NIGHT WANDERINGS, SENIOR STYLE

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And now for more Possum Tracks stories:

 

 

Old folks wander in the night. We have a host of dark hours’ issues—bathroom visits caused by decrepit plumbing, early a.m. wakefulness, aches and pains which require a get-up-and-stretch or—perhaps—an analgesic and a cup of herbal tea. Snoring, wakefulness, illnesses and a whole host of things, a decade back, brought my husband and I to move into separate sleeping quarters, in an attempt to score the now mythical “good night’s sleep”. In our house, too, there are cats who multiply the night time Alarums and Excursions.

B0B is our tiger boy-from-the-hood /spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold. Old habits die hard, so he still keeps a paw in the local night-time goings on.  As spring arrives, there are bunnies, voles, and mice on the move again, more especially their feckless young, which make easy prey.   We wouldn’t know about that, of course, in our human cocoon, but B0B does. He’ll stand on my husband’s chest and meow if he wants to go out. 3 a.m. or 4, he really doesn’t care how you feel about this, especially if there is an enemy abroad, such as the young neighbor tom now leaving some sort of smart-ass gangsta tag on a nearby tree or trash can.

 

No! This Will Not Stand! As soon as it comes to his keen nose’s attention, B0B has to get out there to rectify the situation by adding his own p-mail counter message. If the other guy is still around, that can lead to a confrontation, resulting in Miau-geschrie as Mozart describes the sound, or Katzenmusik, as Google Translate does.

Another feature of nights in this house, I may be a grandma, but I confess I can still wake up screaming from a nightmare, a thing which exasperates everyone else who lives around here, from my husband to the cats. Some past life experience, or, maybe, some random programming from deep within the ancient brain stored at the top of my spine—a poor little shrew sort of critter, chased by a monstrous version of B0B—erupts into the classic night–terror.

OH NO... OH-NO-NO-NO! 
IT SEES ME!

On these occasions, I scream. That either wakes me up, or brings my husband in to shout, "For God's Sake, woman!!"  In that case, I’m the pain in the collective wanna-be-sleeping-ass.

The other night, however, I managed to wake myself up from a near-miss with one of these scream dreams. This particular one had been of the War of the Worlds variety, the kind where you are about to be sucked up onto a booming malevolence hovering overhead. Fortunately, on this occasion, before the mental crescendo of terror, I’d managed to come to by myself.

Still feeling jumpy, I eventually righted myself for a walk to the bathroom. Might as well do that, since I’m already awake. However, upon rounding a corner into a space nominally illuminated by a night-light, I encountered something I hadn’t expected, a moving silhouette, humanoid, the head round. The body was tall, very thin and the arms seemed to dangle in a loose and unmatched way, like something out of The Walking Dead.

 I shrieked.  It did too, so I hauled off and punched it in the chest as hard as I could. After all, the thing was bigger, but it didn’t appear all that steady on its feet.

Maybe, if I could knock it off balance, I could escape…

A thud and a warm breast bone crunched against my knuckles. The creature spoke.
“Ow!” and then “Hey! What the hell?”

As I said at the beginning of this, old folks wander in the night. As you might have expected, my husband and I had unexpectedly encountered one another in the half-dark, and both of us, still groggy, had had quite a scare. Hard on the heels of fear had come irritation, then embarrassment, at last resolving in the only possible way--with a laugh.

 

~~Juliet Waldron
All my historical novels:
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And while you're reading, hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

 

 

How Writers Become Distracted

 

 

Have you finished training your person?

Have you?

Well, well, so you say, but let us see! Let us run through the steps again. 

Repetition is how we all learn best!  

 *** 

Approach your person, meowing plaintively. When they glance down, as they do, you will do a sweet kitty drive-by, gently rubbing against their leg.

A good tip for beginners: When they are typing at high speed is the best time for this kind training!

Your person leans over. Yes she does! She says “What do you want, my fatty fuzzy drawers meatloaf meow-meow puddy-wuddy??” (Sometimes, it’s even dumber than that—there are studies.*)

This, inane as it may sound to you, is an excellent response. It shows that you haven’t been wasting your time. If you haven’t been training this person for long, maybe you’ve lucked out and are working with one of the smart ones.   

Next, it’s time to flop down beside her chair.  Stretch out really long, forepaws and backpaws extending in such a sexy way that, just for a flash, you show off the length of your claws. Bow your belly into one of those easy arcs that screams how flexible you are. Your  tiger pelt catches the light with in a sublime halo of red-gold guard hairs.

Do this whole-heartedly, as if you’ll never arise again. Sometimes, for added effect, you may look over your shoulder and send one of those come hither blinks at the person before turning your head away, finally resting it, in a half disinterested manner, upon the floor again.
 

As soon as your person—the old ones, like the ones I have, will most certainly grunt and groan and make a huge fuss because they have to sit down cross-legged on the floor, whingeing on and on about “vertigo” “last week's surgery” “hip/knee replacements” or whatever is currently ailing their show-offy-monkey balancing-on-their-hind-legs skeleton. Do NOT ever, ever cave. They can get down onto the floor beside you--and, if you have anything to say about it--they will.

As soon as they are all the way down and are just starting to pet (or groom) you, jump up and walk away.

I know this may be tough, especially if they've presciently begun to execute the Aunt Patti Frequent Flyer Eagle Star Super Premium Top Gold level Wuffle which rubs all around your spine in the very bestest way. At such times, you must exercise will power. 

You want this session to be a win, don't you?

Remember, consistency is the key to successful person training--even if that means also being consistently-inconsistent, and always at those times when they are relying on you to do what you did four times last week.
  

Leaving the scene doesn't necessarily mean distance. In fact, at first, it’s better if it isn’t, because then your person will continue attempting to interact, calling and enticing you with mousie fingers to return. But if you're going to close the deal, you must stick to the program and play hard-to-get. You might even flick your tail at them as you turn away and head out to the kitchen food bowl for a crunchy.

 

But don't be in a hurry. Bide your time. Be patient. Maybe have a big drink, too, or even visit the cellar cat box. While you are doing that, though, remain ever-vigilent.

As soon as their annoying self-centered typing resumes, trot upstairs and begin the process all over again.

*** 

But don't start feeling sorry for them, though. Don't waste your time.

Sometimes, okay, they do get to type a lot, because you're napping on the couch on the cat furniture on the other side of the table upon a special fleecy blanket or upon a Queen bed upstairs. You don't really need to be entertained, just at that moment. Besides, this person takes pretty good care of you. The cat box is effectively scooped. There is always a bowl with the aforementioned crunchies and daily fresh water--if that senile co-diety who also holds court here didn't keep standing in it.

If basic things like housekeeping aren't to your liking, you'll soon make those feelings clear. Believe me, persons--this is not a threat, it's a promise! I'll take this weighty subject up at our next person training lesson.

   

Currier & Ives, "The Favorite Cat"

 

~~Juliet Waldron

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http://bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-Juliet

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Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

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Juliet's Author Webpage

Once a week you find them in the lobby of the grocery store.  I have a habit of reading through them. There are the usual advertisers, the churches, the realtors, the auctions, the used car dealers, restaurants that offer “early-bird” specials for seniors, and club listings—chess, photography, computers, knitting, quilting, and a host of support groups. There are a few obituaries, but I hope never to find the few people I do know featured.  There are classified ads, too, and these are mostly the reason I read it.

Every once in a while there’s something that makes me smile.  My most recent favorite said: “Found! One of those things you pick up things with in the 300 block of Mayberry Street.”  This writer had good intentions, but the words to describe the object he’d found eluded him.  Still, he did note where he'd found it, and perhaps that would reunite the owner with the lost object.

Sometimes, the ad reveals something about the mental state of the person who wrote it. This is unintentional, but here’s a good one, full of anxiety: “Lost blue tool box full of tools. I’m not sure where I lost it, but it’s blue, full of tools and says Erector on the lid. Reward! Thank-you.”  You can tell that losing that was a terrible thing, but you can also tell that the writer has probably lost a lot of other important things over the years. As someone who can relate to absent-mindedness and loss, I sincerely hoped someone eventually returned his toolbox (blue).

Another ad, one I responded to, said: “Help me please! I have 31 cats who needs good homes.  Bring cat food.“

I went to the place—the back of beyond behind a very small somewhere along-the-highway town and up a hill via a gullied dirt road. There I found a ramshackle house and on it's last legs barn. There were cats everywhere, running for cover. A woman, thin and tired looking, with tattoos all over her arms, came out and we sat down together on the grass. She explained that she had worked at a shelter, but couldn’t endure the weekly euthanasia, and so had ended up with all these cats. I could see straight-away that most of her cats had no use for people—probably with good reason. 

I watched cats skulking under the rusting junkers  and behind old engine parts that littered the yard. After a few minutes, she  opened the big bag of cat food I’d brought and spread it on the ground. Skinny cats came swarming from every direction.   After gulping hastily, all keeping one eye on me--the unknown--most ran away. I’d been watching an orange threesome, scrawny nine month adolescents. The kind weary woman pointed them out, calling them “my orange brothers.”

One, the skinniest and shabbiest, climbed onto my lap. As soon as I touched him he began to purr, a huge roaring purr. He drooled with joy as I began to pet him gently. His eyes were washed-out yellow. His fur was dry as straw and his nose ran. I could count ribs and feel his knobby spine.

I felt a strong emotional connection—and then he bit me, grabbing the skin of my forearm with his teeth and twisting like a bulldog. Just a millimeter short of drawing blood, he leapt off my lap, stood just out of reach and continued to gaze at me, trembling, drooling, and purring.

“He didn't mean that,” she said. “He just gets excited.” 

This desperate, sick, love-starved soul is the one I took home. You never know what kind of cool stuff you'll discover in the free paper...

 

~ Juliet Waldron

 

 

 

 

Hop on over to these blogs too and see what's cooking: 

 

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/

(Tricia McGill)http://mizging.blogspot.com

(Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/

(Connie Vines)

 

 

 

  

 

 

Bob & The Gollem

 

 

Returned from a 4 day road trip—3 of which were mostly road. The cats missed me, but particularly Bob, because he welcomed me home in his usual over-the-top Uber feline way. Hadn’t been in the house again for more than an hour, when I heard keening outside the door. It’s “Tigger’s” wurra-wurra-wurra, deep, and, somehow, both penetrating and nasal. Nasal of necessity, because he only makes this yeowly cry when he has some pitiful victim clamped between his jaws.  Yesterday, amid the blooming daffodils and the greening yard, the red buds getting ready to burst and send the human community into a coordinated allergy attack, was the last day for a poor bunny, probably  little more than a month old.

 I foolishly opened the door and Bob rushed in carrying it, a tiger with head held high, proudly bearing prey. The sad little head and ears dangled on one side of his mouth, the adorable baby legs on the other. I ran to catch him and he dropped it at my feet. When I gathered it up in a napkin, it was still warm and floppy.

“Damn you, “ said I, which was not the response he was looking for, even though I didn’t really push the regret and sadness I felt into the words. After all, he’s not a kid, he’s a cat, and, in his feline way, he truly meant well. I placed the corpse back outside on the porch. Bob followed and lay down beside it. He stretched out, head up, like some Serengeti hunter relaxing with a fresh-caught antelope.

 

As I gave him a quick stroke, I realized that like the LOTR’s Gollem, he’d brought “master” a lovely present.  As Peter Jackson has it: “Eat them! Eat them, they are young and tender!”

~` Juliet Waldron

http://www.mozartswife.com

BOB & GOLLEM

 

Returned from a 4 day road trip—3 of which were mostly road. The cats missed me, but particularly Bob, because he welcomed me home in his usual over-the-top Uber feline way. Hadn’t been in the house again for more than an hour, when I heard keening outside the door. It’s “Tigger’s” wurra-wurra-wurra, deep, and, somehow, both penetrating and nasal. Nasal of necessity, because he only makes this yeowly cry when he has some pitiful victim clamped between his jaws.  Yesterday, amid the blooming daffodils and the greening yard, the red buds getting ready to burst and send the human community into a coordinated allergy attack, was the last day for a poor bunny, probably  little more than a month old.

 I foolishly opened the door and Bob rushed in carrying it, a tiger with head held high, proudly bearing prey. The sad little head and ears dangled on one side of his mouth, the adorable baby legs on the other. I ran to catch him and he dropped it at my feet. When I gathered it up in a napkin, it was still warm and floppy.

“Damn you, “ said I, which was not the response he was looking for, even though I didn’t really push the regret and sadness I felt into the words. After all, he’s not a kid, he’s a cat, and, in his feline way, he truly meant well. I placed the corpse back outside on the porch. Bob followed and lay down beside it. He stretched out, head up, like some Serengeti hunter relaxing with a freshly-caught antelope. As I gave him a quick stroke, I realized that like the LOTR’s Gollem, he’d brought “master” a lovely present.  As Peter Jackson said it: “Eat them! Eat them, they are young and tender!”

~~Juliet Waldron

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Zombies

I know, the time of year for this has passed—or has it? Zombies today are season-less, rather like basic black, especially to what used to be called “the youth of today.” I haven’t met a kid out of diapers who doesn’t know what a Zombie is, but back in the ‘50’s, this wasn’t so.

Although it might seem amazing to today’s sophisticated mini-consumers of entertainment, Zombies were something I lived without until I was nine. My parents took us on a trip to Bermuda that April, when it was still snowing relentlessly in Upstate NY where we lived. In this vacation spot, I met lots of little city slickers from New York, sophisticated in the darker things, who told me all about Zombies. I think they had more exotic TV in the city, and had perhaps been treated to a Saturday afternoon showing of the Hollywood classic, I Walked with a Zombie, which, beyond the black and white horror film aspect, is a pretty good compendium of basic Zombie lore.

After they’d filled my head with these stories, I had an awful time going to sleep. In those days, some emotion or new concept would get into my head, and I’d experience a freezing, terrifying something akin to a panic attack. I was extremely glad we were on the third floor in that hotel. From what I’d just learned, Zombies weren’t too bright, and so I reasoned they would probably find enough prey to sate their unnatural needs on the two floors below mine.

I was glad I had learned about Zombies when my parents began to travel even farther afield, pretty far, actually for the 1950’s. The winter we spent in Grenada—the stated reason was that my mother had chronic bronchitis—we stayed in a guest house on a point overlooking the bay. There were kids living there with their hotelier parents, a family of four. We played when they got home from school every day. Being proper little West Indians, they knew all about Zombies. I might have lost face worse than I did otherwise if I hadn’t known about them. The creatures the little Grenadians were surprised I’d never heard of were werewolves, which they called Loupe Garou. (I think this is a Haitian expression.) At any rate, they believed that Loupe Garou had first appeared on Haiti, along with the Zombie. It was from that dark birthplace that they’d spread all over the world.

Undeadness is the Zombie’s most repulsive, hackles-raising attribute. As omnivores we should probably forgive their fondness for brains, which are a great source of nutrition. Americans don’t eat them much, but our frugal ancestors did, and most carnivorous animals certainly do. Whenever our well-fed Katter Bob catches a mouse or whatever unlucky rodent, he always begins at the head.

Cicada Time

Bob was sitting on the picnic table the other morning, smiling and pleased with himself. He’d been out dancing in the moonlight, even though it was unusually chilly over night. I was sitting on the bench, patting him. He seemed entirely happy, kneading air with his paws and showing me his spotted belly, playing at being a Domesticated Animal.

The first cicadas are starting in our area, the genetic misfits who awaken on the far edge of their particular Bell Curve. They don’t sing much and flame out early. When one fell from a nearby maple, buzzing like a clockwork toy unwinding, Bob leapt from the table with a bound which would have done a cougar credit and made short work of it.

(It’s humbling, the way he can tune me out. Snap! Gone on cat business!)

I suppose he ate the poor confused thing, like he does everything else. Cicadas, with heads that are pure fat, are one of Mother Nature’s most sought-after crunchy snacks. Birds adore them. I’ve even seen squirrels eat them, these winged, green-armored Doritos of the insect world. I would think the wings and feet would make for an over-ridingly icky mouth feel, but not coming from an insect-eating culture, I’m not the one to judge.

I love cicadas. When I was small, some imaginative family member told me that their wings--see-through, gossamer, etched in green--were fairy wings. I guess what I really love is their deafening song, which can be as loud as 120 decibels up close. They are one of the few noisy things in which I take pleasure. It’s Nature, after all, like waves crashing on shore. The males on my trees start; the neighbor’s cicadas shout out an answer. With the trees arching green overhead, it’s my favorite sort of chorale.

The Great Sammu

“Pica” is defined as a “depraved or perverted appetite … for unnatural food, as chalk, clay, etc. common in chlorosis or pregnancy…”

My mother used the word in a way which stripped it mostly of those dire connotations, simply to describe cravings, like the classic chalk or pickle cravings of the old time malnourished pregnancy. I’ve often thought of the word when describing some of the odd foods my many felines have enjoyed over the years.

One of the oddest cravings I’ve ever seen in a cat were those of Sam, a.k.a. The Great Sammu, a large apple-headed Siamese who adopted us when we lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee. (The name “Sam” slowly morphed into “Sammu” because he was fat and sleek, like Nammu, the Whale). Sam had been living next door with his boy and his boy’s family. They had fallen on hard times, and had moved in temporarily with an aunt and uncle. A dog already lived there, and although this dog was a mellow character, Sammu’s nose was out of joint. He began to show up on our doorstep, rub on our legs and converse with us in his most elegant Siamese. He was a gorgeous seal point, with dark blue eyes, very intelligent, and skilled at getting his way. Finally, he spent so much time mooching at our house that his boy simply gave him to us.

Sammu lived happily with our family for about four years, until something happened to him, about 2 years after our move to PA. We never found out what. One day, while I was deathly ill with bronchitis, he just didn’t come home. Although I hobbled around the neighborhood coughing, searching alleys and garages, I never found his body. My dearest hope is that someone catnapped him; he was beautiful and personable.

At any rate, we learned from the boy next door that Sammu’s family had found him behind a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, where he was scrounging the dumpster for his supper. This must have been where he came by his pica, which was for “Mexican.” In the ‘80’s, making Nachos out of corn chips covered in bean and burger chili, layered with cheese, salsa, guacamole and sour cream was the latest thing. I soon learned I could never produce one of these meals without fixing a little plate for Sam. It was quite amazing to watch him eat, because he’d just start at the top and work his way straight through to the corn chips at the bottom. Cats aren’t really equipped for handling this kind of food, but he would sit there and chew away at the corn chips until he’d got most of them down. He seemed just as fond of the beans and guacamole as he was of the more predictable sour cream and hamburger. After he finished, he sat there, sides bulging, cleaning his face and long whiskers with one elegant, dark chocolate paw. We always wondered whether we should offer him a little dish of cerveza to go with it.

Serial Bob

We have a bulkhead next to a small extension at the back of our house. Between bulkhead and laundry is about a foot and half of pavement. This has become the place where our local serial killer lays out his victims. I tend to let cats in and out at this back door, where I’m sort of tucked inside, facing the patio and a fence. This is often the first view of my yard I have in the morning, but I’ve learned not to look around the door at the area between the bulkhead and the house until well after I’ve had my coffee.

Our ex-stray cat has decided that this is the place to leave displays of his night’s work. Right now, fortunately, he’s apparently on hiatus, but earlier this spring when everything was young, tender, and frisking with joy, he was busy. The “work” that always impresses us most is the squirrels, full grown ones that he lugs in for us to admire. He used to eat them whole back when he was on the lam, but now just the head seems to be satisfactory. What’s the zombie joke? “Brainssssss!”

Anyway, he caught four squirrels this spring, great big plush grown-ups who should have known better. I don’t feel too sorry about them, because we’ve got a ton of squirrels who are up to no good with my bulbs and gardens. I do mourn the bunnies and chipmunks he catches, but what purely I hate, what I yell about, are the song birds.

Worst and most heinous of all his crimes, he ate my adorable jazz-master catbird in his fine, gray Wall Street suit. He crunched house finches around the bird feeder like potato chips, so that I gave up putting seeds into it. He brought me a darling Carolina Wren in his mouth, held so carefully that when I coaxed it away from him, the wren took flight straight from my hand. I hope very much that his/her rattling little bold scolding self survived the ordeal. This cat of mine could give Sylvester a bad name!
Web Site: Juliet Waldron

Tulip Ruminations

Here in southern PA, the tulips have already gone by. It’s sad. You study catalogs, choose bulbs, dig and plant, crawling around on your old, creaking knees for hours making certain they are comfortably bedded down. Then, in they appear, bloom, and in less than a week, their glorious moment is past. This year, three record breaking days of 90 degree heat finished them off in record time.

Daffodils last a bit longer, and there is quite a selection of these nowadays, ones that come early, ones that bloom late, ones with ruffles, ones in pink and white as well as yellow. What’s more, squirrels don’t think daffodils are quite as yummy as tulips, so the bulbs—and the flowers—are more likely to survive. (Bob Cat has done a good job of young squirrel crunching, but he isn’t as hungry as he used to be.) Our apple tree, too, flowered and dropped in record time. I hope the pollinators had a chance to do their job and make us some apples. The bloom lasted such a short time that I never found an instant to go and stand under the tree and catch the scent, or listen to the busy humming over my head, and contemplate the miracle of flower and fruit upon which life on our little planet depends.

Think I’ve learned my lesson about tulips. They were once the sole property of aristocratic gardens, and maybe that’s how it should still be. Corporations and Outlet Malls can bring in troops of gardeners and plant annuals over the bulb’s heads way faster than I can. Better for this home gardener to plant perennial native plants that bush and straggle, but which do bloom and feed the local pollinators for a respectable amount of time. Better for this home gardener to raise a few veggies, tomatoes, salad and herbs in pots on the patio, and eat from home rather than what came in on the truck From Heaven Knows Where, sprayed with Heaven Knows What.

Bob's Good Idea

Bob, the Cat-Boy-in-the-Hood who has chosen to live with us, occasionally finds his new home boring. With his usual creativity, he has found a good solution—good, at least, for him!

This April, the weather has been erratic, with warm spells, followed by really chilly cold spells. We’re glad to see the rain, because we need it, and I’m glad to see the cold, because it suppresses the neighbors and quiets the place down a little.

Anyhow, Bob has a pretty good routine devised. He cruises, hunting for moles and mice as he always has, using our house as a convenient pit stop for crunchies, and for shelter when it rains, snows, blows or is otherwise inclement. This works well for him, even at night, because we are retired and also because we are old, which means one or the other of us is awake and always ready to play doorman for him.

When the weather is really bad, however, he may be stuck inside for 10-12 hours which soon becomes intolerable. Things then become intolerable for our other three gentle, completely domesticated felines who are kept indoors most of the time. To liven things up, Bob will try to play with them, and like a lot of tough street cats, his idea of fun is not the same as theirs. He plays rough, and although I don’t think he really means to hurt them, they clearly do not like it.

Well, around 2 a.m. on a night when I was up reading, it started to rain. So, I opened the door as usual and there he was, waiting to come in. After giving him the usual quick stroke on the head, I went back upstairs and climbed into bed, because rain on the roof is a wonderful sleeping potion for me. No sooner had I settled down, then the noise began. It was kitty thunder footing, and if you have more than one cat, you know what I mean. Amazing how much noise those dainty little feet can make, especially in a herd! I figured Bob was just blowing off steam, so I ignored it. With the lovely rain drumming, I soon went back to sleep.

The next day I came downstairs and at once realized that this had not been a good choice. In the middle of the living room lay a headless mouse. I realized Bob must have smuggled in some "entertainment."
Sure enough, a few nights later the process repeated. I tried to check his mouth. He easily evaded me, and trotted off into the dining room. The other cats—for once—followed. There he dropped his mouse, and then sat back with a feline smile. The others approached, quivering with excitement. Rarely do they get such a thrill!

The poor mouse took one look and made a run for it, and a melee followed as the indoor cats took after it. Bob licked his paw, apparently well pleased with himself. It suddenly came to me that we now had a mouse inside—perhaps crippled—which would obtain a small revenge by dying far back under my ten-ton entertainment center. After hanging around for some time, following the stampede hither and thither, I realized there was not much I could do to either help the mouse or hinder the cats. In the end, I decided there was nothing to do but go back to bed.

Cat Names

Cat Names and how they get them is a long and tortuous topic, as twisted and lumpy as old street cat’s busted tail. The “owner” (or, more properly, the feline “host”) gives kitty a name, but as Paul Gallico told us long ago in his wonderful and heartbreaking story, The Abandoned, kitties arrive with their own names, secret names that only cats know.

It is my theory that the secret name leaks into the susceptible mind of the cat “owner” and causes a kind of sea change to occur. The original “given” name becomes something else, it transmutes, sometimes taking along the elements of the by-human-bestowed name, sometimes not. I gave the name “Pamina” to a small flame-point domestic shorthair barn-born kitten, during my extended period of Mozart Madness. This promptly morphed into “Mina,” which became in turn became “Meena,” “Meena-Moo,” and finally just “Moo.” At the same time, we had another barn baby who made a perfect imitation of a Maine Coon, old-fashioned black and gray. As if Mozart wasn’t sufficiently entertaining, I was also reading a lot of ETA Hoffmann, one of the 18th Century inventors of the Fantasy novel. This darling round kitten became “Murr,” after Hoffmann’s own beloved feline companion. (It means “purr” in German.)
Typical of human skill in naming, this large cuddly ball with toe feathers and a fluffy buff belly, did not purr at all. He had that gorgeous round Maine Coon face, with neck ruff and ear feathers, so he became “Murr Face.” After awhile—and you can see this coming—it just became “Face,” or, when we wished to address him formally: “Face Cat.”

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with “Mittens” or “Boots,” nor even “Fluffy,” although I think these cats, too, have secret names, ones their owners may never discover. I once read in a new age magazine that cats prefer names which have initial sounds of “S,” “T,” “F,” “B,” “M” and “P.” On the strength of this (perhaps) dubious authority, I followed the rule for many years in giving cat names. We had “Set” and “Tut” strictly following the Egyptian theme. We had Bast the Beautiful, a ferocious black female who chased squirrels up trees, caught them and then rode them down to their deaths. We had “Sam,” a Siamese, of course, but of the apple-headed big bodied variety. His full name was “Mahasamatman” after the Buddha.

Some nice folks in Nashville let us take over Sam’s care, as he’d moved over to our house anyway. Fact was, they’d picked him up behind a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. He loved those dinners we had in the eighties: corn chips covered with chili and cheese. You could make Sam a plate starting with the chip, bean and burger layer, then top it with salsa, sour cream and guacamole, and he’d motor through it, right down to the bottom.

There’s an old adage about every life “Needs 9 cats.” You need at least nine, IMHO, because every cat is a stand-out individual. The older I get, and the more I learn about them, the better my feline relationships become. As the all-powerful aliens said on an ancient Star Trek “They are beings; they have spirit.”
–Juliet Waldron
http://www.mozartswife.com/

B.0.B. Cat

Bob, yes, that’s an acronym. He arrived as a skinny youth, a gray striped tiger with two enormous boy accoutrements carried proudly beneath his tail. He had a very loud, deep voice and a head and chest that were thick, out of proportion to the rest of him. Clearly, here was a young tomcat -- on the lam! I, of course, petted him. He was very friendly. I fervently hoped he had a home.

Then, one day as winter approached, I offered him food. At first he turned it down. He had on a tight, much weathered collar. He began to show up daily for petting, and also to eat what I offered. He drooled as he gobbled down a bowl of dry kibble, and I imagined he’d been recently abandoned—or that whoever had been feeding him had stopped. One day he came to me and put a paw on his collar, clawing. I removed it, and scratched his neck, which obviously felt good. It had been on the verge of choking. Again, I hoped that if he did belong to someone, even marginally, they’d replace the collar, but no one did.

We began to call him B.B., in honor of his sizeable boy parts, ever more notable as he grew. He began to appear, calling loudly, morning and evening, to get his handout. He liked to sit on my lap, too, so I began to huddle on the porch, sitting on the car’s silver sunscreen to keep my butt warm. I started to take my flea comb out and groom him a bit, pinching out the ones I caught, and cleaning his scarred up head. He seemed to like it. Because he was so big and such a tomcat, I was hesitant about handling him—I just let him do what he wanted, which was to curl up on lap and knead for a few minutes after he ate.

We already had 3 indulged indoor cats, and my husband was adamant about “no more,” so B.B. and I got through the winter as well as we could. (Chris keeps my cat collection under control.) I worried about B.B. when it was very cold, and offered water along with the food now, which he would lap thirstily. Still, he walked off every day as though he had places to go and things to do. (The song “Tomcat Strut” came to mind.) As long as he was fed, everything seemed OK, although I did worry when he showed up covered in blood from fighting during the autumn Yy-eowly season. In the depths of the winter, too, he’d show up covered in blood, but with no new wounds I could locate. Then his ribs and belly stuck out and he had no appetite. When I found squirrel tails in the yard, I understood that alone among 40 years of cats, I had concrete proof that B.B. wasn’t afraid to take on our thuggish local “tree rats.”

Cute, squirrels—and don’t get me wrong, there’s almost nothing more adorable than a litter? of babies, practicing their acrobatics, rejoicing in spring and the abundance of food. Yes, and they are smart, too, but just hell on my birdfeeders! I’ve never lived anywhere with such aggressive squirrels. These guys have a look in their eyes that makes me fear they’re planning a mugging. Perhaps it’s that we live in too urban an area for the men to plug them, like they would in the sticks, but we do seem in need of a predator for them.

Well, to return to B.0.B., a dear friend of mine who loves animals kicked in half of the Humane Society’s spay and neuter bill, and we trapped B.B. and took him on the appointed day. He was tested for Feline Leukemia/ peritonitis, given his shots and his life changed—we hoped—when we removed the B.B’s. We brought him home and locked him in a room with box and water, and fed him as he recovered. He seemed happy to be warm and didn’t carry a grudge, as we humans might. What we still didn’t know was if this paws are made for walkin’ guy would stay with us after neutering and gaining entry to our home.

As we suspected, he hasn’t changed his game plan one iota.

We did change his name, though. Now (at least to us,) he’s B. Zero B. or Bob. It seems like a decent name for a large gray cat. Who knows how many other names he has! I put a collar on him with a tag, and that lasted about 2 days, although I did get a phone call from a lady who said she was glad such a nice cat had a home, and that he visited her regularly. I put another collar on him, which lasted even less time, but received a phone call from a second lady who said pretty much the same thing. Who knows how many other benefactors he has?

Oh, B.0.B., you total bum! Even as I write, I’m waiting for you to put in your daily appearance. He’s taken to using our house for a crash pad, appearing when it’s cold, or raining, and calling for “in.” When the door opens, he heads for the food bowl and slams his face into it. Kibble flies in all directions as he eats . The other cats watch him, in awe. Then, after getting some patting—he’s a great leg rubber and has a wonderful purr—he goes to sleep upside down on the couch with his mouth open. He drools, too, especially when he’s happy or getting a chin scratch.