The Blog

I heard somewhere that cats only learn to meow so they can communicate with humans.

Thanks for the advice on what to do about the cute little visiting cat in my back yard. You can find most of the story here. To recap the advice I got:

Most of you thought I should go on feeding Tigger, but deny it to his owners down the block. Certainly, when Tigger still doesn’t want to hang out at their house – where he actually lives – they will be suspicious, and surely there will be a confrontation and a questioning. Can I lie about this convincingly? I don’t know.

A small but significant minority felt that we should just adopt Tigger – or as some put it, accept the fact that he has already adopted us. I have to say that my heart leans in this direction. But there are two elements to my dilemna that I didn’t mention in the original post.

One is that Mrs. Jones is highly sensitive to stinky cat-pee odors, and a new cat in the family could incite a smelly turf battle. It may be true that the anticipation is worse than the actual occurrence, but she has said she would have to move out if Tigger or Molly the Cat started with the territorial marking in or about the house. I don’t know how to factor this in to our decision, because, for one thing, I don’t know if either of them would do their stinky little spraying, and if they did, how hard would it be to neutralize the smell, and would Mrs. Jones really move out? Still. Let it suffice to say that I would rather lose both cats than Mrs. Jones.

The other element is that there is a little girl involved. We don’t really know these particular neighbors, and it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that the pudgy ten-year-old wannabe cheerleader I have seen around is their daughter. So “adopting” Tigger becomes more problematic, regardless of whether he has adopted us, or if our neighbors are glad to get rid of him, or anything else. I couldn’t take away a little girl’s kitty. Mind you, I haven’t asked her if it would be OK, but need I dramatize for you what that conversation would be like? I didn’t think so.

So for the time being I am honoring my neighbors’ wishes and not feeding Tigger. As shown in the picture above, he is still hanging out at our back door (coincidentally, it’s the kitchen door). Going on Day 5 of Tigger-betrayal, and he is learning a whole meowing vocabulary. He can now say “I thought you guys were my friends!” And “I am very hungry!” And yes, these are always exclamatory sentences.

With the various complications, together with the fact that Tigger likes us, he really likes us, I don’t think this will get resolved amicably or honestly any time soon. I may not be able to let him join our little family full-time, but if I see that he is losing weight or getting sick or just not thriving, I’ll begin “Operation Feed-and-Deny.”

I’m hoping for a sign that will tell me what to do.

Fair warning: If you don’t want to read a cat post, turn back now.

Meet Tigger:

Tigger is a frequent visitor to the backyard lately, somewhat to the chagrin of the resident queen, Molly the Cat:

Tigger is outgoing, inquisitive, trusting and playful. He likes to par-tay. Molly, on the other hand, is reserved. Her idea of a good time is hiding in a bush, spying on the backyard. She can do this all day, even if nobody’s there.

We have a dilemna. Tigger doesn’t live here. Tigger isn’t our cat. But Tigger never goes home.

Home is two doors down. We don’t really know the people who live there, but once when Tigger got trapped in our house by a door that blew shut, I caught him and read his little tag. “Tigger,” it said, and there was a phone number.

We called the number, because Tigger was acting like a lost cat, and we thought we’d try to help, and that’s how we found out he lived so close. The woman who answered was not concerned about the little guy, and indeed had not been missing him. She even volunteered that her husband didn’t like Tigger. Seems his heart had been stolen by a black cat who had recently died a violent traffic-related death. She told us that Tigger was not cuddly. Didn’t like people. Couldn’t stand to be picked up or petted. Always ran when he saw people coming.

We were pretty surprised, because this was exactly the opposite of what we saw. He loved to be with people, couldn’t get enough petting, always wanted to play. And he’s the cutest darned thing. At first he had dry, brittle fur, and he scratched a lot, even though he didn’t have fleas. And when the lady on the phone told us he was a year old, we were horrified, because he was the size of a six-month-old kitten. We discovered that Tigger had a brother, Bootsie, who was the alpha cat and ate most of the food. These are stupid names, aren’t they? I had nothing to do with them.

So we fed him. Not much at first, just a few bites here and there, but good quality stuff. Anyone who’s ever fed a stray cat knows where this is going, and over the course of six weeks, that’s exactly where it went. Tigger hung around more and more, and eventually he had a feeding schedule, just like Molly the Cat, although Tigger never gets to come in the house, which pleases M and frustrates T.

He thrived on the food (and attention) he got from us. His coat got shiny and luxuriant, and he gained a couple of pounds. Every now and then Bootsie would show up. Tigger obviously idolizes his big brother, but even in our yard Bootsie eats all the food, and Tigger quietly defers. In fact, it was after watching this deference once that I started feeding Tigger regular meals. I figured he just couldn’t get close enough to the food back home.

But today Miss B (Mrs. Jones) had another talk with the lady two doors down. She came looking for Tigger, and she found him at our house. She said she hadn’t seen him for two weeks.

Two weeks! Molly the Cat was a raggedy unattractive little stray when she came to us seven years ago, and to this day she’s kind of ornery and bitey, but if she went missing even for one day I would be all over the neighborhood looking for her. Molly the Cat is in the house for bed every night or I am out searching until I find her. And these people can ignore such a cutie-pie for two weeks?

Miss B and I have concluded that these people are not good cat stewards. They have a bad attitude toward Tigger, they don’t really know him at all, they don’t seem to be feeding him very well (witness his new shiny coat) and it took them two weeks to come looking for him.

And now they’d like us to stop feeding him, so he will stop coming to visit. Personally, I suspect he’ll continue to visit no matter what we do. He visited for weeks before we ever gave him a snack. But, hoo boy it will be hard to stop feeding him, now that he has come to expect it. He will give me that expectant look, and he won’t know what’s going on when I fail to come across with the goodies.

Our neighbor has hinted that if we like him so much maybe we should just keep him. But what about Molly the Cat? She hates him (she hates all visitors, human and animal), and she precipitates daily screaming confrontations with him (even though he is only mildly interested in her – they are both fixed). Then there’s the issue of Tigger’s big brother, playmate and role model, Bootsie. Would it be right to separate them? Plus, you know it’s easy to shoot off your mouth and say “Why don’t you just take him?” but if we said “Yeah, we want him,” I don’t know how she would react.

Tonight’s the first night in a month that Tigger won’t get any food here. He’s lounging on the back stoop right now, waiting for a late-night snack. Instead he will get a door closed gently in his face. I’ll try to comply with his owner’s wishes, but if I see him getting scrawny again, and his fur turning scruffy and scratchy, I don’t know how I’ll take it.

What do you think I should do? Cut off all food? Claim him as ours? Buy an RV and hit the road for two years? Or feed him surreptitiously, all the while claiming I am not feeding him?

Just a few quick words for my friends in the midwest:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Today in Southern California was the first day in a couple of weeks that the temperature was normal, sort of. In my town it hit 81 degrees, and now, late at night, it’s only 66, truly a California balmy night after a mostly triple-digit July.

So eat your hearts out Bismarck, Iowa City, Champaign, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland and the rest of you. You know who you are. I’ve heard the worldwide heat wave has come to your town now. If you need to lose weight, just mow the lawn. That should be good for a ten or fifteen pound reduction.

Oh, and you poor people – better stay under the bridge if you want to maintain that alabaster skin. Also, it’s cooler there.

If you live in the Northeast (according to my weather girl on KCAL 9), get ready: you’re next.

I pretty much can’t stand to hear any more about the Israeli-Hezbollah brouhaha.

I think the thing to do now is to encourage them to fight it out to the finish, but make ’em use only weapons they built themselves. No F-16’s, no katyusha rockets, no M-16’s or Kalashnikov rifles, and definitely no cluster bombs. That would leave just Uzi’s and car bombs, so the combatants would have to walk or drive right up to each other. My hope is that at close proximity they’d recognize their common humanity, lay down their arms and go to Starbucks for lattes (decaf for the Muslims, of course).

What is wrong with those people having a war in the desert, ten days into a worldwide heat wave? Isn’t it bad enough just living in the desert? And hey – worldwide heat wave? Didn’t we just have one of those a couple of years ago? Killed all those elderly French people? I bet they’ve got air conditioners over there this year (French readers, please let me know. So I won’t worry.). Too bad the cows in Fresno don’t have AC in the barn.

Locally, due to the worldwide heat wave, I nearly had an underpants crisis. Shocking, I know, but it’s a dangerous world, and I live very near the edge of it. It’s been so f*cking hot in my town for the past two weeks that I’ve had a few multiple shower days. I’d get all sweaty reading blogs or washing the car, then I’d cool off by taking a nice refreshing shower. After that, who wants to put on the sweat-drenched previously-worn boxer briefs, even if I’d only been wearing them for twenty minutes? Not me, let me tell you, so I’d have to get a fresh pair out of the drawer cuz there’s no way I’m going without, damn the consequences.

Boxer briefs are the perfect undergarment for me. I can’t make up my mind about anything: Hunter or vegan? Musician or wage slave? Mozart or Beethoven? PC or Mac? Boxers or briefs? I don’t know how long the boxer brief has been around, but I made the switch this year. Committed fully to them. Hybrid underpants. Snug like briefs, long like boxers. Sure, they look ridiculous, but no more than like bicycle pants, and those are worn right out on the street. The important thing is I didn’t have to decide which way to go. Boxer briefs. The best – and worst – of both worlds.

And under ordinary weather conditions I have enough boxer briefs to get me from laundry day to laundry day. One a day is usually enough, since I almost never have those embarrassing “accidents” any more. But what with the frequent bathing (because of the worldwide heat wave) it was touch and go near the end of the current laundry cycle and it looked for a while like I might have to go back to those shiny acrylic bikinis I got during the Reagan administration. I don’t mind saying I was down to one shower a day there for the last few days.

But you’ll be happy to know that I made it, and all is well now. I had to remain perfectly motionless for the past 48 hours, but I again have a drawer full of fresh, fluffy folded underpants, so when you see me, you will know that I am modestly but stylishly underclothed.

Speaking of underclothed, here’s a story about the latest way to beat the worldwide heat wave: Tubing on the river, with strippers! I especially like the city councilman who is worried because, he says, they “…are trained to take off their clothes.” Hooah.

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*Yes, I am f*cking censoring myself, bcause it turns out that words may have powers of their own, and you can’t be too careful.