Benjamin says "Aloha!"...

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.... and staying?

Amber prior to retirement (See! He looks "smelly" doesn't he?)

Sunday morning, I was in for a rather rude awakening. My Person's sister arrived at my house and brought with her..... a cat....

Amber belongs to my Person's mother and is "retiring" from the farm where he has lived for a number of years. Nice enough guy, I guess, but was I consulted about having him move in? No. I was not!

Not only does he "smell funny" and, until they can figure out where to put his box, it is in the living room (because he has been hiding under a table in the corner a good bit of the time) but he has taken to exploring all MY territory at 4:30 in the morning. AND.... AND!!!! I caught him sleeping on MY PERSON'S BED last night.... My Person DID move him off to her mother's bed when she woke to find him there but still.... Oh! The indignity! Oh! The humiliation!

I have tried hissing. I have tried glaring pointedly at my person. I have tried sitting with my back to the whole lot of them for an hour. I even tried luring him out the door in hopes that he didn't want to be here as much as I don't want him to be here..... No such luck.

Drat!

Me demonstrating one of my patented indignant looks (archive photo)

A Good Book....

My Person recommends this book for people who like cats.... The Fur Person, by May Sarton



This one is good, too: Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant

You just can't please the humans, can you?

So, this morning, I escape between the feet of my human person's parental unit and spend most of the morning and early afternoon doing whatever it is I do outside.

At some point, I found a vole (for the uninformed, these are rodents). After playing with it for some time, I decided that this would be an excellent early birthday present for my human (or perhaps a belated birthday present for her parental unit whose present she still hasn't gotten around to buying). Brilliant idea! I'll bet no cat has EVER thought of bringing their human a rodent for a present!

You would have been happy that I brought this to her.

But Nooooooooo! First, she thinks it is a cricket or something. Then, when she realizes what it is, she chases bme off and spends the next 15 minutes racing about the house with no clothes on trying to round up small rodents with mangled back legs.

WELL!

Apparently, she isn't PLEASED about having to spend 15 minutes racing about the house with no clothes on trying to round up small rodents with mangled back legs. I can tell because she spent another 5 minutes shouting "Bad Cat!" at me....

She didn't catch the rodent. It is probably dying in behind the big trunk in the hall closet.

A vole (not THE vole)

Pippin

Pippin is gone....

Someone kicked Pippin so hard that he had to be put to sleep by his people.

My Person is angry and I am lonely. I miss Pippin barging in and eating my catnip. While we didn't see eye-to-eye, he didn't deserve to die like that... no pet does.

My Person dreamed about him standing outside the patio door, just looking in. It made her think of a stanza from "Cat Heaven" by Cynthia Rylant

"Then when a cat needs,she may just simply ponder

and watch the blue world deep and wide . . .

She will watch the old house

where she once lived and wandered,

and the people who loved her inside."

My Person gets mad!

Yesterday, I made like Houdini and escaped from the house.

The neighbour who has been threatening to take Knuckes to the Pound, made the same threat about me, claiming that I messed on her lawn.

First of all, let me say that I am, like many cats, very fastidious and if I do my "business", I don't do it in the middle of someone's lawn. I am also somewhat lazy and don't feel it necessary to walk all the way across the Co-op where I live, in order to do my "business". If I do my "business" it is in my box, in the privacy of my own home. If I were "caught short", I would be far more likely to do it in my own yard or in the yard of The Interloper, not to go across town to do it.

Secondly, my Person, makes it a policy not to let me out of the house. If I do get out of the house, I have to do it when her mother is going in or out, since I can take advantage of the fact that she is 80 years-old and very, very slow. If my Person is home when I escape, she usually manages to catch me and put me back in the house. My Person's mother, again because she is 80, can't catch me, so she has to let me come in on my own.

My Person is very responsible, too. She always makes sure I haven't upset a neighbour and gets mad when I get out.

Yesterday, I got out when my Person's mother was going out of the house. This time, the neighbour went up to my Person's mother and started yelling at her about me having messed on her lawn (except she didn't use the word "messed". She used a word that started with "s" and ends with "hit"). Since my Person's mother is very old and very slow, and doesn't swear, this made her very unhappy and she cried. She had trouble sleeping last night, and that made my Person upset.

Today, my Person wrote a letter to tell the neighbour what she thought of he for yelling at her mother and for never once speaking to her in a reasonable manner about this supposed problem. In fact, the only two times she has nmentioned the problem to my Person, she claimed that I had been out of the house when, in fact, I hadn't been out for days because my Person had been sick in bed with the flu and her mother had been out of town, so I had no chance to escape.

The next time was a few days later when I actually had been out. The neighbour yelled at my Person's mother and then accused my Person of lying about the other day when I hadn't been out.

My Person was pretty upset about being called a liar and tried to explain that not only was she not a liar but that she didn't think that I had been messing on the woman's lawn. She suggested it might have been a dog or one of the many, many other cats that wander around the neighbourhood.

This time, my Person wrote a letter and sent a copy to the Board for the Co-op telling them she was pretty upset.

She also pointed out that if the woman caught me and took me to the Pound, she would take her to court. Since she could bring a number of neighbours who could state that this woman regularly made irrational and unsubstantiated claims about other peoples' cats, the fact that she yelled at an 80 year-old woman and made her feel guilty about being old, and that she had offered no proff, my Person said that it was likely that the woman would lose.

No one f***s with my Person!

Tuxedo, aka "Knuckles" presuming to make himself to home on MY chair!

Knuckles, as my Person calls him, is shortly, unfortunately, likely to be picked up by Animal Control. No one seems to know who he belongs to and he has been making himself "to home" in a number of the houses around. He comes into My house to avail himself of catnip. Unfortunately, he is an "outdoor cat" and has raised the ire of one of my doltish neighbours who blames him for getting into her garbage. Since he is very well fed and has more than ample access to catfood (although food is always out for Me, he hardly ever touches it, so I very much doubt he is tearing open garbage bags in order to steal food), I think it far more likely that it is a racoon and not My dear little friend. Anyhow, Knuckles and I seem to tolerate each other and We and Pippin (The Interloper) are now fast friends.

There are times when, rather than calling Animal Control, you could call People Control....

Pippin (The Interloper) helping himself to MY catnip! That's me in the background planning my revenge... One day.... One day... when you least expect it!....

Me, again. Note the disbelief at seeing not one Interloper, but TWO Interlopers in my own house! Of all the indignities! I shall glare pointedly at my Person for an entire evening for this!

My Person SAYS that this is what happens when, in my Houdini guise, I escape and they have to leave the back door open for me to come in.... Frankly, I think it is their own fault for not stadnding by the door awaiting my desire to re-enter. Imagine?!?!?

Interloper, Redout and "The Evil Eye"

So, I was out in my yard, yesterday, minding my own business. Imagine my ire when I was sniffing through the bushes and discovered The Interloper! Was I fizzified!

My Person came over to try and smooth the waters, but The Interloper dashed off. As if I needed help in shooing her away. However, I was mightily ticked off when The Interloper had the nerve to appear on MY PORCH half an hour later. Luckily for her, the patio door was shut or I'd have given her such a scratching!

Meanwhile, I have been practicing my Evil Eye! It seems to work just fine on some of the Humans who have the nerve to wander into my house. I put them in their place, but, for some reason, there are some who refuse to leave. My Person's brother has been staying off and on over the last few months and has had the nerve to take over the couch when he is here. My Person tells me that he won't be staying any more, since he bought his own house. I have to grudginly admit that I haven't minded when he speaks softly and quietly to me. He keeps his hands behind his back and obviously knows that I would scratch them to ribbons if he tried to mess up my fur.

I'm not sure why all these Humans come into my house. I make it clear whose house it is, and yet my Person and The Mother continue to let them in. I guess I really have to work on perfecting The Evil Eye.

What I really hate is when my person goes away and doesn't come back for days and days. Sometimes, she leaves The Mother to feed and talk to me. That is okay. When both she and The Mother go away, which they did for 10 days last October, some other Humans came in and tried to talk and play with me. I think I made my point when I growled at them all every day.

When my Person and The Mother camne home, I made it clear that I was angry. It was hard to stay angry with my Person, though. Once I did a thorough sniffing to see if she had been consorting with other Kitty Kats, I sat on her and climbed on her, and if she left the room, I cried until I found her. I tried to stay angry.... but I was just so glad to see her.

Interloper!

Tonight, I was hissified to find a cat wandering through MY domain! I was beside myself and for quite some time after my Person chased it off, I was looking out the patio doors trying to see if it came back.

My Person said that it had come from two doors down and belongs to the big Boxer named Cassius. I care not where it came from! I just don't want it in MY yard!

This morning, my Person was trying to track down a bad smell and found two very dead mice in the live-trap under the sink. She said to me that this wouldn't happen if I would take the least bit of interest in doing what cats are supposed to do naturally and catch the mice. I just glared at her and said "Why should I catch mice when you have a perfectly good trap under the sink to do it?" I mean, REALLY! What WAS she thinking?

Overflowing Cat Box Blues

- Jane Robinson (with some liberties)

First I must mention the lack of attention:
Here I am wasting away. (it's awful)
Why did you get me if you won't pet me
Seventeen hours a day? I ask you
What is this crap when I sit on your lap?
I expect a devoted masseuse;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me
Overflowin' cat box blues.

Now I have grown gaunt from privation and want
But catfood I don't deign to take (how gauche)
But I could connive to completely revive
When you give-a me half of your steak (done rare)
I'll sit and I'll beg with my claws in your leg
Until you concede what I'm due;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me..
Overflowin' cat box blues.

Hey, I don't deserve this lousy door service:
I'm always on the wrong side. You know this
Prancing and yowling, moaning and growling
Works, but it hurts a cat's pride. So I'll just
Claw and I'll spray till the door rots away
And leaves me a hole to pass through;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me...
Overflowin' cat box blues.

Say, whenever I go for the bed or the sofa
You always shoo me away. (How rude!)
You say I get hair on the fabric of chairs
That offends your pristine derriere. Well now if
I can't repose where I want, I suppose, I'll
Throw up where you most like to snooze;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me..
Overflowin' cat box blues.

Well, you ought to know when a cat's got to go
That you owe him a spotless commode. (Let's hear it)
Why should I squat on the same soggy spot
Right on top of three weeks worth of load? Now really!
If I were a grouch I would piss on the couch,
But instead I have pissed in your shoe;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me...
Overflowin' cat box blues.

Since you have neutered me nobody's laid me -
I'm all neurotic and tense - it's true now -
Kneading and mewing is all that I'm doing
And not fighting toms on the fence. Don't think that
I've become bitter because I can't litter
No, but I've lost a few screws;
I got those `Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me
Overflowin' cat box blues.

First things first

This was me just a few days after my Person found me. My brothers and I were left in a box just inside the doors of the store where my Person worked. We were all adopted by people who worked in the store, and I was lucky enough to get my Person. She loved me from the first minute she met me, and I have to admit that I kind of like her, too.

I like to climb on my Person when my person goes to sleep at night, and I like to go sniffing in my garden. I have to wear a harness and stay on a leash, which I don't like, but it is better than not being able to go out at all. I do manage to sneak out every once in a while when my Person's mother opens the door. I lurk with intent while she is around and then, because she is slow, I can dash between her feet.