So What Do You Call a Bunch of Cats?

I know it's a herd of deer or cattle, a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a flock of birds, a pride of lions, but what do you call a gathering of cats? They don't normally travel in packs, so maybe there is no name for a bunch of cats hanging around together. A pitter patter of cats? A nuisance of cats? A gang  of cats? A felicity of felines?

This is definitely a gang going on across the street, ready to rumble and up to no good. The cat I so unaffectionately call the black and white bastard appears to be the ringleader. Lately I've seen these cats running in a pack around the neighborhood and spending lots of time in the yard across the street, the owner rarely being at home because of his work. I don't know where all these cats are coming from, but our one neighbor has been trapping and spaying or neutering them and then returning them to the neighborhood. At least some of them anyway, the kittens born in her back yard. I'm thinking a couple of these cats are from those litters.

It's a little hard to tell, but there is the one white cat, the black and white cat and a black cat all nonchalantly sitting there.

This morning I took Millie for her first walk since her spay and in front of the neutering lady's house there were 5 or 6 cats under a truck and of course Millie wanted to get at those cats! Then on our way back the truck they were under was gone and they were now under another truck. And Millie still wanted to get at them.

Our evenings have been interrupted by the sound of yowling and fighting cats and let's not even talk about the stench of cat urine by our front walkway where they like to spray.

We've always had a problem with strays in this neighborhood but at least they are cats and not dogs like some neighborhoods in this town where packs of dogs run loose all day.

Anyway.

Millie enjoyed her walk this morning, I didn't take her far since she is just done recuperating from her operation. Yesterday I took her in the car to drop a package at Office Depot and get her a new bigger harness at Petco. She couldn't quite figure out why we weren't going for a walk since her leash was on but she did pretty well except that she pooped in the aisle at Petco. I did clean it up and we did get her a bigger harness and yet another new toy.

Cat Traps and Other Exciting Stuff

I didn't realize it's been almost a week since my last post, not because I've been so incredibly busy or anything, mostly because I don't have much to talk about. Then there is the whole Keith being at home all day and he wants to use the computer sometimes, too.

So, we still have two stray cats in the neighborhood that are the most annoying (at least according to Lucy and Genie) stray cats EVER. The big white cat has been around for at least three years and is the reason that I have to sit out front with Lucy while she eats because if big white stray hears the crunching of food, he comes running and eats her food. He also likes to spray on our front screen so that our porch always smells of boy cat pee. He has also figured out that there is sometimes food on the back porch and there has been many a morning and many an evening when I'll be walking through the house and see him eating away on the back porch.

Then, a few months ago, here comes a big black and white cat that is even bolder, he will go right into the shed in the backyard, using Genie's secret entrance to get in, looking for food or a warm place to sleep. Now that it's getting warmer, we've stopped leaving Genie's food in the shed so that hopefully this cat will stop going in there. We have an old cat stand under the roof on the side of the shed where Genie can sit and also use as a stepstool to get into the window, and one day Keith goes out there and finds black and white cat sound asleep on her cat stand.

The white cat and the black and white cat don't like each other, vying for territory, and yowling at each other. One night they even got into it in our front yard and I guess the black and white cat won because the yard was full of tufts of all white cat hair.

Anyway, we have been trying to trap these two pains in the asses and so far they are not desperate enough for food or are wary enough that they have not been caught. We did catch another cat, though, a big fluffy cat with one of those smashed in dumb looking faces who apparently actually belongs to someone down the street. He didn't act like the usual stray caught in the trap, hissing and spitting and jumping around, Keith said when he found the cat in the trap it gave the most pitiful little meow and didn't try to bite him when he stuck his finger in the cage, actually letting him touch it. Not a stray. We don't know how long the poor thing was stuck in there since the cage had been baited at night and it was now morning, but I have never seen a cat move SO FAST after the door was opened to free it.

I don't think that cat will come visiting this end of the street again anytime soon.

We had a beautiful day yesterday, warm enough to where it was getting stuffy in the house in the evening and we actually turned on the overhead fan in the living room. It took us a while to remember where we had stored the remote control for the fan to turn it on, though.  Today is supposed to be even better, with a taste of summer and 85 degrees by 4 pm. Nice!

Another One Bites The Dust

A few weeks ago I wrote about trapping the big white cat that had been such a nuisance, spraying his extremely strong scent all over our front porch and eating Lucy's food every chance he got. We had to trick him into entering the trap by putting food further and further inside it each day until BAM he got caught and taken to the pound where I'm sure he was dispatched to the big litter box in the sky within a few days. He was quite feral after all.

We thought that there was just one other big white cat left on the street and hadn't seen a whole lot of him so figured he found another source of food somewhere, but a week or so ago, here comes a big gray striped tabby cat spraying his extremely strong scent all over our front porch and eating Lucy's food. Where he came from we don't know, but he needed to go.

So, this morning I fed Lucy before it was even light outside then set the trap and within 30 minutes there he was in the trap, very very angry about the whole situation and banging around trying to get out. I covered the trap up with a blanket, which calms the cat a little bit, and then we had to wait about 4 hours before the pound would even be open to take him over there.

We both feel bad about trapping these poor strays, but if we don't, they will find a nice young female stray and then we'll have even more stray cats stealing Lucy's food.

I'm really hoping some other new stray doesn't show up, it seems like we get rid of one and two more take its place.

In other fun happenings around here, we got a new vacuum cleaner. Whoo hoo! We really did need one, the old one that we've had for quite a few years just wasn't working very well and one of the wheels fell off, so it was getting harder and harder to push around the house. While walking through Walmart the other day I saw a Bissell for less than $45.00 with the good whirlpool sucking action thing and a washable filter so you wouldn't have to keep buying filters for it like our old one. Or, as in our case, instead of buying a new filter, Keith would use his air compressor to blow all the dirt out of it every few months.

Well, the $45.00 was incredibly well worth it, I had just vacuumed the floors in the morning with the old vacuum cleaner, and when I tried out the new one, I could not believe how much more cat hair and stuff it sucked out of our supposedly somewhat clean carpet. So much stuff that the dirt cup was full before I was halfway done.

 So, taking a stray cat to the pound and vacuuming the floors and actually getting them clean have been the highlights of our week so far. Just too much fun around here!

Weird Cats

While I love all of my cats, there are times (like when I am cleaning the cat boxes each and every morning and each and every night) that I wish we did not have quite so many of them, or maybe none at all. But, then who would climb up beside me on the couch to be petted?

It is a bit much sometimes, though, with one cat in the front yard, one cat in the back yard, neither of whom like each other and won't share the same yard, and five of them indoors pooping and peeing. Last night we had to put Lucy in the garage because there was a stray dog running around that was scaring her and barking at her. The dog didn't seem dangerous, it was a beautiful wolf looking husky type dog with blue eyes and a light coat, but it really did look like a wolf and was rather large and when Lucy tried to run up the tree to get away from it, there was already one of the stray cats that comes around to eat her food up in her tree. So, she froze at the bottom of the tree not knowing which way to go. Stray cat danger or dog danger? What do you do?

The strays are getting bolder and bolder what with no more cats and food next door, and every time I feed Lucy I have to sit by her so she can eat without a stray chasing her off. They are big tomcats and she is a little afraid of them, although I did see her take a swipe at one of them the other day. One of them is getting so very bold or so very hungry that he snuck around behind me while I was sitting on the porch to eat her food. While she was eating it and while I was sitting right there. They also come to the back door where we sometimes feed Genie and stare in at us before we run them off.

We have tried to trap them but they know something is up and won't go in the trap no matter how hungry they are.

Harri is her usual timid scared spooked at everything self and it doesn't help that Buddy chases her every chance he gets. She sits under our little end table (actually a budget tv tray table that I got because Keith never did make the end tables that he was going to make and bought wood for) apparently feeling a little safer with a little sort of cage around her.

Keith finally got Genie to go into the shed when it is cold or raining through the window on the side instead of us having to leave the door open. She has an outdoor stand under the overhang carport type thing on the side of the shed that is tall enough to where she just has to jump in the window and onto a ramp that he built and then onto a big shelf where she has a box with a blanket inside it to cozy up in. We keep some dry food in there for her and hope that the strays don't get smart enough to figure all that out. She is not the brightest cat in the world so we are glad she finally got the going in the window thing through her head.

This morning the sun actually came out and I found her curled up in one of our flower pots that doesn't have a flower in it because it died. Apparently the dirt was warm from the sun? Who knows, but there she was in the flower pot.

Murphy's Law?

You know how you pay your car off and a week later it breaks down? Or you get a tax refund and then the refrigerator breaks down? Or you get laid off from your job and lose your insurance and your tooth starts hurting?

Well, that is what's happening here. We haven't got our car paid off yet, still another couple of years on that, and we don't have a broken refrigerator, knock on wood, but we do have a very achy tooth. Very. Achy. Hurts.

For a few years now I've been telling the different dentists that I've seen, different because it seems like the dental offices up here can't manage to keep the same dentist on staff for some reason and each time you come in for a visit you are seeing someone new, but anyway I've been telling them that one of my molars has something wrong with it. About 5 years ago I bit down on something crunchy and my tooth hurt. So, I figured the something crunchy cracked my tooth. It didn't hurt all the time, just when I would bite something crunchy in a particular way, so I kind of avoided biting crunchy things with that tooth. Every dentist I've seen since has looked at it and taken x-rays of it and seen nothing wrong with it.

Well now there is definitely something wrong. I'm thinking maybe there was a miniscule crack that couldn't be seen that has now become the Grand Canyon and I've been taking aspirin every few hours and putting orajel on my tooth and hot compresses on my jaw since Friday. My whole jaw, not just the one suspect tooth is HURTING. And of course it is the weekend. When the dentist's office is closed. And we have no insurance.

So, first thing tomorrow will be a call to see how quickly I can get in and get this tooth looked at and maybe get some Vicodin and see how much it will cost to either get this thing out of my mouth or put a crown on it.

And, speaking of crowns, the strangest thing with this crown that I got put on a tooth on the other side of my mouth, when I chew food on the side with the crown away from the hurting tooth, the food does not taste right, like my taste buds got novocained and have never recovered. Can that happen? The good thing is that I don't eat as much because the food tastes so blah, but still, I would like to be able to enjoy what I'm eating because even if the food doesn't taste right I'm hungry!

So, that's the fun I'm having this weekend.

In other news, we have 2 down and about 5 to go on the stray and abandoned cats 'yes I shouldn't have been feeding these kittens that were born in my garage but I'm stupid' situation here. We caught one of the kittens in the trap on Thursday or Friday, and Keith took it down to the shelter where obviously it will be put down because it is feral and yes that is sad but you would do the same thing if you had all these cats running around. Then we caught the calico cat that actually belonged to stupid and stupider next door and took her over the the shelter yesterday. The stupids kept trying to shove the calico into a cat carrier and the calico was having none of that and was biting and scratching, so then they came back after they had officially moved out and tried to trap her by feeding her first, then putting food in the trap and standing next to it going 'here kitty kitty' and the calico is not as stupid as her owners so she would have none of that either. So, they just left her here figuring we would feed her.

We kind of starved her for a day and then put food in the trap early on Saturday and in she went. Keith told the people at the shelter about the abandoned cat issue and they do send a notice to the homeowner about it and file some sort of complaint against stupid and stupider if they left a forwarding address, so we are hoping they get some kind of fine or something. Because those two were STUPID. We are very glad to see them both gone even if it means cleaning up the cat mess.

Call of the Wild

I feel sort of like I'm watching a nature show from my front yard sometimes, a show about wild cats and their habits.

Dimwit next door leaves her garage door propped up so that her cats can come and go, so of course every stray cat in the neighborhood has figured out that there is food in there. They also figured out that it's a good place to give birth. So now instead of 2 or 3 stray cats coming across the street to eat in her garage, she has an entire cat family of mama and three kittens hanging around. Keith told her to shut the garage door and she said 'but what about the kittens?' The feral kittens that are going to make more kittens, and then their kittens will make more kittens, and soon we will have herds of stray cats on our street instead of just 2 or 3.

Anyway, the kittens are getting big enough now to where they are starting to roam. Mama cat was crossing the street the other day, stops in the middle of the street, looks back, and then here come the babies straggling along behind her. She is starting to make the yards across the street part of her territory, using the bushes in the front yards as cover, and going through the broken slat in the fence to the back yards.

This morning I woke up early (not because I really wanted to, just woke up an hour early) and went out to feed Lucy in the dark and saw the three kittens playing on the front sidewalk across the street. They would hide in one clump of bushes and spring out to attack one of their siblings and then hide in the other clump of bushes. It was actually rather amusing watching them, but it won't be quite so amusing when they are grown and reproducing, and I'm sure the already the crankiest people on the block across the street will become even crankier when they discover kittens living in their bushes.

Other than watching stray cats play and being on my own for the next 10 days, it's just hot here and nothing much else is going on. I was watching the weather report and I don't know why they bother, they could just say that each day will be pretty much like the previous, it's just freaking hot out there, folks.

I Am

The. Worst. Human. On. The. Planet.

I feel horrible. The cats that I had to stop feeding are at my door every morning and every afternoon and sometimes in between waiting waiting waiting for some food. I am a prisoner in my own home because I can't stand to go outside and hear them crying. I'm hoping that they will give up soon, but every day they are outside waiting waiting waiting. And crying.

And then last night Keith gave them a handful of food because he wants them to keep coming around so that we can trap them. I yelled at him. DON'T DO THAT!

I am hoping that they will travel the neighborhood and find some other sucker for stray cats who will feed them or find some backyard with bowls of dog food laying around or even find a mouse or catch a bird. Not that I've ever seen mice around here. But there are lots of birds. Because I really don't want to trap them and take them to the pound, but if we don't they soon will produce more stray cats, so I'm hoping that they will just move on to greener pastures.

And then last night we are at the table eating dinner and the cats are all at the back sliding door pawing at it because little kittens are on the other side of the door staring in at us. And meowing. Because they see that we are eating. Food. It's really hard to enjoy your dinner when hungry eyes are staring in at you. Sad little kitten hungry eyes. Damn.

So I feel terrible. Horrible. Awful. Cruel. Rotten. Mean.

The Year in Review

I see lots of bloggers doing a recap of all the exciting things that happened during the past year and thought maybe I should do a review, too.

Meh.

I've got nothing.

But, in other news, I do think the economy is starting to improve because yesterday we got, for the first time in a very long time, a credit card offer in the mail. We used to get at least 3 or 4 a week back in the good old free flowing credit days but ever since the big crash of '08, nothing. So, to me that is a good sign that the old mailbox will start filling up with junk mail credit card offers once again. People can now go back to the olden days of credit cards filling up their wallets, shopping for stuff they really can't afford, but, hey, I'VE GOT CREDIT CARDS! Yay!

And, what are our plans for New Year's Eve?

Meh.

I've got nothing.

And, speaking of cats, here is the infamous Bandit getting a snack. He is the only one out of our three tiny ferals that will let us pet him. He's the crafty one, he knows that if he runs across the street and rolls on his back for his belly to be petted that his tricks will EARN HIM FOOD! The big stray in the picture is the one we've been feeding for a while, we call him Sal. He doesn't do tricks or let us pet him, he just meows for his food, but he is willing to share with the little ones.


We think Sal is the kindly Uncle.

Sunday Morning with the Stray Cat Family

Mom, Dad, and the kids just out enjoying the sun on a lazy Sunday.



There's a third little white kitten that must have been hiding.