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Helping with renos.

Floating ethereal cat. She who would not be touched because she has knots she won’t let us at. She looks holy but all that chasing of stick and toys and treats and laser and now she’s gone and grabbed a fledgling sparrow. I caught her and release the bird which flew. Hopefully it’s not injured. And that with her on a leash and wearing a bell and us within view. Little predator.

Clearly she’s becoming his cat. I’m told she sleeps curled up to me but daytime she trots after him, meows indefatigably when he showers. He will drowwwwn. His every change of breath alerts her.

Boards him whenever he naps.

She’s at her sweetest when asleep.

She pays attention to me too. Greets me when I come in. Head bumps, but mostly complains. Rain, cold, in and out. She’s become very chatty with a huge voice that warbles and grunts. Her purr is quiet and self-conscious and rare.

Still, I think we’re out of honeymoon phase. Why did we get a cat? My allergies are back with the amount of hair she sheds, probably on my pillow. Going away for 3 days was glorious silence of the morning. Imagine peeing without getting ankles bitten or door scratched.

We left her with a cat sitter visiting her twice a day and she didn’t eat until we returned, then ate all kibble in 2 hours.

Guess we stuck for a decade or so.

She has conquered the shopping cart.

She has decided this is the final order of poems. Nothing moves.

She wishes you happy new year in her fancy hat.

She holds still for her glamour shot.

She inspects the room from above.

She spies the treat on the window sill.

She has seized her beaver.

Nummy catnip beaver.

She rests.

Otherwise she is at Humanyms.

When there’s a sound on the porch, Holly is apt to race from upstairs or basement poised to pounce out the door. In winter she then put her ears back and ran back in. In summer a small meow of protest as we carried her back. The harness was some punishment device until she associated it with leash and with being outside with us for hours. She can chase flies and bugs, watch squirrels and birds and go into stand off with her frenemy who shortcuts a path across the back of her yard.

Ants to pursue. Posts to walk circle around in the order god ordained and meowing all the way as the human unwinds us going 3 times counterclockwise.

Outdoors is quiet times too. Flower box is a box, right. Must sit on it.

Indoors there are things to be explored. For example, there may be a treat hidden in there.

I’ve learned that we are more interesting people when we do things. Do doesn’t include think, write, read. Even playing solitaire with real cards counts as great fun for her to pounce the cards. Cooking? Absolutely fascinating. And there’s the chance for unaccompanied walks through flour with her tail swishing it into fans all over the house.

She gradually gets more cuddly when we’re awake.

She seems more dog than cat, running towards noise to investigate instead of cringing, sticking her head in a garbage bag, trying to see if styrofoam is edible. She likes to chase balls.

We are getting rituals. She tries to wake me in the morning. When I do finally get up she runs back upstairs and flops on her side and I flop on mine and we breathe together. She adjusts her toes to touch my toes or fingers.

She nose bumped with me. A first. When we come home she races to greet me and runs her legs around my legs then goes off. Sometimes it’s even not food related.

Cwazy cat, lies on her back looking more like a badger as she swats. She’s not fat as she looks. She’s on her lo calorie diet and she’s 1/4 fluff by volume. The rest is muscle and intelligence.

She adds laughter to the home. Home to the home.

When we put a blanket over the sofa she went caving under there. To wake us in the morning she may nibble an ear, or head butt, or sit on my gut, or go under the sheets to tickle the toes.

She likes to observe from a half wall what’s going on in the kitchen as I cook. From there she can still see out the window. She watches for our inattention to go onto the forbidden counter and try out an arugula as beard, which she then eats. The rest of the stolen salad becomes toys.

Sometimes she keeps her own life about house, moving from window to window watching kids, dogs, squirrels. She splunks the basement and stalks the walking feet.

She single-pawedly has done more damage to a sofa in a month than the two previous cats did together in 7 years. She’s high gear kitten racing around with none of this grace that some cats have. I can’t tell if it is her or the man running down the stair with heavy thumps.

If we go out for an evening as soon as we’re home she’s purring around our legs with hellos. She chases laser tag as her favourite thing. Except for maybe treats. She loves racing after thrown treats.

We’re trying to clicker train her to scratch the post or the scratch pad but her response is to pick up the clicker and carry it to us when she wants a treat or click it herself. The laser too. She’ll nudge it and click it on when she wants a game.

But for all her rambunctiousness, her favourite place to sleep is on the hubby’s lap. Or nearby on a blanket within reach.

Meet Holly. She joined us this week to stay. It seems we are ready to love again, and already are enchanted.

About 5 years, although it seems only 2, after Valderbar passed, we started cat sitting for a few friends. Cats somehow entered the radar again as spots of happiness. Cats in windows, ignoring us on lawns, sauntering in front of slow suburban cars.

It was Sept 1991 that Trixie died. The week after I went to university she was hit by a car. Mom didn’t tell me. She didn’t want to. But it was nearly Thanksgiving and I was coming home so she phoned. She was afraid I might notice someone missing so wanted to prepare me. Nearly a couple months ago your dog passed, she apologized.

Still I get verklempt on seeing a black and white ticking pattern around the neck of a medium sized dog. I’ve been known to find myself attached to people based on particular shade of brown eyes like hers. I can see her face more readily than most people’s.

Could we have another cat of our own. There’s so much complexity.

From the shelter there is such need. 63 cats, just today. All of them sterilized. How do I feel about being unable to have children and wanting to and taking away that option and all normal sexuality from a companion?

Do I want to be responsible for one I cannot control who will continue to prey on the bird population, or else keep inside the house?

Unlike with Valerie, we will be home full time. We both will be here. Unlike with Valerie, my allergies have gone away. Even cat sitting for days in a house full of cat hair, waking with a cat on my head, one on my chest, I had no symptoms.

With Hobie he was too old to be trained to leash and harness. Why are you punishing me was his plaintive objection. Once he got out. He ran away, never to be found. We lived in the countryside then. Fox and martins and all creatures of the forest at our back door and if he cut through the woods heading for where he used to live with hubby, there are so many roads he could have eventually found, or I suppose, other families.

Do we want to avoid cats that look or feel like either of them? Is a cat filling the niche instead of adopting a kid? Wouldn’t we have started adopting kids if that had been our wish. We’re together 22 years, nearly half of that with 1 of 4 cats.

How do you find if there’s a natural personality connection when one is behind bars surrounded by dozens of others? But then, how do you know anything in life. If you could make a kid, there’s no guarantee that as people you’d like one another. And if you do or don’t personalities shift over time.

Zoe never liked us. Or maybe she did at first. She hovered near in early months. Maybe Stockholm syndrome. We were jailers who gave her kibble which she would approach when we weren’t near it. But she had all kinds of mental and physical trauma. We knew that at the shelter. There were BBs in her skull. The doctor took out what they could. She was old and sore and tired. We never knew her in her youth. We gave her a refuge from being eaten I suppose, and sometimes friendly companionship with Valerie when they weren’t at odds. Each relationship is different.

What are we looking for? To save someone from discomfort of shelter to optimize herself or himself, and feel secure under our roof? To have someone who comes and cuddles and notices us? Someone who touches and is touchable? Needs to help others and needs to feel a home less empty when there’s someone here but us.

What about our schedule? Who can catsit for us? How to communicate that we’ll be back when our daily pattern breaks in 6 or 8 months time?

And somehow – between friendly neighbourhood cats, such as Cat, aka Kitteh, who foist himself into our house, running across the living room thru the open door and straight upstairs to my pillow. My waking and seeing a cat on the other pillow.

Then a few months later he and his people moved away – and a couple stints of catsitting and finally death is an old bruise, like seeing a photo of someone who died 20 years ago.

There’s a resolution to cherish the now and the meow.

To have a cat about house? The hubbykins wants. I waver. Waking up with a cat on my chest sniffing my chin and feeling the giggles rise out of my sleep…something’s shifted.

A lot of the grief was the helplessness of illness, the frustration of not being able to help as everything Valerie wanted to eat she’d try but vomit it. The irritable bowel, the vomiting, the inserting IV, the indignities, the way death smelled up close as it got closer and further. It’s daily caused me more stress than I realized at the time.

We took her in during her mid-life. She still had kittenness within her. She had cleverness and mischief and scheming. She was complex and comforting and mean to her roommate cat. Why did they have the falling out I’ll never know. Her illness overwhelmed her life in my memory but finally that’s receding and I can see her life past it.