The past couple of days have been worrisome and annoying. Once I got a better look at the large, fluffy orange cat, I realized it was Tiger, who belongs to the new neighbors across the street. Besides Tiger, they have two, very pretty little females, both of whom had litters of kitten a couple of months ago. Well, Tiger has more or less taken over the porch and he is a WAILER. He yowls and yowls. He won't go away. And even though I petted him a few times over at his house, he's afraid to come over to me when he's here.

Tiger's been driving us crazy. Then one of the females came to the bedroom doors and wailed and cried. Opal went ballistic and tried to attack her through the door. This evening, I finally had to call my neighbor and have her send one of her daughters over to fetch Tiger. It gets better. Tiger isn't fixed. The two females aren't fixed. My neighbor claims she can't afford to get them fixed. I warned her that she's on her way to having more litters of kittens if she doesn't do something IMMEDIATELY. Sigh....

The worrisome part is that during the past couple of days with all this going on, besides having to break up fights between Scooter and Tiger, I think Tiger may have driven Sasha and friends away. Usually Sasha is at our place all the time, but for days we've hardly seen him at all until one appearance late at night. Today he did show up a couple hours after we'd gotten up, and has been around a bit more along with his boon companions, Smokey and Desert Peach. But he's been absent an awful lot and we're not happy about that.

Perp caught at the scene of the crime: trash knocked over, empty treat bags dragged out, part of bag dumped in water, assorted odds and ends scattered. Zebedee tries to look innocent. Sapphire beats a fast retreat (see tail lower left corner).

A couple of days ago, I discovered that Tom had two bites on his right cheek. I hadn't noticed them before because the hair had matted over and hidden them. I cleaned them up and the wounds look fine. Judging from the amount of healing, I'd say it happened before I brought him inside. I haven't put him back in the cage for days, not even at night, and I haven't seen any indications of trouble or fighting with the other mogs. Tom has a VOICE and he's not afraid to use it. He still yowls from time to time, and gives an obligatory hiss if he feels cornered, but otherwise he's getting along fine. I tried him out with a cat toy this morning and it turns out he's quite a playful boy, too.

Pippin's tests came back negative for giardia or anything else, so the vet's best guess is that he has IBS (Irritable Bowl Syndrome) or a food allergy. We have him on Innova, some of the best food you can buy, so we'll see what happens from here. Pippin has turned in to a HUGE cat, possibly the biggest cat I have. Looking at his paws when he was a kitten, I predicted that he would be big. He's about twice the size of Opal. He's also getting fat, so we've gotten the "diet" version of the cat food.

Zebedee continues to get into my lap when I'm cleaning cat boxes. He loves to rub up against my dust mask, causing it to pop inward or knocking it askew on my face.

Scooter keeps coming around on a daily basis, eating our food, hanging out in the yard. There's a large orange fluffy cat that appears every once in a while and gives Scooter a hard time. I don't know if this is another feral or someone's wandering pet. Scooter's getting along better with Sasha, which helps keep things calm otherwise.

I had another win with Ariel last night. She definitely enjoys the neck scritchies and we haven't had another Feral Moment recently. I put a fresh bowl of food in the Cave, then began to give her neck scritchies. After several seconds, she calmly stood up to begin eating, without moving away from me. I decided to take a chance and began lightly scratching her butt and stroking her back. She let me!!! After half a minute of that, she moved to her usual eating position where she's backed inside a cubbyhole, but she actually did let me scratch her butt! That's a major trimph where Ariel is concerned. I'm not happy that she continues to hide out in the Cave and doesn't feel safe to come out, but one side benefit of having her in that confined space is that it's given me closer access to her where I could keep trying to make these physical connections. From that point of view, having her in the Cave has worked out really well, I just don't want it to be a permanent situation for her.

His Grace Lord Simon holding court.

Zebedee and Mojo hanging out.

Bowie peeks around the corner of my office. His fur is a total mess these days as he sheds his longer, thicker winter fur in large matted patches.

Things remain peaceful within the Horde. Tom continues to have his moments of asking loudly, "Why am I here? Do I have to live with all these other cats?"

Pippin keeps having bouts of diarrhea, even after we put him back on the expensive food. Looks like another vet bill coming up.

Zebedee is eight months old now and I'm sure he must have grown, but it doesn't seem like he's grown much. He's awfully small for his age, or so it seems to me. Maybe he'll do a lot of growing at the last minute.

Cuteness to die for. Two Sleepy Kittens.

I let Tom out of Hotel Moggy first thing this morning and all has been peaceful. He spent a few minutes during the say yowling his confusion and he got up to visit me on my desk briefly, but generally he's doing even better than I expected.

Opal managed to slip out the front door, but fortunately didn't go more than a few steps. She wants to go outside something fierce. After what happened to Nefreet, it's our biggest nightmare. She so quick and slippery, we have to watch ourselves at the front door every minute.

Still no word from Tom's people. I don't want to lock him up in the cage indefinitely, so last night I let him out for a brief ramble. There was a moderate amount of hissing, but no major hissy fits. Today, he's been out for most of the day. He found a cubbyhole on top of a box on a shelf and slept there most of the day. Tonight, he prowled and yowled for a bit, but things have been remarkably calm and quiet overall. I think he can sleep inside the cage tonight as a precaution, until I'm sure there won't be unexpected fights. I have many moggies clustered around me at the moment, possibly to avoid him.

Sasha is best buddies with the other feral cats, but three of them in particular are super best buddies -- Sasha, Smokey the Siamese, and The Desert Peach (previously called Peaches&Cream, a pale orange tabby with white chest and paws -- his new name is an in-joke based on a favorite comic book series). Smokey and Desert Peach are almost inseparable. They loooove one another. A couple of nights ago when it was colder than usual, all three of them crammed themselves into Sasha's little house-bed. It was so endearing.

There was no sign of Tom again since Thurs. morning and the weather took a nasty turn. Yesterday we had a snowstorm from morning until mid-afternoon, though none of it stuck to the ground. I had spent Thur. calling for Tom and looking for him, but no sign. Then Friday morning, Scooter showed up muddy, wet, cold and hungry in the snow, so I took him inside and checked him into Hotel Moggy. I called his "mother", R. and left a detailed message.

R. didn't get back to me until this morning. She refers to Scooter as "totally an outside cat", meaning gee, so what if he's out in a snowstorm. I can't take that cavalier attitude, I'm afraid. But today was sunny and upper 60s, so I carried Scooter up the road to go home.

When I got back to my yard, who should be there but Tom. Randy came out of the house and as I was saying, "Guess who's here?", I looked off to my side and there was Scooter, back at our house, rolling around in the dirt like a fool. I put Tom in Hotel Moggy and left a message for his people and haven't heard a word from them.

I'm spending way too much time taking care of other people's cats.

My mogs nearly gave me a heart attack last night when one of them knocked a couple of ceramic food bowls onto the floor where they shattered with a sound like the apocalypse. Good thing I buy lots of bowls like that for fifty cents apiece at the Salvation Army thrift shop.

Kate says thanks for the kind birthday wishes. ;)

Now I must heave a heavy sigh. Tom is back. He showed up this morning. I called his people's cell phone, but they may or may not have bought more minutes for the phone, so that could be useless. We have a 70% chance of snow tonight. I will do my best to get Tom inside before nightfall in case we do get the snow.

Today's featured moggy is Jetta. You can't tell it very well in these photos, but she has developed some extra markings that I love. Besides the patch of white lace at her throat, she has light gray streaks behind each ear and gray stripes between each of her toes. She remains as scruffy as ever, in spite of best efforts to brush her.

Jetta is too big to hang over the monitor, so she decided to hang over the computer itself.

"What?" she asks.

Happy Birthday to my old girl, Kate! She's made it to 16. This isn't her precise birthday, but it's a pretty close approximation of it. She and her brother, Knobby, were brought to me when they were only two weeks old and had lost their mother. I had a very small tabby, Neddie, who had given birth to three black kittens and she wasn't thrilled about having another two kittens nursing on top of the three. Because Neddie was so small, I supplemented Kate's and Knobby's food by hand-feeding them with a dropper. I hadn't planned on keeping them, of course. But here is Kate, 16 years later, still with me. She is also the only cat that was named by my late husband, Peter. He complained that he never got to name any of them, so I told him to come up with name. He came up with Kate. Neither one of us could have imagined that Katie-cat would outlive him by 13 years.

She's curled up next to the heater sleeping, her favorite activity of her later years, though she does still get in my lap from time to time. Tonight, in honor of Kate's birthday, she and the Horde had some canned food. She was quite happy about that.

Katie-cat

Soaking up the heat.

The current LapFungus-in-residence is -- tah dah! -- Zebedee.

I made the mistake of being casual with Ariel and moving my hand too quickly from the wrong direction, so we had a Feral Moment. She is determined to remind me on a regular basis that she is still a feral cat.

Sasha covered with dust and plum blossoms.

Scooter dreams of tulips.

Mojo is energetically trying to wrestle a button off my shirt. Earlier he was playing too rough with Zebedee and I had to chase him off. He has a street brawler's energy.

Ariel continues to enjoy the neck scratching and head petting, in spite of herself. A new twist -- the last couple of times when she decided she'd had enough, she got up and went over to her food, an amazingly relaxed thing for her to do.

I've received some kind donations recently and they've been a tremendous help. Cynthia M. referred to one of her cats as a "LapFungus". I can't tell you how hard I laughed over that. A LapFungus! What a perfect word.

Opal and her mousie take a nap.

Zebedee keeps a tub of food from floating away.

Last night, we heard a cat fight in the yard. I rushed outside and found Tom chasing off one of the ferals. Tom retreated to his old house across the street, but he let me pick him up and carry him over here. I had a carrier on the porch waiting for him. He was NOT happy about being put in the carrier! From there, I transferred him into the cage in my office, which I had set up in advance for him. I was surprised by how well everybody tolerated him and how peaceful and quiet he was about the situation. No growls, no hisses, no yowling. He had a comfortable night inside, out of the cold.

This morning, I tried to call his people, but I remembered L. telling me the minutes had run out on their cell phone. They had given directions to their current house, so early in the afternoon I drove over there and we made arrangements for them to come by later. Around 3, they showed up, we had a petting fest (Puck polished their shoes) and Tom was on his way home. Yay!

With Tom gone, Scooter is back and picking fights with the ferals. Sigh....

Very little sneezing going on today, so the cold may not have run its course already. That would be good. Nothing worse than an office full of miserable moggies.

We had a sprinkling of teeny-tiny snow pellets this morning, a cold day and high winds. The winds tossed the trees around and made the outside cats get weird. Sasha raced around the yard like a rocket-butt.

The cold virus in the office has spread. The new sneezing victims are Zoe, Mojo and Ariel. Mojo goes into the Cave a lot and eats Ariel's food, so I'm not surprised she caught it.

Good news! Tom is going home! One of my guesses was correct -- his people moved back into this area and he wandered away from the new house. I was at the post office when his people spotted me and came over to ask if Tom had shown up. L. was very happy to hear that he was okay and was at my place. She said she'd been keeping him inside with the other cats, but had let him out a couple of times to become familiar with the new yard, then he disappeared. They're living about a mile or so away. She gave me her cell number so that when he shows up again, I can nab him and we can do a prisoner exchange. I haven't seen him yet today. I called Tom a few times, to no avail. It would be nice if he could show up and go home before tonight, because it's going to be another freezing night.

Tom-Tom: "Pet me, you fool."

Diva gave me a scare last night. She's usually one of the first to respond when I call out that it's treat time. When I located her, she didn't respond to me. Her head lolled in my hand. For a few terrifying seconds, I thought she had just died or was in a coma. Finally, she snapped out of what must have been a deep, deep sleep and reacted normally. I've never seen a cat sleep THAT deeply.

Saffy found a piece of bubble wrap to carry around the office. It's an odd sound to hear and when I looked around to see what it was, Saffy meeped at me as if to say, "What?"

Meanwhile, her sister Opal found the empty skin of her favorite kittenhood mousie again and took to carrying that around the house.

The yard and front porch have become cat central once more with the usual gang of ferals showing up in force. It's amusing to see Sasha welcome them into the yard and lead them around. Smokey and Peaches seem to be good buddies of his. It reminds me of some young, rich noble's son inviting his poor friends to dinner at his estate. Sasha is so mellow, he gets along with all of them.

Tom hung around with me while I was watering plants and weeding. He demanded attention, which I gave him, but when I returned to the weeding, he complained. If I didn't respond to the complaint, he would hiss and whack me on the leg! Then he chased Scooter out of the yard. Scooter keeps coming back though, and we're getting tired of carrying him home.

Poor Simon continues to sneeze and wheeze. I'm waiting to see who catches it next.

I'm regaining lost ground with Ariel. She let me scratch her neck, pet her head and she even purred for me!

Scooter at the food bowl. As you can see, he's a pretty boy. This pose hides how messed up his left shoulder is.

Puck asks Theseus, "Does this bed make my butt look fat?"

I managed to get past another barrier in Ariel's Feral Fang Shui and gave her a scritch behind the south-facing left ear! Wheeee!

Jetta is mostly better, but the cold has been passed on to Lord Simon who is sneezing miserably.

I almost never mention Tosca. That's because she is so close to being a perfect cat. She's affectionate without getting in my face, never gets sick, is playful, happy, talkative, fat & sassy, and mostly gets along with everybody. Once in a while, she gets into a minor tiff with another cat, but that's the exception. Such a good girl. I even named my giant black-with-white-spots pet sabretooth in World of Warcraft after her.

Saffy says, "There's a golf ball in my water!"

Tosca says, "So?"

Jetta continues to sneeze from her cold.

Pippin is doing much better now that we've changed him back to high quality food. It may be a coincidence, but I suspect he had a problem with the other brand of food we tried.

It's that time again. Ant season. I found ants all over Ariel's food bowl. The battle has begun.

Speaking of Ariel, she has turned her Feral Response Mode up a couple of notches for some mysterious reason. I'm continuing to give her scritchies, but she's being twitchier about it, nowhere near as relaxed as she was last week. I'll gently persevere and try to make up the lost ground. I sure would like to know what happens to make her switch off like that.

Good news. The biopsy report showed that what Theseus has is...a benign cyst. Just as my previous vet told me years ago. Technically, my current vet said it's an epidermal inclusion cyst. If it were located elsewhere or not so large, we could simply have it removed. My vet doesn't favor doing that to Theseus since it would take out a significant part of his mouth. He would only advise it if the cyst were to become a major problem. I haven't seen any sign of blood from the cyst since before I took Theseus in. There doesn't seem to be much else that can be done for it. One possible option is a steroid shot to calm down whatever inflammation there might be, but even that won't do much to change it. I'm afraid Theseus is simply stuck with it.

Anybody remember when we used to get daily visits from our cat-friend, Bob the black cat? His people moved away several months ago. Bob showed up the other day to say hello! His people have moved back to the same house. Humorously, we have new neighbors next door who have a dog named Bob.

Tom is here every day and we're having debates on what to do with the poor guy. He needs a home, a good loving home. Anybody reading this in the L.A. area that could take him in? Otherwise, I may have to take him to Cause4Cats and let him live in a cattery. I don't think he could adjust to the Horde and we can't afford to take in more than we have.

For the past couple of days, I've been going across the street to take care of my neighbors' three cats while they were on a short trip. Tom would follow me over there, to where he used to live, would sit outside and cry and cry. It tore my heart out.

We've had to carry Scooter home three times in the past two days. His people can't leave food outside for him because they live across the street from the House That Is The Source of All Cats, and if they were to leave food out, they'd have a hundred cats in their yard. That's why Scooter keeps coming to our place for food.

Speaking of T. and her house, it seems she's been doing quite a job of TNR'ing more of the ferals around her place. I was about to borrow a trap for Peaches, a pale orange tabby that's been coming here since he was young, but I got a good look at him and realized his ear is tipped. He's already been done!

I also discovered there is more than one pale orange tabby, both with tipped ears. Peaches is entirely orange, the other has a spot of white on the chest, so he's become Peaches&Cream.

Bowie is back. Now that the warm weather has returned, he's moved into his summer home. The pattern is that he must live at T's place during the winter, then comes back to live with us for spring, summer and fall.

I managed to get a brief scritchie with Ariel this morning, though she remains twitchy for whatever reason. Maybe I'll have better luck tonight.

I didn't hear from the vet today about Theseus. It was such a busy, runaround kind of day, it totally escaped my memory.

Diva has passed her cold on. Now Jetta is the one sneezing and wheezing, poor girl.

We don't have enough to worry about, so naturally this is when Pippin decides to develop diarrhea. We had switched to a cheaper dry food and we're hoping it might only be a reaction to that. Randy brought home the higher quality food today, so we'll see if there's any change.

I was making wonderful progress with Ariel. She's been actively enjoying having her neck and head scratched, and careful strokes on the head. Last night, I think I may have even heard a low level purr. I was thrilled. Today -- it's as though the past week never happened. I reached in to do the exact same thing I've been doing. She gave me hisses and spits. She's been like that all day, too, though I'll try again tonight. Either something has her terribly upset in general, or possibly she's not feeling well. She's a feline version of Russian roulette.

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