The Lady Feline Trio

Since yesterday was all about Tumnus, I thought today should be about my lady cats!

First, there's Maggie.  Magrathea.  She's named after the planet Zaphod Beeblebrox wants to get to in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  She sweet and quiet, and has a funny sort of old-lady wheeze meow.  She's an obsessive lap-sitter.  All you have to do is be down for a moment before she's running over and trying to balance on you.  Her one less-than-awesome quirk is that she also will randomly decide you're doing something she doesn't like -- sometimes you're petting her and she wants you to stop, sometimes you aren't doing anything at all and suddenly she turns her head and sort of "barks" in anger, and swats at you.  This can be a once-and-done, or it can make her hiss and jump off your lap.  Oddly enough, she's usually back again in a minute or two as if nothing happened.  Her other favorite pastime is lying on top of you as you sleep.  She's always our bedtime companion.

Next is Hazelnut.  She's the most loveable, the most energetic, the most Everything.  She has a two-part meow, a low trill and then a slide up to a higher maow.  "Trroow-Mraow?"  It's the most fun to try to imitate and, if you do it to her, she'll usually reciprocate with another.  Very sweet.  She's actually got a damaged eye -- not sure of the circumstances because she is a rescue, but it is very likely she was born with it.  It's almost as if her right eye is one huge cataract, so glazed over it's almost black at parts. We suspect she can see shadows, but aside from a little gracelessness and some apparent lack of depth perception, it doesn't affect her at all.  She's the cat who runs to the door when someone visits.  The first one to jump up to greet newcomers.  She's not a big lap-sitter, but she will sit nearby, usually nestled into the couch next to you or on the arm of a chair.  She's hugely furry and we suspect part Maine Coon.  The only thing we've ever seen her show the slightest fear of is a hair-dryer.  We call her "the Nut" mostly, because she's a bit nutty.

Last is Emmy.  Artemis.  She was my first.  I adopted her and her brother, Oliver, from a local no-kill shelter.  Oliver "Ollie" lives with my Dad in Florida now -- but Emmy is with me and her now three feline siblings.  She's my darling.  She's affectionate, a big talker, very petite and agile.  She is the most graceful of all the cats, able to leap tall banisters in a single bound.  She loves rubbing her head on everything and when she's not intimidated by the other cats, she likes to sit on my lap and knead dough.  I think she'd prefer if it was just me and her in this world, and it took her a long, long time to get used to the other cats, but things have adjusted.  She loves being petted and sleeps next to me in bed when there's room.  She's my sweetheart, my Emmy-wems, and I forgive her anything.  Even that year-long stretch where she peed on everything.
   

Loving and Hating a Cat

So, this is Tumnus.  Mr. Tumnus.  He was the bookstore cat until one too many incidents with claws and teeth led me to decide he was better off away from the public.

He's overweight, and ill-tempered.  Sometimes, like in this picture, he's docile and very cute.  You know, like when he's sleeping.  But when he's awake his number one goal is food.  And for some reason that makes him...just really nasty.  You bend down to pet him and he exposes his belly and then...swipes at you.  He sniffs the air and you give him a hand to smell to test the waters and he bites.  Really bites, like that "chomp and hold" kind of bite. 

I have three other cats, Hazelnut, Maggie, and Emmy.  They're not perfect, but they're generally really pleasant, and pretty clear about boundaries and when they want affection and don't.  Tumnus, though -- he's a liar.  He'll purr and lay down in front of you and when you go to reach out your hand he pounces.  It's not playful.  As soon as you get near him, he flips over back onto his stomach like you just jabbed him with a hot poker. 

Tumnus is dealing with permanently damaged kidneys from an undiagnosed bladder infection.  I adopted him from the Animal Rescue League in August of 2012 and he always used the litter box and never showed signs of discomfort.  But all this time, or at least for a lot of it, the bacteria in his body was eating away at the lining of his kidneys.  Now, I know cats are good at hiding their feelings and especially good at hiding pain.  But -- really?  No sign at all?

So it's easy, nay preferable, to try to chalk his nastiness up to him being in pain.  He was much calmer and less liable to snap when he was on his drugs, certainly.  But I'm worried he's just miserable.  Just a big jerk cat.  I mean, there's no law that says every cat has to be either wonderful or misunderstood.  He doesn't like our other cats, he picks fights, he pees on the carpet in a very territorial manner.  I'm worried he's just a big, nasty cat who doesn't want to have anything to do with us.

He likes Dallas better than me, which is fine, as I have (as I said) THREE other cats.  But, like all masochists, I want the cat to like me.  Hell, I want the cat to LOVE me.  There's no reason he shouldn't.  I feed him and change his litter and try to give him love.  Scritches and brushes and belly rubs.  But he lashes out and it gets old real quick.

So I'm trapped between love and hate.  He's just a cat, right, and the "judgement" of me as unworthy by him shouldn't mean anything.  But it does, and so I'm stuck in the in-between.

The great outdoors

So my thoughts the other morning were that my backyard was looking particularly Secret Garden-esque, especially with the creeper vine growing up over the moon mirror I have on the fence.  Isn't it lovely?

My boyfriend Dallas, his son Logan, and I went geocaching on Sunday, June 9th.  It was pretty hot out but there was an occasional breeze that made everything better.  We only found 1/3 caches we went searching for, but I did capture this great shot of a street only a few blocks from where I live.  These trees are huge and old and it feels like a forest and not the middle of a city.

A rainy day

I'm trying like the dickens to adjust the colors of my posts and titles...for some reason nothing is adjusting.  Mayhap I just need to post a new post?  Here it goes...

As part of my first Artist's Date (I'm participating in "The Artist's Way") I am updating and editing my long-existing but never-posted-in personal blog.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to use it, but I thought redesigning it and posting in it a few times a week would help focus me, and help me feel more like I'm accomplishing things in my life.  So here goes nothing.