Cats of the Farm: The Pride Goes On

Mystery, Psalm (taking bath), Solo, and Atticus watching me read. Nice to have supervision. The library is totally lined with bookcases and thus forms a cat track around the top, which they appreciate.

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Salmon! They got the juice. I got the salmon.

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Birdwatching

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Brio is reminding me that it’s time to feed the cats. It was, too, to the minute.

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That must have been an amazing bird… or a whole flock. :joy:

They’re all very attentive.

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What does the Hebrew say, please?

Those both are inherited from Mom, although I did take a semester of Hebrew myself in college just for the fun of it. She did likewise back when she was in college, same reason.

The top one is shalom.

The bottom one, which has a letter broken and reglued so it’s a bit crooked, is the equivalent of PLT. Hebrew doesn’t use written vowels. This was as close as Mom could get to her own name, which was Paulette. The fact that this word, Mom’s name sign she had specially made, is slightly off-center due to a broken letter (years ago) gives me a lot of amusement. Mom found it amusing herself. She never did fit neatly into categories.

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Cool. Thank you.

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Good morning kitties!
And, outside cats: Good morning out there, kitties!

Life with cats.

Bagheera wasn’t on the porch this morning when I went out. I do have cats that aren’t set-the-clock regular, and there are even expanding circles of cats seen about once a week, cats glimpsed as a shadow around a corner, etc. But Bagheera is an extreme regular. He is also the most intense and edgy in personality and the most likely to pick a fight with anything outside of his inner circle, so I was a bit worried about him.

Went for my walk in the woods and then came back. Still no Bagheera. Ate breakfast and did morning chores inside. Still no sign. So then, I donned my coat once more and headed out for a search. Just in case, I checked the road for a quarter mile each way, although they are car wise. Nope. I checked the cat hut and the outbuilding with straw. Nope. I gathered a string of other cats behind me as I walked around, but no Bagheera.

Finally, I found him asleep in one of the buildings slated for destruction, one that honestly I do not enter myself anymore. I have no idea why he decided to sleep there with much warmer and more comfortable options available. Anyway, there he was. I called, and he snapped awake and came out to me, looking perfectly fine. I guess he just decided to sleep in this morning.
I’d rather have a critter search end with a well and fine critter than with an injured or worse critter, but still, when they have put you through effort and concern, it would be nice if they looked apologetic.

Edited to add: For those fans of the pride who thought Rascal would be the most likely to pick a fight, nope. Rascal wants to be left alone. If the world ignores her, she is happy to do likewise. She retaliates against loss of personal space, but beyond that, she just wants to be undisturbed. Bagheera, on the other hand, is scrappy. He tackles things for the fun of it.

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The sentinel. Rascal takes her duties seriously.

The log she is on will be burned, too, eventually, but I want the pile to go down a bit first. That is a storm windfall, and it landed just like that. If I were still into jumping, I would want to jump it. :slight_smile:

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This came up on my memories from today. I found a bluebird feather and brought it inside. From ear lower left, Rosalind, Tenuto, Cory, and Coda. All gone now. I miss you, ladies.

Four Cats with Bluebird Feather

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Do you find housework boring? Add cats. It won’t be any more efficient, but it won’t be boring.

I am attempting to pin Brio between my ankles long enough to let me pick up the debris pile before he rolls in it. He thinks sweeping is a wonderful game, and rolling in the debris pile is the object of it.

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Oh argh! Baler does the same thing and if I try to chase him off , he has to run thru it 600 times spreading it everywhere the little idiot.

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Rascal in the sunlight yesterday afternoon.

And in the wild, wild woods yesterday morning.

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Sometimes I get a feeling that someone is looking right over my shoulder while I’m working.

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Pilgrim’s Drugged Treats, Episode 4.

On the last exciting episode of Pilgrim’s Drugged Treats, Pilgrim was no longer eating the treats straight, and I was smashing treats and mixing them into a small portion of wet food in the guest room with the door closed. This system continues to work with Pilgrim. However, the other cats are miffed. I pick times when they are distracted to take Pilgrim into the guest room, but by the time I open the door again, I am met with 14 annoyed eyes. They know exactly what goes on behind closed doors.

Once the door is opened, some of them bolt in, others glare at me. Psalm and Mary and Brio, the youngest, are usually the fastest in and jump up to police the bed for crumbs while Pilgrim sits there casually licking his chops and washing his face. I carry the saucer and the remainder of the can of Fancy Feast, put back in its Ziploc, to the kitchen, put the FF in the fridge, and put the saucer on the counter. The cats who didn’t go to the bed first follow me, knowing that the food that was on the bed is now gone. When I put the saucer on the counter, they jump up to inspect it, then look at me with another “life isn’t fair” complaint about its emptiness. Finally, resigning themselves to its 99% emptiness, they lick it just to get that last drop. What microscopic bits Pilgrim leaves aren’t enough to hurt them, and it’s more cat food than meds even in the form in which it’s presented to him. So I saw (note the past tense) no harm in letting them lick the saucer off on the counter.

Other than my unpopularity, this system has worked well so far. I have tried telling the other cats that:

  1. This is medicinal.
  2. It’s really not much that Pilgrim is getting. One can of Fancy Feast lasts me six doses.
  3. They have high-quality food themselves available at all times in their bowls.
  4. They are not starving.
  5. There are cats in China who have never in their lives had a Temptation and who would love to have the life my house cats do, even with food being given to just one behind a closed door.

The cats have not been impressed with any of these arguments.

However, this week, we have had a change. Psalm, Mary, and Brio, my former little feral orphans, now no longer feral nor little, have realized that the real part of the show that they are able to participate in is the saucer. So while they still race in to jump up on the bed and sniff hopefully for crumbs while Pilgrim nonchalantly performs his postprandial ablutions in front of them, they have then started racing back to the kitchen after policing the bed. They jump up onto the counter with vigor, especially Brio, who is the largest of them and is named Brio for a reason. Unfortunately, he is not the most coordinated of felines. His mass and energy occasionally exceed his braking ability.

So Monday, I dosed Pilgrim, opened the door, and took the saucer to the counter. The other four cats, minus Pilgrim and the Three Amigos, made a polite circle around it to wash off the last traces of Fancy Feast. As I walked back down the great room, here came Brio, Psalm, and Mary at a gallop heading for the counter. They took the long accepted track of kitchen chair, table, counter as a three-stage jump, but Brio, as he made that final jump from table to counter, forgot or failed to adequately decelerate, and he slid straight into the group of cats around the saucer already. Solo, never the most amiable nor the most tolerant, slapped him, the others began to retreat because Solo in a mood is dangerous, and in the ensuing melee, the saucer was shoved off the edge of the counter.

CRASH. The saucer wound up in the floor in as many pieces as Pilgrim’s drugged treat had been moments earlier. The cats except for Solo, who was still Being Annoyed, jumped down to finish licking it off on the floor, since it was now there for some reason that certainly had nothing to do with them. I, meanwhile, with visions of cats ingesting tiny saucer bits, yelled no, chased them away, and got to conduct an unscheduled sweeping of the kitchen.

That was Monday. Today, Pilgrim had had his treat. I put the saucer on the counter and walked back toward the office. Here came Brio and company galloping the other way to join their cohorts on the cabinet. I said, “Be careful,” as I walked on, but the week since Monday had been event free. Nope. Behind me, I heard Brio’s scramble slide, Solo’s snarl, and then CRASH-CRASH.

Turning around, there were TWO saucers in the floor, my breakfast saucer and Pilgrim’s, in 20 pieces. I do not normally have a lot of dishes on the counter, just a couple going through the Feline Pre Rinse before being washed, but they managed to knock off both saucers that were up there today.

Sigh. I yelled no, chased the cats off, and retrieved the broom while plotting. That makes three saucers down this week. I don’t want to totally deprive them of that microscopic lick, but something has to change. Maybe I’ll put them in the sink from now on. That would lead to a traffic jam at the sink, and Solo would no doubt get more practice at Being Annoyed, not that she needs it, but they wouldn’t be able to knock the saucer off.

As I finished putting the smashed saucers (plural) into the trash, Pilgrim, having finished his most-thorough bath, trotted into the kitchen area to see what I was doing. I studied him, the root cause of all of this, and informed him, “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

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Pilgrim.

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Having had this identical thing happen at my house more times than I care to count I feel you. Thank you for good laugh. You do have a way of telling things that make it all very easy to visualize.

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