The Season's a-Changin' - 2

The fallen autumn leaves crunching underfoot herald a much quieter exfoliation that occurs, year round, yes, but increases in intensity with the move towards colder weather. Ah, hairballs. Little White Kitty bequested us a lovely one yesterday evening. I can only hope she feels better now.

I don't really mean to gross you out, dear reader, but I was struck by a thought in the dark hours of the early day as I walked past the bathroom where Resident Spouse was coughing because of a speck caught in the throat. I turned into the living room and caught sight of LWK under the piano bench, spotlighted in the diffuse rays from a small kitchen light, in pose of slight startlement.

Perhaps she was startled by me, suddenly appearing from the dark bedroom, or perhaps it was a kitty horrified at the thought of the size of the hairball Resident Spouse would produce.

Summer haze

The dog days of summer, open windows at night, lead to indoor/outdoor experiences of many kinds.  Often these things happen at night, when you feel least prepared or least capable of dealing with the unexpected. 

A neighbor mentioned a sighting of a baby skunk the other day, one that apparently was too young to figure out how to spray the dog that was merrily playing with it.  This particular neighbor has successfully live-trapped several young skunks over the years and relocated them to the "wild" on some public land just out of town.

The middle of the night is often when we get a whiff of our resident odoriferous neighbors, the windows open next to the wildlife highway to the delectable goodies in the backyard garden allow sounds and odors to waft in to tickle our brains as we dream.  Dreams can become nightmarish, or at least unpleasant, as in the case of an encounter of the skunk kind several years ago when Resident Kid was but a toddler.

The Resident Cat at the time was a fluffy orange cat with a kingly white tuxedo shirt front.  This cat was a He Cat of the macho kind and liked to prowl the 'hood at night.  One evening we were hit with a powerful strong smell of skunk and went to the back door to see if we could catch sight of what we had caught wind of.  In came He Cat streaking through the house, and, in his wake, that powerful strong smell of skunk.  It didn't take long to find him hunkered down under Resident Kid's bed, squinty-eyed and drooling, obviously having taken the full blast straight in the face.  

Now He Cat was normally a cantankerous type that didn't appreciate even the most desultory grooming attempts on our part and as a a result his long fur was often matted because we would get scratched or bitten if we tried to brush him.  This night was a different matter.  Nary a growl as I picked him up and dunked him in the sink full of the special skunk remover formula that another neighbor had found after their dog was sprayed.  I scrubbed and washed and otherwise took action that would humiliate any self-respecting cat, but this cat was taken beyond humiliation by the utter misery of full strength skunk.  This cat didn't even care that his apparent heft was belied by wet fur that revealed the scrawniest kittenish figure beneath the fluff.  All he cared about was that the homemade skunk remover formula worked.


Homemade Skunk Remover Formula:
1 quart 3% hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 tablespoon liquid dish soap

Mix together (it will foam up hugely) and rub all over skunk sprayed area.  Rinse well.

If cats could whistle - 2

During the time between the introduction of New Dog and LWK's shadow boxing, the household socks stayed securely in their proper places.  (Proper place in this context means "where they were last left by a human," not necessarily where they belonged.  Further, I make no value judgments about the quality of housekeeping in our home.)  I started to hope that things were approaching a new normalcy when the first sock appeared at the bottom of the stairs well out of reach of the baby gate at the top.  This sock, upon closer scrutiny, was recently laundered and bore the unmistakable signs of having been "plucked."  Wondering if it was a fluke, I took it back to the pile of laundry on the folding table and found its mate and took the opportunity to fold the rest of the pile.

About a week later, with a fresh source now piled on the folding table, I found two socks on the stairs.  Neither being the mate of the other, I took them back and, once again, folded the pile.

The following couple of weeks was somewhat disjointed in the household with outside obligations creeping in and distracting us from our normal household jobs.  We were getting the minimum done we needed to be able to function (i.e. have clean clothes to wear) but the folding the pile was definitely low on the list of things to do. 

It seemed LWK was taking full opportunity of the lull in our attention to laundry folding because large collections of 3 to 5 socks appeared at the back door.  In fact, so many socks were being hauled up the stairs that I collected a big pile by the phone and soon was able to match pairs.  I have often suggested that every member of the household should contribute to the laundry process in some way.  I didn't expect the contribution to come from such an unexpected quarter, especially because the helper doesn't even wear clothes.

Going to the mattresses

The shock of a new, fast canine in a formerly feline-dominated world, sent LWK into a bit of a tizzy and, as I think I mentioned before, a retreat to the basement realm.  I would go down every morning and turn on a light and roust her out of a den she'd selected amongst some boxes in storage.  Her love of attention didn't change one whit but she was quite tentative about venturing upstairs.

I'd often talk to her as I collected jars from the pantry or socks from the laundry.  One day while I was folding laundry, she sat down nearby and struck up a conversation.  We stuck to small talk at first, until I broached the subject of the new dog.

"It's your house, too," I said gently, but also firmly.  I wanted to let her know that she had every right to the upstairs that she had previously enjoyed.  "Besides, she's a chicken, you know?  Just swat at her and show her where you stand."  As I said that, I swatted the air with my paw...er...hand.  LWK stared at me in disbelief.  I nodded, "You just have to let her know your boundaries."  I swatted the air a couple more times.   LWK stared and then slowly lifted a paw and swatted the air.  "That's it!"  I crowed.  Hauling my laundry load upstairs I left her to mull things over.

It must have taken her nearly a day after my pep talk to work up her courage, but LWK showed up, puffed out from her nose to the tip of her tail, and stood her ground to that freaky dog.  When Mimsy got too close, LWK swatted at her and Mimsy duly scrambled to cower behind a piece of furniture.  Mission accomplished, LWK reclaimed her post beside the kitchen phone.

Doppler 5

We settled into a long stretch of comfortable being with dogdom, about 4 years in all with little extraordinary in the way of happenings and events.  Doppler slowly, in the slow way only a fast dog can, slowed down a bit in terms of his frenetic puppyish chasing madly hither and yon.  A household routine took hold and everything held an even keel.

One of our first abodes in our new home town of Bend, Oregon was a minuscule rental house will all of 600 square feet.  The main attraction of this shack was that it was freestanding and it allowed dogs with relatively little fuss (in other words, you didn't have to sign away your annual income and your firstborn to have a dog in the house).  By the time we had found this place we had already accepted the fact that we would have to find a rental that would allow a dog because the alternative, giving up Doppler in order to find a place to live, was not tenable.

This little place, which has long since succumbed to the bulldozer, was one of three tiny houses where a variety of young wanna-be professionals/entrepreneurs lived.  We quickly made the acquaintance of our neighbors and started sharing hotted up barbecue grills and the like.  The back house had a young man living there for a short time at the beginning of our stay.  He ended up moving to Portland and left behind his cat, Pumpkin, in the care of our other neighbors until such time as he could find a place that would allow cats.  He gave them a huge jar full of change to pay for cat food and Pumpkin took to living under the houses in the crawl spaces.  As summer wore into fall, the former neighbor made contact periodically and we wondered if he ever would collect Pumpkin (who was, as you might have imagined, a very fluffy orange tabby). 

Doppler, it turned out, was very tolerant of cats.  If they ran, he would chase, but if they stood their ground and swatted, he would respect.  Pumpkin was one of the latter types and had both Doppler and the other neighbor's dog at quite the respectful distance.

Bend was a wonderful town in the mid-1990's.  It had a lot of characteristics of other towns we had traveled through on our early retirement trip (other stories to come) and we had decided to try to make a life in Bend.  I was working retail into the early evenings and Eric was working retail into even later evenings so I often found myself alone, with or without Doppler, watching TV. 

One bitterly cold night, after stoking the little woodstove into producing the 80 degree hot house that was inevitable because any stove was too big for this house, I propped open the front door to temper the heat.  After a few minutes I felt I was being watched and looked up to see an orange face peering in the screen door.  Being a total soft touch, I thought for perhaps a few moments before opening the door to let Pumpkin in.  He walked over and sat on the hearth in front of the wood stove as if he'd done that for years.  We spent a pleasant evening watching TV until Eric came home.  His words, upon entering and taking in the scene were, "So, do we have a cat now?"

Ghost stories for dogs

I think I mentioned that we recently added to our household a critter in the form of a miniature pinscher mix named Mimsy.  She's a cute dog, smart, personable, but a trifle hard for the cats, especially LWK, to stomach.  Thud and Mimsy are close in size, 14 and 15 pounds respectively.  LWK is about half that, tipping the scales at 6-7 pounds. *

The first week was full of the drama of introductions and various vocal displays.  Thud was somewhat unruffled by the advent of new dog, but then we always suspected she was part canine in character.  She quickly learned the ways of wrestling and escape.  She soon discovered the delights of sitting under the furniture that Mimsy wouldn't or couldn't get under and swatting at the poor frustrated dog. 

LWK (Little White Kitty) was less comfortable.  She retreated to safety in the basement, secure behind the baby gate at the top of the stairs.  Each day, we'd give her love and talk to her so she would get at least some of the attention she would normally demand and after a few days, moving whiteness would catch the corner of our eyes as she flitted around nooks and crannies upstairs. 

One night I had flopped down on the bed to read a bit when I felt Mimsy jump up next to me.  I didn't really pay attention to the fact that she didn't demand attention like she often does, in fact, I kind of appreciated being left in peace to turn the pages at my leisure.  Then I felt a tremor...kind of like the tremor that you might feel when a huge truck rumbles by, but here there was no noise.  There it went again  ... and again ... finally I noticed and looked up to see Mimsy sitting, tight and alert and shaking from head to foot.  She had never acted like this before so I sat up to get a bead on her line of sight and saw a demon ghost kitty sitting in the hallway with the light reflecting blue-green off her eyes.  I have to admit, I was a little spooked myself.  The ghost soon evaporated, leaving a shaken little dog in her wake.



*  Names have been changed in these stories to protect the innocent.  The fact that one of these names is real is probably an indication of non-innocence.

If cats could whistle

It all started innocuously enough.  A sock on the stair or in the living room.  I thought I had dropped things as I trundled the laundry downstairs to the washing machine.  Or I blamed the kiddle for leaving dirty socks around.  But then I found a sock under the dining room table.  Hmmmmm.   Definitely not on my flight path.

Before unemployment I was gone most of the day, often home for a quick lunch because I lived close enough to work to make up for my poor, or lack of, lunch planning in the mornings.  When I got home I'd usually crack open the door to see a big toothy yawn from the nearest cat bed on a living room chair.  Lazy stretch and a meow from the big one we occasionally call Thud.  LWK, aka, Little White Kitty was usually curled in a tight ball on our bed and would come out to beg treats as soon as I started making lunch.  Her timing was impeccable.

Once I started staying home for lack of employment, the two of them were incredible pests.  I imagine they were confused because I wasn't leaving them in peace to get their morning naps as usual.  I was always moving about the house, doing this or that, or sitting at the computer with that very entertaining pointer arrow moving about the screen.  It was during this transition period that I started noticing more and more socks strewn about the house.

Now I'll be the first to admit that am not the most careful of housekeepers.  I like to joke that I can interior design them, but not keep them, but even I do not leave socks littering the floor like so many bleached leaves.  Hmmmm.

And then one day I caught the perpetrator.

Picture a cat crouched at the back window watching the birds in the trees and in her mouth...a sock.  She thought she was fast enough that I didn't notice, but I saw her.  LWK dropped the sock like a hot potato and looked up at the sky and I could swear I heard a breathy little whistle coming from a mouth that can't pucker.