I was on the phone with a good friend asking for a recipe.  That’s when I saw it and it saw me seeing it.  So it wasn’t my imagination.  All the books and everything that I kept tidying up over the last few days wasn’t an indication of a new behavior pattern from Molly.  She kept to the usual items we left as a release valve on the countertops for her to knock over.  Empty creamer containers from the diners; empty skate cases from the beach. Anything that made a nice enough sound when falling on the wood floor and then had the added benefit of making a good sound as she practiced driving the ball down the soccer field.

When I saw the chipmunk and it seemed to go, “Cripes! She’s here too!” it ran back into the bowels of the house; first by the dining room and then I lost track of it and feared it went into the bathroom or the basement. I was hoping it went into the bedroom after losing the dream of it opening the front screen door and leaving of its own free will.

This seemed like the time to run and get Molly and lock her in the study. She was behind the French doors in the front room and banging the doors so much that their weak excuse for a lock wasn’t going to hold much longer. I’m not sure if my concern was more for the chipmunk or me trying to pry the chipmunk out of her jaws.  But I knew I didn’t want to face either situation.  I grabbed her and she must have thought we were going to go hunting the chipmunk together because she was eager but didn’t squirm out of my grip. 

Once I got her in the study I starting whooping and hollering to rouse the chipmunk from wherever it was and drive it into the bedroom. Well, that poor thing must have freaked. Suddenly, I saw it run to the bedroom and then try to escape through the open windows. But the screens stopped it. It ran across the bed, ran into each windowsill but the screens were there every time, blocking its escape.

Then it looked like it was coming at me. My neighbor just got done telling me the other day that they do that – run right at you.  I totally freaked.  I screamed and yelled as I jumped on top of the bed. What a sight that must have been. I think I could have jumped higher than Michael Jordan at that moment. My heart was racing.  I kept on hooting and hollering really loud and the chipmunk was running amok.  ‘Oh shoot’, I realized, I’d have to get off the bed, run to one of the windows and pop out the screen. I did just that too.  And don’t ask me how I moved so fast because I have no idea.  I jumped off the bed and unhooked the latches that held the screen in and pushed the damn thing out of its tracks and onto the flowering hastas outside.

Then the critter was trying at the windows again but the wrong ones. Damn.  It was trying for the windows but expecting the same results, no pass to the outside.  What’s that saying about trying the same things and expecting different results?  The definition of crazy. But clearly not the definition of chipmunk.  It kept trying the same thing but expected the same results.

Honestly, I wish I could tell you I know just what happened and how it got to the open window the second time but I can’t even though that’s all I was focused on. But when it got to the window with no screen it was just staying at the edge of the window as if maybe it still didn’t have access to outside.  This time I yelled so loud I thought all the neighbors would be calling the cops.  I swear that the force of my sounds is what finally gave it the final push out the window.  It leaped. What a leap! If there were Olympics for chipmunks, really, when you think about it, there should be, it would have won the broad jump. I don’ t know who displayed more valor that day. The chipmunk or my cat Molly. It certainly wasn’t me. By the way, nobody called the cops. So much for neighborhood crime watch.

There is an owl that has big ear shaped features placed just where you would expect the ears as well. But are they ears?  No, says the owl master. They are not. They are there as a means of moving the sounds around in the air the way you would stir the soup to involve the oregano that would otherwise swim on top. The owl stirs the air, moves it past it’s hidden ears and evolves a strategy of location using it’s head as a sonar basin.  Pity the wee mousies now because that is a very efficient system and early on owls can eat six little mice a night. Or was that an hour? It is at times like these that I castigate myself for not remembering who was Beowulf and who was Grendel. One was the mother and one the child that devoured the warriors in the hall. 

I should remember who is who, because I am one of the monsters when I toss and turn like an alligator either drowning its victim or trying to show off to the girlfriend what a catch I am. What a choice, either wrapping the food in water and mud or dancing the seduction of the last living dinosaur. Which clearly, by the way, did not work. Check the fossil record.

But I digress. If Molly is breathing through her ears, as I would guess, than where is her sonar located?  She does look a lot like an owl, as most cats do.  But I suspect her people, whoever they are, have set up a sonar net in the entire house since there does not appear to be a time when she can’t locate me instantly. In fact, more often than not, when stillness finds me and I look about, she is there, staring at me.  I had tried with Stoner, Molly’s predecessor, the game of sneaking up on her in the morning. I did succeed upon occasion which would surprise me as much as it did Stoner. Stoner’s reaction was a few quick sneezes. Molly’s young yet and hyper alert so I haven’t had any success sneaking up on her. Right now I’m still the mouse.  I’m glad she’s not really an owl.

This week the sense of not knowing began when I saw a bird circling the bark on one of the oaks in the back. This bark is lifting off the tree but not dying. It’s patterned that way and there’s enough lift in each section of bark to hide whole colonies of those tiny owls that are smaller than an inch. I’m sure there’s enough wisdom in the oak tree to fill the libraries across the county. This bird circles the tree of knowledge.  My cat wanted it something fierce the other day. That’s what got my attention in the first place.  It took several days of sightings to get me to remember to look it up. The bird is a creeper. Not a wren but wren-like. That’s what I was saying for days. It looked like a wren.  I surprised myself because I actually recalled that the wrens around here seem to like to move around on the ground. They go in and out of the yucca leaves so much I’d like to charge them an all day fare. 

Jeepers we’ve got a creeper around here. Never knew. It’s going up and down the tree like the stripes on a barbershop pole. My partner’s grandfather, a Bronx barber, told her  that the red and white stripes signified bandages used in bloodletting. Well my cat would like to have some bloody letting activity with the creeper but she’s not going to get it.  In order to do that she’d have to climb the tree in spirals while carrying me with her since I’m attached to the other end of her leash. If  will alone could lift my tonnage I can imagine being wrapped around the tree by her desire. But reality and gravity do tend to set in just when the cartoons take off and philibuster the imagination.

I noticed another little bird lately as well.  It’s not a creeper, it’s not a wren. Definitely not a sparrow. Not a finch, no red.  Not anything I can recall. As I notice the differences my cat seems to notice their distances. They’re all close enough to make her wait in the near death like freeze position. Neither one of us seems to troubled once the bird is gone or another distraction has come along.  Sometimes life is grand.

Baby puss

Beautiful

Boners

Boo

Boo boo

Charles Manson

Her Majesty

Miss priss

Muskrat

My puss

My queen

My puppy

Ooglie booglie

Pony

Pony girl

Rabbit

Schmegayggie

Schmootzie putzie

Sexy girl

Stone

Stoner

Stoner boner

Stoner McTavish

Stoney boners

Stoney Boney

Stoney baloney

Stoniekins

Stonies

Stretch

Stretchy girl

Stoney brook

Stoney bumpers

Sweet baby

Sweet baby girl

Sweet pea

Sweetie pie

Tootsie frootsie girl

Your hineyness

Your Majesty

My song for her was:   Stoney, Stoney Bumpers, Queen of the Wild Blue Sea-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

We also called her:

Pumpkin

Beastie girl

Stoner died September 23, 2008 at 7pm. 

She was with us for 19 years. It was supposed to be 28. She did not keep up her end of the bargain and she left her hotel tab unpaid.  I am not surprised considering how she just ran into our house 19 years ago complaining about the cold, nobody loving her and her hunger.

She got used to her blue plate special three times a day.  It was hard to get someone over here as often as that schedule demanded so we rarely went away.  Without her to confer with and share items for her smell library, frankly, not too much was of such interest or pull anyhow to make it worthwhile. Always wondered what Stoner was thinking.  She had a magnificent mind. For those times we were away there was a message string on the back of the chair by the front door. She would let us know what she thought of our departures and/or what happened during our absence with this string.  I’m upset right now because I can’t find it. So all the names we called her up above, are asking her in every way I know how, where is that damn string?  Don’t think there weren’t more names. There were but the message string being gone has not helped the memory.

She came into our lives in a very unusually cold November in 1990.  She ran into the house. I thought she was a squirrel.  It was the first of two times she ran in before, eventually she was invited in. But after the running in times she would come by the front porch every day I got home from work. And it got so that I would worry about her if I didn’t see her.  And I didn’t like cats.  Of course. And I was afraid Lynn would fall in love with her and adopt her. So I warned, no toys, no food for that animal. She was, after all, an animal and I had to remind her of that so many times. You’d think she would remember.

She came into my life a year after my mother died. She was19 and a half years old. We were told about her beginnings and roughly guess that she was about 5 to 6 months old when she came to us. So my mother was gone nearly 20 years when Stoner left us. 

I was the first to get snookered of course. That’s what my neighbors called it.  She started sleeping over at first.  One night, then a string of nights in a row, then two weeks in a row. Her wayward father, our noisy neighbor, never even seemed to care that she was missing. One day I saw that she was injured. We took her to the vet. Paid for the operation. She had been attacked by another cat. Pepper actually. Pepper became her Moriarity.  All I would have to say to her is “There’s Pepper!” and she would become fierce and ready to attack. Pepper picked on her when she was little and prior to her Ninja training.

After that I asked Lynn to go tell Mr. Wonderful that she was our cat now. I thought I’d punch him in the nose if I saw him. She was at our door when injured and hungry. Not his. 

The truth is that Stoner made us hers. She mothered me every step of the way through nearly two decades.  If I have any sense about me it’s because she tried to keep me ship shape and on the straight and narrow. At least by her clock. And my god did her clock ever work so accurately.  By my digital alarm clock Stoner would wake me nearly every morning at 5:27 AM.

Anyway, I miss her like crazy at times and her message string always felt like a reminder that she was there in some way. It was a purple sneaker lace that she liked.  I don’t know where it is and would like to.  Meanwhile, back on the farm, Molly is here and we adopted her this time around. She is not nearly as sophisticated as Stoner was, but sweet as can be. Her list of names not that impressive yet. That is something that grows over time. Molly has emergency mice. They’re in my nightstand drawer. When we’re gone too long or not paying attention an emergency mouse would show up or we would find them in different places in the house. Ever since a few weeks ago when she had her heyday with two chipmunks and two voles I noticed that the emergency mice weren’t showing up.  I didn’t really want her growing up so fast on me. So it was good to know that when I was away visiting a friend just now that she took one of the mice out of the draw. It didn’t get far into the house but at least she’s still my little girl. I mean, I know she’s an animal. I’m the one reminding her of that all the time too. There’s telltale signs and I don’t know why they forget. For Molly it’s especially easy to tell, she’s even got fur on her nose. You’d think they’d know these things.

A solution to this dilemma is to allow our feline friends their art forms. Who will judge if it’s art or just an inferior mess? That’s something we can all decide later. Or, we can find a way to develop a test with those felines that seem judicial and artistic – and allow them to make the decisions on which pieces go into the museums and which do not make the grade.

The forms that the art works take can be varied and even cutting edge by human standards. This has never been done with the agenda to have museum quality art driving the field.  Why not be bold?  Fur balls, destruction, the documentation of ruined household articles, even the placement of cat catches, can all be entered into the field of museum quality art.  If cats are to be qualifying judges, we can also have a human panel of judges, identified as such, so that the public, most likely human and not feline, can decide for themselves what is art and what is not.

If it turns out that the cats’ work that end up in the museum have a hold on the public’s imagination, all the better. The main function of this effort is to give art a chance and if it takes the cat population to do this, our rescues and adoptions could be considered a form of patronizing the arts.

But the tale here is about Stoner’s condo and how it came to be a domicile for her.  It had a porch or a veranda if  you will.  It had the remains of the tippy top of the cedar tree that was struck by lighting as a bridge from the porch to the patio section. No blocks or tiles on this patio but pure, easly licking grass and dirt.  That’s where Stoner conducted her business and why we never had to have a litter box in the house – let us say amen.

Stoner’s Condo was a simple affair of four foot squares covered in steel gauge fencing that a squirrel couldn’t get through.

She had a small cat door and through the slit where the door would swing, Stoner managed to refine her hunting skills. More on that another time. It didn’t take Stoner long to realize she could become one of the most efficient hunters using that slit as her sight – but it took her human family members quite a while, it’s embarrassing to say just how long, to realize that screen over the fencing could cut down quite a bit on the avian visitors Stoner brought into the house.

Well, the ideas for cat houses, if you’ll pardon the expression, catpatios, or as we have referred to them, cat condos has emerged into the collective unconscious and found it’s way into the New York Times summer pages of things to do for your kitty family members to make their lives more interesting.  It’s true, there’s no major studies by any appropriately qualified parties to determine if access to the outdoors, however limited, is good for your feline family members.  Some veterinarians might tell you that they’re very happy within their comfort homes. Who knows the mind of a cat really? How can you tell?  Although we people living with cats know that their animals understand every word spoken and choose to have selective hearing, we cannot survey them for quality of life questions.

That’s leaves us with trial by error.  Our experience has been that Stoner’s Condo, transferred to Molly through the transition of time and space and the great abandonment of Stoner from this world – makes for a happier cat.  I personally promised Molly freedoms that she would not believe when we rescued her from her crowded cell.  She saw that was no lie but has now progressed toward hungering for greater freedom of movement. We are working on that on a daily basis.  The progression from cat condo, to summer dacha, or the screen house if you, took place last summer. There have been some adventures between these transitions that make the early explorations of the North of South poles seem like child play. 

Tune in tomorrow for another installment of Cat condos the way to freedom.

*Hoisted high *
A confident, contented cat will hold her tail high in the air as she
moves about her territory. A tail that is erect like a flagpole signals
a happy mood or a friendly greeting. Cats often send this message as
they approach a welcoming person. If the top third of the tail twitches
as the cat nears you, this means he totally adores you.

*Question mark*
A tail looking bent in a question mark often conveys a playful mood.
This would be a good time to engage in a five- or ten-minute play session.

*Flying low*
A tail positioned straight down, parallel to the legs, may represent an
aggressive mood. Be wary. That said, there are exceptions to this rule.
Some breeds, such as Persions, Exotics, and Scottish Folds, normally
tend to carry their tails lower than their backs.

*Tucked away*
A tail curved beneath teh body signals fear or submission. Something is
making the cat nervous.

*Puffed up*
A pipe cleaner of a tail reflects a severely agitated or frightened cat
whi is trying to look bigger to ward off danger.

*Whipping*
A tail that whips rapidly back and forth indicates both fear and
aggression. It is a warning that says “stay away.”

*Swishing*
A tail that swishes slowly from side to side usually means the cat is
focused on an object. Cats often swish their tails right before they
pounce on a toy mouse. It is part of their predatory positioning.

*Twitching*
A tail that twitches just at the tip is a sign of curiosity and excitement.

*Cat-to-cat*
A tail wrapped around another cat is equivalent to a person casually
putting her arm around a favorite pal. It conveys feline friendship.

–
Imagine Peace

It’s a beautiful night. The moist air is delicious. I’m writing this and appreciating the late spring evening even as our house is apparently being surrounded by wild animals. Voles, raccoons, nocturnal squirrels, the fox that’s been around for 25 years, chipmunks and owls, most likely the mountain lion Marge saw years ago, have all apparently engaged in some kind of treaty and decided to close in on us. So at least Molly seems to think.

We were watching a sweet movie called Summer House – recommended but you’ll find it sad.  Molly came tearing out of the bedroom into the living room then went careening into my study, then into the front study, then back to the bedroom clearly tracking what may amount to an unprecedented onslaught of urban/suburban animals on two hard working Americans. 

No doubt all this activity follows the actual internment but subsequent release of an aberrant chipmunk.  Once removed, apparently the chipmunk became a community organizer, we know how dangerous those folks can be, and brought every four legged and winged creature within the area against us.  Could it be that the chipmunk, unceremoniously carried from the house in a quart sized deli container, felt an incredible breach of diplomacy and has declared vengeance? 

It is true that we used a deli container, plastic, not glass, to remove the chipmunk. We found another chipmunk in the house the following week.  We did not call the exterminators. We did not go and get a trap nor did we do anything that would be, we thought, disrespectful to a chipmunk. We even stopped and admired the chipmunk in the container before releasing it.  Even the next day, while walking Molly, I pulled pack so that she would not pounce on the chipmunk when it froze in its tracks before taking cover under the hastas.  We are a peace loving bunch.

And yet, the animals have surrounded our house and Molly is crazy with war plans and alarm. 

It is true that a vole turned up dead in our living room.  We are not sure what happened. There was no lab crew around to do a crime scene investigation. My belief is that the vole, aged and tired from the sudden heat of a lazy spring day had a heart attack. There is no evidence that any foul play took place. Although Molly was compassionate enough to bring the vole into the living room we do not believe she had any part whatsoever in its demise.  I was very happy about that. She maintains her innocence. 

It is true that what with the chipmunks and the dead vole Molly has had some red letter days here lately.   But her joy does not mean that she has been a catalyst for war.  That’s good too because when I adopted her I promised her we’d treat her to the best possible times.  Not the worst possible times. Even though our house is surrounded and this may be the last message from here for some time it is safe to say, so far this week, cat heaven.  Humans, as always, lucky just to be in limbo.

http://blogs.catster.com/the-cats-meow-a-cat-and-kitten-blog/kitty-the-cat-is-backpacking-from-miami-to-ushuaia/2010/04/28/

Kitty the Cat, found as a kitten abandoned on a roadside in Louisiana, is having the adventure of her life. Her goal: to hike from Miami to Ushuaia entirely on foot/paws, spending just 2 Euros a day, and completing the trip in three years.