The ways of Monk

Monk has settled into our household quite thoroughly. 

So far, he has managed to:

• get on top of just about every surface in the house.  You would think the tops of the kitchen cabinets (at least 4 feet from the countertops) are pretty inaccessible, but not to this lanky daredevil
• make a toy of anything not tied down (we quickly learned to hide jewelry, pens, and any other oddment)
• investigate every last accessible square inch of the house, and some not so accessible spots: one day I spotted Monk draped over the handlebars of J.'s bike, hind-legs dangling, as if that precarious spot was his latest hangout
• make his presence known, such as walking on the keyboard while I'm working on the computer

A new order

Meet Theolonius Monk (Monk for short, in keeping with our religious order of cats...though Monk occupies a much lower rank than the vaulted position occupied by Pope).  He's a laid-back tomcat, lean as a whip with beautiful long legs and black markings on his back that look like wings. 

We adopted him from the humane society.  What better way to honor the memory of Pope, a former shelter cat himself?

Thief in the night

Our cat Pope died Monday night. 

The house is quiet, and my heart aches.

"I love cats because I enjoy my home;

and little by little, they become its visible soul."

- Jean Cocteau

Cats

Today I am thankful for my cats.

I don't think we ever realize how much our pets do for us.  To them, you are absolutely normal.  They like you just the way you are, even if you sing to them in awful operatic voices and pick them up for far too frequent cuddles.  Think how serious this is, to be accepted at face value.  There is no pretense, no hiding of your true self behind the flimsy disguise you wear for work.  To be confronted by a creature that sees you, and likes what she sees, is no small thing.

Other reasons why I like cats:

• They can be ridiculously entertaining, especially when they go on wild dashes about the house as if the hounds of hell are snapping at their heels
• They purr
• They talk to you
• Nothing says welcome like a pair of cats coming to greet you after a long day at work, which is what they usually do, but, as this picture demonstrates, not always
  

Pope and Sasha rudely awakened from their nap

"I love cats.  I love their grace and their elegance.  I love their independence and their arrogance and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare."--Joyce Stranger.

Herding cats

Taking pictures of cats is like trying to herd them.

 

Cats and their mysterious ways

This is the ritual everytime I get on the computer.  Sasha, this shy little wisp of a cat, becomes bold in her quest for affection.  Up into my lap she leaps for several rounds of petting and head scratches.  She gazes up at me in adoration while I work on the computer  She loves me.  I am the center of her universe during this time.

Then she leaves and returns to whatever secret place she has.

Scenes from a house

A typical evening at the house.

As soon as I step in the door, the cats materialize from wherever they sequester themselves during the day and wrap themselves around my legs, crying for attention and leaving great quantities of fur on my person.

Pope is like a dog--he comes when called. Sasha is more cat-like in that you never know what she's going to do next.

What do you see?

Pope's heroic stance

Loch Ness monster plant in our front yard

More pictures up at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozimanndias8

It's raining cats

Meet Sasha, the latest addition to the household. Yes, she's always this cute. She headbutts you with her cuteness, always ready for a petting.


Pope isn't too sure about her yet.

Obsessions of a feline nature

This is Pope, who is fascinated with the ends of things (tip of the string is just barely out of the picture):

This is Bea, who is fascinated with the tops of things:

I don't have a picture of Mojo, who was fascinated with the insides of things.

Encounters of a third kind

I am currently in a house with 6 cats, 2 dogs, and five other humans besides me.

The power struggles between the cats are interesting largely because they are so subtle. A stranger would think all the cats are getting along just fine, but they aren't looking close enough. True, each cat's doing his/her own thing--Pope's on the rug in the living room, Bea's on the table in the dining room, Callie's under the guest bed, Toby's dozing on the in-law's bed, Burt's on the chair in the basement, and Delta is sleeping in the closet downstairs--but they are missing those rare encounters where these seemingly laid-back animals display their ferocious, mostly hidden, natures.

When they move through the house, it's mostly uneventful, or so it seems. Except for the alert ears, the penetrating eyes, the deliberate cold shoulders, the twitching tails, one would think the cats are fine in each other's presence. But then an encounter happens, explosive, shocking, over as quick as it began: a yowl, a BAM-BAM-BAM of a paw against another cat's head, fur on end, fangs bared. Then something is decided (we humans don't know what the outcome was) and the cats return to their docile selves, ignoring each other, going their own way.

Who was the victor? Who gave way? We'll never know.

Best things in life are free

Having a laptop and free wi-fi is awesome. Case in point:

Last week, I hung out in Jon's truck in the parking lot at Asbury College while he went to class for a couple hours. There was wi-fi in the area, so I was able to knock out an hour of work for my job while keeping the cat company in the truck. (Yes, the cat was in there with me, curled up on the driver's seat). When work was done, I watched youtube videos and trailers for various movies while night descended.

Stay tuned for stories and pictures from the Smokies (I have an adventure to relate)

Our daily adventure

Our cat has learned about the outdoors. He slipped out the door this morning and was investigating the neighbor's porch while we frantically searched. Being me, I was already thinking of squealing tires and a limp form on the road.

He couldn't resist the lure of kitty treats, however.

Cat on a motorcycle

Originally uploaded by dwain

A picture taken by my friend who is in the envious position of being in Greece for a long time.

The name's Bond

After two years of pestering, I finally got Mom and Dad to get a cat. He's a slim, debonair looking little fellow, in his tuxedo coloring, mostly black with a white underbelly. His official name is James Bond, but we call him Jimmie. Though I sometimes call him Hitler because of the white moustache he has.

Cats on the belfrey

There is a cat herd here at the in-law's. J.'s sister's 3 cats, our very own Pope, and the in-law's two cats.

Watching them sort out their place on the hierarchy of cats is very interesting. The only real aggression I've seen is between Pope and Toby, one of the mostly-outdoors cats belonging to the in-laws, everything else is just playful altercations.

I think Pope and Bea like each other secretly. It's like middle school, where they tease each other because they're too embarrassed to admit they like each other.

Bea is the strangest cat of the herd. She has to investigate everything--the surface of everything, including the digital TV (she has good balance), the inside of everything, etc. She is quite vocal in her opinions. In front of a door leading outside, "MRow!" If Pope is about to pounce, she flicks her tail and disdainfully says "MRow!" which puts him in his place. If she glimpses a parallel world in the mirror, "MRow!"

Out of the ordinary

We are packing for the move to our new place.

This perplexes Pope. He doesn't know what to do with himself when he walks into a room and some large piece of furniture is missing. His eyes dilate and his ears start swiveling furiously and any little noise sets him off.

I've been seeing more of the bushy-tail Pope--whenever he's frightened, his tail bushes out as he turns so that the full length of his body is facing you while the hair raises on his back, making him look bigger than he is. He also does a strange stiff-legged skip backwards/sideways.

My admirer

If I interpret Pope's tail behavior correctly, it would appear that this strange little creature absolutely adores me. According to the article "The 9 most common tail positions and what they mean," if, while the cat approaches you with his tail held straight up (a sign that he welcomes you), "the top third of the tail twitches as the cat nears you, this means that he totally adores you." (Planet Cat, page 221).

The extent we go to to convince ourselves that these vain animals actually consider us worthwhile...

The closed door

Pope does not understand a closed door. There's a subtle principle behind it, no pun intended. Once you are on one side of a closed door, that generally means you're there to stay for a while, that you have some purpose in being on that side of the closed door.

Not so with the cat. He will mew and yowl so that you see his little pink tongue and black gums and look at the closed door and look at you and look back again. So you open it and let him pass, and shut it again, because there was a reason why it was closed. Then 20 seconds later comes the mews and yowls and scratching at the door because, you see, a cat simply cannot tolerate a barrier in his domain. No sooner do you let him out than he wants back in, as soon as he sees that door being shut.

A tooth

Autumn has a tooth now. If only it were this easy to excite such declarations of pride in our loved ones.

We saw her last Saturday, and I can't get over how she keeps changing. Perhaps the most unnerving of all was the fact that she has started thinking. She would gaze at you with a somber expression and it was quite clear that she was sizing you up. Not unlike suffering the steady gaze of a cat (of which I suffered plenty last night).