Tag: Kitty Cat Club Med

It’s not easy being a Bad Boy.….nobody approves of you, unless you happen to be fighting their battle.  Now being a Brainiac is easy-breezy.  Everyone wants you on your Team …. they want the Bad Boy attitude with a well thought-out considered response to avoid confrontation. 

It used to be so easy or at least that is the way I remember it, when my Big Bro’ Beau had my back, my front and my sides too. Life has changed since our Protector Beau took his blue cloud to join RIP Daddy in Heaven.

First off our Diva Calico Gen has become more skittish.  While Beau roamed the highways and the byways of our lives, Gen would stay out past 10:00pm.  On a moonlit summer night the three of us would routinely troupe together, me first, Gen second and Beau bringing up the rear. Over the street, under the fence, down the hill to the creek we would roam.  Not any more. Gen would rather be safe inside, than take her chances with me as her Protector.  After what happened to me who could blame her?

It was a beautiful night.  I remembered Momma had said FDR claimed that ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself.’. .. I was good with that.  I would go trekking by myself, I would.  It was so easy.  I pushed under the fence, peered around to give myself the ‘all clear’ and whammo.  It was like I stepped on a buried hand grenade. Sharp teeth sunk deep through my bone, eliciting piecing pain in my right paw.

What the Sam Hill was that?  Could it be that long talked about Forest Freak that I thought was an old wive’s tale to keep cats inside the house?    I emitted a guttural growl that started at my toes, and spewed from my mouth and ears, deafening my attacker, who bolted away at the speed of lightning, never to be seen again. The silence of the dark forest was broken wide open as rabbits, mice, raccoons and squirrels scrambled to gather up their young ones and disappear into the dense woods. Birds squawked and flapped their wings,  as they too recognized danger had replaced the tranquility of the night.

Like the Farmer in the Dell Rhyme, ‘The Cheese Was Left Alone.’ I had no one to help me. I belly crawled up the hill, under the fence in unbelievable pain, no idea what had happened.  Some Brainiac I was.  Without Beau-Re-Guard I was helpless to defend myself from these thuggish guerrilla warfare tactics.

Still, I had a plan.  I would go wait on the bench for Momma to open the door.  She could fix it.  She can fix anything!

As the Fashionista Kitty Cat of the Kitty Club Med, the Neighborhood Cats and the Cat Colony, I must keep my eye out for up coming trends and then reject or accept and implement them.  I know, I see you, smirking  but this is a real job for a Kitty Cat who has vision, loves glitter and is still working on bringing those high heels and sparkly eye lashes to the kitty market.

Besotted feline lovers are every where, willing to indulge their precious tabbies, although some of them are ashamed to admit it. Derision is heaped on  the Cat Lady or the poor Cat Man who indulges his soul and forges an inexplicable bond with a feline who everyone knows can not possibly replace the love of a dog. My take on that theory is a lot of the Two Footed know ‘nawthing about nawthing’. Still. dogs may be all things wise and wonderful as well as fine pillows to sleep on (at least Jakita is) but they are high maintenance, and sometimes hard on your ears, you know.

First off a Two Footed Owner has to train a dog to do just about anything. Sit, stand, stay, run, fetch, drop, wave, wiggle, you get it – oh, and house break them.  Not cats.  Momma just put a litter tray in the bathroom, closed us in the first few days and we figured it out ourselves.  No road map.  No GPS. No ‘Go Pottie’.  We got it, Pontiac.

Momma doesn’t have to take us for a walk.  We choose if we want to follow her and Jakita on their walks but otherwise,  we have it figured out.  We can walk leisurely or stealthily or thunder whenever, wherever we want at any given time, not on some dead set rigid schedule. Still it is kind of fun to tag along with Momma and Jakita, run ahead, hide in the bushes, then jump out at them.  Momma stops to pet us and try to get us home safely but we got that too, Momma.  We cross the road to the creek and back a dozen times a day.

Then there is the grooming.  What’s up with that, huh?  Jakita digs in the mud, jumps in puddles, then expects Momma to bath, brush and blow dry her.  I must admit.  I love getting brushed myself and if I am out in the rain, when Momma opens the door to let me in, I expect her to pick the fluffiest towel and dry me down promptly.  Failure to comply on her behalf, results in my giving her a proper dressing down.  I always say, ‘A dry cat is a happy cat.’

Yet I can’t deny, my BFF (Best Friend Forever) is Jakita.  She is definitely demanding and high maintenance but she has a good head on her shoulders and a non judgemental tender heart.  Sometimes I think because she grew up in a minority, she likes cats (especially me, but Andy will do when Momma vacuums and Charlie when I am outside) more than dogs that sniff to long, bark too loud or worse still, have to show their dominance over her.  You got to know Jakita.  Inside of her lives a warrior that can take care of business, anyone’s business.

What I know is, dog lovers, cat lovers they are usually all good people. We got to put aside some dog owner superiority.  And, I  got  a secret.  Somewhere deep in my heart I feel the same way about Jakita that she does for me. That begs the question if a dog and cat can be best friends forever, what is wrong with those  hard-headed, critical Two Footed pet owners that pit a dog’s loyalty against an adorable, playful, agile cat? Just ask Jakita and I. We both bring love to the table….and love is a grand thing, init???

 

I love nights. I know what you are thinking. All cats love nights – they are nocturnal.  Yes, we like to prowl around, hide in bushes, then ambush unsuspecting moonbeams, but that is not why I like nights.

No, I love nights because I have Momma’s undivided attention. By 9:00pm I am skulking around at her bedroom door, trying to remind her through telepathy, that it is time to go to sleep because then and only then, I no longer have to share Momma with our gaggle of pets, housecleaning, gardening, painting, computer time and who ever she visits, when she goes God knows where.  Sometimes she comes back with cat food, oh and little Temptation morsels, that she only serves to me because I turn up my nose (and whiskers) at wet food. Obviously,  I don’t begrudge those trips. I even would encourage to go more often to the pet store.

Jakita, in her wisdom, decided she would much rather follow Wonder Boy’s ‘late to bed, late to rise’ schedule.  I mean one night she just plopped off Momma’s bed and she never returned. Well, that is not quite accurate.

You see, during the day when Gen and I are sleeping, Jakita begs Momma to put her up on the bed, (I’m pretty out of shape but I’d be so ashamed if I could not make it on the bed without help – was she born without springs in her back paws?) Then she dog naps as we cat nap. I like Jakita.  She always shows me the respect I deserve but I don’t always understand her choices.

Gen and I, we get along fine, love to air kiss but the Diva Calico Gen is besotted with Wonder Boy so she has always wants to share his space at night.  Come early morning, when she hears Momma stir, she comes in, meowing softly and jumps up on the bed beside Momma and I, all kisses and giggles, ready to kick-start the day, always up, like the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidtt. What’s that all about?

That leaves only Bad Boy Andy who would love to sleep with Momma at night, but it is not happening, at least not in my life time.  The second he steps in to the bedroom I start my low growl.  If he dares to jump on the bed he gets my hisses, and  snarls from way down deep in my belly, as I take a menacing stance.  Andy may have Momma fooled, but not me.  He terrorized me  so much over the years, chasing me round the basement, through the crawl space, (never in front of Momma), hunting me down, jumping on my back, nipping my ears.  Let Momma love him in the daytime but I got her at night. Andy is the Brainiac.  He knows why I give him the deep six. And  he will never pursue me in front of Momma because he wants her to think of him as the Black and White Tuxedo Gentleman Cat that he is not!

So I may be old, I may not be a Diva, or a Brainiac. I may have too many coats of fur that turn in to dreadful clumps and make me look like an overweight and out of  shape porcupine. 

But I know how to take care of business….and Momma is my business.

 

I am a fine Black and White, and like a good wine, I get better as I age. Just don’t put me in a bottle in your wine cellar. Then I may not live up to your expectations.

As in Indoor / Outdoor / Indoor cat I have the blessings of a home, while still able to quench my call of the wild streak that runs from the tip of my twitching nose, down my back, to my tail and up my soft belly. I know it is invisible to mere mortals but it is real and goading me to the next level of interaction with the Four Footed and some Two Footed.

In order to quell my call of the wild streak as well as my testosterone  level, I spend a lot of time breathing deeply, exhaling, stretching, doing yoga poses, clearing the wheat from the chaff, so to speak because Momma is not a fan of that side of me. That is why I spend a lot of time outside on the front bench just surveying Andyville.  Oh, oh, don’t tell Jakita what I said.  She calls our homeland Jakitaville but she does not put in the long hours that I do, culling the herd, so to speak.

Now I am no Jakita.  I do not have a book of Policies and Procedures.  No, I just react, situation by situation, to keep our surroundings safe and habitable.  I can be ever so accommodating with the squirrels and the raccoons.  They have a separate cycle of life that I do not interfere with as long as they are no threat to my family and me.  It is other situations I feel I must control. I will give you a for instance.

Momma is on her hands and knees weeding the front garden.  Someone passing by stops to chat.  I get off my front perch and stroll over.  No, do not pat me, I am like the President’s Secret Service.  I am on duty.  I sit on a stepping stone to evaluate the threat.  If it seems to be a friendly, I stretch out in the sun.  Then again, if it appears to be a loony tune or an unsub, I pester Momma by winding around her and caterwauling, until she tells the person, uuuhhh, she has to see what I want.  Maybe I am hungry.  That works.  Some fresh chicken chunks for saving, possibly, your life.  Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

 

 

My next big challenge is the feral felines that steal Momma’s time and sometimes her heart.  Now Casey is Over and Out but I barely tolerated him.  Next came BB.  Oh, what a troubled cat he was.  I never knew such a vocal, disturbed, (I tell you) cat, howling and growling, like a hand grenade about to detonate. But I saw through him.  He was just frightened and trying to keep all taker’s back.  And…. if BB was the grenade, Clem was the pin. 

I know I was  a Feral, rescued at a tender age so I don’t understand how that pecking order works completely.  All I know is when BB started hissing and growling, Clem with  his tortitude went in to an attack mode that pulverized poor BB.  Momma interfering left her with gashes and bite marks.  Throwing cold water or shaking a bottle of marbles at them, intensified the fight, bringing it to a new level of unbridled suffering.  And BB, a much bigger cat, always lost to this little wild cat from. H_LL.  I would just shake my head.  Leave them alone and let them go home, Momma, anywhere out of my sight.

Momma, please, you can’t go investing your heart in the strays, should it be the Two Footed or Four Footed kind.  You know it surely did not lengthen Casey and BB’s life. From where I stand, I don’t see any improvement in the life of the poor unfortunate Two Footed either who walk around muttering to the voices in their head.  They actually looked scared when you look at them, like maybe they have done something wrong, just by walking by.  As the Most Wise Wonder Boy says, do not encourage the strays. Their ways are not our ways, okay. You heard that one before, you say?

Wonder Boy and I, we understand testosterone and feel things we don’t see. Now it is time to embrace it, Momma.  After all, we are depending on you to not upset the apple cart of life, okay, Momma? 

 

 

Being Andy, the Brainiac Cat, is not all it is cracked up to be.  Sure, sure, sure, I get recognition for my cleverness from Momma and Wonder Boy, but as  for my fellow felines, well, it is just water off a duck’s back to them.  After all, a Higher Power doled out the goodies, like  Diva Calico Gen has the art of being  irresistible, while Beau(Re-Guarded) had to ability to protect us.  It is not something I am allowed to brag about since it falls under the same premise that a cat does not choose the color of fur assigned. No, that evolves from some unknown hereditary genes that no cat ever takes credit for.

Then again, there are those Hybrid Designer Cats who may be bred for size, temperament or lines of ancestry but, not me. I am a Proud Feral descended from the deep, dark Jungle many, many eons ago.

Still, here in Kitty Cat Club Med, a lot of changes have occurred.  My Big Brother RIP Beau-Re-Guard caught the Blue Cloud to Heaven so I feel an obligation not only to be the leader but to protect the homestead and its parameters .  That is why trouble finds me (and it always finds me). Somehow, somewhere along the twisted road of life, I seemed to have morphed in to Beau who, like the Irish, would never consider backing down from  a fight.

Let’s start with my sister Diva Calico Gen.  She is a piece of cake, so easy to get along with.  She grooms me painstakingly and with the conviction of a mother cat.  Yet, that devil that lurks inside of me sometimes surfaces and without thought of consequences, I decide to nip  or claw her.  It is only to get a chase going, but Gen is so sensitive and Momma buys into her plaintive meows, ‘Andy is bullying me.’  You know the bad press bullies get these days. If Momma is not fast enough, Senorita Jakita makes short work of me, jumping on my back, pinning me in place, till I beg for mercy.  Still there is no grudge held for past indiscretions. We have an understanding like the Three Musketeers – all for one and one for all.

Then, well, there is Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (Charlie).  She may be a cousin, or we may even share the same mother  since we came from the same cat colony (Charlie was born the year previous to me).  All that being said, she is so different. Can cats have mental health issues?  Truly, Charlie seems to like the Two Footed much better than the Four Footed (except Jakita, who she depends on to defend her against me).  I mean, I do not get that cat.  I am walking down the hall, minding my own business.  Charlie will be hiding under the table.  All of a sudden she is hissing like a snake, scaring me in to a ‘fight or flight attack.’  And me, I always choose the fight.  Here we are, at six o’clock in the morning engaging in hand to hand combat, rolling around on our backs, growling, hissing, caterwauling, both hoping to land the knockout punch shot before Momma and Jakita come to straighten us out. And we never forget.  And there is no surrender.

Now Clem the Colony Cat  still hangs around a lot, but he is like me.  He is clever.  If we land at the front steps together, he lets me lead the way in to the house.  He waits patiently for Momma to feed me, Gen,  Charlie, then him.  Once I have left my feeding station (we all have our own), then Clem  will go to check out my left overs.

Problem is, I still have that need to confirm who is boss so sometimes I will try to provoke Clem in to a reaction.  He is younger and faster than me and can usually leave me in the dust but I got to show him, I am the Tom Cat Leader.  I have no intention to pass on my title yet.  So, just keep respecting me and you will  live to see another day. 

But don’t tell Momma I said that, okay? She doesn’t understand the testosterone blessing and / or curse that rules the male body, soul and mind that makes us do the things we do.  🙂

 

There is always another kitty tale to bring you and no one ever tells them better than me.  I have looked at the Family Tree  pictures, constructed the time line of where, when and who, as well as put my Diva Calico Gen spin on it so, pull up a chair and lend an ear.

 

You know, there is nothing like kittens (or puppies) to bring out the ooohhh’s and the aaahhh’s in the Two Footed, unless they have a pitiful  heart of stone.  In the spring, just after the Princess took her cats and moved back in with her parents, Feral Mama cats were birthing all over town, in the bushes, deep in the forests by swift flowing creeks or wherever a nest could be hidden from the Forest Freaks.  Little did Momma know two of those kittens had her name registered as legal owner, so far up there in the clouds that only Momma’s esoteric father (aka Grandpapa) knew.

 

Now Momma and her father shared this  amazing Father-Daughter relationship, so I am told. They were of one accord on most subjects although she did push back when he trotted out some theories passed down and nixed, by even the cavemen.  But kittens, that needed a home, that was hard to argue and justify refusal.

One day on a long weekend holiday Monday, just to please her father and maybe out of curiosity, Momma went deep in to the forest and was absolutely astonished. Grandpapa was not pulling her leg…. this time. There were several nests of kittens, little balls of fur, all colors curled up  next to their sleeping siblings. A quick survey indicated the Mama cats were out, probably hunting. Good, no attack cats to intercept the mission. With every color, every size available, how could a Two Footed decide which to choose? There were all so captivating. However, a pure white, stood up, stretched and stared at Momma as if to say, ‘I know what you are up to.  Take me.’  The well-mannered Etiquette Queen Finicky Cat now had a Forever Home.

When Momma arrived with Finicky Cat,  Daddy asked why had she not brought a second one, so back they went.  Marching around the long-term care parking lot was a little scrap of a black and white kitty, following her splotchy gray and white gaunter-by-the-minute Mama, who actually stopped, looked at Momma & Daddy, as if to say, ‘Take her, please. She does not have what it takes to be a feral. She is like a stalker, following me everywhere I go.  Enough already, take her.’ Thus Little Miss Fraidy Cat joined Finicky Cat in a land of abundant food, fresh water, cat nip and balls with bells (liked all that) and regular trips to vet (did not like that so much).

Now when you take in teeny tiny kittens who  have never been inside four walls with a roof, it is very scary for them.  Ask me, I lived it.  Finicky apparently rolled with the punches, sensing it was all good but Fraidy, was well, afraid. I mean did the name cause the condition or the condition cause the name, I ask?

Momma recalled that the day after they brought them home, Daddy, more of a dog lover, but would put up with Momma’s weakness, told her they were taking them back to the forest that very day because Fraidy hissed at him so ferociously, like a wild cat, he said.  No telling what that orphaned feral would do once she was full size.

Momma laughed and told him, ‘Give it a week.  She will be all over the new and improved life. What is not to like?’ It included not only the Two Footed but two dogs (Angel Teddy and Mama Tammy) who wanted  to mother smother the latest additions to the family .  Momma knew, Daddy was a soft spot, once the purring kicked in.

Fraidy Cat and Finicky Cat were really our stepping-stones, laying down the Cat-A-Laws for  Momma, Daddy and Wonder Boy, introducing for the first time the miracle and healing power of Feral Kitties.

There is another real life in the jungle or you can not beat your DNA story to bring you about our Foremothers, Fraidy and Finicky but it must wait for another day, another dollar. Kaching!

 

Hi. It is Gen, Jakita’s BFF.

You know the deal – it is my right to tell tales, kitty tails.  What about the Budgie, Momma? Well, you can fit him in,  when you mention Finicky.  But let’s begin with Ginger and Fluffy because they were the first two cats (brother and sister) that Momma & RIP Daddy and, well, they only came when the Run Away Princess moved in. ‘Who is that?’ you ask.  No accounting for stories, they meander like a river that over throws its banks, flooding your basement to such a degree that no one will sell you home insurance again.  That is another story, for another ‘day in the life of….’.  Let’s fill you in with how RIP Daddy and Momma took in the Run Away Princess.

Call Momma Peter Pan, but she always related well to children.  That is why it was so easy to embrace RIP Daddy’s niece Pretty-Little-Dutch-Girl, (his brother’s daughter) who reminded her of that skipping rhyme they used to sing on the school yard play ground: ‘I am a pretty little Dutch girl, As pretty as pretty can be, be, be, And all the boys in my town, Are crazy over me, me, me.’ She was absolutely ‘picture perfect’ with her streaked blonde hair, turquoise blue eyes that were accentuated by her wholesome tanned skin. And so was her behaviour.  Momma found that very odd.  After all, she had nieces and nephews who got in all kinds of trouble growing up, in words and deeds, but Pretty-Little-Dutch-Girl’s mother swore she never did or said anything bad.

Give me a ‘for instance’, you say.  Well, one day Daddy’s sweet sister was visiting with her rambunctious son.  He kept jumping on the couch, his mother kept pleading with him to stop.  So Momma’s five your old niece stepped in.  She looked at Daddy’s sister and said, “If I had a kid like him, I would not take him anywhere.” Daddy’s sister left. Problem solved.

So being from a fine family of normal, mouthy children, Momma tried to talk to Daddy that she did not think it was healthy to be perfect. He got very riled at her, reminding her that Pretty-Little-Dutch-Girl’s grandfather had been a much respected, important in the Dutch community minister and that she probably had inherited all of his good genes.  But are we not taught that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?

Now there are optical illusions, delusions  and downright lies that can mask family life. At the home base the Pretty-Little-Dutch-girl struggled and failed, to be  perfect, as she entered her teenage years.   That is why she became the Run Away Princess, who moved in with a (girl)friend. The disengaged parents agreed to the deception until…Momma put a letter in the Big Smoke newspaper that touched their cold hearts.

The Run Away Princess moved in with RIP Daddy and Momma the day the letter was published. Her first order of business was to have a cat since her mother would not allow pets in her house.  And that, Virginia, is how Ginger (male ginger tiger-striped) and Fluffy (female soft fluffy ginger tabby) came into our lives. Don’t kid yourself, Momma fed them, RIP Daddy changed their litter boxes but their loyalty was always to the Run Away Princess who had rescued them from bedlam and brought them to an oasis. When she would go out, they would sit outside her bedroom door, awaiting the return of their Masteress (so to speak).

 

They moved out five years later when the Princess, no longer a Run Away, moved back home with her parents. Suddenly pets were okay, if it meant they could get their daughter back.  Live and learn.  Live and learn.

And the Lesson.  First off: Try it, you just may like it! The Princess’ mother loved those cats, indulged their every whim, even keeping them when the Princess married and moved out, worrying over them as she had about her own daughter. Go figure, eh!