Category Archives: animals and pets

the cat came back

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He scooted out the door one day. It took him more than two weeks to get hungry enough to walk into the trap. And for those two weeks the family kept vigil.

Cuddles is just what his name says — soft and cuddly and affectionate. My grandson chose him at the pound several years ago; Cuddles is his cat.

For two weeks food was left out for him (the raccoons and possums and other cats had a feast). Two humane traps were set. Two outdoor cameras were set to catch any possible sight of Cuddles.

And every night Cuddles showed up on the cameras, but he was too smart to go near the traps. Until he got hungry enough.

He’s home now, much leaner and very tired. My daughter got all the matted fur out of his long black hair. My son-in-law checked him for ticks and removed several. My daughter have him a flea and tick bath and repellent. He looks half the size of what he was. His green eyes are tired.

Cuddles is home. The back door now sports a spring hinge. All’s right with the world here in the valley.

chicken soup as catalyst

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I made a big pot of chicken soup the other day (see previous post).

Except for echinacea and goldenseal, I have never found any concoction that does battle with a sore throat and cold better than chicken soup. Of course, you have to add lots of garlic and onions. I also add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to leech the calcium from the chicken bones into the broth. And I load it with all kinds of other vegetables, which I discard after I have strained them out of the soup.

I picked out the wishbone to take home to my grandson so that we can both wish that his run-away cat would come home. That darned cat has been gone for almost a week — gone from the house (he’s been an indoor cat) but not from the property. He shows up every night on the outdoor camera that has been set up near the dish that’s left outside for him. I’m betting that he’s having the time of his life, and that even my outstanding chicken soup would not lure him back into captivity. On the other hand, he might come back for the love that awaits him behind that door that he now just ignores.

As I was ladling the hearty broth into freezer containers, I had flashes of some lines from an August Strinberg play that my once-husband once directed. (He was a big Strindberg fan.) It had something to do with servants discussing the fact that even though their employers got to eat the meat, the servants got the broth, and that’s where all the nutrition really is.

After my broth has cooled in the containers, I skim off the chicken fat accumulated at the top of each. I pick some up on my finger and taste it. Yum. Tasty cholesterol. When I was a kid, my mother would save the chicken fat from the soup and use it to brown chicken pieces for chicken fricasee. (Does anyone make chicken fricasee any more?)

My mother made chicken soup a staple in our house when I was a kid. Back then, in the 1940s, she used chicken necks and wings because they were cheap. (That was before chicken wings became so popular, of course.) I would help her pick out the meat from among the tiny boiled bones so that she could make chicken salad.

These days my mother doesn’t seem to like the watery consistency of chicken soup, so I thicken the broth into gravy, add the boiled chicken and freshly cooked vegetables, and turn it all into a hearty stew.

These days it’s hard to find food stuffs that mom really likes Something she devours one day she will refuse the next time it’s offered.

That’s the one thing you can count on regarding dementia — you can’t count on anything working more than once.

As it should be, there are all sorts of experiments going on to find ways to prevent and stall the progress of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. What I wish is there was a better understanding of how to “make comfortable” people like my mother, who are at the far end of the journey and for whom there doesn’t seem to be any medications that are able to give her the peace of mind and pain-free body that she deserves.

I’ve already warned b!X that, before I get that bad, I will move in with him in Oregon, where they have a Death with Dignity law.

Or maybe I’ll just OD myself on chicken soup.

a black cat almost

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A black cat almost crossed my path yesterday as I walked along almost spring streets.

It saw me coming, took a left, trotting a path ahead and parallel to mine, looking back to see if I were still there, moving forward.

With a last look back, it skittered under a car and watched me pass.

I wrote the following a decade ago while on a weekend writing retreat.

Walking the Stone Labyrinth

Sometimes life
like a labyrinth,
leads you where you have to go.

You think you make choices–
this man or that,
some child or not.

You set your alarm,
choose your shoes,
gather friends for tea,
count your changes.

Until one day a corner comes,
slipping you a glimpse
of those strings of stones
shaping your shadows edge.

And sometimes, perhaps,
on a perfect day,
under a perfect sky,
a perfect black cat
with eyes like glowing stones
races across your path
and waits in the early ferns
for you to cross hers.

she’s caterwauling

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No, not my mom. My cat.
She hisses and swipes at everyone but me. My grandson keeps trying to be nice to her, but she will have none of it.
We have had to put up an opaque barrier in the doorway to my rooms so that she doesn’t see the other two cats in the house — who, at first, yowled at her but now come up and sit on the other side of the gate, waiting and willing to be friends.
When she notices them there, she starts caterwauling and spitting. If I pick her up, she keeps making this strange crying sound with her mouth closed.
Calli is about 12 years old and has never seen another cat. I’m not sure that she knows she’s a cat. As far as she’s concerned, I’m her mother.
I was hoping that my daughter’s two neutered male cats and Calli would eventually, at least, live peacefully side by side. I’m beginning to lose hope for that to every happen.
Right now, I’ll settle just for her caterwauling to stop.

kitty corner

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kittycorner.jpg

As I’m cleaning out old files, I found an old receipt from the vets with my cat’s age on it. (I’ve been trying to remember when I rescued her from the tiny pet store cage in which she could only sit in her litter.) As far as I can figure, she’s almost 12 years old. For a fat old cat, she sure is doing well.
Because I’m anticipating moving her with me when I finally get to my daughter’s, I invested in a large carpeted “house” for her litter box. If I had known that it weighs 50 pounds (the inside is melamine), I might not have ordered it. On the other hand, maybe I would have, since it also works beautifully as another sunny window perch for her.
My mom, who is older than my cat in cat-years, is not doing so well. She seems to only be able to stay awake for a couple of hours at a time. She often doesn’t eat unless one of us feeds her. The hospice nurse is stopping in today, but I doubt if there’s anything she can tell us that we don’t already know.
The only time I seem to get outside for any sun shine is when I go out to tend my kitty corner garden. For lack of any other place to put it that wasn’t overgrown with weeds, I tucked it into the space between the driveway and the woods. It’s not perfect, but what is.
hers.jpg

Not even my grandson is perfect, although he’s close. He can’t be bothered to put on matching socks in the morning, but, as my daughter relates on her blog:
Our big brained boy wanted to know yesterday how the first person ever born was, well, born — because if he/she were the first, how could they be if every person born was only born after the mother before them was born (this child is only turning 6 next weekend, btw).
So there I was, having to launch into a succinct, but thorough explanation of evolution from slimy muck to Man.

carefully care-free

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Four days free of caregiving!
I am heading out tomorrow with my gaggle of friends to Lake Luzerne, which is not far from Lake George, which, as fate would have it, is the site of the annual motorcycle Americade at the same time. No doubt, the roads will be crawling with hogs of all kinds and their wannabe relatives
Back in high school, I dated a guy with a motorcycle — unbeknownst to my parents of course. It might be fun to ride on one again. I mean, isn’t there some commercial where a grandmother rides in on the back of a bike that her grandson is driving? Hmm. Maybe I’ll run into a senior citizen biker.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out if the itchy bumps popping up on my arms are flea bites or hives or some sort. I can’t seem to find any fleas on my cat, but I know those critters are pretty tricky.
Also, meanwhile, the hospice nurse continues to check in on my mother. Mom somehow fractured a rib while I was gone a few weekends ago. While the pain seems to be finally subsiding, she is getting less and less stable on her feet and just is not happy about very much. The nurse brought in a young woman who played the guitar and sang, and my mother seemed to like that — although after they left, she was sure that they stole some of her jewelry.
I don’t know how my brother is going to handle four days and three nights taking care of mom on his own. If it were me, I’d hire someone to come in and help. I’m leaving a list of available private hires on the refrigerator and a stockpile of food that mom likes inside.
I am sooo out of here.

the lone crow

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For the first time ever, I see a lone crow wandering around the area of the bird feeders. At first I wonder if it’s a grackle, but a quick look in the Audobon bird book confirms that, indeed, it is a crow.
I leave tomorrow to join family and friends for my late once-husband’s remembrance party. A lone crow, and thoughts of death.
My mother is now losing her hair. Her digestive system is screwed up. She is always afraid, never satisfied or happy, constantly restless.
I watch the crow march back and forth across the small area where squirrels and doves are pecking at what the finches and cardinals have accidentally tossed their way. He doesn’t seem to be eating. He looks like he’s checking things out.
Is he wondering “Is this the place?”

new bird on the block

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All of the creatures, medium and small, are back to feed in the little space in which our bird feeders hang. It’s the same place where the deer and the bear made their hunger-driven appearances over the winter. Now the space is teeming with the usual chipmunks and squirrels; gold and other finches, including an indigo bunting; the usual flocks of mourning doves and cow birds and house wrens; and the four different kinds of woodpeckers that we’ve been able to identify.
Today, a new movement beyond the window caught my eye. It was a huge wild turkey hen brazenly invading the territory of the usual suspects. And, with might making right, she pretty much grazed wherever she pleased, temporarily displacing the smaller creatures.
If she comes back, it must mean she has her nest nearby. Wild turkeys build their nests on the ground in wooded areas. Perhaps she will return with her brood.
At this rate, I’m going to have to increase my bird food budget. All birds, great and small, are welcome here.

that creature of habit

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She has trained me to adapt to her routines, my fat old lady cat. You can train a dog, but your cat trains you.
Each morning, after she eats and comes down the stairs, she goes to the door to the breezeway and waits for me to open it so that she can look out through the patio doors and check the weather. Of course, I comply.
When she decides to go out, she likes to go out the front door, take a stroll around the house, check for new scents, and then sit at the back door expecting to be let in. I have learned her “constitutional” routine, and now I obediently give her enough time for her walk and then obediently open the back door for her.
She likes her tablespoon treat of wet cat food twice a day at mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and if I forget, she comes and finds me and gives me a sharp tap on my leg to let me know that she’s waiting.
I have become a creature of her habits.
The affection that so many of us have for out cats made this poem (one of Jim Culleny’s daily ones) even more poignant.

A Cat in an Empty Apartment
Wistawa Szymborska
Dying–you wouldn’t do that to a cat.
For what is a cat to do
in an empty apartment?
Climb up the walls?
Brush up against the furniture?
Nothing here seems changed,
and yet something has changed.
Nothing has been moved,
and yet there’s more room.
And in the evenings the lamp is not on.
One hears footsteps on the stairs,
but they’re not the same.
Neither is the hand
that puts a fish on the plate.
Something here isn’t starting
at its usual time.
Something here isn’t happening
as it should.
Somebody has been here and has been,
and then has suddenly disappeared
and now is stubbornly absent.
All the closets have been scanned
and all the shelves run through.
Slipping under the carpet and checking came to nothing.
The rule has even been broken and all the papers scattered.
What else is there to do?
Sleep and wait.
Just let him come back,
let him show up.
Then he’ll find out
that you don’t do that to a cat.
Going toward him
faking reluctance,
slowly,
on very offended paws.
And no jumping, purring at first.

cats will be cats

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I thought my overweight nine year old cat was too slow to catch anything live. But yesterday, as I sat on the front steps trying to get some Vitamin D, she came trotting over to me with a lax lump of chipmunk in her mouth. I suppose she was (as cat’s will) bringing me, the only mother she’s ever known, a present.
I felt bad that I had to grab her by the neck and make her put the poor critter down, since she was probably very proud of her catch. But I did, and she did, and the chipmunk, unhurt, took off like a shot toward the sheltering bushes.
We rather like our chipmunks, who spend a great deal of time waiting under the back steps and in the drain pipes for the squirrels to leave so that they can graze on the fallen bird seed. I have noticed two neighboring cats, one white, the other black and white, slinking into our back yard to try and catch one of the little guys. The other afternoon I happened to look out the window to see the black and white cat succeed. I ran to the door and tried to frighten the cat into dropping his acquisition, but the fast feline was already out of sight.
It’s a cat-catch-chipmunk world out here on the mountain.
It’s also a world terrorized by an old lady who believes she is entitled to every minute of our time.
Again, here it is, after midnight, and I’m still up. Still blogging. Still wishing for a world where cats and chipmunks live peacefully side by side and where old dementia-ridden ladies are sweet and cooperative.
But cats will be cats.