Uni's on a roll. He got another gopher this morning.

I called for Randy to come outside and help me rescue a striped racer. This is a beautiful and harmless snake with a long, slender, nearly-black body and thin yellow stripes for its entire length, and a pale yellow belly. This was the largest one I've seen yet, a bit over a foot long. He was lying utterly still partway across the driveway. I've had to rescue this type of snake from my cats many times in the past.

Randy and I squatted down to have a good look at the snake while one cat after another came prancing by, over and across the snake with no clue it was there since the snake had the very good sense not to move. I ran my fingers lightly down the snake's back to the end of its extremely thin, pointed tail. The snake curled the end of its tail around my finger! That was very cool. It then held the curl up in the air. Sly discovered the curl and began sniffing the snake, at which point we needed to expedite the rescue. Randy carefully picked it up and deposited it in the high, thick weeds where it quickly disappeared.

A bit later, I was standing on the driveway outside my office, surrounded by ten of my cats lying in various poses around me. One of them was Uni, who hasn't co-existed all that peacefully with the rest of the Horde in the past. Now that Uni is a privileged house cat, he has only occasional contact with the others, aside from Nefreet, which doesn't help any. I saw Uni stroll down toward Knobby. Since those two have had vicious fights in the past, I remained outside to make sure there was no trouble.

Knobby got tense, which made the other cats get tense. Blasted Puck really started things by jumping on Knobby himself which set off a Cat Grenade. There was a wild flurry of fighting for about ten seconds and I found myself surrounded by a bunch of puffed up males caterwauling at one another. I had to wade in like a burly Irish cop. "What's all this, then? Break it up! There's nothing to see here! Move along!"

Tosca wandered around as though trying to decide whether to cheer on one of the guys or just get into a fight herself. The wailing continued. I "escorted" Uni up the driveway and herded various troublemakers away from one another until they finally calmed down.

Cats is a four-letter word.

Unicom has caught one gopher a night for the past three nights. This morning, he got nippified (hit up the catnip planter on the back deck), trounced Nefreet (whom Randy had to rescue) then picked a fight with Theseus, whereupon I hauled Uni inside.

Both Uni and Nefreet gave me the Spitting Hiss treatment during their anti-allergy rubdowns.

"I just realized," Randy said, "that every time you have to get all your cats into your office, you're doing a cat scan."

"And an MRI."

"MRI?"

"Moggy Review Inventory."


Blue decided to be a Delinquent this morning, picking fights every two minutes. I was finally forced to chase him around the office with a water squirter until he fled outside.

Blasted Nefreet went out this morning and killed a small bird. I coudn't quite tell what it was. Possibly a young finch. I don't mind the cats killing as many rodents as they want, but I really don't like them to get the birds.

I had to play Find The Puck yet again. Today's game required using the barbed wire "arch" and hiking down the hill a ways.

I have a large lump of contented Siamese in my lap, quietly purring and making it tough to type.

I found that I had a couple of special packets of moist wipes designed to clean up dog butts. Consequently, I gritted my teeth, donned a rubber glove and went after Theseus.

Most cats provide a handy, flexible pad of skin at the scruff of the neck which makes it easy to hold onto them. Instead, Theseus is more like one of those football players who is built like a refridgerator. No neck. I grabbed hold of his no-neck the best I could and proceeded to work at the compacted globs of disgustingness that had taken over his rear end.

Theseus was damned pissed off about it and I can tell you I wasn't enjoying it much, either. However, I did manage to improve the situation, though he needs more work yet. At least I no longer smell him coming from ten feet away. I smell him when he's about one foot away. I'll have to pick up some baby wipes on my next shopping expedition so I can finish the job, then he may be due for a visit to the vet, since the intestinal problem appears to be chronic at this point.

Owl has denuded a couple patches of his back *again*. It's hard to keep up the anti-histamines because he hates taking them so much. I have a painful puncture wound on the side of one knuckle as proof of just how much he hates it.

The Spring Gopher Massacre continues. Since last night:

Unicom...3
Tribble....1

And the night is young. Last night, Uni caught his first gopher within five minutes of going outside. He had two last night and one tonight, but I wouldn't be surprised if he manages a second one tonight.

Puck and Diva both gave me fits by refusing to come inside after lunch. I managed to "lure" Diva inside finally by pretending I'd lost interest in her. But Puck doesn't fall for that. He goes down the hill below the barbed wire fence and ignores me. Today, I grabbed a couple of large bulldog clips, hiked to a loose section of wire, clipped the bottom two strands of wire up to the top one and made a handy access point. Puck didn't even try to run off as I hiked down to him and hauled him up to the office.

Theseus has a bad butt. A smelly, nasty, unpleasant butt. He's been having intestinal problems compounded by being so furry...I'll spare you the details except to say that he stinks and that every time he jumps onto my desk, I chase him off in horror. I need to come up with a method for cleaning him up, a task I so do not want to confront.

I've also been wrestling a bit at a time with his matted dreadlocks. His tactic for avoiding this is to keep moving around in circles or figure 8's constantly as I try to work on the knots. I either give up or get dizzy and fall over. Today, I finally gave up on one knot I've been working on for a week and cut the blasted thing off. There's still plenty more to work on yet.

You might recall that I posted a story about a week or so back in which Theseus had his butt singed by plopping down next to a cone of incense I was burning.

It turns out I had a closer call than I realized. Only last night, I happend to notice a black spot on the wooden, matchstick blinds. When I investigated, I saw that what had actually happened is that when I spooked Theseus into jumping up and running off, the clump of burning incense was tossed through the air and landed on the rolled up bottom portion of the blinds, which is why I never found anything more than residue of ashes on the incense burner.

The incense proceeded to burn a nice, round hole through the matchstick-thin wood of the blinds. Luckily, it didn't set the blinds on fire, but it looks like it came close, or at least had the potential. Yeesh.

Cone incense is hereby banned from this office.

We just had a one-act play of Cat Follies. Randy had come down to my office and when he stepped outside, he found that Theseus had a live, struggling gopher in his mouth. He praised Theseus and I decided to come out with the camera and get a couple of shots. Between Randy and the camera, Theseus got discombobulated and dropped the gopher.

The gopher made a ran for the tall weeds near me, so I blocked it and kept blocking it and nudging it back into the open while one useless damned moggy after another came by, took a sniff and wandered off. The irate gopher ran around, biting at my boots and not one of my blasted cats will go after it. Uni was up in the house asleep, or he'd have taken care of it instantly. If old Achilles were still around, he would have dispatched it in seconds.

The gopher dashed past me into the open door of the office. I jumped inside and booted it out. It ran back inside. I booted it out again and shut the door. Randy brought Puck over. Puck laid down next to the now somewhat battered gopher and gave it one half-assed pat of the paw, apparently unable to work up the interest to do more.

Randy gave up in disgust and went back to the house. I finally picked the gopher up by the tail and tossed it over to Theseus, who anchored the gopher with one big paw. I left him to his own devices. When I went out a few minutes later, there was no sign of Theseus or the gopher. He's either eaten somewhere or it has escaped to nurse its wounds underground. Take your pick.

Unicom the Mighty Gopher Slayer wasted no time getting his second gopher last night. When I came up to the house, Randy proudly pointed out a very wet cat and the remains of a gopher on the front porch. I noted the irony that Uni complains vociferously when I have to wet him down partially for his anti-allergen treatment, but he's perfectly happy to get wetter than that in pursuit of gopher.

There was a moat outside my office door this morning after the downpour. Tribble and Theseus rushed to the door, looked at the water and backed away. I decided not to open the cat door, since there was no way they could use it without going through the moat, and I wasn't in the mood for a ton of wet, muddy moggy paws tracking across everything.

By noon the rain cleared, the sun came out, the moat receded and I let the horde out for a brief romp.

Having romped and eaten, they're settling in for the afternoon. Owl is taking a nap on my escape key, thus tricking me into thinking my software is on the fritz until I remind myself of rule #1 of glitching software: "First, check to see what a cat might be doing."

We had let Uni outside for his usual evening machinations about an hour earlier when it began to rain. Randy quickly went to the dining room doors to see if Uni wanted it.

Uni dashed inside...with a mouthful of gopher. Not-quite-dead-yet gopher. We didn't want to toss him out in the rain, so I tried to direct Uni plus gopher into the back hall which at least has a linoleum floor. Uni went, but I had to pick the almost dead gopher up by the tail and deposit it in the back hall.

Then later I had the delightful fun of cleaning up the leftovers. Meanwhile, Uni was going crazy with wanting to go back out and find another gopher. I let him out onto the front porch which is covered. If he wants to get wet gopher-hunting, more power to him.

Randy carried Puck into the office this afternoon and announced the Puckster had been playing with a snake. I trotted up the driveway to have a look where we found Unicom had taken possession. Uni was batting at the snake and the snake was coiling and striking.

I hauled Uni up in my arms and took him into the house, an action he didn't much appreciate. Randy and I had a good long look at the snake. It was small and was of the type we've seen before where we have trouble determining whether it's a gopher snake or a young rattler with no rattles. The gopher snakes have evolved the unfortunate traits of a similar set of markings, flattening out their heads when threatened, coiling and shaking their tails in imitation of a rattlesnake. It might be a good defense in the wild, but against people, it's deadly.

We finally concluded it was a beneficial gopher snake. I got a broom and dustpan. We "helped" the snake into the dustpan and I dumped him in the deep grasses further down the hill so he could safely escape from moggy predation.

We were amused to hear Nefreet at the dining room glass doors chattering the way she does when she's lusting after a bird that she sees outside. Only this time, she was chattering at a bat that was swooping close to the deck, back and forth, right in front of her.

Sometimes, we sit in the living room and watch "bat tv". Our lamps attract moths to the top of the high cathedral windows and we can watch the bats dart around scooping up the moths.

I got careless for a few days and only gave Owl one anti-histamine a day instead of two. As punishment, he removed a small patch of hair from his back. The rest of the fur on his back is growing in beautifully, so it's a minor set-back, but I simply must be more disciplined about pilling him twice a day.

I've come to think of Puck and Blue as The Tabby Mafia because they like to hang out together. I found them crammed together in one cat bed, heads and paws going every which way. It was adorable.

Later, Puck got between my keyboard and monitor and took a nap with his head on Owl's butt. A few hours after that, I knelt to pet Owl who was curled up in the aforementioned cat bed and suddenly up popped Puck's head from behind Owl. Puck the cuddle-bunny.

Except for the moment he got on the back of my chair and savaged my pony-tail. Or ran around the office picking fights left and right because he was bored.

The Spring Gopher Massacre continues. Unicom had a late night gopher snack. Theseus has just finished playing Gopher Basketball and is crunching down his breakfast. Die, gophers, die!

I have a wireless mouse.

I got the wireless mouse because I got tired of the cats playing with the long cord on the regular mouse and pulling it onto the floor. The Logitech wire mouse is wonderful. It works great and solved the problem. But it runs on two AA batteries that tend to run down in a couple of months because it never actually turns off. It stays powered by the batteries all night.

For that reason, I've been trying to get into the habit of taking the batteries out at night and replacing them in the morning. I'm not very good at remembering to do this, but last night I remembered. Then I did something stupid. It was late and I was tired and in a hurry to get up to the house, so I left the batteries lying on top of the Rubbermaid box that I use to cover the keyboard.

The readers of this blog are surely snickering by now. Yes, I came down this morning and there was only one battery left on the box. Not a big deal. I keep spare batteries around. What disturbs me is that I can't find the other battery. I searched every inch of my desk, then every inch of the floor around my desk. I searched in the wastebasket. I searched under things and around things and between things. I widened the search the floor of the rest of the office. Bast only knows what the moggy or moggies have done with that battery. I'm not happy about a somewhat toxic object lying around where some fool cat might decide to chew on it. I can only hope it was whacked into some obscure, out of reach corner where it can lie forgotten until some future archaeologist excavates it from the ruins of my office.

P.S. Uni had a gopher for breakfast.

LATER IN THE DAY

I found the battery. It had somehow been batted way up under the large plastic floor mat I have over the carpet for my office chair.

Occasionally, I like to light a cone of incense in the office to offset some of the other odors. I looked over and realized that Theseus had positioned himself right next to the burning incense. I mean right next to it. I got over there just in time to prevent him from setting his butt on fire. The incense was gone, the air held the faint scent of burning cat fur and he seemed utterly oblivious to the small patch of burnt fur on his flank. Yeesh.

Theseus developed a strange looking lump right at the corner of his mouth. He's had at least one of these before and I'm as baffled this time as I was last time. I kept an eye on it for over a week, then it finally opened and drained. I cleaned the blood and yucky stuff off his cheek. It's like a tiny cyst or abscess, except it doesn't look quite like those. Maybe he gets a bite there that gets infected. I can't quite figure it.

Thanks to the rain, I have damp cats coming in to press themselves against me for comfort. Their comfort, clearly, not mine.

It's gotten so that every day after lunch, I have to go in search of the Puckster to bring him inside. He refuses to get with the program of coming inside with the rest of the Horde. One day he was down the hill beyond my top barbed wire fence and I was wondering how to lure him back up when he heard people trotting on horseback down below. Puck turned and *raced* up to where I was, even though the horses were about a mile away.

Yesterday, rather than go searching, I decided to see whether Puck would eventually come to the office on his own. Then I got heavily involved in my work and forgot about him. It was very late into dusk when he finally came and "knocked" at the cat door (which was blocked). So much for that idea. I'll have to continue the locate&carry missions for now.