Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Fly

With the new back door, the indoor flies have diminished significantly.

On occasion, though, one will get in, and I am gratified when I can kill it with the electric fly zapper racquet.

One got in yesterday. He had an attitude. He was animated. He was savvy to my games. He liked beef stroganoff, especially if I was making it from scratch just for him. And he loved peeping out of the corner of his eye(s) to watch for the electric zapper.

Gary spoke of it as if it was our new pet. "That is the SMARTEST fly EVER! Look at how he dive-bombs your head!"

I went to the bathroom, came back, found the fly sitting ON the zapper. Sitting on it. The balls! The balls on this fly!

Finally, after hours of this nonsense, I saw him and one of his brothers staring out the back door glass. That is the fly killing field, because when the zapper comes behind them they see the reflection and think it's in front of them. The smart fly didn't catch on even after his brother was killed. 

Smart fly still got zapped, but he went down swinging. It took so many zaps to kill him that I smelled burnt fly flesh. 

A worthy opponent. 

Pet Omen

I was reading through the In Which We Mock Our Pets category, getting a retrospective of all the Goldie posts, and ran into the last few posts about Mac the Dog.

First, the dog was sick for hours, and yet I spoke of how sudden it all was. I had almost an entire day to get used to the idea the dog had a problem. Now I know what a luxury that was.

Second, in the future I will freak out if a pet sleeps, like both Mac and Goldie  " ... with his face on my foot, my favorite position." I will think it's an omen. 

Goldie's been gone for a week now. Gary won't talk about other cats anymore; he says it hurts his heart.

He was up late last night making kissing sounds to the baby raccoons through the window screens, though. 

Gary vs Ellen: Cat Qualifications

Gary is talking a little less about Replacement Cat.

I am still not interested. I am eating so much sugar that I have grown a litter of kittens under my skin. There's an entire kitten nestled in my wattle and two smaller ones curled up on top of my hips. 

Yesterday, these were Gary's specifications for Replacement Cat.

• Kitten
• Cute
• Has jazz hands
• Sounds like this kitten
• House broken (somehow, prodigy kitten, I don't know)

I personally don't need a replacement, because I can still see Goldie out of the corner of my eye, slinking into whatever room I'm in. 

 

Gary Campaigns

Today, Gary: "So have you thought any more about adopting a cat?"

Two and a half hours later, Gary: "Have you made up your mind about the kitten?"

Half an hour later, Gary:  "I read here that if you get a kitten you have to get two."

Shortly thereafter, Me: "Stop it. Just stop."

==== momentary interruption in blog post ====

I SWEAR to you, I typed that quotation mark above and Gary came in to the room and showed me a TikTok of Jazz Hands Kitty.

Sometimes I wonder if he secretly always wanted a baby and just never mentioned it, and now I know: I he would have mentioned it five times a day.

Hinge for Cats

I was in tears after Goldie's light went out, and Gary said, "We'll get another cat."

I was horrified. Way too soon, my dude. Read the room. Read the room full of hysterical crying.

The great thing about Goldie was that we got to know him, and won him over slowly, and watched as he blossomed during his time with us.

Essentially, Goldie was me. Resistant to love, skeptical of affection, bitey. And now Gary wants some whore kitten? Some whore kitten who loves us because we feed it? I don't think so. Last night he wanted to go get a cat at a pet store, even, which goes against everything we learned with our dogs Mac and Doug.

I wish there was some way you could search for cats by personality. Hinge for cats. Seriously, you go in to an app, and they have an algorithm that does some behind the scenes magic, and it serves up a cat you are sure to love and then you delete the app.  I would even accept a Facebook app that gives me Hot Cats Near You. Cats not looking for love. Cats like Goldie. 

Goldie the Cat, too soon gone

I know. That title's an awful way to start, but sadly, and suddenly, Goldie is gone.

As you know, Goldie was most recently seen tucked into the cervical collar in the bookcase. We thought that eating mice may have put him off his feed. I took him to the vet, and the vet verified that Goldie lost 1.5 of his 12 pounds.

Diagnosis: Goldie was not eating because he had a bad tooth. I saw the tooth. It was bad. Brown and mushy and bleeding. Not at all mouse-related. 

Yesterday he went in for a tooth extraction. I signed the forms, and even said to the assistant, "Well, I won't worry about the anesthetic, because he had that when he was neutered."

The surgeon called at noon and said Goldie's heart failed under the anesthetic. They tried CPR for half an hour, but they still lost him. I said, "I will call you back," and then doubled over and screamed "No" for twenty minutes. Gary heard me, figured out what I was screaming about, and joined in.

Later, the vet said Goldie might have had a bad tooth plus Feline Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). It has the same symptoms he'd been exhibiting: sleeping, not eating, withdrawing. It's fatal, and sudden too, so there's nothing we could have done right even if we'd known. 

I've never experienced a sudden death before. Every pet has been put to sleep after an illness, every human has had hospice or died in a hospital.  In those cases I was  still surprised by the death, as if it was unexpected. Now that I've heard the actual "I'm afraid I have some bad news" speech, I can tell you, anything else is better.

It's just awful, especially when I woke up and realized the cat spent the last two nights sleeping with me, chin on my feet, and he won't again.

Goldie Makes Us Aware We Have a Problem

So, I have an ethical problem. Last night, at two in the morning, Goldie emerged from the basement with yes, another mouse. This time both Gary and I were awake for the mouse presentation. 

(It is really remarkable how little a broom affects a mouse, by the way. I wailed away on that thing, truly thought it was dead, and swept it out to the front porch this time. Gary checked on it later and it was standing on its back legs. He felt sorry for it. I was sorry he didn't step on it.)

At any rate, we had been puzzled by why Goldie seemed to be off his feed. Curled up in Gary's cervical collar. Disinterested in playing Kill the Catnip Banana. He must have been spending his nights down in the basement snacking on mice. 

So Gary thinks we have a mouse problem, as we did in '87. He says: "We have a colony of mice in a nest in the basement. We must  employ strategies to kill the mice. No poisons, just good old reliable glue traps. Never open the basement door again."

I say: "We have mouse visitors coming in to the basement through the dryer vent, crawling through an imaginary hole in the subfloor, then plummeting to the basement, where they poop on the storage drawers in one specific place. All we have to do is patch the imaginary hole, and till then, Goldie can be the mighty hunter."

Gary thinks I am deluded. What say you?

Goldie: Poses

In honor of the upcoming Olympics, here is Goldie doing his pike dive pose.

Goldie spent the entire day Saturday in my bed. I was also in bed for most of the day.

On Sunday, however, he was sick of the smell of me and tucked himself into Gary's cervical collar in a basket inside the bookcase behind a pillow in Gary's very unkempt room.

Snug.

Cat Calls Part 2: Mouse Call

The “I have caught a mouse” call is a smug growl, equal parts warning and pride. MRRRER MOW. 

Had someone been listening they would have heard:

“Goldie what is it -- Oooh! You killed a mouse! You killed it and brought it upstairs, you smart boy. Pose for the picture, that’s good. Here, let me pick it up AAAAH IT’S NOT DEAD. “

And then I got a paper towel, Goldie showed me where the mouse was, I tried to catch it and it ran off, I got a bath towel, Goldie showed me where the mouse was, I tried to throw the towel over it and it ran off, I got the broom, Goldie showed me where the mouse was, I tried to beat it to death and it ran off, finally Goldie showed me where the mouse was again and I managed to sweep it out the back door.

Goldie said, “You haz no skills.”

I know they say that cats are trying to teach you to hunt when they bring you mice. I’d prefer a dead mouse next time. 

Cat Calls Part 1: Litter Call

Goldie moves his bowels with enviable regularity. He eats his moist food, he waits half an hour, he poops, he announces. 

"Rawr Rawr RAWR," he says, and repeats, until someone gets up and cleans out his litter box.

There was one day I slept really hard (5 hours deep sleep out of seven) and did not clean out the box, then I was out gardening, and well, half a day went by and his box wasn't clean.

Later I went and checked his litter box. It was on its side; cat litter and ... ahhh ...debris dumped out of the floor. 

I came out and looked at him.

He stared back, then turned his head, then a thought bubble floated out of his ear that said, "Yeah, I tossed it. I believe we had an agreement."

So now I have been schooled. Middle of the night, Gary feeds the cat, I hear the cat make the litter call, and I get up to clean out the litter box.

Goldie makes good again

I was in a restless sleep when Goldie yelled insistently from the basement Monday at 3:30 in the morning. Gary was in the great room, awake enough to look at the cat coming up the basement steps. The sound of Gary screaming is what woke me up.

"GOLDIE DROP IT DROP THE MOUSE!"

Goldie foolishly dropped the mouse. He dropped it on the rug where he and I play Kill the Yarn and Kill the Headphone Cable. 

"OH GOD OH GOD IT'S NOT DEAD ACK ACK AAAACCK."

Gary got a paper towel, picked up the mouse and tossed it out the back door. 

By then I was up, gushing over Goldie for scoring a mouse. 

"DON'T DO THAT I DON'T WANT YOU TO TURN MY SWEET CAT INTO A MURDERER."

Dude, I don't know what to tell you. Your sweet cat is a murderer. Well, he's a wannabe murderer, the mouse seemed to have staggered off into the weeds. Probably been gobbled down by a baby raccoon by now.

On the other hand, yesterday Gary accidentally brought in a cicada from outside (IT’S IN MY HAIR OH GOD ELLEN GET IT OUT OF MY HAIR), and Goldie didn’t even notice. I squished it, which brings my cicada death count to three now.

Goldie: Continues to make an effort

Last night, Goldie again made a big production of caterwauling from the basement. Now that I know the drill, I immediately went down there. He led me to the same corner. I saw what I thought was the same species of tiny-winged flying beetle bug, only twice the size. Not moving, clearly dead, knocked on its side. 

"That's so weird," I thought, "If I didn't know better I'd say that was a baby cicada. Of course, we don’t have cicadas in the basement.”

I threw a paper towel over it. It buzzed. It was a cicada. No other animal makes that obnoxious sound.

I stomped it into cicada paste and wiped it off the cement as best I could. I imagine Goldie wanted to show me the kill, but too bad, my instincts kicked in just like a cat's.

And then, I cheered and praised the mighty cicada hunter. We want to reinforce this behavior.

Goldie: Making an effort

Goldie has almost no interest in crepuscular play time now. It was how we bonded for months, and now, I dangle all manner of things in his face and he shows no interest.

Instead, he has been spending hours downstairs. I no longer spend any time hunting for him when he goes missing. He's at the bottom of the basement steps. 

Last night, he started caterwauling at about nine. Big production. Lured me into the basement.

He led me with great intent to a dark corner. I thought he was alerting me that the Roomba was off its stand. No. He was letting me know that there was a dead beetle on the ground. I poked it. Not a cicada. Tiny winged thing. I nudged it with my toe. Goldie looked at me with significance.

"Oh!" I said. "I thought you were down here hunting mice. This beetle is ... not a mouse. But, still pretty good." Then I made a big fuss over the minuscule beetle.

Then he marched me over to Gary's drum set where there was an equally minuscule baby moth. I made the same production. Then I brought him back to the growing pile of mouse poop in the corner and Goldie darted upstairs.

All I can guess is that he is ashamed of his fear of mice, has heard Gary (and I) shrieking about the cicadas, and has taken on the role of winged insect killer. 

Cat and Mouse

Goldie has suddenly lost interest in our crepuscular play time. I understand that cats grow bored with their toys and crave fresh fake meat. He's been spending lots of time in the basement, possibly after the mice, so I bought this squeaky fake fur mouse.

Goldie was intrigued at first. Gently pawed at it. Showed enough interest that I picked it up by the tail, the better to dangle in his face, and it activated the squeak mechanism. 

Terror in Goldie's eyes. TERROR. That cat ran across the room as if that toy mouse just whipped out an Uzi.

Gary tried to play with Goldie and the toy mouse later, got the same reaction, slam dunked the mouse in the trash can instantly. 

I might buy another and surgically remove the squeak-maker.

Cat Con

The bond of trust I have with Goldie the Cat is weakening. Goldie has seen that Gary and I are saps and is taking advantage.

To his credit, he isn't playing us against each other. I know of households when one person wakes up, feeds the cat, then minutes later the same cat insists to a different human that due to an oversight there was no breakfast, someone has dropped the ball, take care of this.

Goldie doesn't play Gary and I against each other because there is a division of labor. I never do Gary's feeding task, Gary never does my morning play and brushing tasks. Goldie jumps on the table, gets brushed, jumps down to the mat, we play until he growls, and then we're done. 

Only lately, I'll return to the table after an hour and Goldie rubs his face on the brush, or he rolls himself into a cat burrito on the mat. As if to say, "You forgot! We do this every morning. I can't brush myself."

This has gone on for a week, and I won't play Goldie's game. Now Goldie has added a new con: it is called Cat Alien Abduction, in which Goldie tries to convince me that he has vanished into thin air. Twice in as many evenings I have hunted for the cat in every closet, on every level, and twice, after I have searched everywhere, I turn around and the cat is right behind me, sprawled on the floor.

I think he thinks I enjoy it. I do not enjoy it. I don't enjoy being tricked.

Petty Cat

There was some fallout from the day I did not play with the cat.

The next day the cat seemed to have no interest in our usual routine. No furminating, no post-furmination petting, no coffee for me / treats for him special time. Just a glance of equal parts contempt and disinterest.

After the evening routines were ignored as well, I asked cat expert friend Anne if cats held grudges about things like that. 

"Ohhh, yeah," she said. "You are being punished."

"How long will I be punished?"

"A day or two."

Goldie, if asked, would have made it clear he would hate me forever. Worse, he had the nerve to demand that GARY play with him the next evening. Out of SPITE. Gary's not the playmate. I'm the playmate. I took over and things got growly and aggressive very fast.

It is now Saturday and I am glad to say we played for fifteen minutes this morning with the second smallest ball of yarn. But I had NO idea cats could be so sensitive. 

Cat-Free Plan for the Day

I intend to leave the house today, for both work and play, and possibly even an errand. 

This means that I will miss the cat's crepuscular play time. At dawn and dusk Goldie wants to kill small things. He signals that it is killing time by lying on one of our two small rugs and trashing at it until he rolls up into a Goldie Burrito. Then I give him a sacrifice: I dangle the feather stick, or the chewy end of the headphone cord, or I toss the small ball of yarn. (But not the smallest ball of yarn, god, woman, what am I supposed to do with this?)

I have recently read a piece on How to Play with a Cat, and have upped my game. Now I know the importance of letting him believe the headphone cord is in a coma. He gets to do a final pounce and finish the job. 

I might not be there at dusk tonight, and my guess is that Gary's hands and feet are just the right size to pounce on, but just once, before the screaming begins.

Perhaps he will go downstairs and kill the mouse that has been pooping all over the craft storage area. That would be ideal. 

Cat Does Cat Moves

It delights us when Goldie the cat does the classic cat moves, like when he sits on the window sill Halloween style. Lately he's branched out into classic cat bathroom behaviors. I can't get him to lap up water as it's coming out of the faucet, but one day we arrived home to find that he'd unrolled half of the toilet paper. Classic move.

However, his sleeping position is a little unique. I can't find it on the "Cat Body Language Explained" pages. 

It's like a cat jackknife dive, but more pinched in. Picture the Olympic dive pictured in the stamp below, but with the paws stretched past the feet. 

He isn't sleeping hard when he does it, so I can't get a photo. However, a reddit user posted this.

Take that cat, but parallel point the front paws out like he's Superman. That's Goldie's pose.

I don't know what that position means at all. Not relaxed, certainly. If a classic curl means he's conserving warmth, maybe this means he's cold but his hands are hot? He's jack-knifed in pain? The TV is too loud? We smell bad?

Cat Will Require Therapy

Previously, Gary was dismayed the cat was doing an acrobatic leap over the basement steps.

“Goldie, please don't do that: you’re going to die.”

Gary realized that he had no control over the cat’s urge to leap, cats-gonna-cat, so he decided to switch his approach. Instead of discouraging the leaps, he encourages the leaps. That way Goldie gets to practice, and the chance he will tumble drecreases.  

Thus my work day is often interrupted by the distinctive sound of Goldie scrabbling up the last inch of the wall, then Gary gushing, “Goldie, you are so strong! Who’s the most athletic cat? You are! Yes, you are!” Then Goldie gets pets and treats and praise heaped upon him, as we do in this house.

Goldie now sees this as his job. Nine or ten times a day he does this trick. 

I only mention this because this morning at three a.m., he meowed so loudly it penetrated my earplugs. I took them out and called across the house, “Goldie, are you okay?” Then I heard the scrabble and thump. I came out and there he was, on the ledge, testing the limits, evidently. 

He did not get treats and praise.

Cat: Got some splining to do

Gary loves it when Goldie sits on the windowsill like a Halloween decoration. Sadly, I noticed that Goldie has been slowly snipping away at the window screens, and has almost tunneled through.

This means I need to purchase more durable screens. I thought Amazon would provide a selection of sizes, but it seems that all you need is a roll of pet-strength screen material and some device called a "spline" and you do it yourself. 

Seriously. I don't want to do it myself. Now I'm going to have to buy and trash a perfectly good screen to practice "splining". 

Has anyone tried this? 

Cat Tone

I have read that grown cats don't meow to other cats. They mostly only meow at humans. Because cats are manipulative, and want food, and glaring isn't as effective as meowing. 

I mention this because the other day, Gary and I were bickering, and the cat said, "MEOW meow MEOW, meowmeow." Perfect imitation of the Tone I adopt when I am being petulant and sarcastic. 

Now, of course, I have to train the cat to say that on demand. 

Goldie Manipulation Day Two

Well, I have created a monster. 

Now that I have employed the Intermittent Positive Reinforcement, Goldie is indeed trying to please me. All I want him to do is come in my room. However, because the reinforcement is random, he doesn't quite know what he did right. He knows he got a treat when he jumped on the desk in my room, and another one when he jumped on my lap in the room, and another when he jumped on the bed in my room.

I had hoped he would connect "my room" with treats. Instead he has connected "jumping" with treats. This evening he has jumped on the dining table, the kitchen counter, and the sofa table, and every time he looks at me, eyes wide with expectation. Followed by accusatory meowing. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, HUMAN.

Goldie Manipulation

Goldie the cat really loves to do death-defying leaps from the middle of the long ledge over the basement stairs to the shorter higher perpendicular ledge above it. It alarms Gary.

Gary Method

Gary has two methods he uses to discourage the cat.

A. Blocking the high ledge with unattractive cardboard boxes.

B. Pleading with the cat. "Goldie, you are the only cat I will have in my life. Please stop jumping like that. You'll miss your footing and you will die. I don't want you to die, Goldie."

(It hasn't happened yet, but Goldie tells me he plans to jump on top of the boxes. He doesn't think he'll miss his footing.)

On the other hand, all I want from Goldie is some attention during the day. Just a couple of visits to the guest room while I'm working, just a few rubs against my calves, and I'm good. This is how I reason with the cat. 

==========

Ellen Method 

I remember the value of intermittent positive reinforcement from my Psychology of Teaching and Learning class. Good behavior followed by reliable reward is powerful; good behavior followed by an intermittent reward is more powerful. (Read a simple explanation here. Read a really complicated explanation here.) 

To this end I give him treats randomly when he visits. Three visits in a row he gets treats, then no treat the next visit. "NO TREAT?" the cat says. "WE HAZ AN ARRANGEMENT." Cat can't stay out of my room now. "WHAT IS THE TREAT SCHEDULE? I READ ABOUT IT ON WIKIPEDIA. WHEN DOES THE TREAT HAPPEN? I MUST WORK OUT THE PATTERN."

I suppose I could use the power of random treats to convince Goldie to stay off the ledge, but then I'd miss hearing Gary beg the cat to Choose Life. My god, if we'd had children. Can you imagine? I'd have babies hurtling down the stairs, Gary would have babies extorting treats.

Obstacle Christmas Complaints

We have a small house, and just like all aging people, we have accumulated stuff. Up until recently we had just the right amount of furniture, but in the past two months we added cat detritus (litter boxes, food dishes) and  we  Gary added mitigation devices (Hepa shop vacs, Hepa vacuums, humidifiers, and full-size floor air purifiers in five rooms, no I am not kidding). 

So, the house is a bit of an obstacle course to get through. There are several things that could be shifted to the basement (the standing globe, the step-stool chair) but Gary insists he loves those things and they must be within sight. I can't walk through the great room at night: there's no path. The computer room looks like a model of the solar system I made in grade school: no space between the planets, Gary's chair is the center sun, all the moons sprinkled through the voids. 

And then to add Christmas to this? Not a chance. The hanging tree is staying in the basement and we can visit it if we feel festive. Besides, the tree blocks the ledge the cat likes to jump on. The only festive spot might be the porch, where the reindeer go, but honestly I cannot cram another object into my visual field. There is no negative space.

It's not at hoarder level, but add one more thing and it will be. My dad was a borderline hoarder, but at least he constrained it to one room. 

TWIL: Cats and Yarn

This week I learned that while you may purchase automated snakes:

... your cat will still prefer the classic ball of yarn, especially if you make it wiggle like an automated snake. 

However, the most important thing I learned was from a friend, who said cats should not play with yarn unattended. The yarn can get stuck on their tongue barbs, then they swallow the yarn. which proves fatal. (Though somehow the same thing wasn’t fatal to R. Crumb’s brother Maxim.)

New Dimension to the Family Dynamic

So, Gary and I had a disagreement, like all married couples. I don't imagine all couples disagree as loudly as Gary and as tearfully as I do, but there it is.

The interesting thing was that Goldie the cat came into the room at the height of the fight, walked over to me, and began licking my toe. Then he turned to Gary and stared impassively at him as if to say, “I have made my decision.”

I look forward to Goldie's upcoming judgments. 

 

 

Yet Another Special Post from Goldie the Cat

I want to report some cat abuse. I have been very content to eat the brand of moist cat food with which I am most familiar. Now they have switched my food to some high-protein New Zealand brand.

For some reason the Teatless One -- autocorrect just suggested Twatless One, heh-- Teatless gave me some lamb-bone flavored protein. It was vile. You could taste the New Zealand clam shells mixed in. Very strong. Distasteful. 

I could have  told him that I cannot abide lamb.  There are also tins of mackerel and venison.  I suppose I will have to sniff those as well, then paw pointedly on the bin where they store my preferred brand.

Humans are so dim-witted sometimes.

A Very Special Guest Post from Goldie the Cat

First of all, don’t expect much because writing this post is cutting into my sleep time. I got no sleep yesterday because the One With Teats was making turkey WHICH I DID NOT GET and then No Teats was watching a loud football game.

I got my revenge at two in the morning when I said the only human word I know, “Meow,” in a variety of inflections.  “MEOW, meow meow .. MEOWMEOW.” That woke them both up. Now if I could fill the house with strange cats who want to touch them we would be even.

I need to go. Teats keeps trying to scratch my chin.

Cat: Issues

I discovered this week that people with abandonment issues should not have cats.

The cat got got nervous when he saw me sit at my computer on Monday morning.

"Aha," he said, "She is typing. The last time she did that those construction men came and made noise. I must hide."

And hide he did, in a spectacularly clever spot behind the bookcase, where if you looked from one side he was a black cat hidden in the shadow made by your flashlight. 

It took me hours to shine the flashlight from the other side, hours of pleading and singing the Goldie song, wondering WHAT I HAD DONE WRONG THAT MY CAT DADDY DIDN’T LOVE ME ENOUGH TO STAY PAY CHILD SUPPORT.

I let him stay behind the bookcase for four hours, then returned to sing an encore of The Goldie Song, at which point he stretched and came out for cuddles. 

Cone of Food

Well, it begins again.

Gary is a big fan of the Cone of Food. Be it dogs, raccoons, or now cats, all food must be presented in a peak, a Mount Fuji of food, so the animals can munch off the tip of the cone in one bite.

I complained the cone scatters too much, and I wasn’t going to scoop up dry, previously coned food every morning.

So that’s where we are right now. 

Cat: Wheelchair

Goldie the Cat's very favorite thing to do is to hop up in my Mom's wheelchair and go for a ride around the house. I mean, I push the wheelchair: it's not like he's propelling himself around.

He loves it, though. Purrs, makes biscuits, then after going a few rooms he eventually hops off. 

Cat: Not What I Had Planned

So for the first few days, I was the chosen one. Goldie trailed around after me, not Gary. He gave me head-butts and kisses, not Gary. He slept in my bed, not Gary's. And this was especially heady because this is not a loving cat. This has always been the cranky, snarling cat. Then he came here and switched from HateCat to WhoreCat.

But then, on day three, Gary sat down and watched a football game with Goldie and since then they have been inseparable. And I do mean "watched a football game with Goldie" in the literal sense. Goldie sat on the floor and stared up at the television the whole time.

So now I am the boring parent who is at work all day long and Gary is the fun dad who watches football and feeds the cat four servings of wet food a day.

I'm glad the cat's happy, but this was not the family dynamic I planned. Then again, it's the evening now, so tomorrow I will have a new cat again, given how many faces of Goldie I have seen.

Cat: This Year's Christmas Ornament

This year's ornament.

Cat: Hard Working Cat

So the on first night Goldie was here I eventually found him in the basement. He was next to the routers and drills, tucked into the plywood shelves we built under under the stairs. As I was extracting him I noticed what seemed like a ball of grey lint at the front of the shelf.

I was by that shelf the next morning (again, looking for Goldie) when I noticed a bad smell, which led to a further inspection of the ball of grey lint, which turned out to be a mouse with what I assume was a broken neck.

I let the mouse be, both times, because I didn't want to deal with any mysteriously dead mice. I  didn't even make the connection between A) Cat in House and B) Dead Mouse in House until Gary insisted, "Goldie did not kill that mouse. That mouse died of natural causes." 

I didn't see Goldie do it, but I gave him credit anyway, took him to the basement, and fussed over the dead mouse. At least now Goldie will know be assured we are anti-mouse in this house. 

Dead mouse on his first night. Cat establishes his bona fides on night one.

Cat: First Twelve Hours

Goldie the feral traveled well. He was mostly quiet, but every turn in the car was greeted with eight meows, as if to say, “Is this northwest? What's the GPS location? Don’t go so fast: I need to write this down.” 

And then we got home, and everything was fine until I turned my back to open some food, and then when I turned back he was gone. That was at five in the afternoon.

Now, I know cats hide, especially when they're in a new place. So I didn't get upset until ... oh, nine at night. The internet said some cats could hide for a day, and that would not fit in with my schedule. I thought I might have a hole in my house, or accidentally let the cat out, somehow. I alerted the neighbor. She calmed me down and I went to sleep.

... Until two in the morning, when I woke up worried again. I wandered the house, singing the special Goldie song. (Well, not so special, it's the Yale Boola Boola song but, with "Goldie" in the place of "Boola.")

Thankfully after a few verses I heard a tiny meow from the basement, where he was jammed on the shelf behind the router and the drills. 

He rubbed his face all over mine and all was well.

Cat

So there's this feral cat I know, Goldie.

He is a photo of him almost touching a fully clothed SLITPS in Feb 2021. 

By Sep 2023, he liked me enough to put his butt near my hand.

I hope he likes me enough to live with me, because that’s the plan.

The End of Mac

I think the last time Mac seemed normal was at 6 Tuesday, when he slept on my chest. Gradually over the evening he lost mental acuity. By 1 am I had entirely given up and commenced crying, and we said out goodbyes. It was sweet that he fell asleep for fifteen minutes with his face on my foot, my favorite position.

I really thought we'd go to the vet in the morning. We knew he couldn't spend any of the night unattended. Sleeping on the floor with him would only work if he'd slept. The way he was bumping into walls like a Roomba meant I had to walk with him. I kept squirting water in his mouth to keep him hydrated.

If he'd stayed confused and whiny, that would have worked.  At three he started to cry and get stuck in corners. I found that if I pressed my nose against his and we breathed in sync, that seemed to calm him. At four I woke Gary up so he could spell me. He had woken up a few times at night to give useless suggestions.

I think he tended to the dog for fifteen minutes before he announced we were going to the emergency vet. The slide that had seemed gradual to me must have been a dramatic change to someone who'd slept through the three hour decline.

I don't think I'm giving away any spoilers by saying that on a tv show I watch, a major character just died after a speedy decline. (Shhh - don't tell.) The other characters in the show were unprepared, plus there was a difference in diagnosis in the medical community on the show. (No one knows what show I'm talking about? Good.) I couldn't help thinking, "Augh! It's just like [this tv show]."

We might have had a difference in diagnosis if we'd seen our regular vet. The 24 hour ER vet was a tall woman with curly hair and scratches on her collarbone. She said, "If his kidneys are failing, that can cause heightened blood pressure, and at times that can lead to a detached retina." It was a very capable diagnosis.

After she ran tests she sat us down and said, "His kidney numbers are fine." (Hurrah Gary! He's really tried to lay off the treats.) "He's a little dehydrated." (Go me! Only a little dehydrated.) "However, his liver numbers are high and he has an excessive amount of calcium in his blood, and in a dog that's an indicator of cancer. With his symptoms it seems that he has brain cancer."

Whaaaa - huh? I said, "But how would he get brain cancer overnight?"

"Well, you described weakness in his legs that began a year ago." And of course, I had. I was just so used to carrying the dog around everywhere I'd forgotten it was because his legs were wobbly. And there was a year of puking, and limping, and trembling. Everything I thought was age could be neurological. And frankly, is anyone going to notice neurological issues in our epileptic / MS family? Dog can't walk a straight line? Join the club. Convulsions in our family would be completely ignored. (Another tv show callout.)

We'd already resigned ourselves to putting him to sleep because he was so miserable. The kidney / cancer switcheroo was immaterial. I did kind of want our vet to do the deed, but Gary thought we should have this doctor take care of it. (Again, a couple siding with doctors, just like the show.)

Even sedated Mac was miserable. The doctor pushed the plunger and I waited for his eyes to glaze over, but instead they rolled downward. She left us alone to say our goodbyes now that he was gone.

While we were petting him his mouth opened and he made a clicking sound.

"Involuntary muscle spasms," I thought. "And that's the same clicking sound Mom made while she was dying."

He did it again. Then his stomach gurgled.

Gary said, "I think I can feel a pulse." I couldn't feel it, but he was still warm.

Eventually the pulse faded away, or Gary said it did.

We told the receptionist we were having him cremated, and then Gary added:

"We don't need an urn; we'll just put him in with the other dogs." He explained to the receptionist, "We have a little coffin on our mantle where we keep all the dog's ashes."

(No, we don't have a little coffin on our mantle.) "Casket," I assured her. "Like a medieval-type casket."

We decided to take the day off and alternately sleep and cry. Gary asked me to not pick up the dog food or dishes, so I won't. I promised him I would start peeing in the hallway so he could still step barefoot in cold pee. We promised to start cuddling and kissing each other more. ("[He'd] want us to love each other as much as we can now."- TV show.)

So, sad times here, tempered with a newfound ability to sleep uninterrupted and eat unaccompained by demanding barks. Still, we miss our dog.

Updated: Dog Slump

Dog woke up at 4:45 this morning in full Weather Alert Mode. When he does this I turn on the TV and usually find there is an impending weather situation, and I calm him down, or at least try.

Today's weather didn't arrive until 3:30 in the afternoon, and by then the dog had stress barfed twice He just puked up the bright yellow bile because he'd been too freaked out to eat.

Finally, the bad weather passed. I expected him to calm down.

Instead, he traded in his demanding yip for a pitiful whine. Then he started losing track of where his legs were. Then he began navigating around the room by walking right next to the walls.

And finally, and most concerning, he stands in front of his water dish and whines, but he hasn't had anything to drink all day. I've taken to squirting water in his mouth with a syringe.

So, I'm sleeping on the floor tonight and taking him to the vet tomorrow. Hoping it's the doggie flu....

Update: ... And then he began crying because he was wandering and would get stuck in a corner, then he was crying all the time. So we took him to the all-night vet, and they diagnosed brain cancer (something about calcium in his blood).

Anyway, we put him to sleep. It's very sad. and sudden.

All the Men In My Life Have Synchronized Cycles

My brother Dave has had the Whooping Cough for a week. We thought it was his yearly bronchitis because it is the same high-pitched keening hideous cough. (People have accused him of augmenting his cough for pity, that's how dreadful it is.) But no bronchitis: whooping cough. In addition to the cough, he has blood on the toilet paper. We suspect he blew out a hemorrhoid during a coughing spell.

Gary is going in for his colonoscopy Tuesday, in part because he too had a visit from the Melena Fairy. (There are only so many ways I can avoid the word "stool.") (Also, don't name your children Melena.)

So, this morning I was in the basement with Mac the Dog, and I don't know why new rooms inspire dogs to poop, but they do. (I can think of three times dogs have gone into newly-built rooms of brand new homes and have been moved to defecate.) Anyway, I scooped it up with a paper towel and yes, there was a decided red tinge to it.

And, yes, they have all been a little cranky.

Passage of Time

Mac the Dog the last time you saw him:

Mac the Dog today:

He's an old dog.

Now, I know that's a unflattering view. He's pissed at me because I stayed late at work and Gary hasn't even started for home yet. His butt says I CAN'T EVEN LOOK AT YOU.

That makes his butt look smaller, but now you can see his neck wrinkles.

Poor old dog.