Feline Burglar Alarm (Patent Pending)

I'm cool with being old enough to be my sons’ grandmother, but not so much with being old enough for my friends’ babies to be having babies. Talking about baby showers got me remembering mine.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life.

On a Saturday morning that September I was pregnant with Agent 96, we had planned a morning of apple picking with some friends. Neatnik Tom was more annoying than usual, making sure the house was picked up, the dishes done, and the rugs vacuumed All before 9am. Like I'm supposed to know all our knickknacks had to face forward before we leave to pick apples. I had one particular towel that I used in the downstairs bathroom (aka the downstairs bathroom towel, sheesh) and I was peeved that, with that towel in the laundry he made me, made me, put a random towel in the bathroom.

“The yellow towel? Are you effing kidding me? No, I don’t need to put the yellow towel in the bathroom. I’ll put the right one back when the laundry’s done. Jerkwad.” Forgive me. I had hormones. And a big honking watermelon pressing on my bladder.

“Humor me, Linda. I just want a towel in the bathroom, okay?”  Harumphing loudly enough that I was sure he'd know I was the better person, I hung up the towel, and we headed for the door. Leaving the house, I gathered up C and tossed him inside then closed the door behind me, checking, as always, that it had latched.

I’m sure I bellyached during the drive to the orchard about the foolishness of putting the yellow towel in the downstairs bathroom. I’m quite sure I complained to our apple picking companions, Eric and Barbara, about how unreasonable Tom had been over the great towel debacle. But I enjoyed the apple picking, and the fresh air, and the company of our friends. I can only assume they did not equally enjoy the company of my insufferable self.

I knew something was wrong when we returned and I saw C in the front yard waiting for us.

“What’s C doing out, Tom? I’m sure I left him inside.”

“I must have gone back in for something and let him out by mistake”, was Tom’s explanation.

Confused, I knew that Tom had been waiting for me in the car. That was the usual scenario; I invariably forget something, and never make it out the door on the first attempt. The only reasonable explanation for C's presence in the front yard was that the house had been broken into, and the burglars were unaware C had escaped. Was he trying to tell us something? (Like, “There’s a burglar in our house. Maybe two. Meow. And is there any food out here?”)

“No, Tom, really; C shouldn’t be outside. Something’s wrong.” 

Adding to my overall pissedness at Tom was that he was making me, his beloved and by now seventy-three-weeks-pregnant wife, go in first. I touched the doorlatch. My heart stopped,  my fears of an intruder confirmed. We have one of those old-style front doors with the button on the edge that locks and unlocks the mechanism, and we always have the button set so that the door won’t unlatch from the outside. You have to use the key to open it, and the door locks automatically when you close it. The door was unlatched. Clearly someone unfamiliar with our doorlatch protocols had been messing with the door. All signs pointed to a burglar. 

Holy hot cross buns. There’s a band of armed robbers in my house, and you’re making me walk in first? Who are you? And what have you done with Tom? Was what I was thinking. 

What I said was, “You want me to open the g-d front door? Okay, then, I’ll open the g-d front door and then I’ll say I effing told you so.” Or words to that effect.

So I open the door, take a step inside, and …

I just realized I still wear this t-shirt

Tom and Agent 96, Fall 1997

By the following year I had recovered from the trauma, and we went apple picking again. I was pregnant. Again. But the day didn't involve a single curse word.

C Stands for Cool, Calm and Collected

This is the first time I've embedded a video, so let's see if it works.

It was early morning one school day, and I was pouring juice or milk (okay, soda) for David for breakfast, to drink with his eggs or cereal (okay, cookies) when I dropped the glass, shattering it on the ceramic tile kitchen floor, inches from C. He didn't move from his favorite spot next to the heating vent, but I noticed a lot of tiny shards of glass in his fur. So what was I supposed to do?

I got out the vacuum, and the rest is now, officially, history.

Serendipity

Meet the newest Gentile, Momo. When one cat crosses the Rainbow Bridge on a Thursday, and the following Monday you heed a call about a kitten that’s about to be returned to the shelter because the new owner is hopelessly allergic, how can you call it anything but serendipity? How could we just up and adopt a new kitten so quickly? Let me tell you, it was easy. Mostly white with grayish markings at the top of her head, rump and tail, she is a dirty white snowball of boundless energy, enthusiastically trying to befriend her feline housemates, but sadly rebuffed at every turn. Not so with the humans. She takes turns sleeping with all of us: a few hours with 98, then on to 96’s room, settling in with me by the time I turn out the lights. I try to keep her away from the other cats' favorite spots, but she has taken a liking to Pixel’s bed by the window and Ada’s towel on the couch. Heaven help her the first time she jumps up into the kitchen box window, the one with the shelf I specifically cleared off so the cats could view the backyard unimpeded by pottery and spices. Pix will go ballistic.

Ada, as expected, hisses at every encounter. Scruffy is more curious than the others, tentatively sniffing, and even allowing Momo to share the dinner plate with him. Pixel runs, terrified by the tornado-vortex-like nature of Momo’s friendly advances, but even he is slowly coming around. I walked into my bedroom today and they were both on the bed. In opposite corners, they could not have been further from each other and still both have been been on the bed, but there they were, on the bed “together”.

Everything's a toy when you're a kitten: anything tied to a doorknob, anything that makes noise ... any bit of paper or a hairband or a dust bunny or an ant on the floor is there for the entertainment - or nutrition - or friendship - of our little Momo. We thought about renaming her after a comet, but Momo suits her, so a momo she is, and a momo she shall stay. 

I hope Momo's first human companion is feeling better, and that her allergies are subsiding. And I hope she knows how much we already love her little peach.

RIP, C

If I’m in your Facebook newsfeed, you already know that we lost C recently. He’d been on the decline for many months, and while I didn’t want him to suffer (he didn’t), I mostly just didn’t want C to die before Tom did. They were great friends, Tom and C, and I didn’t want Tom to endure that loss. So we did what we could and we did what we had to: we brought C to the vet when he had the symptoms of his recurrent UTI (he always had a UTI, and you’re welcome for me not explaining in excruciating detail why he was so prone to them) … We brought him to the vet when we noticed maggots falling out of a small wound on his backside … We brought him most recently for an overgrown claw. Since he was slowing down, he simply wasn’t wearing down his claws, and it had grown full circle, impaling itself in the pad below it. It didn’t seem to cause any pain, and we wouldn’t even have realized anything was wrong except that David was playing with him on the bed and noticed it. Not even so much as a limp.

That vet appointment fixed the claw, but uncovered several other troubles: congestive heart failure and a pancreatic mass, for starters. We opted not to treat the mass, put him on Plavix ($50 for 7 pills, and that’s with the AAA discount –  and no, C didn't have health insurance) and some other heart meds and antibiotics, and commenced with another round of “hurry up and wait”. Dr. Zanotti didn’t have to say it when we had our scheduled follow up visit: I knew we were looking at days, maybe weeks; certainly not months. We would keep C’s days as pleasant as possible, and that meant a lot of American cheese and chicken scraps. Just a few hours after that appointment we noticed he was unable to walk, and brought him back to the vet. He had thrown a clot, not unexpectedly, and his suffering would soon begin. So while the decision was hard to make, we really had no choice. C had lived a long and happy life. He had eaten his share of treats, pee’d his way into the cellar floor hall of fame, and barfed with the best of them. He’ll be cremated and added to my little “collection”. And when the time is right, and the ground is dry, and the air is warm, we’ll take Tom’s ashes, and C’s, and Mr. Gibb’s, and Yeti’s, and Neko's, and those good friends will share a very pretty spot high in the Fells behind the house, watching the planes and stalking the birds.

We owe a sincere thanks to Stephen Zanotti, VMD,  and all the vets, techs, medical and support staff at Winchester Veterinary Group for everything they’ve done over the years to help us care for the pets we so dearly love, as well as all the animals that are lucky enough to cross their threshold.

To Catch a Bird ... or a Snake ... or a Vole ... Doesn't Matter, Really: Where's the Food?

C came home recently from a nearly weeklong hospital stay, and he's not doing very well. With seventeen years under his belt (Tom and I met when C and Ada were about a year old) I have taken a stroll down memory lane with him this week. What a lovely stroll it was.

I learned early in my relationship with Tom that the way to Tom's heart was through C's stomach. At nearly 20 pounds when I met him, C rarely met a treat he didn't like. On my way to Tom's I'd stop at the deli counter at the Purity Supreme and buy C one slice from the cold cuts section ... bologna one day, roast beef the next. The deli guy knew it was for my new boyfriend's cat, and never begrudged me his time, even though we both knew it was his smallest sale of the day. C, whom we considered a dog trapped in a cat's body, greeted me with enthusiam. Evil grin ... my plan is working! The only time he turned up his nose at my Friday night special was the one time I brought him a single jumbo shrimp. He wouldn't have anything to do with it. Neither would Ada, for that matter, or Mr. Gibbs. Tom had trained his minions well: Don't. Eat. The Fish.

C also liked to supervise household projects. Tom installed the box windows in the sunroom, and they were - are - lovely. Don't look too closely at the window seat, however, lest you notice the pawprints left in the wet polyurethane. They're still there, still visible, and not going anywhere anytime soon. Also in the house repair department was the time that C was so interested in house trim painting (we had a black-and-white cat for a while after that). Not satisfied with climbing the ladder to join Tom, he proceeded to climb up and over Tom on the ladder, positioning himself in the gutter - where he didn't quite fit but thought he had found the best seat in the house. It took an hour to get him down.

Even on his best days now, he never brings home a snake anymore: Ada was into chipmunk and bird inventory control, but C could never resist a garter snake; and I can't say I miss that particular aspect of sharing a house with a pet, or two, or six, but I hope that C continues to enjoy his daily constitutional, a few minutes of sunshine and fresh air, for a long time to come. Then, at the end of the day, that he'll climb the stairs to the second floor, and then climb the stairs up into the bed, so his still-bellowing purr can keep me awake. Enough with the peeing on the cellar floor, though, 'kay?

Me, 2 Boys, 4 Cats, 1 Turtle, 1 Frog, No Dogs Yet

Geoffrey was a wee bit miffed that I didn’t mention his turtle in the title of my new blog, so this entry is dedicated to King Arthur, who joined our family just before Christmas. Geoff knew he wanted a turtle, so we went to Petsmart to have a look, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the one he wanted was $109, and an appropriately-sized terrarium was another $119. I mentioned this to my friend Lynn, who suggested I look on Craigslist.


I had never been on Craigslist before, but I thought I’d give it a try. I looked in the Boston listings for “box turtle” … maybe even plain old “turtle” since I don’t think we had it narrowed down by species at that point. Sure enough, up pops ONE listing: a box turtle and container, with food and water dish, for $25 in Hamilton, MA. So I contacted the person who placed the ad, and after two or three emails back-and-forth we worked out that I would come to her house, since it was a rather cold December day and I didn’t want to expose the turtle to any more outside air than was necessary … but I made sure to mention that I’d have 3 teenage boys with me. (Might this be some murderous whackjob, trying to lure his next victim with the irresistible promise of a turtle and terrarium for $25? – remember, I was under a bit of stress at the time.) I still don’t quite get why it didn’t occur to her that we might have been some murderous whackjob gang, picking our prey based on their “for sale” ads on Craigslist. But it all worked out in the end, happily.

We gathered up a towel and small container so Geoff could hold the turtle in his lap, and piled into the car with Geoff’s friend John, and headed up to our rendezvous point. The seller, Sarah, was an architect whose grown kids were no longer interested in Lula the box turtle, and was thrilled that Lula would be going to a home with kids who would pay her the attention she deserved. And she wasn’t the least little bit offended when we changed Lula's name to King Arthur, rather arbitrarily changing his gender in the process. Sarah was making seasoned olives as Christmas gifts that day, and her kitchen smelled fantastic. She even sent the recipe along, so act surprised if you get lemony olives for Christmas next year.

Then we piled back into the car for the ride home, and it wasn’t until we got to our driveway that we realized that Geoff went the entire ride home with his seatbelt unbuckled.

So we are, officially: me, two boys, four cats, a turtle, a frog, and no dogs yet. And I haven’t actually considered what I’ll do if we ever find that loyal, smart, friendly dog who doesn’t smell when he’s wet and doesn’t ever poop. Will I have to change the name of the blog then?