Senior Citizen Simon & The Man About Town

You know how sometimes if your kids hang with the wrong crowd they can pick up some bad habits. Sometimes peers can be really bad influences. I think I have that going on in my house right now.

You see, Senior Citizen Simon used to be a real stay-at-home cat. He was always begging for someone to take a nap with him during the afternoon. And when I would go to bed at night he would instantly come from wherever he was in the house, climb into bed with me and noogie (neener) down for the night.

Next door neighbor cat, Hercules, was extricated from his loving home (Lovely Daughter's house) earlier this spring when one of her other cats went into heat and Herkie started marking his territory. You see, there's several things wrong here. No. 1, when Lovely Daughter brought Hermione home she was told that Hermione had already been spayed - NOT! And No. 2, Hercules is neutered. We know that for a fact because we had it done. I guess nobody informed Hercules that neutered cats don't mark their territory. So here's Hermione offering all her "goodies" to any male who would have her, and Herkie not wanting any part of that stuff, but still trying to keep the other neighborhood Toms away. That's why he became an outside cat.

Somewhere along the line Man About Town Hercules figured out how to gain entrance to my house through all the flippy dog doors that we have going in and out. You just climb through the back garage door, waltz down the steps going from the garage and into the basement, through that flippy door, through the store room where Simon's cat box is, stop and take a poop or two, then through the flippy door from the storeroom into the TV room, up the basement stairs, make a sharp right into the kitchen and TA-DA - there's Simon's cat food - have a big snack, which means clean out both the wet and dry cat food, and then locate Simon. Entice Simon with all kinds of promises of fun things to do outside at night and lead him back through the maze of flippy doors and out into the free world.

Then along about sunrise it's time to make sure that Simon gets back home safely. Lead him back through the maze of doors, (don't forget to take a poop in the cat box. After all, why would you want to poop outside when you can do it in kitty litter?) upstairs, and down the hallway to the bedroom. Watch and make sure that Simon gets up on the bed okay, peak around the corner of the bedroom door and let out one big meow so that the lady of the house wakes up and knows that you've delivered Simon safely back home.

So now Simon REALLY wants/needs to sleep all day after partying all night long with Herkie. Simon is 16 and Herk is only 9, so he's got a lot more stamina. Boy - don't I know how THAT works!!

Lately Herkie has taken to making more than midnight visits to pick Simon up for all these parties they've been going to. Last night as Ole and I were laying in bed watching TV, Herkie entered the bedroom. I couldn't see him but I could hear him. He sat in the doorway meowing for a few minutes and when neither Ole nor I paid him any attention he turned, tail straight in the air as though he was insulted, and left. I could see the tip of his tail as he marched out the door and down the hallway. Then something told me to sit up and take a better look. There, laying on the floor by the bedroom door was a baby bunny. It hadn't been chewed on or anything, just placed there on the carpet as though it was a gift to us from Herk. I guess he somehow knew that I've declared war on the rabbits around here and wanted to make a few extra points.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I fed them alfalfa all winter up on my deck because they were cute to watch, and now their progeny (neener) have come back to haunt me. Because I fed the bunnies all winter on my deck, some of them have now taken up residence UNDER my deck and are having lunch on the fresh green things that are finally peaking up from the ground. I planted a new bush about a week ago - a Blue Rug Juniper, which is quite prickly. The other day when I was out inspecting things I found that four branches had been chewed off that juniper right at the base of the plant and were laying there on the ground beside it. Now if they had chewed those branches off and eaten them I wouldn't have been nearly so upset, but to just chew them off for the sake of chewing - that doesn't fly. What was it my mother used to say? Don't waste your food. After all there are starving children/bunnies in China!!

The bush will still grow, but it'll be darn lopsided. Darn bunnies, anyway.

Senior Citizen Simon

Man About Town Hercules

Twinkie Guts and Kitty Litter

This is Dante

Poolie's entry about her Twinkie cake inspired me to tell you a story about Twinkies and cat litter.

When Lovely Daughter got out of college she moved into an apartment and got a cat – that was the beginning of her feline zoo. Dante was a huge neutered male, part Siamese and part barn cat, I think. He had been neutered and then declawed as an adult, which made him somewhat on the grumpy side as I think he had been an outside cat at some point. He wanted nothing more than to spend time outside in the sunshine, and here he was cooped up in a third floor apartment.

Well, Lovely Daughter got married to a Marine and in the interim, while they were waiting for base housing, she moved back home with Dante. Because he was declawed (front only) we didn’t let him outside as we’ve just got too many critters around in the country just waiting to make a meal of declawed cats. After a couple of months her then husband was allocated base housing so she loaded up her car and headed east. Loading up her car consisted not only of her personal items, but also Dante and a litter box placed on the floor in the back seat.

Most cats aren’t good travelers, but Dante settled himself either in the back window or on the dash their first day out and watched the world go by. They stopped for the night somewhere in Ohio or Indiana, I don’t remember now, and took off early the next morning to complete their trip.

Now at that point in time Lovely Daughter wasn’t exactly into eating healthy, so she stopped to pick up breakfast, which consisted of a can of Coke and several Twinkies. She placed them on the passenger seat beside her. I don’t know what happened to Dante at this point in time, but he jumped from the back seat into the passenger seat, landed on the Twinkies which went whoosh when their plastic wrapping blew open, and then squish when all the cream center squeezed out and immediately went between his toes. The noise of the plastic blowing and the texture of the cream filling must have upset Dante. He jumped up on the dash, tracked the cream filling across it, wangled his way across Lovely Daughter into the back seat, down on the floor into the litter box where the litter stuck to the cream filling in his feet, back into the front seat and into the Twinkies again. Wash, rinse and repeat a number of times before she could get pulled off the turnpike and get him settled down and cleaned up.

Now she has Twinkie guts and cat litter from one end of the car to the other and all over her clothes, and has another full day of driving before she reaches her destination. Her ex-husband said it took him two full days to get all the Twinkie guts and litter out of her car.

So Dante moved into an apartment on base where he proceeded to let them know that he still didn’t like living inside and just wanted to be outside. They finally bought a cat harness and a leash and would stake him out in the front yard under a tree for periods of time. That made him a little bit happier.

Then we came for a visit (snicker). Ole decided that Dante needed a bit of exercise because he was getting pretty porky around the middle, so one day he started off down the sidewalk with the cat on a leash. Of course Dante didn’t know that he was supposed to get up and walk, so Ole would take a step, drag the cat, take a step, drag the cat. Dante eventually caught on, and that was the beginning of Devil Cat. From then on he didn’t want to be in the house at all. He would sit in the window and cry or lay in front of the apartment door so that you couldn’t get in or out without moving him.

When the ex-husband got out of the Marines and they moved back here of course Dante came along. They moved into their little house on the other side of our property and decided they would let Dante out on his own for short periods of time. Now this cat was no dummy. He had it figured out that they were both gone all day working so there was no one home to let him in or out. So he packed his little kitty suitcase and moved to my house where he could come and go as he pleased. From then on he was the happiest cat you could imagine. I think he went back to his barn cat roots and thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of his time on earth.

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Dante's favorite place to sleep was wrapped around my head. Believe me, when you're having a hot flash the last thing you need is a big cat covering your head!

Even though Dante was declawed in the front he could still climb trees. The only problem was that he could never figure out how to get down so Ole would end up rescuing him.

I Got a Package, I Got a Surprise!

I got a package (done in a sing-song voice) in the mail yesterday afternoon! I love surprises. And this one came from that Pie-Rat who is always doing nice things for people. And she had a little note tucked inside - to her favorite Sturgis bikers!! Thank you so much Poolie. They are salt and pepper shakers and are so cute. I've got them sitting in my garden window right above my sink so I see them all the time.

Ole was so impressed - his comment: "You've really met some genuinely nice people through blogging." Yup, Ole, I have. I just wish we all lived a bit closer so we could get together occasionally.

I really need to get busy on my Pay it Forward items that I promised (within the next year). But that won't be until after I get my fall outside work done once we get a frost. That probably won't be much longer as it was 34 degrees this morning when I got up. Just a wee bit on the nippy side. Fall is really my favorite time of year with the exception that it means I have to go back to wearing shoes and socks - yuck. Normally I stick with the sandals until my toes turn a bit on the blue side from being cold. Then it's fun to warm my feet up by crawling into bed and putting them on Ole's bare back. Boy, does THAT make him quit snoring!!

Fall is also the time when the mice start moving. (Say, Poolie, what's a herd of mice called? There's one for you to look up.) And with us living in the country right next to a field, we do have herds of mice moving when the nights start to get cold. Big fat field mice. They truly are different than the city mice, you know. Remember that story about the city mouse and the country mouse? Well, a country mouse found its way into Lovely Daughter's house last night and met with the paws of their new kitty, Medora. Lovely Daughter said when she got home last night there was Medora playing patty paws with the mouse, batting it around in the bathroom. Lovely Daughter said they sent the mouse for a swim down the toilet, and poor little Medora couldn't figure out what happened to her new playmate. So now Medora is a Workin' Girl. I'm not sure Lovely Daughter's other cats would even know what a mouse is with the exception of Hercules, who lives in the tractor.

Yes, you read that correctly. Herkie lives in the tractor. Herkie loves being outside and only comes in to eat and take an occasional nap. Otherwise you see him roaming the property regularly. Ole has a big John Deere farm tractor that he uses to mow part of our five acres and to move snow in the winter. In the summer he leaves all the windows open on the cab and Herkie discovered that he can get in the cab and have a nice comfy seat to sleep on. You should see all the white hair he has deposited on the seat. I think you could build another cat with all of it.

Well, Folks, I've run out of words for today. I'm sure Ole would argue that point because he says I'm never at a loss for words, but then what does he know, right?

Love Lena