But Wait! There's more...
OK, I am IN!!! I finally felt safe, but I was playing it very very cool. That is until the storm.
I am a Southern Boy, I live in the North Georgia Piedmont. The weather here, according to my People Person, is much nicer than where she came here from-the Gulf Coast region. But we have very wild weather here, I think, so I think if she ever tries to move back to South Alabama I will have to protest strongly. Very strongly.
About a week after I got IN I stopped sleeping under the bed, and started sleeping on top of it even if she was in it. I like sleeping with a people. It is very nice for her to have me there. But when the boomerbangs and the Big Light happened at the same time I got scared and jumped off the bed and got under it. I knew what was coming-Water!
I like water, I even jump in the water box and look at the water falling spout hoping it will turn on, and when she gets in the water box she has to make me stay outside of the door because I like to get in it when the water is falling. That's OK, I just jump in the kitchen sink when she washes things now.
But when I was OUT and the boomerbangers happened I did not like the water because it was hard to find a place to go without water. Water is only good when you can get out of it when you are wanting to get out of it. And the boomerbangs and the Big Lights-UGH!
Anyway, she woke up too, and jumped off the bed. I wondered if she was gonna get under the bed too. But she got a big plastic thing that makes light and then she went around taking the magical Power Lines out of the wall and she did some other things too, like putting a plastic light maker in all the rooms, and then she turned on the TV and sat down in a chair away from the windows.
She talked to herself out loud-a big help to understand what was happening. She kept saying this was one heck of a storm (that's what peoples call boomerbangers?) and she said "Oh please God no tornadoes!"
The way she said it told me she didn't like tornadoes and that she was scared and that maybe she thought this God guy might help. Personally I count on Nubis and Bast, so I can understand.
So I got out from under the bed and came out and sat on Gator's smelly spot and then I jumped on her lap and then she said "Oh Crikes!" but she held me just right and we got in the laundry closet and there was a really loud roarey wind, but it was a little bit far away, and that's how I found out about what is a tornado.
The tornado missed us, but went over the hills to a different town and tore up house coverings and trees and moved a bunch of cars all around. But no peoples, and no cats or dogs or anything.
The next day she made me an evac pak and told me about the hurricanes she and Gator went through down on the Gulf.
I don't like the Gulf. I don't want to go there. Ever.
But I like that I have an evac pak just like Gator's 'cept mine has cat stuff and Gator's had dog stuff.
My momma loves me.
She said I have to get used to a cat carrier and she brought one home for me. She put it on the coffee table and left the door unzipped so that I could go in, but I thought she was gonna take me back to the shelter in it and I wouldn't go in it for ANYTHING not even my favorite fluttery thing she got for me the day after I got IN.
But then, a month after I got IN, she grabbed my front paws together in one hand, and my back paws and back end in the other and the next thing I knew I was in the damn cat carrier! With the door ZIPPED SHUT!!
I let her know how I felt!
But then a lot of people came in and started taking out all of the things in the house. What??
She put me on top of a table and I could see everything that was happening. She leaned down and told me that I should not worry, we are not going to V.E.T. or the shelter, we are moving to a different house!
OH!
How did she know I was afraid of going back to the shelter?
How did she know how to get me in the carrier before I knew what was happening?
She knows cats.
I like my new house. We have lived here since May 5th. We have a lot of things here that we didn't have in the other house, like a washing machine, which is a very cool water box for washing clothes, but not cats. I try to get in it every time she uses it though. And we have a dryer. I like the dryer. My food is on top of it, and it is very warm when she puts the wet clothes from the washing machine into it and turns it on. My people says I am going to love it come winter:)
I have food, and water-I have MY VERY OWN WATER BOWL JUST FOR ME! I have fluttery things and round rolley things called rattle balls, and I have a dryer that I will love in the winter. I have windows to look out of that are not looking at the awful woods I came In from. I have a blog, and friends with blogs that I can read and leave comments on.
I have a people person ALL MY OWN who loves me.
I have good adventures, instead of the scary ones I had when I was OUT. The storm and the move were just the first. My people tells me sometimes about Gator's adventures, like Hurricane Ivan, and when they lived in Guatemala. (What's a Guatemala?)
Now I am going to train her to hunt a camera so that I can show everyone what a handsome Ginger I am!
Oh yeah, I like the cat carrier thing now, and get in it sometimes. She leaves it open, on the floor in the room with the TV and computer. But mostly I like sitting on her lap or next to her on the floor.
OK, now you are all caught up on I, Mozart.
30 July 2007
29 July 2007
Congratulations again to the lovely Fomerly Feral over at missyblueeyes.blogspot.com!
In is beter!
My new people takes very good care of me, 'cept she's gone a lot lately. She has to pay for my kibble. But today she came back early and I heard her tell her people friend Jack that she finally ran her timecard (what's a timecard?) and found out she was on her 20th straight workday.
Hmph. She could have asked me, I cudda told her she had got up before the sun came out for twenty mornings in a row. I cudda told her she left me alone in the dark house twenty times in a row! I cudda.
But she does take very good care of me, and I do live IN, so I try to do my part. When the box on her table makes that loud noise that she seems too able to sleep through, I make sure she gets up. Even if she doesn't want to. I know the box makes her go hunting for the money to pay for my kibble.
In is beter!
My new people takes very good care of me, 'cept she's gone a lot lately. She has to pay for my kibble. But today she came back early and I heard her tell her people friend Jack that she finally ran her timecard (what's a timecard?) and found out she was on her 20th straight workday.
Hmph. She could have asked me, I cudda told her she had got up before the sun came out for twenty mornings in a row. I cudda told her she left me alone in the dark house twenty times in a row! I cudda.
But she does take very good care of me, and I do live IN, so I try to do my part. When the box on her table makes that loud noise that she seems too able to sleep through, I make sure she gets up. Even if she doesn't want to. I know the box makes her go hunting for the money to pay for my kibble.
22 July 2007
The longer I lived outside the more I wanted to get IN. I was cold, I was sneezing, I was hungry and tired all the time.
OK, I was afraid. Bad things happened in the woods where I had to hunt, mean four legs who would eat me. Big birds, too, who past the squirrel nest to tell me they were just waiting for the right time.
One day the squirrel nest fell out of the tree with me in it! I caught myself on a tree branch. I got down from the tree after a while and I told myself that I would never go up a tree again.
I was in trouble and I knew it and I thought maybe my time was running out.
Then it got warmer and I felt a little better, but I still wanted IN!
She was still feeding me. The big black cat that lived in the woods but let her neighbours think he was their cat told me I was stoopid for wanting to go inside. He told me that people are stupid but I should let them feed me, but NEVER go inside.
I didn't like that cat. He was mean. When he hunted he was didn't kill and then eat, he liked to eat while his dinner was still alive. He let the people see him doing it.
Gator had been dead for a long time. When he died I had a bunch of my milk teeth. By now I had a few grown up teeth. Big deal. I still didn't like hunting even though the better teeth made eating my catches a little easier.
UGH, feathers are fluttery and fun unless you have a mouth full of feathers when what you really want is FOOD!
She was away working even more. She needed me. I heard the neighbours talking when they sat on their porches that she was gonna drop dead at her desk if she didn't slow down. They said her son was stoopid for not coming home and bringing the baby to see her.
Whoa, she had a son who had a son! A baby. I know about babies. They smell and cry and are clumsy and incautious about how they touch cats. Probably dogs too.
But I still wanted in and and I decided I still wanted to be in her house. So I started watching to see if she would leave her door open so I could sneak in. I made a PLAN. I would sneak in and be really really quiet and good and she would not even know I was there for a while.
And finally she opened the door and it stayed open for a long time. So long that three other cats tried to get in, but she shooed them out and distracted them from coming in by putting a big bowl of food out on the driveway.
She knows cats.
But I had a PLAN.
I listened and when she was in the back part of the house I ran in the door and turned right and ran into her bedroom and hid under the bed. I smelled all the house smells. I could smell Gator, he smelled old and tired but really sad because he loved her and didn't want to leave her; if a dog could leave that happy/sad smell, then the people person he left that smell for must be a right kind of people. Yes, I was right, this was a good house and a good people, and I was gonna live here and she would be glad.
She came into the front room and sat down. She was reading a book and listening to a TV program, so I came out from under the bed and walked out into the living room. I could smell Gator everywhere, but the smell was really strong in one place a few feet from her chair. I laid down on that spot and stretched out and started to purr.
She looked over at me and said "I know you! You are the cat the people out back adopted from the shelter! But they moved out nearly two months ago! They left you, didn't they?"
Then she went back to her book. We spent the rest of the daytime like that. I would get up to have a bite from the food bowl, then come back in and lay down. I watched the TV, it was just like the one from the shelter that was always on. I like TV.
A cat can learn a lot of things from a TV. I even learned to read from TV, and how to use the Internet to learn more things. I saw a man who was hurt in an accident use one with a straw in his mouth to poke the buttons people call keys to write what he wanted, and after I thought about it I thought I could learn to do something like that with one of my claws, if I could just get a chance to try.
But when the sun started to go in she made me go outside, and I spent the night under her car.
She made a phone call to the people who owned the house out back. "Do you know if they want that ginger cat?"
YESSSSSS!
The next weekend she opened the door again and left it open while she called the people again. "You're sure? Well, that's great, I think I'll take it in then. A cat is the better companion for me with my hours, and I don't think I am ready for another dog really. Thanks Michelle, this is great. I know it's had all it's shots and has been altered because it's a shelter cat. No, I'm good, I've been a catmom before. Mike didn't like cats, so after the cat I brought with me died we didn't have another. Jeez, it's been 18 years since Tiger died!"
Tiger? Gator? She liked wild things, I think. What was she gonna name me??? Possum?!
When she came inside I was trying out her bed and pillow. Niiice! But when she sat down in the chair I got off of the bed and went out and jumped up on the hassock and laid down. I looked at her for a minute while she looked at me, then I started watching the TV because a bunch of people with feathers and other fluttery things came out from the corner of the TV and were fluttering all over the TV to the sound of music-ooooo, I like fluttery things!
She got up and shut the door. She looked at me to see how I was going to take being shut in.
I yawned. I stretched. Then I fell asleep.
When I woke up she showed me where the litter pan is, and where the food bowl JUST FOR ME is and
I
was
IN.
OK, I was afraid. Bad things happened in the woods where I had to hunt, mean four legs who would eat me. Big birds, too, who past the squirrel nest to tell me they were just waiting for the right time.
One day the squirrel nest fell out of the tree with me in it! I caught myself on a tree branch. I got down from the tree after a while and I told myself that I would never go up a tree again.
I was in trouble and I knew it and I thought maybe my time was running out.
Then it got warmer and I felt a little better, but I still wanted IN!
She was still feeding me. The big black cat that lived in the woods but let her neighbours think he was their cat told me I was stoopid for wanting to go inside. He told me that people are stupid but I should let them feed me, but NEVER go inside.
I didn't like that cat. He was mean. When he hunted he was didn't kill and then eat, he liked to eat while his dinner was still alive. He let the people see him doing it.
Gator had been dead for a long time. When he died I had a bunch of my milk teeth. By now I had a few grown up teeth. Big deal. I still didn't like hunting even though the better teeth made eating my catches a little easier.
UGH, feathers are fluttery and fun unless you have a mouth full of feathers when what you really want is FOOD!
She was away working even more. She needed me. I heard the neighbours talking when they sat on their porches that she was gonna drop dead at her desk if she didn't slow down. They said her son was stoopid for not coming home and bringing the baby to see her.
Whoa, she had a son who had a son! A baby. I know about babies. They smell and cry and are clumsy and incautious about how they touch cats. Probably dogs too.
But I still wanted in and and I decided I still wanted to be in her house. So I started watching to see if she would leave her door open so I could sneak in. I made a PLAN. I would sneak in and be really really quiet and good and she would not even know I was there for a while.
And finally she opened the door and it stayed open for a long time. So long that three other cats tried to get in, but she shooed them out and distracted them from coming in by putting a big bowl of food out on the driveway.
She knows cats.
But I had a PLAN.
I listened and when she was in the back part of the house I ran in the door and turned right and ran into her bedroom and hid under the bed. I smelled all the house smells. I could smell Gator, he smelled old and tired but really sad because he loved her and didn't want to leave her; if a dog could leave that happy/sad smell, then the people person he left that smell for must be a right kind of people. Yes, I was right, this was a good house and a good people, and I was gonna live here and she would be glad.
She came into the front room and sat down. She was reading a book and listening to a TV program, so I came out from under the bed and walked out into the living room. I could smell Gator everywhere, but the smell was really strong in one place a few feet from her chair. I laid down on that spot and stretched out and started to purr.
She looked over at me and said "I know you! You are the cat the people out back adopted from the shelter! But they moved out nearly two months ago! They left you, didn't they?"
Then she went back to her book. We spent the rest of the daytime like that. I would get up to have a bite from the food bowl, then come back in and lay down. I watched the TV, it was just like the one from the shelter that was always on. I like TV.
A cat can learn a lot of things from a TV. I even learned to read from TV, and how to use the Internet to learn more things. I saw a man who was hurt in an accident use one with a straw in his mouth to poke the buttons people call keys to write what he wanted, and after I thought about it I thought I could learn to do something like that with one of my claws, if I could just get a chance to try.
But when the sun started to go in she made me go outside, and I spent the night under her car.
She made a phone call to the people who owned the house out back. "Do you know if they want that ginger cat?"
YESSSSSS!
The next weekend she opened the door again and left it open while she called the people again. "You're sure? Well, that's great, I think I'll take it in then. A cat is the better companion for me with my hours, and I don't think I am ready for another dog really. Thanks Michelle, this is great. I know it's had all it's shots and has been altered because it's a shelter cat. No, I'm good, I've been a catmom before. Mike didn't like cats, so after the cat I brought with me died we didn't have another. Jeez, it's been 18 years since Tiger died!"
Tiger? Gator? She liked wild things, I think. What was she gonna name me??? Possum?!
When she came inside I was trying out her bed and pillow. Niiice! But when she sat down in the chair I got off of the bed and went out and jumped up on the hassock and laid down. I looked at her for a minute while she looked at me, then I started watching the TV because a bunch of people with feathers and other fluttery things came out from the corner of the TV and were fluttering all over the TV to the sound of music-ooooo, I like fluttery things!
She got up and shut the door. She looked at me to see how I was going to take being shut in.
I yawned. I stretched. Then I fell asleep.
When I woke up she showed me where the litter pan is, and where the food bowl JUST FOR ME is and
I
was
IN.
20 July 2007
First of all, thank-you very much to all of you visitors! I feel quite welcomed and very much the 21st century cat to have all these new friends in the 'Sphere. Everytime she leaves the computer on I click over to your blogs and bookmark 'em, but she comes back from the bathroom really fast and I don't want her to know how smart I am. Yet. She doesn't use the PC very often because she hunts really long hours sometimes on Saturday too, so I don't get much chance to blog on. It is taking me a while to organize her.
OK, some of you asked for more of how I got in here sooo...
That night it was reeeeally cold AND wet, so cold that ice balls instead of snow covered the ground so deep I couldn't see my paws, and I climbed up in the tree to stay out of it. I stayed in an old squirrel nest that was still pretty tight, and from it I could see down into her whole yard.
In the morning she brought the old dog out before she went hunting for things.
Five mornings in a row she would get up before the sun came out and would get in her car and drive away. She would come back after the sun went in with things-food, or not food things. I didn't know much about the things she brought that weren't food because I'd not lived in a people's house yet. I knew the things weren't food. If I had eaten and was full I would think about what she did with the things that weren't food, but mostly I thought about the food things she brought back from hunting.
Gator didn't look happy at all about walking in, on, through the ice balls. He did his business and dragged her back to the house, and I knew it was warmer in there, and I wished I could go in there with him. Besides me wanting to be warm, he didn't look right and I wanted to go in and curl up with him to make him feel better even though I knew he did not like cats. She always told him "NO Kitty Frisbie, Gator." The way she said it and the way he looked so disappointed when she said it told me Kitty Frisbie is probably not a game the Kitty would like. But I still wanted to snuggle him. Maybe he would learn to like me the way the dog at the shelter did.
One time an old dog came into the shelter before I was adopted and because there was so many dogs and cats the shelter people had to put the newest dog in a cage right next to mine.
He said he was old, and tired, and knew the shelter people would send him to the Bridge, and he was so miserable I felt sorry for him and got right up against the wire by him. I cleaned up the parts of him I could reach, and it made him feel better. He said so.
A real rescue lady took him home to die with dignity at her place. For all I know, he is still alive. Maybe.
But I didn't get a chance to do that for old Gator. While I was still trying to figure out how to get out of the tree, she left to go hunting. When she came back much later, I was back up the tree. So I couldn't sneak in the door when she was coming in.
She brought him out into the dark, he did his business and I could tell he was even worse. That was the last time I saw him alive.
For seven more mornings and nights he didn't come out of the house, but more people came into it, even while she was gone hunting, and I knew they were taking care of Gator while she was hunting. When she would come home she would try to coax him to eat and drink. I know he drank water but she could not get him to eat. I know because I came down every night after she got there and listened at the door.
By now I was about the only cat eating the food she was putting out; I had to fight all the others, and told them they should just go beg somewhere else because this is my food now. Two of the freeloaders had furever homes, they just wanted something different, so I defined the phrase "Git yer own!" for them, and they were so ashamed they slunk off and didn't come back until after I moved in.
So I could listen at the door without too much distraction, and I heard her talking to him. I also shamelessly eavesdropped when she called her son's friend to ask him to let Fox know Gator-really his dog-was dying. I heard her say "Ed, I think he is holding out for Fox to come say good-bye, I really do. If we turn his bed away from the door he struggles to get his head back to it."
Man, that got me! So when she would leave, I would stay by the door and try to talk to him, but he was so sick that he never answered.
On the seventh night that he didn't come out I could hear his breathing had got really hard, and I knew he was hanging on to say good-bye to her. Finally her car came in and she went inside.
After a little while I knew he was dead because I heard her call his name and then start crying. And then a lot of people came and I went up the tree because I didn't much like people then.
That Gator was a people size dog. It took two people to carry his body, wrapped in a plastic thing, outside. They put it down in the back yard by the big oak tree. The women were crying and the men were practical. I heard one say "Thank-God for the cold." The others agreed and I knew they would not be able to put his body in the ground until the sun came out again; I knew that the cold would keep the coyotes away from disturbing his body.
It took them a long time to make a big enough hole and I watched the whole thing from the squirrel nest. They had to use a people thing called a pick-axe (I had to look that word up at the online dictionary so I could spell it right, I am one smart cat!) but the men and a couple of the women from the nieghbourhood got it done and finally Gator's body was decently buried.
I knew she was a good people! One of the shelter ladies used to talk to all of us inmates-that's was she called us-and she was all the time talking about furever homes and the people who would love us so much they would make sure when we crossed the Bridge our bodies would be given a decent burial instead of...never mind the instead. It is one of those shelter memories I don't like.
Every night when she got home from work (She calls hunting "work". Well, it is, isn't it?) she would go around to the backyard to visit Gator's grave. Even before she would put her catch inside. She would say his name, and I began to understand moving in was gonna take longer than I thought.
But she kept putting the food out for us cats, well, just me really but she didn't know that.
The day after he died, when she got back from work, she came outside and called Fox's friend Ed again to tell him what happened. Naturally I listened.
"He died exactly a week after the stroke! He had the stroke Thursday night, Feb 1st at 9 o'clock, and Ed, I swear, he died last night, Thursday the 8th, at 9:11. I don't know what I'll do without him, he's been there with us, and then me after everything with the divorce, for all but three months of his nearly thirteen years. Yeah, he was three months short of thirteen. 24th May 1994 to 8th Feb 2007."
Yowsa, he WAS old!
"I know, I know, Boxers don't usually live that long, 8 or 9 years at best usually. He was such a great dog!" They talked for a while longer, then she shut the phone and went back inside.
I knew about divorce. My fur mother told me that is why we ended up in the box. Her people got a divorce, and everybody went to live in different places, and some of the kids didn't talk to one or the other of the parents, and the parent that got the kid that was mad at the other one didn't want a cat and kitten litter, so out we went.
So, I thought, this two leg got a divorce. From listening to her phone conversation I figured things out. Her son was got grown-up at the same time as the divorce, and moved out of her house, and he blamed her for the divorce, so they didn't talk, but SHE kept his dog that he couldn't take. She kept his dog and loved it so well the dog lived nine whole years with her alone after the divorce. But she never saw her son because he was still mad at her.
Stoopid Fox! (Who names their son Fox, anyway?)
OK, some of you asked for more of how I got in here sooo...
That night it was reeeeally cold AND wet, so cold that ice balls instead of snow covered the ground so deep I couldn't see my paws, and I climbed up in the tree to stay out of it. I stayed in an old squirrel nest that was still pretty tight, and from it I could see down into her whole yard.
In the morning she brought the old dog out before she went hunting for things.
Five mornings in a row she would get up before the sun came out and would get in her car and drive away. She would come back after the sun went in with things-food, or not food things. I didn't know much about the things she brought that weren't food because I'd not lived in a people's house yet. I knew the things weren't food. If I had eaten and was full I would think about what she did with the things that weren't food, but mostly I thought about the food things she brought back from hunting.
Gator didn't look happy at all about walking in, on, through the ice balls. He did his business and dragged her back to the house, and I knew it was warmer in there, and I wished I could go in there with him. Besides me wanting to be warm, he didn't look right and I wanted to go in and curl up with him to make him feel better even though I knew he did not like cats. She always told him "NO Kitty Frisbie, Gator." The way she said it and the way he looked so disappointed when she said it told me Kitty Frisbie is probably not a game the Kitty would like. But I still wanted to snuggle him. Maybe he would learn to like me the way the dog at the shelter did.
One time an old dog came into the shelter before I was adopted and because there was so many dogs and cats the shelter people had to put the newest dog in a cage right next to mine.
He said he was old, and tired, and knew the shelter people would send him to the Bridge, and he was so miserable I felt sorry for him and got right up against the wire by him. I cleaned up the parts of him I could reach, and it made him feel better. He said so.
A real rescue lady took him home to die with dignity at her place. For all I know, he is still alive. Maybe.
But I didn't get a chance to do that for old Gator. While I was still trying to figure out how to get out of the tree, she left to go hunting. When she came back much later, I was back up the tree. So I couldn't sneak in the door when she was coming in.
She brought him out into the dark, he did his business and I could tell he was even worse. That was the last time I saw him alive.
For seven more mornings and nights he didn't come out of the house, but more people came into it, even while she was gone hunting, and I knew they were taking care of Gator while she was hunting. When she would come home she would try to coax him to eat and drink. I know he drank water but she could not get him to eat. I know because I came down every night after she got there and listened at the door.
By now I was about the only cat eating the food she was putting out; I had to fight all the others, and told them they should just go beg somewhere else because this is my food now. Two of the freeloaders had furever homes, they just wanted something different, so I defined the phrase "Git yer own!" for them, and they were so ashamed they slunk off and didn't come back until after I moved in.
So I could listen at the door without too much distraction, and I heard her talking to him. I also shamelessly eavesdropped when she called her son's friend to ask him to let Fox know Gator-really his dog-was dying. I heard her say "Ed, I think he is holding out for Fox to come say good-bye, I really do. If we turn his bed away from the door he struggles to get his head back to it."
Man, that got me! So when she would leave, I would stay by the door and try to talk to him, but he was so sick that he never answered.
On the seventh night that he didn't come out I could hear his breathing had got really hard, and I knew he was hanging on to say good-bye to her. Finally her car came in and she went inside.
After a little while I knew he was dead because I heard her call his name and then start crying. And then a lot of people came and I went up the tree because I didn't much like people then.
That Gator was a people size dog. It took two people to carry his body, wrapped in a plastic thing, outside. They put it down in the back yard by the big oak tree. The women were crying and the men were practical. I heard one say "Thank-God for the cold." The others agreed and I knew they would not be able to put his body in the ground until the sun came out again; I knew that the cold would keep the coyotes away from disturbing his body.
It took them a long time to make a big enough hole and I watched the whole thing from the squirrel nest. They had to use a people thing called a pick-axe (I had to look that word up at the online dictionary so I could spell it right, I am one smart cat!) but the men and a couple of the women from the nieghbourhood got it done and finally Gator's body was decently buried.
I knew she was a good people! One of the shelter ladies used to talk to all of us inmates-that's was she called us-and she was all the time talking about furever homes and the people who would love us so much they would make sure when we crossed the Bridge our bodies would be given a decent burial instead of...never mind the instead. It is one of those shelter memories I don't like.
Every night when she got home from work (She calls hunting "work". Well, it is, isn't it?) she would go around to the backyard to visit Gator's grave. Even before she would put her catch inside. She would say his name, and I began to understand moving in was gonna take longer than I thought.
But she kept putting the food out for us cats, well, just me really but she didn't know that.
The day after he died, when she got back from work, she came outside and called Fox's friend Ed again to tell him what happened. Naturally I listened.
"He died exactly a week after the stroke! He had the stroke Thursday night, Feb 1st at 9 o'clock, and Ed, I swear, he died last night, Thursday the 8th, at 9:11. I don't know what I'll do without him, he's been there with us, and then me after everything with the divorce, for all but three months of his nearly thirteen years. Yeah, he was three months short of thirteen. 24th May 1994 to 8th Feb 2007."
Yowsa, he WAS old!
"I know, I know, Boxers don't usually live that long, 8 or 9 years at best usually. He was such a great dog!" They talked for a while longer, then she shut the phone and went back inside.
I knew about divorce. My fur mother told me that is why we ended up in the box. Her people got a divorce, and everybody went to live in different places, and some of the kids didn't talk to one or the other of the parents, and the parent that got the kid that was mad at the other one didn't want a cat and kitten litter, so out we went.
So, I thought, this two leg got a divorce. From listening to her phone conversation I figured things out. Her son was got grown-up at the same time as the divorce, and moved out of her house, and he blamed her for the divorce, so they didn't talk, but SHE kept his dog that he couldn't take. She kept his dog and loved it so well the dog lived nine whole years with her alone after the divorce. But she never saw her son because he was still mad at her.
Stoopid Fox! (Who names their son Fox, anyway?)
16 July 2007
She Calls Me Mozart. Whatever.
She calls me Mozart because I moved in officially during a PBS televised production of The Magic Flute and she likes to joke that she couldn't call me Puccini.
Whatever.
I pegged her in first thing. She had this really old big dog who looked as though he could still eat me.
But I saw something else. He was so old he was going to cross over the Rainbow Bridge pretty soon, and hey, I needed a home, ya know, so I just started watching them.
She was putting out food for the free cats but she hadn't really noticed me because I was careful not to be seen. I'd been burned before, ya know?
Who cares what my 'real' name is, was? I was born, and the whole litter of us and our mother were dumped in a box at the shelter.
The shelter was a shelter, OK? Not good and I don't like to remember all the stuff that happened there so I don't. I just don't. Especially now that I have been living with her since April. Living with her has pretty well wiped out the hurt of the memories, and the things I went through after my so-called adoption, YEESH! The stuff I had to do to survive!
But sometimes, well sometimes it still shows. Today, the 15th of July, I finally figured out there is a bowl just for me with water in it. I don't have to hope some water stays in the kitchen sink for me to lick up-she has been putting water in the other bowl, the one she keeps putting by the food-hey, I am not gonna miss the food, OK? But the water is so clean I really did not know it was there!
She splashed some at me, and I almost fell off of the top of the dryer where she keeps my food in my surprise-HUH, ya mean there's water for me in that bowl?! I drank half the bowl right down. I was so embarrassed, but OMGsh, it just tasted so GOOD and so CLEAN! Here all this time I thought it was just an extra bowl, for um, I don't know, whatever. Swear to Nubis, I thought it was empty.
You don't want to know why I never thought there would be a bowl of water just for me that was clean, not muddy or worse.
I was just a fluffy little Ginger boy when they stuck a gosh awful lot of needles in me, and I even had to be (oh dear, the horror) to be neutered. But I was all good, because they kept telling me that I was such a cute little thing I was sure to find a really good home.
Yeah, right.
Well, I did, didn't I, in the end? Or was it really the beginning?
Whatever.
What happened was this-yeah, I got adopted all right, and the people who adopted me from the shelter wrapped a damn collar around my neck (that thank Nubis was just loose enough and cheap enough that I eventually got it off before it choked the last life right out of my little, scrawny, STARVING little Ginger body after they moved away-without me!). They told the shelter all kinds of lies about how great my new life was gonna be, and how they would keep me inside the house and I was gonna even get to sleep on the little girl's bed.
BUT, when we got 'home' and I'm still thinking maybe things are gonna be great, they all go inside and slam the door in my face, and I am lucky if I get a handful of cheap (even cheaper than at the shelter) kibble flung out of their door now and again. Because they think cats should be outside. Always. No exceptions.
Oh, yeah, I was watching her alright. Every other week she brought home this ginormus sack of premium dog kibble-I could smell it and it was so premium I would have eaten eat if I'd got a chance. I hated that about me, that I would salivate watching this big sack of dog food going in the door.
That dog had it made. I hated him, I envied him, and I wished he would let me move in while he was still alive, because I could tell she loved him, and he loved her, and hey, even living inside, dogs that big don't live as long as he had without having a really, really good home. I knew he had been brought home as a puppy and had never ever known a bad day. I knew he had never seen the inside of a shelter, or gone hungry-oh Hell no, she looked like the type who would go hungry so he could eat.
My kind of two-leg. She had this nasty old dog inside the house, but she wouldn't let him eat the cats she was feeding, and she brought blankits out and boxes for the free cats, too. She even talked to the free cats.
I wanted to move in to her house-I'm not stupid, I know those free cats aren't free, and I just waited and watched, and tell you the truth when the people who'd adopted me from the shelter moved out a month after moving in, and left me there in the middle of winter it really didn't hurt too much. Honest. I had bigger and better plans. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The dog, she called him Gator. I know about alligators, so I stayed out of his reach. Even after he started noticing me and not letting her know I was there. He would look at me hiding (oh jeez, I was so pathetic) under the car and pretend not to notice me. Or he would just sit down and look at me with this look in his eyes, and I've come to think he was trying to tell me it was OK.
It was so cold, and I was so hungry, and thirsty.
And then he died.
Whatever.
I pegged her in first thing. She had this really old big dog who looked as though he could still eat me.
But I saw something else. He was so old he was going to cross over the Rainbow Bridge pretty soon, and hey, I needed a home, ya know, so I just started watching them.
She was putting out food for the free cats but she hadn't really noticed me because I was careful not to be seen. I'd been burned before, ya know?
Who cares what my 'real' name is, was? I was born, and the whole litter of us and our mother were dumped in a box at the shelter.
The shelter was a shelter, OK? Not good and I don't like to remember all the stuff that happened there so I don't. I just don't. Especially now that I have been living with her since April. Living with her has pretty well wiped out the hurt of the memories, and the things I went through after my so-called adoption, YEESH! The stuff I had to do to survive!
But sometimes, well sometimes it still shows. Today, the 15th of July, I finally figured out there is a bowl just for me with water in it. I don't have to hope some water stays in the kitchen sink for me to lick up-she has been putting water in the other bowl, the one she keeps putting by the food-hey, I am not gonna miss the food, OK? But the water is so clean I really did not know it was there!
She splashed some at me, and I almost fell off of the top of the dryer where she keeps my food in my surprise-HUH, ya mean there's water for me in that bowl?! I drank half the bowl right down. I was so embarrassed, but OMGsh, it just tasted so GOOD and so CLEAN! Here all this time I thought it was just an extra bowl, for um, I don't know, whatever. Swear to Nubis, I thought it was empty.
You don't want to know why I never thought there would be a bowl of water just for me that was clean, not muddy or worse.
I was just a fluffy little Ginger boy when they stuck a gosh awful lot of needles in me, and I even had to be (oh dear, the horror) to be neutered. But I was all good, because they kept telling me that I was such a cute little thing I was sure to find a really good home.
Yeah, right.
Well, I did, didn't I, in the end? Or was it really the beginning?
Whatever.
What happened was this-yeah, I got adopted all right, and the people who adopted me from the shelter wrapped a damn collar around my neck (that thank Nubis was just loose enough and cheap enough that I eventually got it off before it choked the last life right out of my little, scrawny, STARVING little Ginger body after they moved away-without me!). They told the shelter all kinds of lies about how great my new life was gonna be, and how they would keep me inside the house and I was gonna even get to sleep on the little girl's bed.
BUT, when we got 'home' and I'm still thinking maybe things are gonna be great, they all go inside and slam the door in my face, and I am lucky if I get a handful of cheap (even cheaper than at the shelter) kibble flung out of their door now and again. Because they think cats should be outside. Always. No exceptions.
Oh, yeah, I was watching her alright. Every other week she brought home this ginormus sack of premium dog kibble-I could smell it and it was so premium I would have eaten eat if I'd got a chance. I hated that about me, that I would salivate watching this big sack of dog food going in the door.
That dog had it made. I hated him, I envied him, and I wished he would let me move in while he was still alive, because I could tell she loved him, and he loved her, and hey, even living inside, dogs that big don't live as long as he had without having a really, really good home. I knew he had been brought home as a puppy and had never ever known a bad day. I knew he had never seen the inside of a shelter, or gone hungry-oh Hell no, she looked like the type who would go hungry so he could eat.
My kind of two-leg. She had this nasty old dog inside the house, but she wouldn't let him eat the cats she was feeding, and she brought blankits out and boxes for the free cats, too. She even talked to the free cats.
I wanted to move in to her house-I'm not stupid, I know those free cats aren't free, and I just waited and watched, and tell you the truth when the people who'd adopted me from the shelter moved out a month after moving in, and left me there in the middle of winter it really didn't hurt too much. Honest. I had bigger and better plans. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The dog, she called him Gator. I know about alligators, so I stayed out of his reach. Even after he started noticing me and not letting her know I was there. He would look at me hiding (oh jeez, I was so pathetic) under the car and pretend not to notice me. Or he would just sit down and look at me with this look in his eyes, and I've come to think he was trying to tell me it was OK.
It was so cold, and I was so hungry, and thirsty.
And then he died.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)