9/20/05

Say!!!

* * * Cats don’t like it when you roll up a piece of packing tape, stick it to their back, and then pull it off to see how much fur you’ll get (the answer: quite a bit of loose fur will come off with the tape). In fact, they get quite freaked out and run away, chirruping the whole while. In case you were wondering. * * * Why? Why why WHY would someone do a search on “Stick bottles up my butt”? Are they looking for instructions? Are they looking for pictures? And why would they end up on my site? Never mind. I’d rather not know. * * * I popped out of a fairly sound sleep this morning. I glanced at the clock – 6:45 – and listened intently. After a moment, I heard it again, and again. It sounded very much like a cat who was gasping for air, each breath more difficult than the one before. I took out my earplugs and listened some more, and it continued to sound like a cat gasping for air. My immediate thought was “Oh, christ. Spot‘s dying, and I’m going to have to take him to the vet and they’re probably going to have to euthanize him, and I’ll have to stand there and watch them and I DON’T WANNA!” I assumed it was Spot because he’s the oldest and has had some health issues recently. I grabbed my glasses and sat up, and as I did so, Mister Boogers ran out from under the bed with a bird in his mouth. Once he came under the bed, I could tell that he wasn’t gasping for air, but rather was growling in a rhythmic fashion. “GodDAMN you, Mister Boogers!” I yelled. He ran to the doorway of the bedroom and crouched there, growling a warning at Miz Poo, who was on the other side of the room, and Spanky, who was five feet away at the top of the stairs. I got out of bed, put my nightgown on, and walked over to where Mister Boogers was crouched. The bird was so motionless that I was pretty sure it was dead, but when I clapped my hands at Mister Boogers, he reacted by dropping the bird and running two feet away to sit and stare with glittering, evil eyes at the bird. The bird flapped its wings a few times, then lay still. “Oh grand. GRAND. You fucker!” I said to Mister Boogers, who ignored me. “You didn’t KILL it, you just wounded it horribly, and NOW I’m going to have to take the goddamn thing to the vet!” And I didn’t WANNA. The bird lay still as I stepped around it and went into the laundry room to get the rubber gloves I wear when cleaning out the litter box. I put on the gloves and leaned down to pick up the bird so I could examine it closer. Which is when it decided that it was time to get busy living, and it squawked at me in a pissed-off manner and took to the air. It flew past the ceiling fan – thank god it didn’t get caught in the ceiling fan, is all I can say – and I immediately hit the switch to turn the fan off. Mister Boogers, who was as wired as if he’d spent the morning slurping down extra-strength espressos – tracked the bird’s every movement. The bird landed on the top of the window and sat there for a moment. Mister Boogers climbed to the top of the back of the recliner in that corner of the room, and stood on his hind legs, trying to reach the bird. I yelled at Mister Boogers. The bird saw me coming closer, and took flight again, this time landing on the top of the other window. Thus ensused two or three minutes of Mister Boogers and I following the bird back and forth, while Miz Poo sat in the middle of the floor and chirped questions at us. Finally, I grabbed the phone and called Fred on his cell phone. After a moment of talking, we decided that I’d throw the cats out of the room, shut the door, open the window from the top, remove the screen, and hope that the bird was smart enough to glimpse freedom and fly out the window. I picked up Mister Boogers, who immediately went limp and chattered bitchily at me. I tossed him out the bedroom door, shut the door, and turned around… to see Mister Boogers standing on the bed. I grabbed him again, tossed him out the door, and again he managed to get back inside the room at a speed so fast my eyes had no idea what was going on. I was about to yell at him, when the bird squawked, flew for the window by the bathroom, and landed on the floor by the bathroom door. Mister Boogers, of course, ran over and started sniffing at the bird. I yelled at him to get away from the bird – which he ignored – walked over, and picked the bird up. The bird began squealing like a little pig, and I spoke soothingly to him as I carried him down the stairs and to the back door. I was like the pied piper of cats as all four of them followed me the entire way. I opened the back door, stepped out, and held the bird out. The bird looked around as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, and then he flew off, followed by a chattering Mister Boogers, a chirping Miz Poo, and a quiet Spot and Spanky. This is not, for the record, my favorite way to wake up. I’d been intending to sleep for another hour at least, but after chasing a bird around the room and then coming downstairs to set it free, I was far too awake to get back to sleep. Since I was up and wide awake, I decided to get some chores done. I spent the next hour putting laundry away, scrubbing out our cats’ litter box and the box the litter box sits in, which entails carrying the whole kit and caboodle downstairs and out to the back yard, where I fill the litter boxes (and the box the litter box sits in) with soapy water, let it sit for a few minutes, and then scrub everything and rinse it out. Then I left everything outside to dry and went upstairs, where I filled a clean litter box with fresh litter, then came back downstairs to get the box the litter box sits in, dried it off, and carried it and the vacuum cleaner upstairs. For the record, as I was carrying the vacuum cleaner and the litter box box upstairs, I thought “I wonder if this is going to be the time I fall down the stairs because I’m carrying too much shit at the same time so I don’t have to make multiple trips up the stairs?” It was not. Theeeeeen I went back downstairs, filled a bucket with bleach and water, filled syringes with amoxicillin, and went back upstairs. I left the bucket of bleachy water in the spud’s bathroom, went in to the kitten room, and gave each of them a dose of amoxicillin. I took a look at Sad Eyes’ behind, saw that he was caked with poo, and made the hard decision. I was going to have to give him a bath, because there’s just no way all that stuff dried to his tail and the area surrounded his behind was going to come off with just a damp cloth. I filled the spud’s bathroom sink with lukewarm water, made sure I had everything I needed, put the rubber gloves on  and went in to get him. I picked him up and held him close, and he immediately began purring really loudly. He did not, you won’t be surprised to find, much care for having a bath. But he also didn’t fight me as much as I thought he might, and it only took a few minutes of gentle bathing to get 99% of the poo off of him. My mistake was leaving the bathroom door open, so Miz Poo heard the sad little crying kitten and jumped up next to the sink to see what kind of torture I was performing. I picked him up to put him on the towel and dry him, but once he got his claws in my shirt, he climbed up me and ended up hanging on to my back. I grabbed the towel and walked to the kitten room, then bent down so he could jump off me, and then I grabbed him with the towel and rubbed him mostly dry. I totally should have brought the camera upstairs with me, because there’s just nothing so pathetic looking as a wet cat. Next time, I’ll try to remember. While Sad Eyes was being consoled by his brothers and sister, I cleaned the spud’s sink and counter with bleach and water, then dried everything. Then it was back into the kitten room to put them all in the carrier. I put the carrier in the spud’s room and shut her door, then went back into the kitten room with my bucket of bleachy water and a thousand rags. I honestly expected it to only take me about twenty minutes to scrub out the litter box, vacuum the room, and wipe everything down with a bleach solution, but it took me more like 45 minutes. When everything was clean as it could be and I went to get the kittens to put them back in their room, they were all snuggled up in the carrier, dozing. When I put them back in their room and opened the door to the cat carrier, they came out and sniffed around for a little while before flopping down and dozing off. Which gave me enough time to pull the towel out of the carrier, scrub the carrier down, and put a clean towel in the carrier. Then I started a new load of laundry, took a shower, vacuumed the entire upstairs, and carried all the trash in the upstairs down to the garbage can. So, that’s been my day thus far, and it’s not even noon. I think I need a nap. Smitty, asleep in the sun. Sad Eyes suggests that I put the camera away before he comes over and puts it away for me. (If you look closely, you can see a smear of amoxicillin across the bridge of his nose. I have no idea how it got there.) Barrett licks the water off his lips. Little Cal, up close. I love the orange stripes on the side of her face. All of today’s uploaded kitten pics are here. * * * PS: Oh, lovely. I just went into the dining room to find that one of the fucking cats brought a cave cricket into the house, brutally ripped off one of its legs, and left it there to die. At least, I hope it’s dead. Those things fucking creep me out. * * * Previously 2004: “This book makes me want to have a baby!” I said to Fred when I was about halfway through the book. “Let’s have a baby!” 2003: No entry. 2002: Gag city. 2001: I think you know what I’m thinkin’. 2000: I’d like to return to my regularly scheduled life, please.]]>