Tales of the Moggy Horde or How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bast

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We were visited by a cat I've never seen before around here. She was checking out the back yard. She had the coloring of a tortie on her torso, but had calico markings on her head and legs. Large patches of white here and there on the legs; white muzzle and forehead stripe, black patch on the head. The minute she realized we were in the kitchen watching her, she took off over the fence. I hope she's someone's well-loved moggy and not a stray. She's awfully pretty to be feral.

I was in the kitchen preparing something when Saffy spoke up behind me. I turned around and found that she had personally delivered a mousie to my feet. Such a thoughtful girl.

I've been finding chunks of Pippin's fur around the house. This is actually a good thing because it means he's lost enough weight to start grooming parts of himself that he couldn't reach before. Yay!

The plushy tentacle toy has fallen out of favor. Jetta has no interest in it any more. I brought out a new feather toy and Jetta is going completely crazy over that. She catches it and proudly carries it all around the perimeter of the office, then brings it back to me for another bout of play. Zoe likes to follow after and attack the trailing stick and string.

Zoe has settled back down again, so I haven't had to give her another trank. Instead, I gave her a mousie stuffed with catnip. Two hours later, I was fishing it out of the water bowl, as usual.

Now and then, Opal likes to come into the bathroom with me and get petted up while I'm on the porcelain throne. But sometimes she immediately changes her mind. Last night, she came in with me, waited until I was settled, then as I reached down to pet her, she jumped onto my back, got on my shoulders and then stretched her two front legs to rest them on the lever door handle. She didn't manage to open the door, but she got the message across.

Everything was quiet in my office yesterday. No more altercations, so after a brief internal debate, I decided not to give Zoe any more trank as yet. I will watch and wait.

And now, for your amoozlement and edumacation: Studies upon the locomotion of cats.

Pippin hasn't been interested in eating is food with the pumpkin added to it, but yesterday we got him to eat quite a bit of pumpkin with turkey baby food mixed into it. For a few days, he wasn't eating much of his dry food either, but now his appetite has come back. Things are looking better in the catbox, too. He's on the mend.

Unfortunately, yesterday was a bad day on the Zoe front. I had two altercations with Zoe attacking Tosca. I was able to stop both fights quickly, but it's a distressing sign of slipping back into the old pattern. Before I left for the night, I gave Zoe half a trank. I'm undecided where to go from here, whether to continue light doses or not. I'll see how it goes today.

Love this cat. I actually LOL'd watching it.

Poor Pippin didn't react well to visiting the vet, I think. He has diarrhea. When he gets too stressed or upset, his IBS flares up. At least, we're hoping that's all we have going on here. And he gets VERY pissed off about having his butt cleaned, too. The pumpkin puree has come out of the freezer and tonight he gets gooshy food a la pumpkin for a treat. Fortunately, he likes the pumpkin.

I had a PTSD incident with Zoe last night. Things have been going fine and I'd done the usual routine for the night where I hand out treats to Zoe, Tosca and Jetta. They took their turns as usual, no problems. After I'd turned out most of the lights and the office was dark, I accidently stepped on Tosca and she let out a shriek of protest as cats will do.

Zoe snapped. In a split-second she reverted to her aggressive behavior and attacked Tosca. I broke it up quickly, got a firm hold on Zoe and made it clear that this was not acceptable. But I could see that she'd had a flashback and wasn't back to normal. She had crazy eyes and when I set her down, she was still on the prowl to attack.

Although it was late, I stayed in my office another ten minutes or so to monitor the situation. I spent time soothing Tosca and making sure she was all right. She's a dominant cat in her own right and was transmitting her agitation, which were the wrong signals for Zoe at that moment.

I was worrying that I'd have to give Zoe tranks again, but she gradually calmed down. I gave her petting and finally she settled down peaceably near Tosca who was purring.

Happily, everything has returned to normal and Zoe is fine today, but clearly she has issues beneath the surface that I need to watch for.

It took the two of us to round up Pippin and he gave us a major hiss when he put him into the carrier. I wasn't able to go on this visit to the vet because of a heavy writing deadline, so Randy took him. He said Pippin was perfectly well-behaved and quiet throughout the entire rest of the trip and the exam.

Much good news. At the vet's office, the Pipster weighed in at 19.5 lbs. We broke the 20 lb. barrier! The vet was impressed that we've gotten Pippin's weight down and said he wouldn't mind seeing it come down to 12 lbs. Randy and I can't see Pippin getting down to 12 lbs. He's too big a cat underneath for that little weight. His head is twice the size of his sisters' heads and his shoulders are huge. We'll see how it goes.

The vet thought he was in great shape. The dandruff is most likely from not being able to groom himself properly back there, as I suspected. Other really good news, the vet did a blood count and Pippin's red cell count (and the entire test) was completely normal. The vet thinks the previous high red blood cell count may have been due to Pippin being born and living his first couple of years at high altitude (5,000 feet). Now that he's been living at around sea level for three years, everything is normal.

Opal had her usual, but bizarre reaction when Pippin got home -- she hissed at him. And kept hissing at him for hours. It's as though she's convinced we've brought a strange cat into the house. Wacky girl.

I've had a lot of cats over the years, entire hordes of cats spanning decades. And yet it took a couple of years and Randy's insight to solve a puzzling behavior that Opal had developed. It started when we moved to the Bay area. At the previous house, the kittens had a room set up just for them and they were closed in there at night. At the new house, which is also two-story, we elected not to close our bedroom door, and so the cats have access to us all night.

This was a new thing for them. They settled into a pattern. Pippin sleeps at the bottom of the bed up against my feet. Opal sometimes sleeps curled up next to Randy and sometimes in a cat bed beneath the bed. Saffy has a cat bed in front of a heating vent near the bed.

But Opal began to carry on in an odd way once we got into bed and turned off the lights. She'd be downstairs on the first floor and begin to yowl. To human ears, it sounded like a complaining yowl of distress, as though she was confused and didn't know where we were. We would call to her and encourage her to come upstairs to us and eventually she would.

We couldn't figure out why she would be distressed and confused because often she would be in the bedroom with us, but would yowl from the first floor. This made no sense and for the longest time, we simply couldn't figure out why she went through the ritual almost every night.

Along with this, when Randy would wake up the next morning, he'd find a mousie toy lying on the floor next to the bed. We thought this was quite endearing, that she should bring an offering during the night.

Finally, Randy put the two things together. He realized that Opal was going downstairs to find a mousie. All her carrying on was about finding the mousie and letting us know she had found it for us. He clinched it by turning on the light shortly after Opal went through the yowling ritual and sure enough, she would be there by the side of the bed with the mousie offering. Randy would praise her and let her know what a good girl she was for bringing the mousie.

That seemed to do the trick. She has calmed down quite a bit recently and doesn't carry on nearly as much as she used to, but she continues to bring mousie offerings and makes sure we know about them. We call it Opal's Mousie Song.

Occasionally, Saffy will do a similar thing. She'll bring a mousie to Randy while he's working in his office and yowl to let him know about it.

And most recently, ever since I took her off the tranks, Zoe has been bringing the fuzzy ball toy to the steps of the door to my office when I'm inside the house, then yowls and yowls until I go into my office and acknowledge her gift.

They're getting us well trained.

Zoe has lost weight. Not in a bad way, so far. She's at a good, trim, svelt weight that is just right. Hopefully, this is because she's off the tranks and her natural energy levels have kicked her metabolism back up.

Pippin, meanwhile, has developed dandruff. He goes crazy when we scratch his back -- puts his head up in the air, rocks his head back and froth and licks the air. I'm guessing his back must itch a lot, which would go along with the dandruff. He goes to the vet next week for an annual check-up and we'll see what the vet has to say about it.

This is a lot of fun. Big cats getting stoned!

Today the must-see on Cat TV was The Rat Family, featuring Mama Rat, Papa Rat and introducing the All-New, All-Adorable Baby Rat! In today's episode, the Rat Family gathered to eat seed while three cats drooled heavily at the glass doors.

Furry Potpurri

Zoe has been using my printer to print out numerous test pages. Thanks to her dedication, I know my printer works. It has also, oddly, run out of paper.

One of the cats threw up a hairball on the bedroom floor, then snagged a pair of Randy's underwear and used them to cover it up.

It can be a challenge to identify the "gifts" cat leave for us. I found one such unsavory gift on my office floor and after a great deal of close scrutiny, I finally concluded that it had once been a slug.

Zoe gave Jetta a five minute head-bath. This is a good sign!

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