Lumpen Cat and Punk Kitten

I came home yesterday to Bartleby lying in the middle of the driveway just taking in the sun. She's decided that living outside again is preferable to sharing a house with other cats and, especially, kittens. She can be found parked under my car or my brother's truck depending on which of us is home.

Usually, if neither of us is around she'll lie off to the side of the driveway and lift her head the least possible amount to see who is arriving when we return. Yesterday, she lay right in the middle of my side blocking the way. I pulled up slowly until I couldn't see her in front anymore hoping she would walk away. She didn't move. I honked the horn. She didn't blink. I got out and went round to the front where she lay nearly under the bumper and told her that, while I appreciated the trust she put in me not to run her over, she really needed to shift her butt. True to her namesake, she preferred not to.

So I physically picked her up and carried her to the top of the driveway and deposited her, limp but unprotesting, by the walkway and proceeded to finish parking.

Speaking of the walkway, I have spent the last week cleaning out weeds between pavers and along the edges. It's really a one day job but I restricted myself to the hour or so each day after the sun sinks behind the house putting the walkway in shadow and before the mosquitoes and other bitey critters come out to feed. And each day Bartleby would stroll over, look at what I was doing and plop herself down right in front of me. So I'd work around her until, having moved sufficiently beyond, she'd get up and park in front of me again thus allowing me to go back and clean up the Bartleby-shaped patch I'd left behind. It's kind of a system we've worked out.

Meanwhile, in the house, it seems Mittens is developing something of a black stripe on her back similar to Paribanour's chipmunk markings. Mittens' stripe is much narrower, however, and since the black stripey fur is longer than the background gray fur (as it is on Paribanour, as well) it tends to get pushed up giving Mittens something of a Mohawk. Which makes her even more bad-ass when she's picking fights with her bigger sister. She needs an earring.

Blood and Tears

Had a very good platelet donation today, despite the intake nurse mistakenly setting me up for a whole blood draw. We got that straightened out fast. I was in and out in less than an hour, including paperwork and vitals. This is the first time in three months everything has gone right on the first try.

The last two times we had bad draws on the first attempts (the nurse accepted responsibility, but who knows) so last time, on the second try the following week, we went for the left arm instead of the usual right. That worked so well we went for the left arm first off this time, too, and it worked again. Maybe the right side veins are just played out. (Yes, I know it doesn't work that way.)

Also, these last two times the phlebotomist who usually takes my vitals has been away and both times my blood pressure was normal. The last few times he's taken it, it has been 15 or so points higher than usual and borderline hypertensive which was starting to be worrisome but now I am convinced it's something he's doing and not me. He stopped in from his own appointment at the VA toward the end of my session and and, after talking it over, we jokingly agreed that he's just stressing me out. I suspect it comes from him constantly hounding me for a photo they can attach to my five gallon certificate up on the wall with all the rest of the donors but since I've been consistent about the inevitability of that not happening he's given up and stuck a generic shot of some middle-aged guy in a suit up there and, although he thinks that will shame me into complying, I am perfectly happy with the result, so there.

So I took my cookies and T-shirt and went home only to find out one of the kittens is going away today.

My brother was grooming Scheherazade and Paribanour when I walked in. One or the other of them is going to a home with a little girl, another cat and a dog. Scheherazade is all gray with subtle tiger stripes and loves to pounce from around the corner, rearing up on her hind legs before launching herself at her target, a useless but totally adorable strategy since the time it involves to complete the move means any prey other than my brother's and my legs has ample time to run away. Paribanour, also otherwise all gray, has a striking and sophisticated tapering black chipmunk stripe from just below her shoulders to her tail. She's the toe-licker.

I helped my brother stuff them both in the canvas cat carryall the vet gave him when he brought Jasmine in for the first time. He's taking them to the adoptive family to let them choose. No matter which one comes home again, this will be a sad house tonight.


UPDATE: Paribanour came back. Scheherazade is gone. So, less pouncing but toe licking continues. For now.

Things That Delighted Me This Weekend

Seven or eight teensy little ants (two of them could easily fit on a sesame seed) found a rather large dead spider (comparatively speaking. The body was maybe a half inch across) and dragged the corpse by the legs up an outside wall. Six ants each grabbed the very tip of a leg and pulled while the others pushed on the thorax. It was slow going and a constant stream of fellow ants flowed in both directions up and down the wall just off to their side but they persisted.

A pair of electric Day-Glo pistachio green parrots attacked the bougainvillea by the front door and with no concern for either the cats or me less than twelve feet away worked with their beaks, sometimes upside down, to twist and break off the topmost dead branchlets for nest construction material.

I caught a faint scent of night-blooming jasmine last evening when I went out to feed Bartleby who has moved outdoors, where she cannot be bothered by kittens, while the weather is nice. I can think of nothing more exotic and civilized at the same time than a warm dark evening under stars and moonlight in a garden of jasmine.

It rained. I've been working on the front walkway, cleaning out growth between stones, edging, pulling weeds and turning soil and it rained briefly but heavily yesterday afternoon, a foretaste of Rainy Season which officially starts in a week or so. When it stopped, the living smell of freshly turned wet earth rose up and made the whole exercise worthwhile.

The first mango dropped from the tree. It was warm and sweet and a harbinger for summer. There are more than a hundred ripening on it right now.

It was a good weekend.

Sign of the Times: Co-Pilot Division

I was out driving around today and saw one of those license plate frames people buy to personalize their vehicles without having to pay for vanity plates. Usually, they're in support of some sports team or they're extolling the virtues of the owner's children or grandchildren or "My Other Car Is a ______." This one said,

This Car Is Protect by

Angels

Uh . . ., no.

Your car, dear lady, is protected by DOT safety regulations, Korean design specifications, the manufacturing expertise of hundreds of component suppliers and the ability of other drivers, such as myself, to skillfully avoid ramming your superstitious ass.

Especially, since your own "skills" include stopping more than a car length short of the intersection, exceeding the speed limit by at least 10 mph and turning without signalling.

Before She Teaches the Kids to Ki---Oops, Too Late

My brother came home Saturday night to find splotches of blood all over the floor by the front door. Fortunately, it was on tile and easy to clean up. Jasmine had killed a mouse. We have no evidence to say how much involvement the kids had in the catching/killing or whether mama let them sample the corpse. They didn't eat it (or maybe just didn't get the chance before my brother came home).

What I don't understand is why the mouse was in the house in the first place. We've had no indications of rodents since Bartleby arrived (not that she'd do anything about it if we did). It's been very warm and mostly sunny for weeks now and everything imaginable is green and in bloom so it seems to me it would be easier to find food outside rather than trying to come in where you must know there are cats.

The only idea I have is that the mouse may have been infected with toxoplasmosis which can alter the mouse's brain to where the hapless critter actually becomes attracted to the scent of cats and actively seeks them out.

So, maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was a kind of assisted suicide.

Meanwhile, the kids have discovered their tails, or, more accurately, each others' tails and spend hours in a frenzied ball of fuzziness bouncing through the rooms and over, under and around the furniture sometimes forming a sort of feline daisy chain of tail chasing before collapsing on top of each other in a furry heap on the couch. Scheherazade has started purring. Apparently, the others have not yet figured out how. When I walk around barefoot, Paribanour will lie down in front of me, reach out and grab my ankle with both front paws and lick my toes. Mittens likes to climb into my lap, roll over on her back, stretch out as far as possible (which is surprisingly far for a kitten) and fall asleep.

They remain, apparently, singularly unimpressed with mama's dead mouse trick.

There and Back Again

My brother and I went to our aunt's funeral service Thursday. Google Maps lied about how long it would take to get there so despite leaving ten minutes earlier than planned and consistently exceeding the speed limit  (by only about 5/10 mph) we barely made it with minutes to spare which was still pretty good since our family has, for generations now, a well-deserved reputation for tardiness.

(Beautiful downtown Pahokee)

Part of the problem is that there are no direct routes between our corner of the Gulf coast and their section of the Atlantic shore what with Lake Okeechobee directly in the way. We took the southern route around the lake which was technically shorter and despite construction along a good chunk of the route we were only held up once (in beautiful downtown Pahokee) where the road went down to one lane for half a mile and the flag man waited until the line of vehicles backed up enough on our side to make it worthwhile to switch the directional flow of traffic (we, of course, were the first car in line.) for the record, Pahokee makes Belle Glade (which we also passed through on the southern route) look like a thriving metropolis and Belle Glade was once, way back at the beginning of the epidemic, the AIDS capital of the world although they seem to have gotten it under control since the BG General Hospital is now the BG General Hos  tal a farm implement distributor.

(The road and the dike)

We never did see the lake despite driving right next to it for fifty or so miles since it is completely hemmed in by a 25-35 foot tall dike. We drove along beside that straight, flat-topped sloping green wall on one side and low, flat open miles of sugarcane on the other until the monstrously huge sugar refinery rose up alone in the distance all towering smokestacks and multi-acre-covering building. There are very few roads out there but railroad tracks built up on berms crisscross the area.

(Another section of dike)

Aunt Shirley's service itself was pleasant enough, if Baptist. She'd become increasingly religious as she aged and at least some of her grandchildren (although not her kids so much) seem to be also. One of the grandkids sang a couple of songs in a very nice strong, light baritone. It was interesting to see how few of my generation even pretended to join in the hymns.

From there it was a short convoy to the cemetery where the preacher said a few more words and I had my most traumatic experience of the day when the groundskeepers offered bottled water to the attendees (the tent sheltered only the coffin and immediate family and the rest of us were out in the direct sun). One woman handed a bottle to a small boy with the instructions, "Give this to grandpa." The lad proceeded to hand it to my closest cousin who was born less than six months before me! Grandpa? Grandpa! WTH?!? I'm still debating what I want to be when I grow up!

Then it was off to to one of the cousins' homes for store-bought platters of sandwiches and veggies supplied by the church folk and trying to identify people in old photographs and other reminiscing and then retracing our steps another three hours back home through dying towns and cane fields. We did see a train full of sugar cane, trucks full of oranges, a parade of some thirty brand new snub-nosed farm tractors going the other way (perhaps to the BG General Hos  tal) with a police escort front and back, and more vultures in and beside the road, up in trees and on telephone and light poles than I'd seen before in all my time down here.

Shirley J. (Davis) Parsons 2/7/1923 - 5/5/2013

I just learned that Mom's kid sister, my Aunt Shirley, passed away this past Sunday. She was 90 years old and the last member of that generation. She had six kids, five boys and a girl (actually four boys, the girl and and "accidental" boy at the last minute).

She outlived her older brother, a marine wounded in the Pacific during WWII, and his wife; her older sister (Mom) and her husband (Dad); her own husband and her second oldest son.

Her services will be this Thursday over on the other coast, about a three hour drive around Lake Okeechobee. Another chance to visit our cousins.

The Hunger

She'll behave for several days until we start to believe maybe she's over this "phase" and then, without warning, the Hunger strikes, the insatiable cravings begin again, the unstoppable driving desire that can only be quenched by consuming . . . grains!

Seriously. What cat craves baked goods? What cat is so consumed by a desire to carbo load that she tears into a box of Raisin Bran? Or a loaf of five-grain whole wheat bread? Or cheese danish?

Such are the things Jasmine has gotten into (or has tried to) just over the last three days. She didn't succeed with the danishes because they were encased in a hard plastic shell but the multiple fang punctures mean they're now stored in the cabinet and not left on the counter. My brother has also bought a breadbox and I've put the cereal in what I hope are Jasmine-proof containers.

Admittedly, she is skinny, hip bones and shoulder bones prominent but not ribs. She's been tested for worms  and is clean. Her fur is short but sleek (and starting to fill in nicely from her wounding a few weeks back). She is fed several times a day and often leaves substantial portions for later. (We put down two plates and sometimes she'll eat from one while the kids share the other but just as often Jasmine will switch to whichever plate was put down last or whichever one the kittens are enjoying.) If she wasn't so thin I'd blame it entirely on neurosis from being feral for however long she was outside except I know for a fact Neighbor Dan and his girls were feeding her at least as much as we were before she came in from the wild.

And what's with the carbs? We're not vegetarians (although my brother is much more carnivorous than I) and there is always plenty of bacon, sausage, chicken, fish, pork roast or ham to beg for. Which she doesn't. and she's totally uninterested in all the fruit and veggies we keep on the counter.

She just seems to have one hell of a metabolism. Which I sincerely hope slows down soon thanks to her recent operation. I'd really like to bake some shortbread soon for all the strawberries, or maybe some cookies.

It's Not Going to Get Any Easier

Well, that turned out to be just about as traumatic as we feared it would.

One of the kitten adopters came by this morning and took Dinarzade away.

She was a very nice woman my brother knows with a boyfriend and sweet young daughter who was turning herself inside out at the prospect of a kitten. They had expressed interest when the kids were born and came by this morning after calling my brother who got up early (for him) to play with them all one last time. He had them bouncing of the walls and furniture and each other for the better part of an hour before the adopters showed up.

The kittens were more curious than scared since they are used to Neighbor Dan and his girls coming over to play with them. Dinarzade proved to be the least shy of the bunch and even purred when the boyfriend held her to his chest and the little girl leaned in to listen. That clinched it.

Jasmine, obviously, had no idea what was happening until they took Dinarzade out the front door. She tried following but my brother blocked her way. After they were gone, she and the (remaining) kids all became very quiet for a while.

My brother went back to bed. Mittens and Scheherazade eventually went to sleep but Paribanour stuck, literally, by her mom's side as Jasmine investigated every possible hiding place for a kitten. When she finally gave up, Paribanour sympathy-nursed for a while. When I went out, Jasmine got up and tried to follow me out the door. We're all feeling pretty bummed out. Especially the humans, who know there are still two more to go.

It doesn't help our mood that it's dark and been raining continuously for the past two days.