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.

Fresh Stuff

Which one was that ancient Greek Philosopher who claimed that illness is good because recovery is bliss?

Phew.

Anna came by yesterday & met our new gorgeous neighbours.

I did some cleaning, well quite a lot compared to when I was ill....

O it's still so smelly in some places.

Phooey, I've only been doing the most basic work since the illness hit me.

I can do the Dyson, the dishes and the surfaces, but!

I been only doing essentials and I haven't been sociable enough with my little crowd.

They are 'marking' to protest.

My sense of smell is only recently returning.

They hit the cushioned chair.

They hit my smart new rucksack (by the way, thanx Leeton for a great rucksack!)

(Sorry I dropped in on Roscoe with my rucksack ponging!)

As smell returned, I realised that the spraying process even hit certain spots in the kitchen.

(Which yesterday I scrubbed with diluted lavender oil!)

The couch is a write-off but I'll air the covers tomorrow.

I got younger folks visiting next week. I have to conquer some smells.

Truly, I do want to be further down the track, but my little critturs are saying, 

'Where have you been?' (PS, 'We could go even more feral if you like!')

Blissfully warmer weather, sunlight on back verandah in the mornings, ah, this place is a good place. Great light. Books keep coming in and with fabulous neighbours I'm doing some gardening at least.

I've got books to add as promised, and I have music to add as promised.

That's because Jez helped me.

I thank Brendan, Jez, Lucy, Mina, and we don't forget Aphex!

I thought I had too many cats until I checked the following site.

The Pussies Galore post on http://littlecatdiaries.blogspot.com/

WOW!

New Bits

Need a new card for the camera.

Lotsa stuff ready to roll.

New books, new note book writings, new possibilities.

Just to say, thanx to everyone who's stayed in touch.

A new level is happening mostly thanx for the counseling, I guess.

I am awed by those blogs I list & by new things I've not had time to indicate.

Check my new books and music etc tomorrow!!!

Love,

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!)

chillouts

Lucibelle Loves Dyson

No choice about chilling out when icy winds and rain returned these last few days.

The Clan has various shelters outside, particularly a small dry back verandah with a few handy boxes to protect fur from nasty wind gusts.

I've wanted to clean, but this Flu has insisted that I can't quite manage that.

Vacuuming with flaming sinusses and more dentals until some basic problems are sorted?

No, not really.

Anyone who has cats and carpet is reliant on a good vacuum cleaner, and when Anna gave me a Dyson for my birthday, it made the whole business a lot easier.

In good health, while I vacuum, I play music, I put on my glasses and I'm so fascinated by the freshening of the air as well as the sharp cleanliness of the floor, I can cope with a low flying jet type scream of sound necessary to re-create a clean floor. 

The Dyson is much more high pitched than other vacuum cleaners on account of it's somewhat Super Sonic whatevers.  

(No, with a lingering Flu, I'm not even going to try and find the handbook describing the ultra technology of the Dyson though, hey, I can add a link!)

Yeh, if I'm headachy I find the Dyson a bit shrill. The strange thing is that even though the cats hated the former vacuum cleaner, they don't mind the Dyson at all.

There's one unfortunate side-effect of their tolerance to the cleansing noise. If they are all inside, then I have to keep shifting cats as well as shifting furniture as I clean.

I couldn't leave them outside on those cold days. The piteous cries from the back verandah as I trawled the kitchen for various human fuelings was simply too much for me.

They ended up in the lounge room with the heater while I went back to bed with a hot water bottle. 

The heater quietened them down. Heavens, if there are half a dozen cats in a small space, then they are going to chase each other around and quarrel after two days, little so and so's. I almost said, worse than kids before I remembered that's not quite so.

The first priority as I began to recover had to be the kitchen after several days of staggering out, preparing Instant Food, (the kinds of things I always scorned!). The room spun. I managed some thiss's and that's until I just gave up and only rinsed and put away.

Last night, I finally did the proper job on proper hot dishwashing, cleaning surfaces & floor. A bit more this AM. Overwhelmed somewhat.

I'm procrastinating by working here, but it's been nice to have done my explorations and the communications while the sun blissfully colours the room bright.

I went outside to eat my noodles and had a conversation with neighbour Ron about the garden. The first ranuncula is in bloom. A cheerful blossom, cats running, playing as we talked.

Seeya

Spring Begins

And This Is Why I Got My Camera!

I’ve recently resumed a blog whose intention is to focus on my studies and the factors comprising my real work. I hit a few misunderstandings back in the nineties and probably even earlier than that and well the work is more interesting than those misunderstandings I hope.

 

I tried blogging soon after I got the computer. It’s taken quite a long time to know where to look and to understand what this acronym or that means.  Oh yes, I’d read all the early cyber philosophy books back in the seventies. I dreamed of computers back then and Science Fiction had strong imaginings about what they would be and how they might change things.

But nothing is ever quite as we dream or imagine it will be.

 

It's disappointing that Computer Media can be so incredibly trivial. Celebrity sagas aren’t simply an occasional curiosity concerning the notable and more. They seem to have become the entire imaginative content of some people’s lives.  Even some of the trivial people who become celebs believe they are doing something more than their vacuity would suggest.

 

I’m just glad that I was brought up with a grounding in Literature, History and Real Life and so on.

 

Yes, computers were an essential part of several of my former workplaces from the eighties onwards. I fell in love with them then (as it were).  No longer did I have to re-type an entire manuscript sometimes several times in order to create the perfect essay or radio script. I remember my Seventies seminar paper for Philosophy: Ludwig Wittgenstein arguing with Bertrand Russell, his former mentor:

 

I wrote out all the relevant quotes from both parties, cut up each quote separately and spent a long time sorting and rewriting before I literally pasted onto blank paper. Yes, if something complex needs to be said, it’s far better to cook it on the computer than to write and rewrite where there is the need to correct.

 

Many great writers simply wrote and rarely corrected. That's not me at all. My first draft is inevitably raw clay requiring much work and considerable time.

 

Some of my essays and works have succeeded and the best ones developed  from notebook stage and then via much correction and polish.

 

This business with blogs and websites is thoroughly exciting.

 

Yeah, I worked on that old blog on Saturday and I’ve decided that some of the strange things that have prevented my work as well as some of what I’ve had to learn since I first became ill will go there. I’m building up to post some essays, a process I first thought might be simple.

 

(Local friend John Butcher suggested I advertise my writing on ebay!!!

 

 

Oh yes? Would people really buy an essay or a poem on ebay? I said I want to keep copyright of my work & he reckons there are so many people hitting ebay that some would just love to have and interesting essay just faxed or posted to them. Is the world that strange? I explained that I want to find a publisher who’ll push my work, and my one nibble feels pretty good.)

 

Today I have a streaming cold, not helped I suspect, by Saturday and twelve hours straight stuck at the computer. Possibly eyestrain didn’t help much…the cold seems to be going round capturing friend after friend and I’ve got to the point of conceding that I probably need some rest.

 

I’ve just returned from sitting in the front garden with a cup of tea, sunglasses and a big hat. Even with my blocked nose, Jasmine, Violets and Freesia’s were bliss (though I wish last year’s Boronia had survived). The sunshine was divine, cats were basking beneath geranium and daisy bushes purring while I thought about how I’ve managed to learn some computering a little sooner than Anna expected.

 

I liked Macintosh from our very first encounter and I especially like its visual capacity. I also did some work with my collection of photographs on the weekend.

 

I’d have loved to include some garden pics here, but the camera needs a new card and that is that, so my only new pictures are today to be detected within these words.

 

(Blossom, beautiful, beautiful blossom has begun with firstly the cherry tree down the road and today, the first plum blossom in the big yard. Come to think of it, this must mark the anniversary of my camera because it was last year’s first plum blossoms inspired me to get the camera in the first place….)

 

I’ve wanted to properly introduce the Grey Cats and to tell their story for some time.

 

While I was still trying to work out the bits and whatnots about blogging, I began a Word Manuscript about them all.  A quick look today revealed that I have a considerable editing session to complete before I post and I don’t feel up to a major editing session, O No.

 

So I’ll just include the kitty pics as a teaser for now. My head is spinning and the eyes are swimming and I’m feeling as if a lie down might be nice. So glad I rarely get a cold, I hate them. (‘Scuse me, AChoo!)  Thank Goodness Anna brought extra tissues yesterday!

__________________________

Grey Kits: From Left, Clock Wise, Grace, Sylvio, Fred, Baby, Zorro.

Cat People Proper

Stanley Brings Breakfast.

I’d call Maria a Cat Lady and I’d name her so honourably. I met her several years ago outside our local Library in the days when I could manage more walking. I’d already noticed a healthy colony of cats in a nearby building who weren’t responsive to passers by. Then several weeks later I met Maria with her basket full of cat food. She was feeding this lot.

 

I asked her about them. It turns out that Maria ranges through three suburbs, visiting each one twice a week to leave food and organise vetinary work for the on heat and the sick among groups of ownerless cats. It’s a worry when the population gets out of hand. Life on the streets is cruel and awful for all stray creatures.

 

Maria is doing something about the problem and my cats won’t be joining hers.

 

I am a writer and a communicator who owns several cats. I am not a cat lady. Not all cat ladies are mad. It’s true that some people love cats well and not wisely but there are also those who care enough to take practical steps.

 

Sarah from Up The River is one of those. She’s taken on the task of paying vets to de-sex all her little local strays.

 

Cats are beautiful and they maintain their wildness. In Bondi I worried about our local birds because there weren’t so many protective trees. Eventually I saw more of the smaller birds killed by currawongs and magpies than by cats.

 

In our suburb, cats are put off birds by the harassments of Myna birds and the fact that we back onto a very long block reaching almost to our local partially cleaned river, and all the old houses have huge trees of all description, many with branches too closely woven for cats to enter.

 

When I first moved here there was an infestation of tall Night Jasmine trees growing along the side of the fence.

 

My friend John helped me get those trees out which was good because the roots had invaded the drain and were threatening the water pipe. The trees had been a gathering place for dawn songbirds and for a time I missed the early birdsong and the lovely shading patterns in my room from the afternoon sun. Eventually I put a hakea in. It’s well away from the pipes and it’s grown fast enough to cast pretty shadows into the room again. However, it’s too prickly for either bird or cat! Indeed, it’s almost too prickly to prune enough to maintain a path past it.

 

The dawn songbirds have moved to the native tree in the street outside.

 

I’ve seen an incredible variety of bird life here, more than I ever previously saw in a suburban environment. Yesterday, a little flock of yellow winged finches escaped the back yard as I let the cats out. I wish I could identify some of the others, but the bird book went during my time of homelessness.

 

On Sunday, as I saw Anna off on the bus, we noticed two Rosellas perched on nearby wires and no, we didn’t have our cameras.

 

Bob Just, who lives in Fern Rouge, densely inhabited by both people and cats, recently sent me these pictures of Rosella Jusef, a frequent visitor to his back yard. It’s Jusef’s relatives that Anna and I had noticed happily settled on the wires above. Bob who likes cats and who has previously owned some wonderful characters, says that these days he’s taken to watering cats who wander into his yard with the garden hose (for Jusef’s sake).

Hey

Name Calling etc

Ready To Find A Home.

 

Ted is back from overseas. He’s in a more cheerful frame of mind than he was when he left. On Election Night last year, as he sat amongst our merry crowd, he confessed that he’d moved to our Labor Stronghold here is order to covert as many people as possible to Liberal Policy. We asked how many converts he’d made.

‘None at all,’ was the rueful answer.

He accepted our teasing well enough that evening, but as Labor’s early weeks became months his cheery attitudes changed. He got the snarls. If any one told a funny story, he’d shout,

‘I hate it when people put people down!!!’ 

Yet he willingly put us down all the time. Gradually all his former friends departed his presence.

At the point at which he referred to me as a ‘cat lady’, I also stopped talking to him.

I don’t mind being teased. As an Aspergian, I’m so literal in conversation, it makes me an easy target and, well, now that I know about the Asperger’s, I can laugh at myself.  Even though Ted explained that he has a habit of naming people, I felt that in his case the allegation was essentially malicious and a springboard for ridicule.

When I was a young mother with a few too many cats I was never described so. We lived in the country in those days. For a time after the first two cats came, I didn’t have a car and couldn’t get to the vet in the next bigger town.

Eventually (this was the Seventies), enough of our many visitors departed with a feline friend to relieve our problems. Initially in that place I’d decided not to have cats there, right up until the time that we were invaded by rats.  Our cats then helped us.

When we finally got our cats, I discovered that Anna adores cats, thinks of herself as a cat person in a totemic sense.

Then, later, when I lived with my ex and his daughter in Bondi,  we got the child a cat and allowed one litter. Princess was born into that first Bondi litter almost nineteen years ago. There were disruptions, money shortages, a house move and Squeak, Princess’s sister was pregnant by the time we’d finally found and shifted into the new flat.

Eventually, money matters improved somewhat and we had Squeaky and her kits de-sexed. Mama Tottie, already de-sexed, hadn’t wanted to move in with us. She found a place halfway between the old place and the new one.

The old place was situated in a back street with its own tiny private backyard. Cat’s Paradise.

In the newer street, in the bigger place, there was more communication between neighbours, some of whom we’d already met. Some of our new neighbours had children who told other children and pretty soon there were quite a few kids trooping around to the new place to visit and view the kittens. Many said they’d have loved to take one home, but pressures of a small flat away from the ground was a bit much.

This was the time that I realised that, unlike us kids who grew up in the bush in the Fifties, many city kids don’t know how to handle small living creatures. Fluffy toys and cartoon animals on TV aren’t the same thing at all. It’s the first time I thought that slowing down and sensitising oneself to a small creature’s centre of gravity, range of movement, freedom to breathe and to feel safe with person, might in some cases be a helpful teaching aid in terms of some childish emotional problems.

Again, it was an environment where there was a large circle of friends and most kits eventually found homes. Apart from Princess, their sagas don’t relate here.

I wasn’t called a cat lady in those days.

The fact is that I’m now an older person and I live alone.

Thus do appellations attach themselves via hostile attitudes. 

I love to read about these creatures who developed with us and civilised some of us. I read all the time about this cat tribe who shares our Earth. One of my favourite books is Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (which is only now on my booklist). Before all these things happened, I’d already read her book about The Gentle People, the Bushmen of South Africa before I read Tribe of Tiger.

Apparently when EMT was doing her anthropological studies in Africa, (and she is a most sensitive anthropologist), she also fell in love with Lions. Her book deals with how the cat tribe is different from all other animal groups in their playfulness and their independent terms of co-operation. She speaks of Lions, Tigers, the American Puma, as well as the domestic Moggie who apparently believes itself to be as big as any Tiger. 

Which I believe is why, when there are several to deal with in a smallish space, the best human adaptation is to respect them and to move around them.

This most recent time when the cats accumulated was caused by serious dental illness and the loss of an ability to cope with the every day. Frightful really, but then my Dental Treatments were interrupted by Bureaucratic bullies and there’ll be legal redress eventually.

I didn’t sit around dotingly watching these recent ones breed or letting them run wild as the poor ladies in California did with their rats, saying that since they’d never had children they just loved to watch the little faces and so on. Check Barista & the 'all creatures great and small' post to discover how mad things can get in times of loneliness!  I wondered, why the neighbours didn't get cats themselves, but it all went pretty mad much too fast.

I made the mistake of thinking that two of them were boys and they weren’t and …

A mistake I’ve got to take responsibility for. The latest lot weren’t intended, but then, as I explain in my opening blog, I later read my dream books, & how for some time in the previous years there’d been cats in my dream life asking me to hear them speak, and here it all is!

If I don’t have quite as many very close friends as previously, what I have here is a range of vivid and interesting personalities, (although it will also be very good when a few more of these little furry critturs find a home for themselves!).

Stanley’s sister Lucibelle would love to find her own place, for example, and three of her siblings have already done so. One of them, Feather, stars in a video clip which I think is pretty good. Her co-star is Sylvio’s brother Fred. The clip is on you tube and I haven’t learned much about the recent video stuff yet. I can post the address to anyone interested though.

‘Cheese toast = warm tummy later.’ Lucibelle.