Over a Candle

So I’ve been trying to write blog posts and failing miserably. Mea culpa.

To tide you over until the writer’s block finally falls off my desk, I thought I would share a scene from earlier today. I’m sitting on the chair in front of the AC (because I’m HOT!), and before too long, I’m surrounded by all three cats.

Ronni took the picture.

I’m just glad a fight didn’t break out on top of me.

Okay, some necessary fuzz therapy is long overdue. Because of the outrageous heat wave this week, I’ve been opening the north window in the living room. Since the great cat escape of several summers ago, it’s the only window sill the cats can actually sit in. (The others have wooden grilles in them to prevent repeat escapes.) So the boys have been particularly happy.

Luckily, they don’t mind sharing…

She knows why…

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Well, “innocent” is likely to be the wrong word… Probably “oblivious” would be better… Or even “damned”… But maybe I shouldn’t quibble…

Shamatha is the cat most likely to be asleep before he finishes settling down into your lap. He just gets so comfortable so fast.

Anyway, I’m still swamped, but I thought maybe others could benefit from a little fuzz therapy.

This entire football season, whenever I get to watch a game, Siddhartha winds up in front of the television. He doesn’t really watch TV unless it’s football. We can’t explain it. (Shamatha used to watch the DVD screen saver bounce around the screen, but he doesn’t seem interested anymore.) I think Sidd is a Colts fan, like his dad.

Tonight, during Indianapolis’ trouncing of the Baltimore Ravens, I decided to take a video. I can’t say it’s terribly exciting, but Ronni and I both thought it was cute. So here it is (only about a minute)…

One of my friends on Facebook left a comment on my last post about my cats. She said that she was really touched by the love I have for my cats. So that got me thinking… I figured I would write a little something about each of them.

Bishop is my blue-cream. I was there when she was born. She was the last of her litter to be born. Indeed, she was born almost a full day after her three litter mates. Her litter consisted of a black cat, an orange striped cat, and a cream color. She and the black were the two females. Her mom was an orange striped cat. She loved to climb all over me when I would visit (I was dating the woman who owned the mama cat at the time). She would claw at my jeans and ride around on my shoulders.

She is the first cat I have had as an adult. It is no exaggeration to say that she got me through some hard times. When I lived in Atlanta for nine months, I made it through in no small part because I knew she depended on me. She would sit on my chest (as I reclined in my lay-z-boy) as I fell asleep listening to NPR. She and I survived the ice storm that took out our power for almost a week. She has been my loyal companion.

She and I haven’t always gotten along. I am a disciplinarian, and she is… well, she’s a cat. She wants to do what she wants to do. We are both pretty stubborn. But she is my cat. And I am her human. Even though she always seems to like women better.

However, I always felt guilty leaving Bishop at home by herself so much. Whenever we’d come back from a visit to our family, she would talk to us, non-stop, for nearly a day. I figured she was cursing us out. So we decided to get her some companionship. We drove out to the Humane Society in Detroit Lakes and sat with nine males trying to pick one as they romped around the room.

Shamatha was the cat that crawled into Ronni’s lap and stayed there. Even though Ronni had had other ideas about which cat to get, Shama was the smart one. Sucking up to Ronni worked. She fell in love with him, and we brought him home.

The experience was traumatic for everyone. Bishop hid for days. She wanted nothing to do with this new cat. Shamatha was confused. He was in a new place, and all his playmates, including his brother, were absent. The humans may have been nice enough, but the other cat wanted nothing to do with him. Maybe he wasn’t lonely, but it seemed that way. And his plaintive meows as he wandered around the house were heartbreaking.

Shamatha is my familiar. I always thought my familiar would be a black male. I don’t know why. I had the image in my head, and it worked for me. But Shamatha clearly is my familiar. He wants my lap. He sits with me when I meditate. He seems to get anxious when I leave the house in the morning, and he’s right there at the door when I come home. Though he picked Ronni at the shelter, he does seem to have an affinity for me. He loves to lick my beard and chew my hair. He’s the only one of the three cats to regularly come to me before going to Ronni. (The other two will come to me only if Ronni’s lap is already occupied.)

Being unable to hear Shamatha’s cries any longer, I went back to Detroit Lakes and picked up his brother. Siddhartha had crawled into my lap at the shelter. And I knew, when we saw the two of them, I couldn’t just take one. If we were going to take one, we had to take them both. But I talked myself into believing we could just take Shama home. That didn’t last long.

Reunited, the brothers seemed so happy to see one another. Maybe we just projected our human emotions on to them. But I’ve never known two cats to be so consistently friendly to one another. They always sleep together. They often follow each other around, bathe one another, and wrestle around (just for fun, mind you).

Though Sidd took to me in the shelter, he is Ronni’s cat, through and through. He’s warmed up to me a bit more, but he loves her. Probably because she’s a dog person and Sidd is clearly our puppy. He loves having his tummy rubbed. He practically seems to beg for table scraps and just waits for her to drop food (which she almost invariably does). He will sit on her in almost any position she’ll let him. And he has absolutely no interest in yarn when she’s knitting. (Shamatha, on the other hand, cannot be within five feet of her when she’s knitting.)

Siddhartha really seems like the youngest child. He’s constantly annoying his big sister, and always following his brother around. He can’t let Shamatha do anything by himself. And Shamatha always seems to tolerate it.

These are our cats. I know they aren’t really our kids, but we love them a lot. We do as right by them as we know how. I feel badly, sometimes, that Bishop isn’t as taken with the boys as I hoped she might be. But I couldn’t get rid of the boys now even if I thought it would help her. They are a part of our family. One day, maybe, we’ll get more. For now, they provide us plenty of entertainment.

For the third night in a row, Bishop woke us up at about 4:00 AM trying to claw her way out of the library. As a result, we have decided to end our little experiment of separating the cats at night. There’s no other place to close Bishop up where we can’t hear her attempts to break out. And closing the boys into the library just seems wrong. Two cats in that room, even two cats that love each other the way they do, just doesn’t seem right. We’ll just have to hope that Bishop can get to the litter box. We might try putting her in the library during the day, when we’re at work. Not sure if that will work, but at least we might get some sleep.

I don’t want a completely downer cat post, so here are some new pics…

Speaking of how the boys love each other:

Shama’s mouth is often opening, but especially when he and Sidd are wrestling around… You can see his little fangs if you look closely at his mouth.

And I don’t want to forget Bishop. She wouldn’t look at me when I took the picture. She was too busy looking down at Sidd who was drifting a little too close to her, apparently…

I love my cats, even when they do things I don’t like.

Okay, we need something light… Weird things and all that, and I’m not prepared to post about them today. But I do have pictures…

First, Shamatha was looking so cute on the couch, and he let me get in really close for a great shot. He’s so photogenic…

Then, a bit later, I noticed all the cats on the couch looking at Ronni and I in the kitchen. They all stayed long enough to get a shot, but the flash had it’s usual effect… Laser-eye kittehs!

We live in a house with freaky, evil creatures. And we love them!

I hope everyone is safe tonight. More tomorrow…

I’m feeling badly. Last night, I shut Bishop into the library. And I’m probably going to do it again tonight. I’m not punishing her, but it feels like I am. It really is for her own good.

Someone has, on occasion, used places other than litterboxes for that purpose. I don’t know who it is. I was worried about bladder infections, but it’s just about as likely to be feces as it is to be urine. (Lovely topic, I know. I hope no one is trying to eat.)

Yesterday, I heard a fight down the hallway, and saw Sidd run into the basement. I went into the bathroom and it seemed someone had decided to both urinate and defecate on the bath mat. I can’t prove it was Bishop, but that’s my suspicion. I have noticed, in the past, that when Bishop tries to go downstairs to the litterboxes, or even into the one in the library, often one or both of the boys will start stalking her. This makes going to the bathroom and unwanted trial for her.

The only solution I could think of was to close either the boys or Bishop in the library (with one litterbox) so that she would have the opportunity to use it without being tormented. I felt badly closing her in, though. She didn’t do anything wrong, and she hates being closed in rooms. (Sure enough, last night, I heard her scratching at and banging on the library door before I went to sleep.) But closing the boys in seemed wrong, too, since there are two of them and they are far more active. Putting them into a small room together seemed a bad solution.

So, with much reluctance, I put Bishop in the room by herself. I don’t exactly feel right doing it, but I’m beside myself with what to do. I agonize over the welfare of these cats. I want them to be happy and healthy. And they just don’t seem to be able to get along. Not fully. And the way the boys stalk her and keep her from using the litterbox is so frustrating. This isn’t exactly the ideal solution, but it’s the only one I can think of.

It’s tough being a pet owner sometimes.

I believe I’m better. I made it through work today. I still don’t feel 100%, but I feel so much better than I did even a few days ago.

I think I know who to thank for my recovery. Sunday afternoon, while I was resting on the couch, I noticed that the boys seemed to be… ah… interceding on my behalf…

Unfortunately, Ronni seems to have come down with something. Maybe they can say a few prayers for her now.