Cooked in my Sleep

Didn't sleep well last night - the cats are killing me. Pinning me down on both sides so I can't move and turning the bed into a Mongolian BBQ.

I'm convinced that as they sleep their body temperature rises and they can direct that heat wherever they want. They *could* send it into the room and take the chill out of the air, but NO - it's all directed to me.

Last night I woke up in an uncomfortable, sweaty configuration to find the little one smack up against my stomach and the medium-large one behind my knees. It had to be 400 degrees under the covers.

If I do manage to turn over at any time, they reposition and re-pin in moments. Later during the night I woke up on my back with my hands clasped above my head behind the pillow. I had one on either side of me. Even in my sleep, I move my arms out of the way to accommodate them. How the hell are they doing this???

I turn off the heating blanket when I get into bed - I only use it to take the chill off before I get in and David can tell you, I'm no thermogenic wonder. He gets my ice-cold feet on his legs every night. I know they seek out warm snoozing spots, but that generally isn't me.

So that tells me I must smell like chicken wrapped in bacon. Or maybe it's all those times I've moved the cats around the house with my mouth.

Cats Amaze Me

carpey flapjack

Because obviously I'm easily amazed. And I like shiny things.

I've spent a lot of time with our cats this year. Despite being around cats all my life, I still expect them to be aloof and cold, not needing any human interaction beyond feeding times.

And there are days when, if they had thumbs, I know they'd trip me so my head would crack square into the corner of a table and they'd no longer have someone nagging them about getting down off the counters or to stop stealing my socks and hiding them around the house, or to please cover the goddamn giant crap in the box.

But most days, they surprise me with how social they are. While they have bonded together somewhat as a tiny pride of living room lions, they still seem to prefer being with humans, or since I'm the one home all the time, me.

Neo, always a street-tough bulldog of a cat in my eyes, follows me from room to room, curling up near wherever I am. He doesn't have to be right on my lap like Nikita, but he's gotta be in the same room. He's a total badass yet he purrs the moment you touch him - that amazes me.


neo & nikita

With so much more observation time, I've seen much more of their personalities. They're all very different from one another - their only commonalities are bad breath, crapping in a box and loving ground up fish mush.

Ninja is the soft-headed gentle giant, content to play with a tiny carpet fiber or chase his tail on the couch. He doesn't rub his cheek against your leg, but instead gently brushes by like a fish in a lagoon, earning him the nickname Carpey.

He has a surprising range of expressions for a cat so mentally challenged. When he's happy the top of his head becomes rounded and fluffy and a ridge in his fur appears down his back. He's so at ease with the world he's totally comfortable sleeping flat on his back with his belly fully exposed. It's amazingly soft.

Because we see him as so, well, retarded, I was astounded one day when I figured out he was trying to tell me to clean out his crap box.

Like most cats, Ninja is particular about where he craps. The other two are fine with any box and any type of litter, but Ninja's gotta have it exactly the way he wants it or there could be trouble. Like a puddle of urine on the kitchen floor trouble. Or a box of books soaked in cat urine trouble.

As I sat here one day typing on this here computer dealie, he kept carping my leg and meowing softly - something he never does during the day. Normally right after breakfast, he's down for his all-day nap-a-thon - never up before 3pm when it's time to start bullying me into feeding them.

I watched him closely and he didn't look unhappy or stressed - he looked intent. We have two cat boxes in the closet behind me - that's the only reason he comes up here, except for bullying time.

Figuring it couldn't hurt to take a look, I grabbed a plastic bag and took the top off one of the boxes. Sure enough, it was due for cleaning. I scooped all the boxes and as soon as I finished, in he went to pollute it once again. And then he went back to his nap. Amazing.

I could go on and on about them, but if you have cats you know all the funny, weird things they do that make you wonder what planet they came from.

The scary thing is trying to stay on this side of the crazy cat lady line where I'm not talking to them like I know what they're saying back to me, but I gotta tell you, that line is getting blurry.

Cat Lady Goes to the Vet

And what does she wear? A white t-shirt. Because I'm the crazy cat lady and I don't care how much black cat fur ends up all over me. I don't mind walking around with a sort-of black angora shirt with tufts of hair drifting off of me into the breeze.

It was just a simple trip to get their vaccines updated and the requisite paperwork to import them into Canada, but after what Ninja did, I think we might leave him here with a bag of food and a deck of cards.

He's 60 years old in cat years and it shows. What a ferocious, cranky asshole he's become. Couldn't weigh him, couldn't check his temperature (in the dignified way every cat loves) and almost couldn't get the shot in his leg.

As he lay there on the table, scruffed to the limit with a towel over his head, he suddenly grew four extra paws with straight razors at the tips and his teeth were ginormous. He almost chomped me twice and I had to apologize profusely for my big, angry retarded cat ass.

The vet and the vet tech backed away like, "he seems fine, bye!" Meanwhile Neo, the street-tough thug, was all sweetness and love, meowing calmly as he explored the exam room and all its surfaces. He didn't flinch when he got his shot and later rubbed against the vet's legs.

The best part of the visit was the small bottle of kitty tranquilizers they gave me - some for them, some for me - for the drive north. We very well may drug the cats, mainly to see how they behave all doped up, but it might make their trip a little less stressful. I'll want to put a gun in my mouth if I have to hear 16 hours of nonstop meowling.


Neo & Nikita, inspecting the equipment


Neo, thinkin' about dinner


Stack O Cats

p.s. I would like to add that it's all David's fault for collecting cats like souvenir mugs. I happened to find a stray one day, but the other two were intentional "go out and adopt another cat" acquisitions. But who do people point and laugh at? Me.

Update:
Everyone seemed fine yesterday, then this morning, little Nikita didn't get up for breakfast. She stayed on our bed all morning and into the afternoon before finally getting up around 2pm to slowly amble into the kitchen for a nibble.

She looked like she hurt all over and ate only a few bites before heading right back to the bedroom to where she spent most of the day.

I followed her and massaged her a little, checking the back leg where they injected the vaccine. She mewed loudly at that - she wasn't a happy kitten.

I called the vet to find out if hers was a normal reaction to the rabies vaccine - she's not reacted like this before and with only a few days before we move, she'd better be OK.

They called back and said she was having a "borderline normal" reaction, but for next year's vaccine, it might be a good idea to give her some Benadryl before she gets the shot.

Really? So, she's already having trouble with the vaccine, which is administered "one shot per cat," not adjusted for weight differences, and you're telling me I should put additional substances into her tiny body before you shoot her up with too much of the thing she's allergic to? Really?

This is why I don't like taking healthy cats to the vet. Sure, sometimes it's necessary, but like human doctors who are happy to hand out Rx meds like candy, most vets don't seem to care much about how they're treating different animals - just slam the shot in there and if that doesn't work, throw another chemical down there to even it all out.

No wonder Ninja wanted to rip her hand off - maybe he's not retarded after all but some sort of idiot savant with the ability to sense quackery from a mile away.

At this point, I'm happy to report she's doing much better. Stupid shitty vaccines, and for cats that are exclusively indoor cats and well cared for, they definitely do not need annual shots, no matter what the vet says - even mainstream Prevention magazine agrees.

Very Restless Natives

Neo & Nikita

Since Nikita's last projectile pukey episode several weeks ago, the kids have been on a new feeding plan.

No longer do we leave kitty kibble out for grazing - cats aren't grazers by nature, though if you try to tell Neo (aka Medicine Ball) that, he'll slap your big human face.

They get two hearty meals a day - a bit of kibble and some very delicious-smelling ground up fish in a can. Mmm mmm mmm mmm MMM!

While this new routine is supposedly much healthier for them (they haven't yet told me if they feel more cat-like and better nourished), it's created another new routine.

Every morning the bed is covered in cats, starting around 6:30am. They assemble and parade all over everything until we get up, their way of letting us know it's TIME FOR BREAKFAST, BITCHES. NOW.

They've always been helpful in waking us up early in the morning, but now they do it with so much more purpose. You have to admire their tenacity. They will wear you down until you put some damn food in their damn bowls.

In the afternoon, as it gets closer to 3pm, they begin to follow me wherever I go, maybe just in case I have their food in my pocket - they'll be right there in case I decide to feed them on the couch, or in the bathroom, or on top of the clean laundry.

And as the clock approaches 5pm, the hour we decided best for their dinnertime, they collect around me like a tiny gang of cat thugs, staring at me and maneuvering closer and closer to me as time ticks down to the magical hour.

If I'm working on my laptop, usually standing up at the pub table in the bar, one will sit on the chair behind me, one will sit directly behind the laptop, and the third will sit on the bar next to the chair - each no more than 1 foot away from me.

If I do not acknowledge their presence, especially the one directly behind me on the chair, he/she will proceed to "climb" up my back and rest forepaws there until I turn around.

There are times I've given into them way earlier than 5pm, because they all have very sharp teeth and dozens of claws between them.

If they manage to trip me in just the right spot, I'm done for. And then David comes home late from work and finds them snacking on my face.

Ninja (El Retardo, Chimpee the Ass Monkey, Big Walking Rug, and a number of other nicknames)

Mmmotherhood

In the middle of the night last night I was awakened two seconds too late to shove a puking cat off of the bed, where he upchucked a hairball onto the comforter directly on top of me.

I'm sure it mustn't be any fun for a cat to be surprised by a hairball in the middle of the night, but come on - right on top of me while I'm in the damn bed? You're a CAT. You're known for your quick reflexes, remember?

Getting up at 1:30 in the morning to clean cat puke off the bed is such a pleasure. For a moment I considered just moving to the other side of the bed to go right back to sleep.

Then after his breakfast, he blew a few more chunks, with me telling him "It's OK, get it out," while trying to keep him from spewing it onto the carpet.

Then the bird wants his breakfast and doesn't want to be left out of the fun, so he starts mouthing off for attention, then the other boy cat leaves a monster crap in the box and neglects to cover it, his way of sharing with us what he can make all by himself.

For a moment, it felt very much like taking care of my brother's kids when he was in school on weekends. There was always someone hungry, someone crapping, someone wanting something, every second of every minute of the day. It made me nuts.

If the late-night cat barf alarm keeps up, I'm going to leave piles of food all over the house and join David across the pond.

David Who?

David called this afternoon while I was on the road and because of the noise of the car, I wasn't sure who it was. When he said a very cheerful "Hi!" I asked, "Who is this?" To that he said, "But I've only been gone day!"

I was all discombobulated because I ran out of coffee beans and had to brew a pot of regular, crema-less coffee. The humanity. I was off my game all day.

I left an hour too early for an appointment, forgot to eat lunch, and screwed up the white balance on some shots.

And the cats are becoming more needy with only one human around to pester. While I was on a conference call Nikita chewed the phone antenna, leaving adorable little teeth marks all over it.

Then Neo tried playing with the headset microphone like it was a ball and when he couldn't bat it off the desk, he slapshotted the bluetooth earbud instead. I found it under the couch.

It's just a matter of time before things get ugly.