Posts Tagged ‘Pequenita’
Remaining Cat
With daytime high temperatures this week hovering despicably close to winter levels, the urge to crawl back into bed and refuse to face the world is strong. Pequenita has no problem succumbing to the call of the nap, taking up a strategic position on the extra blanket that had been tossed in a bundle on our bed.
She has been highly visible since last Friday when we removed Mozyr from our home, and she seems to have picked up where he left off with regard to showing up anywhere I happen to be in the house. It’s hard to tell if she is happier having our attention all to herself, or if she is just showing up to question where the heck he is.
For the most part, she seems to be doing fine without Mozyr around. Even though it has left her as a solo cat in the house, it frees her from needing to navigate the sharing of food and litter boxes. I think she likes that.
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Different Cat
When we first saw Mozyr at the feline adoption center, he was demonstrating some amazing athleticism and intelligence in his play. He also gave me the impression he had good confidence in himself. That all seemed to change when we got him home. His preferred spot for a long while was as far under our bed as he could get, up against the wall. Meanwhile, Pequenita, who is half his size, proved to be as bold as he was shy.
For all I know, she contributed to his apparent loss of confidence. There was a brief spell when she seemed to take control of him, banishing him from the bedroom altogether. At the same time, he would bully her off the food, so it seemed like there was an exchange of the dominance roles going on.
He was skittish about receiving affection, and resisted being picked up. He behaved very shy around visiting family and friends. I found myself referring to him as being a chicken, and had begun to think he was just going to be a distant cat that tolerates people as a necessary evil in order to get fed morning and night and have his litter box cleaned.
After a long period of these behavior patterns, he surprised me with a change, suddenly deciding to show up in the bathroom during my evening routines. He would often jump up beside the sink to check out what I was up to, and several times he even laid down right in the sink I was trying to use. He seemed to be indicating that I was his choice for a buddy, but it stayed entirely on his terms. If I tried to pick him up, or give him attention at a time of my choosing, I got rebuffed.
That all went away these last few months, when he seemed to get out of sorts around the time we had company, and then throughout a couple of his recent illnesses. He gave us a scare last Wednesday, when he appeared to be really sick. A quick online search turned up several instances where his symptoms were listed as having potential to be serious, but also could be something simple that a cat can get over in a day. We are lucky that it appears to have been the latter.
We made it very clear that we were trying to help him, and he seemed to respond overnight. He continues to seem better everyday and not only is more like his old self, he is that and beyond. He is a changed cat, as if this illness did something to him. I’ve never had him sit in my lap before.
Yesterday, as I was reading on our couch (and Delilah was outside in her kennel), Mozyr showed up –that in itself being a rare occurrence lately– and proceeded to lay on the book in my lap –an unprecedented occurrence! These last two days, he has met my gestures of attention with greater acceptance than he has ever shown before. I pulled the book out from under him and continued to read. He laid in my lap so long that I decided I should get a picture.
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Never assume your pets won’t change their behavior toward you, especially if you base that assumption simply on how they have behaved with you for the year prior.
Change happens.
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Cat Like
During a visit by our friend, Jane, over the weekend, she got a quick glimpse of Mozyr and asked us if he was a Russian Blue. I didn’t know anything about Russian Blue as a breed, so couldn’t say, one way or the other. It seems to me that he has an awful lot of hints of the classic tabby pattern, and is more likely just a domestic shorthair, but he does match a lot of the descriptions of the Russian Blue.
He is again showing signs of becoming increasingly bonded with me, after that brief recent spell when he had gotten out of sorts and didn’t appear to feel well. He’s behaving more like his old self now, but still is not warming up to the dog at all. He is shy around strangers and appears to have the double coat and green eyes. I think he has big feet, but I didn’t notice whether that fits a trait of any particular breed.
He has been sleeping on top of me at night, and in this photo, is lounging on me as I was reading on our bed.
Both cats are quick to approach me when I lay down on our bed. I often work on my laptop there, and that is a time when Pequenita likes to perch herself between me and the screen, totally blocking my view. It’s as if she is sending me a message that she would prefer to have my undivided attention.
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The is the view I usually end up with when I am trying to type.
Their behaviors are so cat-like sometimes. I guess that is why we like them.
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Rescue Effort
It is just a little cold here this morning. Minus 21°F on the thermometer, don’t know what the wind chill is. It actually looks pretty calm outside, compared to yesterday afternoon when we were experiencing some intense gusts and a heavy, steady wind. It created frequent mini-tornadoes of snow.
We stayed up later than usual last night to take in the Grammy Awards broadcast. For some reason, Delilah decided to wake us up earlier than usual. Nothing like a bad night’s sleep to make you feel less than your best self in the morning. On top of that, I spent the afternoon clearing snow –which felt like a bit of a doomed task with the wind beginning to blow and fill in everything I had just plowed– and once again I got the ATV stuck, which required extra shoveling effort to dig out, so most of the muscles and joints of my body are in ‘complain mode.’
Growing old is not for sissies. If it’s this tough for me now, what’s it going to be like when I get old?
At one point yesterday, when we were lounging around the warmth of the fireplace before I ventured outside to work, from my perch on the couch I spotted Delilah fix her gaze on some prize up the spiral staircase. It must be a cat, I thought, and off she went, seeking closer inspection. She seems to desperately want to make contact, probably as much as the cats would fervently prefer to have her not. As she headed up, I tried alerting Cyndie, who had disappeared into the basement in search of a cookbook, and I pondered aloud whether it was Pequenita or Mozyr up in the loft.
As the scrambling and hissing commenced up there, I spotted Pequenita emerge from the safe zone of our bedroom and start up the stairs. That meant it was Mozyr who Delilah was engaged with and had cornered up there.
Mozyr has been behaving more and more like his old self recently. On days last week when I was working, and Delilah would be out in the kennel, both cats were taking advantage of the dog’s absence when I got home, wandering around the house and snitching some dog food from her bowl. Mozyr has become our bathroom pal again, hopping up by the sink, and sitting on the edge of the bathtub when I shower. I take it as a good sign that he chose to venture out from the confines of the bedroom and climb the stairs to the loft when Delilah was around. It gave him a chance to act out toward her and express how he feels about having a dog sibling forced upon his world.
When the commotion settled down and we were able to bring Delilah back down the stairs, it occurred to me that Pequenita’s behavior could be interpreted as coming to Mozyr’s rescue. When she heard the confrontation, she came running and put herself in harms way by diverting Delilah’s attention, smartly doing so with a convenient escape route back to safety. In fact, that helped our effort to convince Delilah to leave Mozyr alone and come back down with us, as Pequenita sprinted her way down and to the other side of the gate.
The brave cat to the rescue, once again, and Moz seems no worse for the wear.
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Bravest Cat
It seems as though a pattern is being revealed to us where we start talking about reaching the limits of our patience with trying to make progress normalizing relations between our cats and dog, and then they suddenly make big gains toward the goal. In the last few days, Delilah and Pequenita have been working diligently to practice co-existing peacefully.
While Mozyr has lagged behind in the bedroom, the two females have been spending a lot of time fraternizing out in the main room. We are leaving a gate up, blocking the hallway to our bedroom now, and Delilah often waits by that gate for Pequenita to venture out. That little cat is being the brave one and stepping out in plain view, even as the dog winds up with excitement over the mere sight of her.
Occasionally, Delilah is able to play it cool long enough that it appears we’ve reach a new drama-free mutual acceptance between them. It offers us rewarding glimpses of what it might possibly be like someday. Pequenita will walk right under Delilah and stroll about calmly and slowly, while Delilah peers down at her with a look of surprised disbelief.
It is almost too funny to watch Delilah struggle to control herself, and eventually her wagging tail gets so much momentum that it swings the front of her body into action, springing back and forth in attempt to get the cat to play. It looks as though, if she thought she could get away with it, Delilah would snatch the little kitty up like a chew toy and run around squeaking her.
When the energy gets to be too much, Pequenita pins her ears back, turns sideways, and in no uncertain terms hisses a powerful message that backs Delilah off. The cat also practices a mean swing that has already taught Delilah to be quick to back away when she is bouncing around in hopes of some play.
When it gets too overwhelming for Pequenita, she just sprints back behind the gate for a while. After the dog has calmed down again, ‘Nita will return and try the exercise another time. We are surprised at how quickly she has been returning. It is often enough that it seems evident that it is an intentional experiment toward achieving normalization.
We couldn’t ask for anything more from Pequenita. She is truly one cool, brave cat.
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Where’s Mozyr?
With the horses and our dog, Delilah, getting the majority of attention since they all arrived, we have admittedly neglected the cats to varying degrees. Of course, one of the reasons they haven’t been getting the same amount of attention is that they so rarely demand it.
Can I just mention here what a nuisance Delilah can be with her penchant for scouring the firewood pile next to the fireplace to claw out reasonable sized scraps of bark which she then carries to any and all floor spaces accessible to her, to crunch into shreds, leaving wood shrapnel strewn everywhere? Yes, I can, and I just did.
You’d think she wasn’t getting enough fiber in her diet, but after all the horse manure, frozen dead moles, paper trash, and stuffed toys she mouths and often times shreds, I am pretty sure her chewing addictions aren’t vitamin or mineral deficiency related.
As we have slowly advanced the steps toward normalizing relations between the dog and cats in our house, Delilah has gained space to roam freely. We prohibit access to our bedroom and the basement for now, allowing the cats a few zones of protection from canine harassment. For the most part, the cats remain free to move about as they please. Their usual choice is to stay holed up in our bedroom, which has always been their perceived safe zone.
From the start, little Pequenita has been the bravest about testing boundaries with Delilah. Poor Mozyr has always behaved like a literal little scaredy-cat. He will often disappear from sight, hiding as far under our bed as he can get.
Saturday night we spotted that the rarely used (and only recently rediscovered) cat beds that Cyndie had placed on the floor in our bedroom when company arrived, had been peed on. In no mood to deal with it, I tossed them outside to freeze. Then I spotted Mozyr on the top level of their cat tree, perched in a position that looked like he was trying to pee. Poor guy was having a problem.
It being the weekend of historic cold temperatures, a visit to the vet was the last thing we wanted, but if he was having urinary trouble, and if we had been missing signals up to this point, it seemed important to have him seen. In the morning, Cyndie searched for an emergency vet that would be open and Mozyr VERY reluctantly made it into a carrier for the trip.
The veterinarian said cats will tend to stop using the litter box if they associate it with pain or difficulty they have with peeing. I had another thought… when we are home alone, we usually use our bathroom without closing the door, and Mozyr almost always makes a trip in to seek attention and get a drink from a water bowl on the floor in there. For the two weeks we had guests, the bathroom door was always shut when in use, and the timid little scaredy-cat was probably lost as to what to do.
It could be that he was not drinking as much water, or was just too scared or uncomfortable to go down and use the litter box. The vet re-hydrated him with IV fluids and we are enticing him to drink more with some tuna water. He seems a bit more like his old self already.
Yesterday, Pequenita moved us ever closer to ultimate dog/cat normalization with a relentless series of forays into unprotected territory, walking right underneath Delilah a couple of times, while ‘Lilah fought the urge to over-react. Our beautiful canine did everything she could to be good, but lost it a few times, chasing ‘Nita back to the gate. We think they both did a heroic job of getting better used to being in proximity with each other.
Mozyr did his best to not run under the bed every time he heard ‘Lilah’s tags jingle, but he hardly set foot out of the bedroom.
Slow progress, but progress in the right direction. Our hopes for an ultimately happy ending are renewed. I think Pequenita will deserve the majority of credit. If Mozyr overcomes his fears, that will deserve a worthy celebration.
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Delightful Delilah
I had a very fine day yesterday with Delilah that started a little surprisingly. Cyndie had gotten up early to let Delilah out, and then was occupied with some activity, while I remained in bed trying to fall back to sleep. I was jolted alert by a commotion in the dark at the foot of the bed. Usually it is the sound of the cats doing battle, but that rarely lasts very long, and this sound wasn’t stopping.
My intuition sensed Delilah was in the room, but the familiar clanking sound of the tags on her collar was missing. Then it occurred to me that the reason she would be able to appear in our bedroom in the first place would be, if she got loose from her leash, which would be logical if she had slipped out of her collar altogether. I jumped out of bed in the dark, wearing my usual sleepwear –which doesn’t happen to involve pajamas– and blindly stepped into the middle of the hissing fracas, feeling a bit ill at ease.
By this time, Cyndie was aware something was amiss and had come running. She toggled the light switch and revealed the standoff between the girls. Pequenita will stand her ground, but Mozyr zooms under the bed at the slightest threat. Calm was restored, but my thoughts of falling back to sleep were dashed.
After breakfast, I took Delilah outside to see if I could chuck a ball someplace where she would have to hunt to find it. It is thrilling to watch her dial in the location, as she passes back and forth across the path the ball took. One of my tosses ended up deflecting off a tree, changing trajectory from what Delilah was anticipating. I thought I saw where it landed and waited for her to narrow it down to that spot. I could tell it was a hard one, because she was obviously having difficulty homing in on it.
She would pop out of the woods, and then circle back in to hunt some more. One time, when she came out and headed all the way back toward me, I figured she was giving up. Then I spotted the ball in her mouth. I didn’t believe it, because she hadn’t made it back to the spot I had been watching. I thought she must have found some other ball from an earlier time. I hiked in and checked out the spot I had been eyeing. Nothing there!
Her nose is definitely better than my eyesight.
The morning altercation with Pequenita must have stirred something in the cat, as she came out three different times throughout the day to approach Delilah and make contact. It is not entirely unprecedented that she do that, but it doesn’t happen every day. Three times in one day is of noteworthy significance. When Delilah remains calm in the presence of the cat(s), she gets a treat.
On the third occasion, when Cyndie had arrived home, they were almost nose to nose, gobbling up the treats she was putting down. It was very rewarding to see Delilah maintain her composure for all three of the visits from Pequenita.
Progress has been very slow in coming, but it appears our patience is finally being rewarded. I don’t know about the cats, but I am truly looking forward to the day when we don’t have to confine Delilah to a leash when she comes inside the house.
Critter Controllers
Back in October of last year, when we arrived as new owners of this property and home, we immediately discovered that mice and moles appeared to be all too comfortable here. The mice inspired our energies toward getting a couple of cats as house mates. Mozyr was to be our big mouser, based on his incredibly intelligent and athletic showing-off performance during our visit to the feline rescue shelter.
Pequenita is just a wee little thing, but proved to be quite the go-getter and primary instigator for affection and initiator of conflict.
Neither one of them has left a gift carcass for us, during the time since we brought them home, but we have not seen any evidence of a mouse indoors during that period, either.
They are doing something right for us.
Last fall, the grounds here had an unnerving amount of dirt mounds and trail scars to indicate we had quite an infestation of moles and/or gophers. There are oodles of suggested ways to trap them, poison them, or chase them off. One brilliant method involves eliminating the insects and grub worms under the lawn that the varmints find so appealing. I’m just not up for all of that.
We got a dog.
Up to this point of the summer, we haven’t been seeing any new mounds of dirt, but something is slowly, but surely, tunneling under the grass, leaving a maze of scars in the lawn. I have no idea if Delilah will turn out to be the solution for driving off the moles, but last night, she displayed a fair amount of interest in chasing a scent she picked up when I directed her attention to one of the soft spots trailing across the turf.
Helping Hand
It’s hand specialist visit day! Wish me luck for a definitive diagnosis, and hopefully, a plan toward fixing whatever is going wrong in there.
I think my brace has been helping in the last few days. I’ve been wearing it selectively, and when it is not on, trying to do normal activity with that hand, as much as possible. I’m noticing just enough improvement that I worry it won’t present well for diagnosis this morning. I may have found a way to self-treat this recent flare-up, but I still am hoping to learn why the thumb joint has been a chronic nuisance for the two years prior, especially if it is determined not to be the arthritis that I assumed it to be.
When you are feeling kind of punky because you have an “owie” hand that makes it hard to do pretty much everything that you can think of to do, you just might find yourself crashed out on a bed for a sulking nap. Either that, or the napping cat just looked so irresistible that I succumbed to joining him. Cyndie found the visual irresistible, and grabbed my camera.
That’s about as close as we can get to Mozyr, before he takes his leave. There’s no snuggling with that cat, yet.
Pequenita is another story. There’s no not snuggling with her. She walks right up on top of us, steps between our face and anything we happen to be doing, and demands hands, pushing her nose under our fingers, while kneading our chest.
She will probably be as happy as me to have my left hand be freed from pain, and available for full strength use again.
Relative Something 