Pet Blogging

Catie’s Story (also starring Linden and Hamilton)

by eddie blake

I was never really a cat person until I first started dating my partner Stephanie. I was immediately adopted by Linden, one of her two furbabies.  Linden was a Miyazaki dust-goblin of a cat, all poofy black fur and huge yellow eyes. When I began seeing Stephanie regularly, I would be chewed out by Linden when I would arrive for the weekends. In a flurry of meeps and squeaks, she’d vituperate me, wondering if I were possibly seeing other cats.

Stephanie’s cat-naming-protocols were based on where the cat was rescued. There was a Cortelyou, (from Cortelyou Road) Linden, (from Linden Blvd) and Hamilton (from Fort Hamilton Parkway). Linden was a special cat, a fuzzy princess purrasaurus who was amazingly affectionate. She loved her mom, but followed me around the apartment unerringly. She would leap in my lap to hide from the vet or burrow into a pair of my discarded pants, left on a comfy chair. She would let me hold her like a baby while she kneaded my arm. She would headbutt me when she wanted scrumbles, meep at me when she wanted treats, and steal food off of my plate if we were eating something she liked, like shrimp.

Goddamn, I loved that cat. She died one night in the middle of January, in a bolt out of the blue. One minute she was fine, the next she gurgled and seized. She stopped breathing a moment after that. There was no time to get her medical attention. I had to accept it. My little girl was dead. My girlfriend and I were devastated. Just destroyed. Unfortunately, we noticed very shortly afterwards, that her brother Hamilton was also keenly lamenting Linden’s absence.  Even wrapped in our own grief, we could see him incessantly hunting for her. He would check her favorite hiding spots. He was constantly looking over his shoulder for her during dinnertimes. It was really sad.

Steph and I talked about the problem.  I consulted with some of the Jackals, (Thanks, WereBear!) and we decided to take a walk to Sean Casey Animal Rescue, where we had adopted Hamilton, right before NYC shut down for the plague. I was interested in adopting a younger cat, eight months to a year old, rather than a kitten. This concern was birthed out of my own anxieties about being a new kitten father and fears that Hamilton, a boisterous and knuckleheaded goofball, might inadvertently injure the lil fella while trying to play with him or her.

We met a couple of cats. There was a glorious, old lady-cat named Peaches and Cream, a few others that were even older, and some very tiny kittens mewling for my attention, when I stumbled across a cage with a beautiful reddish-brown, tiger-stripey named Ally.  One of the SCAR helpers told us they’d gotten her from a kill-shelter “down South”, and that she was about a year old. She was a tiny bundle of trust, all headbutts and belly-showing, and I instantaneously liked the cut of her jib. We decided she needed to be part of our weird menagerie, and took her home. Sean Casey Animal Rescue is between Fort Hamilton Parkway and Caton Ave, so Ally became Caton, Caton became Catie-cat, and that was that.

We quarantined her in the bathroom, but once she realized she wasn’t at the shelter anymore, she didn’t mind a bit. She chomped down her wet food with growly glee and delighted at the panoply of toys we provided for her. Hell, she didn’t have that or those at the shelter. It was also much quieter. SCAR rescues all sorts of animals from all sorts of predicaments in NYC, and pre-plague, it would be no surprise to go in there and find tortoises and iguanas walking freely, dogs baying in the yard, dozens of cats and kittens vying for attention and hordes of caged birds chirping like they were getting paid by the hour. Consequently, Hamilton and his new, younger sister don’t meow in the conventional sense but sound far more like birds. They trill, and they both vocalize a lot.

As soon as she went on her voyage of discovery through our apartment, she found rugs, blankets and sofas very much to be to her liking. She was very keen on staking a claim to our home. For a cat who grew up in shelters, she knew exactly what to do with the scratchy-posts on the cat-tree. Woe onto any of the catnip-mice that would dare cross her path, for that poor mouse will have seen its last sunrise. She plays hard, reveling in the sense of freedom only someone that’s lived a chunk of her life in a cage could embrace. She’s also made herself at home, with relative ease. She swiftly discovered the quiet darkness of my clothes closet and the comfy chair with the pants that cats seem to like.

Hamilton wasn’t too happy with this turn of events at first. He thought all of our stuffs were belongings to him, but this upstart tiger-stripey was putting that notion to the question. There was a lot of hissing at first and some territorial gaming. It especially became a problem during mealtimes. Catie might very well have been the runt of her litter, and making sure she got fed was a high priority for her. She was a very aggressive eater, snatching food from Hamilton’s bowl and making a huge mess for such a small cat. We’re also not sure where she picked up the habit, but she liked to toss her bowl over when she was finished eating. We solved one issue by moving Hamilton’s tray and bowl, while the other was solved with some Velcro strips. She’s still a sloppy eater though. Slowly, happily, a form of cat-détente developed.

The thing is, both Hamilton and Catie are very friendly cats. Hamilton, as previously noted, is just a boisterous, bouncing, goofball. He’s also a serious mama’s boy, and shadows Stephanie constantly. Catie has decided that her new life works much better for her than the old one. She recognizes, I think, the role I played in finding her that new life and can often be found a foot or so from me. Stephanie and I live in Brooklyn, and thanks to the quarantine and the plague, we’ve been stuck at home for the duration. Consequently, Hamilton and Catie have been spending a lot of time in close proximity. It looks like they’ve decided that the other fella ain’t quite so bad.

Things are really working out. Maybe it’s the remembered, shared smell of SCAR, maybe it was some secret tiger-stripey thing, maybe dumb luck, but whatever it is, I’m so glad. They play together now. They share toys. They’ll sit together on the windowsill and trill and taunt birds in the courtyard. They stalk and groom each other, and often can be found sleeping on blankies, wrapped around each other , dreaming of catnip and treats.

So that’s it. That’s Catie’s story so far. She’s gained a bunch of weight and gotten a lot bigger since we adopted her, and we’ve been treating a nagging ear issue she’s got. Otherwise she’s happy, healthy, and so down with her new home. She’s taking our lives over like a boss. Here’s a bonus image of her diving head-first to drink out of my glass of water, just because she could. That’s just how Catie rolls.

*****

If you think you might like to have your furry family featured here, please send an email to watergirl at balloon-juice.com.  If you check out the banner picture for Furry Friends, you’ll see that we’re not limiting this series to cat and dogs!  ~WaterGirl

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All’s Well That Ends Well: A Story of Bella, and Pepper and Avalune and, Finally, Leto

by Avalune

“Don’t get a dog while I’m gone.”

This is Leto, preparing to leave for Iraq. I give him a look that says “who me?” But don’t go as far as batting my eyelashes. And I didn’t set out to ignore his only request. In fact, I still blame my supervisor, who very helpfully pointed out that he couldn’t “kill me” for bringing home the tiny bundle of eyeballs because he wasn’t here.

I was working at a long term psychiatric treatment facility for adolescents when one of the school teachers brought in a litter of black and tan puppies. “Huntin’ dogs” she said. I didn’t want the cuddling of the smallest girl to end – so it didn’t.

🎶🔔 Jingle Bells 🔔🎶

It is almost Christmas and I named her Jingle Bell, or “Bella” for short. I start sending Leto pictures of this tiny creature curled up on my desk. Giant, slightly alien eyeballs, and fur.

“What. Is. That?”

“What is what?”

This is how he is introduced to Bella.

The drive to South Carolina to visit with the in-laws for the holidays is a good solid 10 hours, if you only stop as often as you must for fuel. Bella is uncontainable unless I let her curl up on my thigh, so that is how we make the drive.

The first two nights in the kennel are abysmal for everyone with the howling and crying and thrashing, so eventually I try putting the kennel next to my bed and this calms her. She isn’t eating well, so Leto’s mother and I go find puppy milk and other soft foods to try. Bella doesn’t eat any of them. One morning, my father in law hands me a plate of eggs and Bella crawls straight up the side of the arm of the couch like a furry Spider-Man and when she’s reached the summit, launches herself into my plate of eggs. We watch her scarf them down with wonder.

🥚

Eggs huh? Eggs it is then.

We fix her plates of eggs for a couple days until I make the drive back home and take her to the vet.

“Look at these gums,” the vet tells me, prying her lips away from her teeth. They are stark white, like her sharp little teeth. He checks her tail to tip and gives her some shots. He tells me she’s riddled with worms as he snaps off his gloves. “Ah, they swore she was wormed” I tell him. He assures me the medicine will do the trick.

And it does. Her appetite burgeons. Her energy abounds. She little spoons our older Labrador, Pepper, who looks at me with those long suffering lab eyes while ducking errant stick ends or other trash Bella seems to prefer to toys. She is all teeth and sass and finally starting to grow into her huge eyes.

She likes to play with the in-law’s boxer. Her favorite game is to hide under furniture where Chelsea can’t squeeze her broad chested body or jowly face. Bella pops out like a Dune sand worm, biting biting, then retreating back to her hole. It’s an unfair game but Chelsea is determined.

Pepper mostly ignores them both.

Leto is resistant. She is clearly my dog. But her expansive personality is hard to ignore. Where Pepper is well behaved and predictable, Bella is curious and clever and opinionated.

We eventually decide she must be a Manchester Terrier. Also sometimes called a Manchester Terrorist – by cat owning friends, or at least she was before there was a Manchester Terrorist and it seemed insensitive. She exhibits classic terrier behaviors, what we call “dog brain” in which all sense, common or otherwise, is completely abandoned when she catches a scent or sees something interesting.

She’s too large to be a purebred terrier – the normal size of the non-toy breed being around 25-30lbs, while she is 40-45lbs. Manchester Terriers or “Manchies” are a lightning combination of whippet and rat terrier. Usually the ears are clipped to be upright, so their prey have less to latch onto. As a testament to the breed, she pulls when she walks, too eager to poke her face into anything remotely resembling a hole in the ground and races towards any lump on the ground that might indicate the shape of say, a hedgehog or a bunny rabbit – even if it proves to be the same rock over and over again. When she isn’t chasing rock buns, she likes to snuggle in covers, or pillow forts in the manner of a whippet.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

She is patriotic but respectful of the host country, howling through the entirety of God Save the Queen and the Star Spangled Banner at precisely 5pm every weekday in England. She knows several Italian words, many of which she ignores, such as basta, piano, cattiva.

Bella has an entire language of growls and whines and barks which she deploys mostly to plead her case for an extra treat, or to talk back when she is in disagreement. She is moody sometimes and will show teeth and growl/grunt making her sound like a gator. Unfortunately, it’s too adorable to take seriously, and so is generally ignored up until the nose wiggling involved in her show of teeth required eventually results in a sneezing fit. We stop whatever has earned her ire – usually petting – and laugh and point. She does not like to be pointed at.

The only thing she hates more than being pointed at is getting a raspberry on her belly. Though dangerous with the flailing legs and teeth, completely worth doing periodically, because it winds her up like nothing else. After a raspberry, she runs circles and barks indignantly before demanding compensation for her insulted ego.

She is immensely protective of me – launching herself at anyone who gets too close, comes up on us too suddenly, or has the gall to tell me good morning. And Bella is slow to warm up to strangers, though strangers will often try to bribe her. She will accept the treat and then kindly tell them to fuck off. In the case of strangers we invite inside, she will tolerate a pat but growl and bear her teeth at them. Should they stop patting, due to the intimidation, she pushes her head into their hand, as if to say I have not released you. Once she has decided she likes you, she will throw herself at you when you arrive, with such gusto she cannot be resisted.

Leto could not resist either but the next dog, he says, has to be his dog.

***

Update: Bella “singing along” with one of the anthems.

Furry Friends – Avalune – Don’t Get A Dog While I’m GonePost + Comments (56)