Another cat blog

Long Distance Call

You’d think working from would leave you free from distractions, but that’s only because you dared to think about yourself instead of your feline masters. I’ll be deep in the structure of an article when, like SETI only wishes would happen, my long silence is broken by an extraordinary call from far away.

My view from the writing desk

The call comes from a great distance, involves frequencies unknown to the human throat, and demonstrates true intelligence. Note his artful disposition: to the untrained eye he might be rolled on his back and begging, but he’s doing it three meters away, unignorably, and is 100% guaranteed to get me up and over to him. When you can command something thirteen times your size that’s not called “begging.”

Close-up, because you only wish you could command so hard mid-recline

I’ve seen unconscious people less relaxedly disburse their limbs, and men standing on tanks without being nearly as authoritative. The Lovely Lady X working in the lab doesn’t mean I can write uninterrupted, it means Neutrino knows I’m the only possible source of service. So he waits longer, understanding that I have to focus and that he has to utterly destroy that focus when he finally wants attention.

He’s an expert. That white belly is more amazingly rubbable than a gross of Aladdin’s lamps.

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Sisyphus

Can you recognise the bravest plant in the world?

One of these plants is not like the others.
 
A hint: do suicidally brave things usually end up looking healthy? That grass on the lower right has fewer blades than a nun, less chlorophyll than the average cow, and more relentless determination than a mixed battalion of SAS and Spetznaz. Because at least they can fight back.

If greenery could wage wars, Sisyphus has been to Vietnam. And had much less fun than every other plant there because they do pretty well in jungles (though metaphors to pretty badly with this much examination.) He knows our cats more deeply than we ever will: from the inside. His catgrass chemistry hypnotizes them for hours, his sacrificed limbs journey through them for days, and by now about 1% of their total body mass is ground Sisyphean material. Even though cats can’t digest grass. They’ve just eaten so much of him a little must have gotten in by now anyway.  
 
They would look really menacing if they weren’t so cuddly. And he wasn’t a plant. Something even vegetarians don’t whine about killing, chopping up and eating.

When he first arrived he had a full head of lush green, in the same way the new recruit is green at start of the movie: before vast monsters shred everything he’s ever known. He’s been destroyed by angry young males more often than Dracula, and still he refuses to die. Every time I rescue him from feline attentions the first step is amputation, ripping away the ruined and shattered blades to let the few with a hope of healing take all the nutrients.  He spends the next few weeks convalescing on the sunny patio nursed with sunshine, water, and the hungry glare of cats through the window.
 

Nothing else will turn the sun into this much toughness until someone builds a solar-powered flamethrower

And he hasn’t given up.

Because when he’s inside, he’s more spellbinding than Merlin kidnapping David Copperfield. His blades certainly capture some attention, but his pot hosts a bigger cast than Disneyland. And the cats never start crying when playing there. A circus of miniscule bugs leap and escape, and if you think poor Sisyphus has it hard you should see what happens to them. Until such escapees suicidally volunteer for feline entertainment duty, the cats sit and stare like he contains the meaning of the universe. And since he contains something to chase and kill, to a cat he does.

Come at me!

Look at the courage! That long blade is a middle finger directed at things with claws, teeth, and the ability to move, and he does not give a rat’s ass. He doesn’t have any ass! He has no digestive system! That’s how little he cares for your puny animalisic concepts of death and dismemberment.
He’s back for another tour of duty, and if he was a human he’d have an eyepatch, sergeant’s stripes, and two cigars - one at each corner of his unkillable grin.

Leave Note / Reblog

The Cat in the Corner

 

One day, walking down the stairs in our apartment building, we found a cat in the corner of a stairwell…
 


…and photography has never failed to capture the true sight so badly. Photos flatten out emotions and can only accurately report on what’s physically there, and so were the cruelest way to judge this poor girl. But if so, they were only the latest and least in a long string of cruelties.



She never asked anything of the world and got even less. She didn’t understand why things had to be so hard, and didn’t think she was important enough to ask. So she held still and kept quiet and waited patiently for whatever the world decided would happen next. It clearly wasn’t up to her, and equally clearly wouldn’t be for much longer. We gave her food, water, a towel to lie on - we couldn’t bring her home, she and our cats would destroy each other with strength or sickness - and no matter how many times we checked she hadn’t moved. Like she knew the whole world was now just a waiting room for where she was going.



Despite this she was nothing but friendly, using what could only kindly be called her strength to rub against you. She’d slowly walk over to wrap herself around your leg, and loved pushing her head into your cupped hands as if you could protect her from what had already happened. Her spine a serrated blade, almost two dimensional. Stroking her was like rubbing a razor but cut even more deeply to feel. You could count her bones with your eyes closed, and she’d stay and purr at the attention. A purr you couldn’t hear, only feel as you held her.



As the day passed the bowls of food and water multiplied as people noticed, as well-intentioned and useless as flowers before a grave. She certainly couldn’t eat it. The only thing she took was a few strips of salmon, one at a time, and even those would sit neglected until someone stroked her - as if the warmth of another being reminded her she was still here. We all waited until after work on the longshot that a distraught owner would find her again. As people arrived home a whole community built up on the landing, clustering around to give attention. Another cat-loving couple had already brought a cat-carrier to bring her to the vet. One pretty young boy even had the hope that it was curable, that she could be adopted, and may he stay so beautifully optimistic as long as possible.

The next day she was gone, the corner empty and silent. The day after a note let all who’d seen “Bonnie”, who’d finally found a name at the end, know that she’d spent a final night indoors, loved, before being put to rest. I talked with the woman on the upper floor who’d taken care of her, contributed to the vet bills, and walked down the stairs.

The corner was still empty. But this time it was peaceful.

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