Nietzsche is on the mend. Every morning and night I am popping hyperthyroid pills down her gullet and she seems better. Just as she was getting on the mend, or mend-ish anyway, she got hit with a rogue pack of fleas that apparently just missed the frosts we’ve been having and we had to treat that too. So now she is sleeping again instead of dealing with THE BUGS THE BUGS that were bothering her before, both in her body and out. For a few weeks there, every time she pestered me, her dish was empty and she was starving, but now she comes to see me to hold down my lap again.
Today I was thinking about years ago when she was a younger kitty and used to get on top of things, overcoming physics and stumpy peg legs. One day I came home from work and she did not greet me like she usually did, which I didn’t notice at first because I also had two needy boy cats. After an hour or so, I noticed she was AWOL and called her. She didn’t come, which wasn’t totally unusual because she is a pretty classic cat who comes when she feels like it. She’s not going to get off her fat ass for me if she is having a nap or watching her stories.
That evening all was quiet and I was sitting on the couch reading a book.
“Urk!” I hear, from somewhere in the living room. “Urt!” She was muffled and quiet.
“Neech?” I called her.
“Mer!”
I finally isolated the sound to the piano. Oh, please don’t let her be in the piano, I thought. I peeped behind it. There she was, upside down with her head tilted toward the ground, fully wedged in between the back of the piano and the wall. When she saw me, she wiggled her legs like some kind of giant fake movie spider.
The piano was on wheels and I pushed it out slightly, with my hand under her back to catch her. I set her upright and she shook her head a couple of times, washed her back, and went on her way.
Thus we learn it is possible to be dignified, even if we are potato-shaped and have stumpy legs. Dignity, always DIGNITY.
Companion, on his way home from his new job, ran into our neighbor Drama King.
“How’s it going, D.K.?” Companion asked.
Drama King sighed, er, dramtically.
“Okay,” he said glumly. “I’m getting married on Saturday.”
“Oh, um, congrats!”
“Yeah,” Drama King said, and carried on.
Ah, everyone should know the thrill of love at least once in their lives.
ADDITIONALLY, I am in a better mood today, and so is Hurricane Strudel. Back in the pull-up pants for today. I saw her go into the loo myself on Monday, but I guess she’s decided she’s scared of it again. Loos and cows. These are the things that torment the two-year-old psyche.
Oy, Bossy once found her cat in the silverware drawer. She had climbed up through the back of the kitchen cabinet. It’s very complicated and involved ratty cabinetry.
I once found my cat two blocks away, stuck in a tree. Like, the same day he went missing, and I out on a random walk with my little kids. They kept saying, hey that sounds like china, that sounds like kitty! I am all hell naws but lo! Twas! That poor kitty was never right in the head again, sadly. Bad pet parenting FTW
Window cat once got stuck under a bed (one of those ones with drawers under it – apparently cats can crawl through drawers in only one direction), and since he doesn’t meow, it took some hours to find him after we discovered he was missing.
Tenzing the cat climbed into, and behind a drawer that is next to the stove, and decided to hang out. I had to change what I was making for dinner because I couldn’t use the oven for fear of baking his silly feline ass.
Drama King sounds like a peach. If he weren’t getting married this weekend, I’d introduce him to my ex and they could have loads of depressed, high drama babies.
My nephew was deathly afraid of the (nonexistant) cows in his front yard as a toddler. Who knows how he came up with that idea?
This reminds me of when the monochrome kitty of terror got stuck in The Boy’s dresser. Much like the under the bed incident, she got into a drawer, crawled into the back and couldn’t get back out. She does, however, meow and it only took a few moments (after I got home from work) to locate her. What is it with cats and tight spaces?
Oh! I have a cat stuck in a weird place story, too. It’s actually not my story. It happened to my boss. His wife called him at work because their cat was stuck in the walls of their house. Evidently a contractor was doing drywall work and their cat went into the wall but wouldn’t come out.
I forget how my boss resolved the situation. But I do remember thinking “why can’t this woman deal with this herself?” You know that movie “Falling Down” with Michael Douglas? The wife of Robert Duvall’s character calls him at the police station every day because she’s having a nervous breakdown and can’t do anything without him. So he has to leave work early all the time. That’s how I picture the wife of my boss. Utterly helpless.
Or you know that joke southern stand-up comic Ryan White does about being on the road and getting calls from his wife about the dog having accidents in the house? He’s on the road — what’s he supposed to do? Fly home to clean it up? First he says “shoot it!” then he says to leave it and he’ll pick it up when he gets back.
Who are these helpless women? And how do they get by in the cold cruel world???
I once found my cat wedged quite firmly between wall and water boiler. Down, near the bottom. It took copious amounts of patience and band-aids to remove him from his position of demise. Sometimes I wonder how these animals of grace with 9 lives survive. Truly, curiosity COULD kill the cat.
So, not a cat story, but I will tell it anyway. I am unstoppable like that.
I work in a science lab (we study evolution). We have some snapping turtles and some bullfrogs, among other things. The animals live in tanks in the greenhouse to keep warm, but there is also a water heater in there on half-size cinder blocks. Do you see where this is going? It’s a real bitch to try and coax a snapping turtle out from under a water heater, BELIEVE ME.
The bullfrog story is a little bit more sensational. Those bullfrogs, they are slippery. And also jump everywhere. So one day, one of them gets away while we’re changing his water. Of course, he heads right for the water heater. Since the holes in the half-size cinder blocks aren’t big enough for a human hand to squeeze through, we had to poke at him with sticks. There we were, rolling on the floor of the greenhouse, and the fucking fire alarm goes off, so we had to leave the building. We were very worried that he would dry out while we were outside, but we finally got him out and rinsed the cement bits off of him and he was fine.
Wow, those were longer than I intended. Oops!
Cool stories, you guys.
WHY I DON’T LET MY FERRET RUN WILD
Once upon a one ferret. He was dumped on the porch of a neighbor, the one with the official crazy cat lady license and badge for our zipcode, and she got my name from an acquaintance. He knew me slightly, third-hand, but not well enough to worry about me never speaking to him again if his great plan to foist me with an exotic animal didn’t work out well.
So the nayb calls and emails and wears me down. I’d just lost an Awesome[tm] Hirusute Cat of Generous Girth named Maxwell The Cat and was still gutted about it and not in the market for a new pet to eventually mourn over. No pets for me, no ma’am, they only brink you heartache. *dramatic sob, clutching pearls, looking tragic*
So there I was with a new ferret, because I am an all-day sucker. What? You thought I stood a chance to get away? Fools!
Cute little bastard had clearly been abused. He didn’t like being touched, he bit to draw blood, he was surly and cranky and Quite Disgruntled. I made a note not to leave mustalid-sized weaponry on low shelves. I persisted, even when my arms started to look like used corn-on-the-cobs. I loved that unlovable little wanker and he gradually started to mellow out. And then he ran out of ferret chow.
The Troglodytes who had abandoned him with all his worldly goods on a stranger’s porch had included a large sack of kibble, and it was down to a few spoonfuls of brown dust. Time to get more.
I went, with ferret in tow, to a pet supplies mart. There was a huge open bin crammed full of what looked like fur-covered worms moving at a high rate of speed. More ferrets!! I asked the bored clerk if mine could hang out with the other weasels. Bored clerk didn’t give as shit if he did. So I dumped him into the fray and went about the business of buying him nourishment.
When I returned, one side of the bin was still a blur of fur and high-pitched “muk muk muk” chuckling sounds. The other side had Mr Woozle–my ferret–and a new, strange ferret. They seemed to be getting along. I reached in to pick my guy out and the new ferret perked up and raced up my arm and tucked herself under my hair and gave me a lick on the chin.
“No,” I said, heart like a stone. “You cost $80 and I am underemployed and eating ramen three times a day. If I buy you, I will have to steal someone else’s ramen and eat that.” So I pried the new ferret loose and put her in the bin again, and reached for Mr Woozle.
Again the new ferret attempted to climb my arm. She got up on her haunches and begged. She did the head-tilt thing. She did the big eyes thing. She waggled her whiskers at me. I was unmoved. I packed Woozle into his carrier and was heading out the door, when I heard a scrabbling sound.
Mr Woozle was trying to dig his way out of the carrier to get to his new friend. When I looked back, she was on her hind paws again, pressing her front paw pads and nose to the glass of the bin, mournfully staring. I shattered like a cheap dollar store mug.
My roommates’ ramen was delicious. For ramen, that is.
So I had two ferrets. Woozle and Koosh, so named because her first act of destruction was to attempt to eat an entire cat toy made of spiny bits of rubber, which, had she succeeded, would have been a $600 vet bill to unblock her t00bz.
I went to work and came home, like always, for about two weeks without incident. Then, one day, I came home and Woozle was in the ferret jail but not Koosh. And a trail of destruction stretched far and wide across the first floor.
Garbage cans were overturned. Ferret-sized black pawprints led backwards to the fireplace, which had been thoroughly explored and nigh unto destroyed. Newspapers had been turned into nests and tunnels. Shoes that my roommate had left on the floor were de-soled and unlaced. Plants were uprooted. Rugs were rumpled. Various breakable things were broken. There had been a ferret party, and I had not been invited.
The question remained: where was Koosh? It was bucketing rain outside, and I didn’t recall a brown hazy thing darting out when I came in, so I looked upstairs. No carnage there. I looked all over the first floor, while cleaning up. No Koosh.
I picked up trash and scolded. Then called for Koosh. No reply. I wiped up ashes and dirt and lectured. Then shook a treat can. No Koosh. I stuck my roommate’s shoe soles back in (yucky!) and complained. Then squeezed a squeaky toy about four dozen times. No Koosh. This was not looking good. Did one of my roommates let her out? Is she in the sofa or chair cushions? Inside a cabinet? On top of the curtain rods? Really, with ferrets, you can’t rule anywhere out. If the head will fit, the body will follow. And Koosh had a teeny, tiny little head and was a fantastic climber. She once climbed up the side of an endtable to chew buttons off my mobile phone. Determination? Athletics? A hearty helping of The Devil within? Oh, in spades. She could be anywhere. Doing anything. Getting eaten by large, angry dogs, for one, since ferrets typically have no sense of self-preservation. Gah!
Finally I got alarmed and took Mr Woozle out and put him on his harness and leash. “Find your girlfriend,” I told him. “Go find Koosh.”
He beelined to the bathroom, and there was a tiny hole in the baseboard. Oh, God! Was the ferret in the walls of the house? It’s a rental! Or…OH GOD! Was the ferret in the furnace? Holy shnizz, this was not good. I put my eye to the hole and thought I saw…basement crap. Could she have climbed down under the house? It was worth a try.
I got suited up in monsoon-wear and took Woozle, on his leash, outside. “Find Koosh,” I repeated. He looked at me, annoyed to be rained upon, then got a glint in his eyes as an idea flitted across his ADHD-addled peanut-sized polecat brain. He led me to the backyard, and then to the basement door.
I unlocked the door and clicked on my flashlight. There were approximately four thousand rusty, spiky, dirty, stinky, nasty, ancient, musty things in the basement, all piled on top of each other in such a way that breathing on them wrong might cause a crapalanche. We entered with trepidation. Well, I did. Woozle launched himself in there like he was shot from a tiny cannon. I called myself hoarse. No Koosh.
We stood there, starting to feel despair. I picked up Mr Woozle and tried to formulate a new plan which would involve calling every strong person I knew to help me empty the pigsty that stretched out before me. All to find one tiny ferret. You know you’d do it, too, if it were your animal. But you dread having to.
I sighed, and then I heard the sound of a bell. Both animals had harnesses with bells. I’d never been so glad to hear something in all my life. Mr Woozle strained and struggled to get down, and we listened again.
*faint dingle-jingle*
I put Woozle down and let his leash extend to maximum and he disappeared into the dark.
*jingle*
*JINGLE*
*jingle-jingle*
And then he managed to herd Koosh straight towards me. She was wet, filthy, smelly, and thoroughly pleased with herself. She had had the best time EVAR. She was not in the least bit embarrassed to have caused her boyfriend and I to lose our minds with angst.
Both animals were scrubbed clean, which they weren’t sure they enjoyed, and sent to their room.
Which I fastened shut with twist-ties.
The next day I bought carabiner-style C-clips, which failed spectacularly when Koosh squeezed past one five minutes after I clipped it on. Back out I went, where I bought enough snap-lead locks to hold every door and opening shut on both sides.
Houdini ferrets no more, my critters never escaped again. Koosh went to the great Rainbow Bridghe in the sky a few years later, but Mr Woozle is still alive and grumpy, and biting everyone BUT his adopted human mom (me).
If you can’t enlarge your mind at least do Tracy a favor.