Category: Cat

No more conversations with my cat – 100

20160903_163902

This is Chester.

For a few days, we have been monitoring Chester.

He hasn’t been talkative, in fact, I have been mistaking his usual taciturn nature in the mornings for what it really was.

A total lack of interest in anything.

He did not come down in the morning. OK, so, sometimes he cracks a hissy fit and totally ignores me.

But, this is different.

After a few days he returns and gives me the benefit of his wisdom.

Today, he hasn’t shown at all, so I went looking for him.

He was in his usual hiding spot, lying down.   I give him a pat, he opes his eyes and looks at me.  This is a cat who is not well.

I pick him up, and there’s no immediate fight back. He doesn’t normally like to be carried anywhere. Today, he’s putty in my hands.

I call the vet. She can fit him in now if I run.  I’m running.

He goes into his carry basket without a fight.  OK, now I know something is definitely wrong.

 

There’s not a sound between home and the clinic. Usually, he screams the place down, trying to get him into the carrier, and then makes as much noise as possible when driving.

Today there is nothing, not even a whimper.

The vet comes out. She has been seeing him for the last ten years and they are well acquainted.

We see her every six months. Without fail, for shots and stuff.

I take him out of the carrier and he lies down on the metal bench.

She looks at him, then picks him up.

She weighs him.

He’s lost two kilos, and that’s a lot for a cat.

I can see it’s bad news.

It is.

He’s 19 years old, long past the average life expectancy.

To keep him alive now would be inhumane. He has, apparently, reached the end of his life, and has lost the desire to eat or to do anything. There was nothing I could have done to prevent it.

She says, it just happens.

It will be quick and it will be painless.

I can see in his eyes that it’s what he wants.

I said goodbye, went outside and sat in the car, and cried.

There’s going to be a lot more tears before this day is out.

Past conversations with my cat – 61

20160902_094127

This is Chester.  This is just before he jumped on the bed and started scratching at the cover.

In the first place, he’s not allowed on the bed.  Somehow he seems not to have got that memo.

In the second place, I don’t like being woken up with a rather shrill meow in my ear.

What, I ask, in a rather grumpy tone.

He sits on my stomach.  Maximum effect for a cat that’s heavier than it looks.

It’s national cat day.

Rubbish, I mutter.  I’d know if it was or wasn’t, it comes up on the computer.

It’s national cat day.  You have to do what I tell you.

As if that doesn’t happen every day.

I throw the cover over him and he disappears.  Get out of that, I say, and I’ll think about it.

In the meantime, I go down to the computer and have a look.  National cat day?  Not our national cat day, it’s in the United States of America.

I hear the jingling of his bird warning system coming down the passage, then a moment later he appears at the door to my office.

Got your wires crossed mate, I say.  It’s in America, not here.  Back to the boondocks for you matey.  I’m going back to bed.

I think I just noticed a cat can shake his head like a human.  Or maybe not, it’s too early in the morning to be bothered about it.

 

 

Conversations with my cat – 99

20151219_163915

This is Chester.

Not everything is fine in la-la-land, as he now calls it.

Not happy that I didn’t tell him about the second week of child invasion.

He should consider himself lucky that the school week started on Tuesday, and only one was staying home to do schoolwork.

The other has been able to return to the classroom.

One less tormentor, I heard him mutter as he slinked past the room where the homeschooler was working.

But a more sinister problem had arisen.

He’s stopped eating his food.  I first thought this was part of a two-week standoff, where he cuts his nose off to spite his face.

This is not the first time we’ve been through this.

So, just to see if it is a fit of pique, I get him his absolute favorite food.  Fresh Atlantic Salmon cut into small pieces just the way he likes it.

Yes, the aroma reaches him in his hiding spot, along with the call-out that I’d bought him salmon, but when he goes to the bowl, he takes a sniff, or two, then wanders away.

He doesn’t even look at me.

Very, very unusual.

I will be keeping an eye on this.

 

Past conversations with my cat – 60

20160903_010425

This is Chester.  Once again we have a standoff.

This time it’s over the scratching post, and, I guess, where I’ve put it.  Silly me, I didn’t think it mattered where I put it.

But, you’d think he would be grateful I spent nearly a whole day building it for him.

And many more hours trawling the pet shops trying to find a replacement that was better than the last one.  It’s amazing just how much these people want to charge for something that I could make for a lot less.

So I did.

Is it possible that Chester wants me to spend a fortune on a new scratching extravaganza?  it’s not as if he knows anything about money, and costs, and effort.

Or does he?

I’m beginning to think this cat is a lot smarter than he looks.

Still, once again I pick him up, get the low growl because he knows where I’m taking him, and then put him on the top level.

Perhaps it’s the smell of the new carpet.  It certainly makes my nose wrinkle and doesn’t do much for allergy sufferers, but it is new, even if it is an offcut.  Surely he couldn’t be offended at that, could he?

Perhaps I’ve won.  He’s sitting there looking at me.

Now, if only I could read his mind!

 

 

 

Past conversations with my cat – 59

20160921_071443

This is Chester.  He’s gone AWOL.

I know he’s somewhere in the house, and hasn’t escaped.  He’s done this before, particularly when he has to go visit the vet for his three monthly checkup.

This time I suspect it is a major case of the sulks.

We had to change his scratching post as the previous one has been shredded.  It was made out of some old carpet and had a box in the form of a house at the top.

He liked to use my lounge chair as a launching pad to get into the house.  I’ve watched him do that death-defying act a number of times, and it explains the claw marks on my chair.

So, rather than admonish him again, I bought a new scratching post, with a new house that’s not so high up,, and moved it to a different position so he could not use my chair.

First day, he ignored it.

Second day, he went over and sniffed it, then walked off with a snooty expression.

Third day, he didn’t go in the room.

Fourth day, I took him down there and put him in the house.  You’d think I had tried to lock him up in jail.

This is the fifth day, and he’s disappeared.

But…

He doesn’t know I’ve got a secret weapon.

Some old friends we haven’t seen for a while are coming to visit, and he likes them and makes a special effort to come and see them.

They arrive, and after a few minutes, out he comes, trotting down the passage and straight to them.

I glare at him.  You can run, but you can’t hide.

And you will use that scratching post.

Conversations with my cat – 98

20160903_163902

This is Chester.  He’s now over having the grandchildren staying with us.

As part of the COVIS 19 restrictions in place, the grandchildren cannot go to school.

However, because their parents are both working (which is very fortunate as so many others are not) they have asked us to look after them.

So, they arrive Sunday night, stay the whole week, and go back home on Friday.  It means they are homeschooling, so the internet is taking a beating, I have to feed them, morning tea, lunch. After school snack at three and then dinner.

Chicken nuggets, pies, and shoestring chips can only go so far, and, no, he does not like scraps from their plates.

And having to cater for four rather than two means a gentle shift in logistics.  More shopping for food, having to do the washing every day, tormenting the cat.

OK, that last part is where Chester comes in, or, rather, he stays hidden away.

Remember that phobia he has when the grandchildren are around?

Now they’re here semi-permanently, he’s in hiding, and coming out only for food and water.

And to let me know just how displeased he is.

He wants his domain back.

Pity I haven’t told him yet they’re going to be back next week.

 

Past conversations with my cat – 58

20160907_135509

This is Chester. He’s decided to watch the ice hockey with us.

It’s hockey night in Canada, and the Bruins are playing the Maple Leafs, our team. Chester seems unimpressed.

After several minutes he says, it’s a lot of going back and forth with not much happening, and, where’s the ball?

This is ice hockey not football on ice, I tell him. It’s called a puck and it’s a disk, and you hit it with a hockey stick.

I can see this is going to be a long difficult night.

After a few minutes, the Bruins scored and the horn sounds. It nearly scares him out of his skin.

What just happened.

I explain.

Then your team is not very good are they, letting the other team score. Wouldn’t it be better if they all stood in a line across the front of the goal?

Then nothing would happen.

At least the other team wouldn’t score.

I shake my head. I don’t think cats quite understand the nuances of the game.

Another few minutes Chester shakes his head and walks off muttering, let me know when the mouse catching championship is on.

Past conversations with my cat – 57

20160922_162007

This is Chester.  We have a major discussion coming up.

He knows I’m not happy.  We had a discussion about claws and furniture a while back where it was clearly understood that the scratching post was where he worked on his anger management issues.

And for quite some time I thought it was working.

More fool me.

The trouble is, there are certain parts of a room you don’t venture very often, and one of them is that small space behind the chairs in the lounge.  We have a cleaning lady so we don’t venture there very often.

But it’s where we keep our DVD collection, not that we look at DVDs any more, but someone else was looking for one.  That’s where I noticed the damage.  Near the scratching post, on the corner of the lounge chair, clear evidence of the cat’s work.

He thought if he did it out of sight we wouldn’t notice.  He would be right, except for exceptional circumstances.

Now I’m looking for him.  He knows.  Perhaps that was the reason for the fearsome attitude the other day.  Where’s the tiger now?

I can wait.  He has to come out eventually.

Past conversations with my cat – 56

20161008_135142

This is Chester.  It’s going to be an interesting morning.

When I finally make it out to the writing room, I find him sitting on my desk, next to the keyboard, with a rather benign expression.

Remembering that cats can’t have expressive expressions, it worried me that he’s working overtime to make me think he has one.

I can feel his eyes boring into me, following me around the room, watching and waiting.

Waiting for what I wonder.

I also remember that cats are hunters and killers.  If he was a lion or a tiger I’d be in a great deal of trouble now.  He’d pounce, and that would be the end.

Is this we hat he’d be doing if I let him outside?

Is he sending me a warning?

I finish what I’m doing on the other side of the room and come over to the seat.

Are you done giving me the death stare? I ask him.

A slight shake of the head, and if I wanted to write anything into it, that would be a no.

A few seconds pass, then he jumps down to the floor and walks off.

Job done, I suspect he’s thinking.

Back to his least favourite dinner tonight, I’m thinking.

Conversations with my cat – 97

20161008_135142

This is Chester

Still hiding away.

Like any wise, old, skeptical cat, he’s not believing the good news.

We do not have a COVID 19 case in our house. Of course, we had to wait an agonizing 24 hours before we got the good news by phone.

It shows that our testing labs are getting through the tests, of which I heard in the news there were about 4,000, with only 10 or so new cases countrywide.

Queensland had none overnight, so if our case had been positive, we would have been in the news for al; the wrong reasons.

So, after broadcasting the news, that is, walking up and down the passage saying it was safe to come out, there’s still no sign of him.

But…

I have a cunning plan.

I bought a can of his absolute favorite food.

Come dinner time I’m putting it out.

 

Of course, food trumps fear every time.

He walks past me on his way to the tasty treats, the tail movements indicating he is not a happy cat.

The things I have to suffer at the hands of you humans, he mutters.

So, I say casually, we have guests for dinner.

He stops, turns his head in that dismissive manner of his.
What else can you do to me?

COVID 19, Grandchildren, I suppose you’re going to let me outside.

Do you want to go outside?

With COVID 19 lurking on every corner?

It’s under control.

Right. I’ve been watching TV. You do realize there’s good news and fake news, and there’s more of the latter than the former.

So, he’s going with the confuse the poor human with blather.

It’s working. I say, Go back into hiding. I was quite enjoying the silence.

After dinner, he says, ending the conversation with the angry tail swish. Yes, we are not amused.