Muchness

Stan:

The world is wet it went, from dust rolling casual on fur and then all around

to water soaking dripping wetting paws.

Today I'm inside.

When cold winds came she let us stay open door out back.

Zorro tipped the milk.

She was cross we boys need party sometime.

Watch through window.

Zorro hid. I coul-don't fit that hide.

She went away, came back, Zorro slow, full of milk, my tummy grumbling.

No milk today.

Hot cloths and the lavender smell like the carpet.

We try not to mark the trays well kept,

but she cleaned the kitchen recently and we got to work.

She doesn't pee lavender but it strong cat smell.

There is some spraying in places we talk to pee-wise.

Friday

Inside Cats

The cats are introducing me to more people and especially to more children.

The cats act charming, they curl up under the flowering bushes looking graceful and whiskery and they accept praise and worship from us all.

Princess doesn't come out of her bathroom nest very often, but every few days she's restless and wanders around with her characteristic cry which sounds like a hoarse Wowwr!! Wowr. On those days I take her across the road to visit Jos and Mick and to assume her old place on the verandah where she has watched the street go by these last eight years or so.

Not every day. A day out, then two day's rest.

Even though the vet said that her kidneys are remarkably good for a cat her age, she sometimes pees in her bed.  More work for she but Princess still does her cat work, slipping out from her curtained bed, saying hello, lip marking the red shelf in the bathroom, accepting caress and praise, then slipping back to bed.

She's eating well and her arthritic back legs are less shaky than they were a few weeks ago.

She can still leap onto my lap. She can still run nimbly up Jos's front steps although I'm not sure that she still ascends the mulberry tree to get to Jos's roof.

She said she wanted to go out in yesterday's blistering heat. As I carried her past our front gate, she had the energy to hiss at Scrap, who looked  surprised.

Me, I didn't do much at all, a bit of study, a walk to the Post Office to pay bills, some kitchen work and so on.

I collected Princess in the evening. As I chatted with Jos, Sylvio dashed across the road to talk to us. Friday evening's traffic is always dense. Jos and I were frozen with horror. Sylvio timed his run well. I brought him back first. Usually Sylvio, Grace and Stanley are inside by evening time being the first of all the cats to enquire about dinner....

Next time I'll make sure he's in before I cross the road. He's too daring, that small silver boy.

So all are inside and fed except for Greyling. I try to fetch her a few times, but she dances away. 

I go outside to look for her and notice fine drops of rain.

Too tired, too hot to bring the washing in earlier, I get the basket and fetch the washing, not even bothering to fold it.

When I return to our small back yard, the garden is full of silver whiskery faces, mischievous and mysterious.  I'd closed the door without locking it and it must have been Zorro who teased the door open.

They've had their dinner and now they aren't going to come inside, thanks all the same!

I go to get the camera. The pattern of the little faces among the flowering silvery mauve heliotrope and the silver dragon shapes of the artichoke is lovely. They are all in the wilderness by the time I return to the garden and No, when I call, they will not come.

I give up and go inside.

The rain gradually gets heavier and pretty soon there are faces at the kitchen window.

"Can we come inside now please?"

"Oh, all right," she growls.

But Lucibelle and Balanchine didn't escape. They knew the rain to be on its way.

Sylvio's Mystery

We all welcome a delicious day like this. She even skips a bit, arms wide, heart singing. All of the little felines are a-hunting, whisker-quivering, they raise the left front paw and move inside through wide open doors. They tease the inside doors to investigate all the biscuit bowls for stray biscuits, they check the hallway to see if there's something in the can to scoop before the can is binned. The block of wood is still wedged against the fridge door, but it's worth a try because the fridge is a most delectable place for one Zorro, even if he got stuck inside for a good ten minutes once during kittentime. She has recently placed a bigger block of wood against the fridge door and phooey, it won't move, but what's this in the kitchen corner?  It's a cupboard ajar, a cupboard with the big big pack of biscuits. Lucibelle helps Zorro, but then there's something of more interest, the busy buzzing of a blowfly at the kitchen window above the sink. (The Blowfly is the surest sign of Springtime!)  Crash goes a plate and everyone flees.  Cautiously they come back.  The cupboard door is closed, the plate swept up, the finger is shaken, Naughty, NAUGHTY!! And they all run off to chase the butterflies except for Stanley who settles on the verandah in order to closely watch the street.  She is cooking again, but clumsy after her illness spills some food on the track suit pants which are rinsed and hung on the line still dripping. Sylvio is entranced.  (He loves water, he tastes it and teases it and wets his ears and paws with it and he's the only cat who danced around in last week's warm rain, enjoying wetness.)  They have all accompanied She to the clothes line in next door's yard and they run up and down the loquat tree and do some chasing, when Sylvio discovers that water is dripping from above.He wriggles his ears, he licks the drops, then he sets off to examine every inch of lawn to see if dripping water comes from above anywhere else. It's very confusing sometimes for a cat who knows what he likes.

Health Problems

Zorro: Why you wakes me up?

It's very hard to take a pic of Zorro because he's very shy. 

Soon after he was born, a mean Tomcat came round and tried to kill him. (One reason to take responsibility for kitty cats is that Toms will try to kill them off so that the little females go on heat again!)

I rescued Zorro as a shrieking terrified kitten and he doesn't really trust very much ever since. He is a cute lad though and he is definately Mama Greyling's favourite fellow feline. She's gentle and wise, he's an affectionate sook with big brimming eyes and a very hoarse miouw, possibly from shrieking while Greyling gripped him by the scruff as she tried to face off one mean mean Tomcat!

His name came because when all the kits ran in a bunch, he'd leap over all of them and streak ahead. Even when tiny he could leap to my shoulder height and I'm not short! He seemed to be so brave and daring. Finally when most of the previous litters found homes, the grey kits could be brought inside from the laundry. 

I didn't see Zorro for four days. He went into hiding. His apparent daring I think was the fear from his early trauma. The early bravado which earned him his name was all gone by the time he crept out from behind the clothes rack.

It was hard enough to take pictures of modest Greyling. It's been even more difficult to take a good shot of Zorro. When I get the card for my camera, I'll try again!  When he suddenly appears from under the flowering bushes, his eyes wide and ready to run, he looks amazing, but I've not been quick enough yet.

So much to read, so much to understand.

My persistent fluey head cold has been very sticky. I keep getting about on certain days. Then even that keeps on being too much for me. I worked out a few herbs that have me feeling better today. It's easier to treat other people/ animals than myself. I miss my brilliant Acupuncturist, Gabi.

There's a lot in my notebooks which I'm editing for my blogs. Yeh, I had another go at the first blog I tried & I'm writing more about my studies there. I'll include it on my list, OK?

In the meantime, Princess, Ariel, Little Cat, the Old Cat of the Tribe has become ill again. It worried me that Jos didn't want to provide her with an electric blanket or a hot water bottle when Princess, now nearly Nineteen is so much bothered by arthritis. 

After her recent illness, although I went over the road to say hello to the little one every few days, it wasn't until Jos called to say Princess again seemed unwell that I went over for a closer look. The fur shaved for her hospital drips & tests hasn't even grown back yet, and the serene one was uncharacteristically in a very bad mood indeed.

So I brought her back here. There were early signs of dehydration,  little elasticity in the scruff of her neck, and now I'm feeding her a diluted herbal mixture with an eyedropper. Thankfully she's looking and sounding and walking much better.

I put her electric blanket in a nest in the bathroom, giving her privacy with a towel for a screen.

Initially, she stopped trusting this place when I cared for Marvin, a nice enough dog who needed a temporary place, but then he chased Princess and terrified her. Princess then endured until I cared for the second dog. (There have been a lot of people 'between homes' in Sydney recently with this rental crisis and pet owners are most seriously hit).

The second dog, Bindi, wasn't aggressive, but Princess decided that enough was enough and she departed. At present there are no dogs here, although there's a rather bad tempered little chap across the road who's chased Scrap once or twice. 

(Last time he engaged in cat chasing, Scrap and the younger cats disappeared into the Wilderness which he can't access and His Dogness went back to the tree which the cats like to sharpen their claws upon. He was sniffing and marking as I crept up toward him. One sharp handclap above his head and he was off, not seen since.)

Princess's eyes are failing. It seems as if I may take her over to Jos's place on sunny days at times, but perhaps she will have to be an inside cat mostly. I'd hate Dogness to attack her while she's so weak and he does get out since his folks have been renovating. 

I had thought that she should spend more time here when she was ill before, but Jos missed her and she missed Jos and Mick and Col and so on and so again she crossed the road...

Yeh, maybe this little cat, a companion for so long doesn't have much time left. While her fur is shiny and while she can enjoy her food, enjoy company and purr, I'll do my best for her.

When I lived Up The River, I was horribly, hideously ill for a long time. I could raise myself on pillows, I could reach for my books and I studied a lot. There were several good essays yet to be copied from notebooks and I never felt entirely functionless.

My Uncanny Ex Man was nuts. He became cruel and horrible and it would have been a totally isolating time except for one companion, a small cat by name of Princess.

Even when I was in the worst pain, she lay close to the pain and for a very long time she was my only friend, even when Ex Man smashed everything up including me.

Somehow Princess and self  both survived. Somehow I owe her much. She likes her nest in the bathroom pretty fine. It's a lovely big bathroom and a good private space.

Small Queen Scrap likes to stay in my room of an evening. Then Scrap ventures forth early each morning when then I bring Princess back to my bed. I've thought of trying her here in the room with Scrap. It's a big space and Scrap is a gentle girl. I guess I just worry that Princess would worry too much with failing vision, & that maybe Scrap could get frightened and attack her.

Besides, I have to prove to Princess that I'm not hiding another dog somewhere.

Greyling

Formerly known as Grey Boy, Greyling is a small cat with a big soul.

She's not just spoken to me in my dreams, she's even visited friends locally in their sleep, especially since she became a Mum. (Fred is the only one of her kittens who has found a home so far. Is she looking for homes for the others?)

(She likes Zorro best, big sooky gentle Zorro.)

Sometimes Greyling comes in for dinner later than the rest. Usually I feed the latecomers separately in the Bathroom or in the Hall because, of course, those already fed will all just keep eating. 

Greyling won't touch any food  until she can share it with the rest of the tribe. 

She's not a cat you'll meet out front. She's shy. She hides in the Wilderness behind the place.

Once Greyling decides that she loves a person or a fellow cat, she is the most loving sweet-natured affectionate little feline I ever met. (And I have met some very special ones in my time!)

Most of my cats are very figurative if I dream of them, they may have fluffy blue or green fur or polka dot markings or even pony tails. If they talk, they say they like their food and they don't like dogs, they say they like this plant or that, and, (apart from Sylvio),  they don't much like rain. Sometimes they tell me what they feel some people really are like in their terms.

When Greyling arrives in a dream, she is always her own self and she makes unusual sense.

'I like this place. I want to stay around here,' she said before visiting another local friend in his dream. He was so convinced she was in the house, he got up to look for her, but that was when we all thought she was a boy on account of the size of her balls.

Stanley is spending more time inside recently, the only one not precisely tempted by the odours of Spring. I think he's enjoying the pats and the cuddles as I work out back in Kitchen Dining and Lounge Rooms. (Possibly also he's looking for food handouts when I cook!)