mariness

My family found my first cat through a want ad, when we were looking for a cat who could help with the mouse problem. That cat was more than successful, and always superior to the family she graciously agreed to share living space with. My second cat was a rescue from the streets of Miami; I'd hit the point where I wanted the cat, and I'd asked friends to keep an ear out for any cats in need of a home, and there was Tasha in all of her not-exactly-friendly neuroticism, convinced, post joining me, that I was the only worthwhile human being on earth. The Grey One was another kitten found by friends, that I got after Tasha died, leaving the Little One distraught.

The Little One was different.

He found me.

He was a tiny ball of mud that barely looked like a kitten when he found me. I washed him and considered what to do with him - I already had Tasha who did not regard other living creatures with favor and certainly was not interested in sharing her human with another cat. And yet. He was so incredibly adorable and loud and adorable - and he'd followed ME. He'd picked me. I decided that I couldn't give him up.

Even if it meant no peace in the household for a couple of years.

It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

I gave him a nicely evil name, Asmodean, since he'd wormed his way into the household, and an internet pseudonym, the Little One, since he was a very small kitten. Right from the beginning, he was more of a dog than a cat - he followed me around like a puppy, played fetch, and was incredibly friendly - some critics said overly friendly - to anyone who entered. He had an underappreciated habit of just sitting on people when not headbutting them.

He also loved to play, and jump, and leap - I've never seen another cat make some of the jumps that he did, which had the tendency to startle visitors and board games. And one - only one - bad habit; he was convinced, despite all protests to the contrary, that computer and laptop keyboards were designed to be cat beds. As I explained once, years back, one of my pet peeves as a writer was how much time I had to spend removing him from the keyboard. He added a good ten pages of random letters and symbols to my Tor.com post on Toy Story just last week.

His first bad moment came when Tasha died. She may have hated him, but he loved her, and also, I realized, he'd never been alone. He did not like being alone at all. So I acquired the Grey One and told him that she was his kitten. They took me literally; I've sometimes been allowed to pet the Grey One, but she was always his cat, not mine.

When I got sick, he was the best thing ever.

He knew something was wrong when I first moved up here, and got quiet and even friendlier, if possible - I think he was afraid that I would leave him behind. Despite his usual vocal objections to car rides, he was completely silent on the way up. The moment we let him out of his carrier, he went for me, and stayed beside me. He didn't quite have the Grey One's unusual gift for knowing exactly when my blood pressure dropped, but he did know that he could get on top of me, and I could scratch his chin, and that was important knowledge. He rarely left me alone for an instant, and I needed that.

I was up in Columbus when we moved to this house According to my brother, he freaked out and headed straight for a cabinet as everything was moved out of the apartment. He was the last thing to leave, primarily because he didn't want to leave the cabinet - I think because he was afraid he would never see me again. When I came to the house a few days later, he went NUTS and clung to me for the next several days.

And that was our interaction for the next several years. He slept with me, watched TV with me, leaned against me or slept on me or slept near me when I wrote or read, listened to every telephone conversation. He sat at the window, watching me leave on the trike or in someone else's car, waiting for me to return.

He did start to slow down, just a little. He stopped leaping to the top of the bookshelves - something he used to be able to do from the floor, and could still do from the TV stand, and did a few times after we arrived here. As he started having a few problems jumping to the my bed, which is a bit high - he could make it, but he kinda had to claw the arrival - I got him a set of little kitty stairs, which he liked. He could still jump on the couch, and did that without a problem. In the past year or so, he tended to stay on my bed a little bit more. But every time I thought, ok, he's slowing down, he'd surprise me by jumping to the window, or dashing through the hallway, or indulging in his loud, raspy, purrs. When he made it to the age of 17 this fall, I thought that I was going to be lucky enough to have him for a few more years.

Yesterday morning, he was at the windowsill, watching the cardinals. Late yesterday afternoon, his back legs visibly gave out. He struggled for a bit. An hour or so later, he was back to walking, and paced the hallway, but he seemed a bit confused and disoriented. He stared at the litter box for a bit, and then - very unusually - refused it (though he used the easily cleaned tile floor.) Then he seemed better and came back to the bedroom. I brought him some tuna fish, and it took him a moment to realize what it was, and eat it. He wandered a bit more, but kept stopping and staring at corners, or looking confused.

I probably should have taken him to the vet right then, but....I don't drive, and we don't have a 24 hour vet that I can reach via mobility scooter or trike. He seemed to recover a bit in the evening; I had him on my lap as we watched Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. But he was also incredibly quiet. Much later, I found him in between the TV stand and the wall, head on the speaker, the other cat watching him. I picked him up and he flopped against my chest immediately.

I don't think either one of us slept well - I know I didn't. At about 4 am, he started seizing. He got better after I held him again. I managed a bit more sleep. By the time I woke, he was seizing again.

He was in bad shape when we reached the vet.

We didn't even have time to put him to sleep. He died while I was slowly rocking him, wrapped in a towel, back and forth, wrapped in a towel. I'm not sure he even knew I was there, but I hope he did.

He was the hands down best cat I've ever had, more than a cat, a friend.

The Grey One is sleeping curled up in the sun, nearby. She's been watching me off and on since I got back. I think she thinks I can still bring him home.

I want to fill this with funny memories, but my heart is too full right now.

Bye, little cat. You will be so, so missed.

Understand this, before you read any further: my brother often says very very mean things about the two cats who have been gracious enough to agree to live with us, mere humans. One has even condescended to climb into my lap right now and curl up, watching me type, just to offer his comfort and love. (I myself am certain this has nothing to do with me wearing velvet or the plunging temperatures.) That same cat happily follows my brother around squeaking and squeaking not, as suspicious minds might think, because my brother might be a source of chicken or tuna, but to make sure my brother never has to feel lonely in the kitchen. And yet, my brother has accused them of doing nothing but sleep around and has even - I shudder to tell you this, but it is the absolute truth, and I have witnesses - said they are lazy and useless. Just because the Grey One was demonstrating how efficiently she naps to make sure that she has the energy to position herself into the right napping position later. I call this very clever. And sometimes he has - I shudder to tell you this as well - refused to go over to a cat and scratch the cat or cuddle the cat even when the cat is in CLEAR AND OBVIOUS NEED of such affection. And each Christmas I get a wrapped can of tuna fish that's labelled, in his writing, "from the cats" and various gag gifts for the cats.

So it was with this knowledge that I ripped off the Peanuts Christmas wrapping paper today to see a gift called the PetPetter, a machine that pets your pets so that you, and I quote the box, can "Never touch your pets again!" It is, the box assured me, designed with both pets and human immune systems in mind.

I was indignant. "THIS IS THE MEANEST GIFT EVER! WHO WOULD EVEN THINK OF SOMETHING LIKE THIS?"

fbhjr had another objection: "Rechargable for hotel use?" (That was also on the box.) "Why exactly would you be taking your pets to a hotel if you don't want to pet them?"

My brother fell over laughing.

It's his sense of humor, and he'd already given me a real gift - a coffee grinder. So, although I couldn't exactly say "Thank you" because it was mean, I did keep reading the box. "DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS GUY SAYS? 'All pets have one thing in common: they are dirty disease-carrying friends.'"

"Absolute truth."

"MEAN!"

"Yes, cats are filthy," said my father, unhelpfully.

"It'll be useful when you're gone for three weeks," someone said.

"That's true," I said, glaring. "Because SOMEONE DOESN'T HUG THE CATS WHEN I'M GONE. WAIT! WHAT IS THIS? 'SHOW YOUR LOVE FROM A DISTANCE WITH THESE OTHER GREAT PET PRODUCTS?' You don't deserve to live with cats!"

The Christmas peace was almost ruined. To restore the calm, my brother then handed my mother a gift in that Peanuts Christmas wrapping paper - a video game that keeps track of the household chores you do. Similar, I thought, to a game that tithenai and others have been chatting about over on Twitter - some sort of quest game that unlocks things the more you walk or something like that. Because she is nice my mother said "Thank you," and put the box aside saying she would open it later. I followed her example, thinking kindly thoughts of Goodwill figuring someone might want to give someone else a gag gift like this until my brother handed me another box.

This one was worse: a Petsweep, or an "Animal-Powered Debris Removal System": little pads that can be put on the feet of cats so they can sweep the floors as they walk. "THIS IS EVEN WORSE. WHO IS THIS GUY?"

"This will make the cats useful," my brother said cheerfully, handing a very large gift over to my father. Which turned out to contain a box, which turned out to contain another wrapped present, which turned out to contain a box, which turned out to....seven boxes later, contain a silver Roman coin featuring the head of Julius Caesar, c. 46 BC, in a very tightly sealed container. The entire thing was so small malterre was terrified of losing it, though we all passed it around carefully enough.

And then a real gift from my brother for the cats: a little cat bed. (The Little One is now 15, and slowing down, and we have wood laminate floors, so this is good. I'm also going to get a step for the bed in a few more months; he can still jump up, but I can see him looking for alternative routes to the couch, and my bed is pretty high.) So all was mostly forgiven.

My original plan was to follow this with Settlers of Catan, but I'd been getting increasingly dizzy, and food right after this made things worse, so I went back to my room and crashed for a few hours while the rest of them hung out and chatted. That is, my parents and fbhjr and malterre chatted; my brother went back to his usual quiet mode. And then I joined them for another hour before the four of them took off, leaving me with my brother.

"You know," he said. "You can't always trust the box."

In our family, unless the gifts come from my father, who has the store wrap them, this is true, since my mother has a notorious habit of reusing all of the boxes used for last year's Christmas gifts whether or not the box has anything to do with what's inside. My brother has occasionally followed her example - using the box that the squirrel baffle came in to wrap my birthday present just yesterday, for example.

The room was still spinning a bit. "What?"

"I think you should probably open the box." He paused. "Mom probably should too."

I'd already put the PetSweep back in my room. I looked at the PetPetter suspiciously. I opened the box.

As most alert readers have undoubtedly already guessed, it contained, not a PetPetter, but a note on the box flap visible only once the box is open: "Don't get too excited, your real gift is inside." True: a solar charger for mobile devices.

(The other box - the PetSweep - contained Darth Vader coffee beans - to go with the coffee grinder.)

My brother was almost doubled over. "Five people! Five people fell for it!"

"Because YOU'RE MEAN TO THE CATS."

"The one box had a DOG WEARING SHOVELS. I thought for SURE you'd guess it THEN, but no!"

"Because it was a clearly MEAN GIFT! I can't believe you didn't say anything UNTIL EVERYONE LEFT!"

"THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!"

(Amazon has it here, along with a few others. Also, Mom, if you are reading this, you should probably open your box.)

Quite a bit of drama around these parts this morning. A visit to the vet earlier this week resulted in the determination that the Grey One had to go in for kitty surgery early this morning. My initial plan had been to act Totally Normal and with that Fool Her into taking her usual morning nap and quickly grab her, wrap her in a towel and stuff her into her cat carrier, a method that had worked perfectly well earlier this week even if it had left me with slightly shattered eardrums.

Unfortunately I had forgotten that part of the plan today included removing all food by 10 pm (vet's orders). Neither cat approved of this since this also meant removing Midnight Snacks, and decided to express their disapproval by clawing at me. By 1 or 2 am I had more or less had it and kicked the cats out so I could sleep. When I woke up I was very groggy and thought to myself, wait, do I really want to chase a cat out from inside the bed? No, no I do not. So I did something that seemed sensible at the time -- I closed my bedroom door.

This, alas, combined with the removal of the food and the fact that I went to find coffee instead of bringing out food raised suspicions. When moments had passed, and the Grey One found that I was sitting in the living room with coffee, not bringing her food even though she was obviously dying, and that the doors to ALL THREE BEDROOMS were closed, she did the only sensible thing a cat can do under the circumstances:

She howled up a storm and then darted INTO the wall behind the bathtub.

If you have never tried to remove a cat from this sort of situation, my advice is, don't. She was completely out of reach -- and knew it -- making this a two person job that required removing part of another wall and a hose and a lot of stomping in the bathtub. We finally got her to run out only to have her hide behind the DVD player which was more drama, and arrived completely late at the vet's.

Seriously hoping all of this money and effort spent on making the poor cat completely miserable turns out to be worth it.

Meanwhile the Little One is freaking out. I told him that the other cat would be back soon, but apparently I am no longer trustworthy. I sense I shall be administering plenty of tuna in the near future.

As I may have mentioned, for Christmas the cats very kindly and thoughtfully gave me a three and half story cat tower, with scratching posts, for me to put together for them. (The "half" is a little half tunnel thing between the top and second stories that in the optimistic view of the designers can be used as a resting place for a small cat and a good place to dangle a tail from.) As I was informed, the cats had decided on this cat tower in the hopes that the top of the tower would tempt a certain small black and white cat away from from the top of the bookshelf in the living room, where he is not wanted on the grounds that when he descends from the top of the bookshelf, he lands either on the aquarium (whose cover was not exactly designed with cats in mind), the TV/TV stand, which now holds a considerably more expensive and lightweight TV that could be knocked over, or on a small grey cat who finds having a black and white cat fall on her a terrifying experience that justifies not using the litter box for a few hours. AUUUGH. Also their old little cat condo was getting quite scratched up and scruffy looking (they've had it for about ten years -- they don't get into it but they like to scratch the outside and the Grey One will sometimes sleep on the top curled up into a small ball. The cat tower would also give the Grey One new places to hide in, which if you are the Grey One is a decided advantage.

So, naturally, this morning I found the Grey One standing on top of the second story not hidden at all, and the Little One sleeping on top of the bookshelf.

I didn't take him down (although I am watching to keep him off the aquarium). I should, but he's 13, and I rather like this reminder that he's incredibly active for a 13 year old cat (far more active than the Grey One, who at 11 has decided that really, this is the time of life when cats should nap a lot, preferably in places where they can't be seen.) He still dashes around the house, still plays with his mice, and still seems to be under the impression that he's a kitten or a dog. I can take a little bookshelf excitement. And maybe he'll find the top part of the cat tower at some point.

First, from alert reader gargoylerose we see that the squirrels are, gasp, ARMORING UP. People! Do not increase their access to weapons technology!

Second, from alert reader wyldemusick, this explains the superiority of cats:

Contrary to the howls of protest currently emanating from the hallway, I am not a cruel person. (Well. Only occasionally.) I simply hold fast to the notions that:

1. Cats do not belong in kitchen cabinets. I understand that they (the cabinets) are small and dark and comfortable, and provide an excellent jumping stop to land on the stove, which in turn allows a four legged creature to make an elegant and graceful jump to the window sill. This, however, ignores the small fact that a) the humans of the household DO NOT WANT CATS ON THE STOVE, which we have explained at some length before this, and b) that cabinet is for the storage of household items, not cats.

2. Contrary to popular opinion, I have not actually caused the rain, although it is true that unlike you, I welcome it. (I'm hoping it revives the rose bush that burst out in glory in January then died in February just as the other rose bush that died in January decided that maybe life was worth living if in an unenthusiastic, scraggling sort of way.) I will also note that although it is true that the two squirrels who usually play on the front lawn and in the maple tree cannot currently be seen, a) this might not have anything to do with the rain, and might more come from b) knowing that you sit at the window and stare at them.

3. How do we know I'm not cruel? Because I very very badly need to go to the bathroom at the moment, and yet I'm not stirring, because your partner in furry crimes has flopped himself across my lap and chest in ecstasy, and I'm just not cruel enough to spoil this moment.

S, C and I are off for Gen Con tomorrow, which means my access to and time on the internet will be greatly limited for a week or so. So, some small things before I go, in case I don't get around to it tomorrow:

1. The usual Tor.com post should be up on Thursday, as I continue to read my way through the works of Edith Nesbit.

2. This got kinda lost in all of the LJ troubles of last week, but, Bull Spec #6, which features a little poem of mine, "Petals," is available for sale in print or pdf format. It's got lots of good stuff in it.

3. Bull Spec also has some good buzz about the upcoming issue of Fantastique Unfettered #3. (Link is to the Bull Spec review; for some reason Blogger is telling me that I am not allowed to access Fantastique Unfettered at the moment. The internet. It is such fun.) This issue features poems by lots of people, as well as short fiction from me and skogkatt AND an interview with Mike Allen (time_shark. I believe it's coming out at the end of the month, and I'll have more information about it then.

4. If you have any pity to spare, and I realize this week you might not, send it to a very sad little black and white cat, who saw me packing up the suitcase today. He put two of his toy mice in it, in a hopeful sort of way, and I had to break the bad news to him that the Indianapolis Convention Center is most unreasonable on the subject of cats, even over friendly ones. I'm just grateful that I found the mice before I left (although I'm sure he'll try to sneak one in again) and that I've mostly kept him out of the suitcase, but this is a very sad little cat right now, hiding under the bed, with even his companion in naps ignoring him. On a related note the Grey One is highly irritated that I dared – dared – enter the closet when she was using it for napping periods, which is just Not Ok, even though I have informed her that everyone in this house is out of the closet, including her, and in any case this house is filled with several excellent napping areas. This argument went nowhere.

The Little One is rarely this upset when I pack (then again, I rarely pack in advance, so I suspect he thought I was leaving today), but the last time I packed up this suitcase was World Fantasy Con, which was also the same time we moved, and he came into a new house without me.

So for the next few days I'll be flitting in and out of this, and spending time at my parents' condo when not there. (Spare a few thoughts for the cats who will be spending AN ETERNITY without anyone rubbing their bellies or scratching their chins. It's a tragedy. Well. In cat terms.) I'm guessing my internet access at the conference will be limited, and in any case, for this conference I'll just be taking along my iTouch, not my notebook computer. I'll try to keep up with things at night, but, no guarantees.

Not that I'll be quite deserting you. In theory last week's Tor.com post will be going up tomorrow (see! time travel!), and I have a follow up post that I'll be trying to put up after that goes up, either late Thursday or Friday. And I may well be blogging bits about the conference here and there.

Also, housekeeping note: Apparently in response to the amount of spam slamming my LJ, Lj is now randomly screening some of your comments -- all comments with links, and some additional comments without links for seemingly random reasons. (In a fun touch, much of the spam - some with links - is still popping up unscreened.) If you actually WANT your comment left screened, that's fine - just tell me in the comments, and I'll leave it screened. Otherwise, I will unscreen comments when I get a chance.

I'm still trying to keep anonymous commenting on, largely because I get some interesting non-spam stuff that way, but I have to admit that the ongoing Russian porn is kinda making me rethink that. And of course, now that I've written that phrase, I'm sure I'll get slammed with still more of that.

The Grey One entered my life as a tiny kitten several years back. Her mother had been badly abused and was rescued by a couple of friends. Most of the litter ended up normal enough, but the Grey One was always shy and skittish, even in her box; I picked her because she was pretty and cute and looked as if she needed to be held.

So sometimes my judgement is a little off. Not about the pretty and cute part.

I had gotten her because the Little One needed a kitten (my older cat had died and he does not handle being alone well), and when I brought her home in her box, I told the Little One that this was his kitten.

I didn't expect them to take me so literally. The Little One LOVED the kitten and began carrying her around in his mouth, cuddling her, and refusing to let me (or others) handle her. It became very clear that this was his kitten, and later cat, not mine. Sometimes I was allowed to pet her (these were exciting times) and I was distinctly allowed to turn the water on for her so she could watch it run until she learned how to turn it on herself. (Which did not take long. This is a very intelligent little cat.)

And so she remained for awhile: highly intelligent, exquisitely beautiful, and a cat that is to be seen and heard (she can be very vocal when she wants to be), not touched, when she could be seen at all (a startlingly high number of people remain convinced that this is a one cat household.)

When I moved here, I determined that since I now had the time, I was going to transform her into a friendly cat. At least a friendly to me cat. I coaxed. I scratched. I used judicious supplies of tuna. I discovered a weakness – her belly has, as it turned out, a terrible need to be scratched and rubbed on an irregular basis.

And now I can't get her off me and it's interfering with my typing.