Owen and his Animals

When Owen arrived in our household, there were already five of us living here:  me, Sean, Dorothy, Plum and Posy.  Whereas his appearance was a little traumatic for the pets (well, except that we think it took Posy about four months before she noticed he was there), Owen’s landscape has always included beasties lying about.  And he is quite good (so far) with all the animals, especially since he is not very physical with them in general.

He is fond of Dorothy and will introduce her to us and whoever else might come to our house.  When we are away from home running errands, he will say that he wants to go home to Dorothy.  And when they are outside together, he will bring her sticks (which is good, since Dorothy will take them from him regardless).

I’d say of all three pets, Plum is the one who likes Owen the best.  Dorothy knows she has to behave well towards Owen, but she is jealous of him and will often sit on the couch and cry when we play with him (Oh! The long suffering bulldogge!).  So her feeling towards him is more tolerance and a grudging acknowledgement that she had better be nice to Dad’s young.  Plum, on the other hand, is interested in Owen – no doubt it is probably more that he is willing to have another lesser being in his, the alpha male’s, household, but this manifests itself in affectionate leg rubbing while Owen is watching TV and a general interest in what Owen is doing.  Plum will talk to Owen too, and meow at him in a friendly way.  This is all good, since Plum’s tendency to urinate outside the box has not put him in his father’s good graces, to put it mildly.  Being nice to Owen seems the least he can do.

And then there’s Posy.  Posy’s reaction to Owen is generally to hightail it in the opposite direction.  Quickly!  Owen is solicitous of her – or rather, he became so once he heard me calling her Posita.  His version of “Posita” is po-di-TAH, and he likes to shout this at high decibels.  He’ll call po-di-TAH when it is time for her dinner, or when he is just wondering where she is.  Needless to say, she does not come running.

The name’s Posy.

But you don’t call me anything at all, little boy.

Plum Dumbledore's Rampages

Almost two months have passed since Plum got all his teeth removed during his dental surgery.  He is all healed, but we have definitely been experiencing a few bumps in the road.  Or puddles, I should say.  The vet had thought that maybe Plum’s forays outside of the box had been due to mouth pain, and that after his surgery he wouldn’t need his calming meds.  Sadly, this has turned out not to be the case.  Now that Plum feels better, he apparently feels even more better being a jerk to Posy and peeing in our recycling area and kitchen.  It is annoying.  I’ve been trying to slip his meds back in his food, but tiny though they are (1/4 of a small pill), he must smell it in the food, and of course will have nothing to do with the food once the pill is there.  I’m going to have to get pill pockets again and hope that he can gum them.

I'm naughty!

Since Plum’s surgery we’ve been feeding both cats canned food and no dry, since Plum can no longer chew it.  The one problem with this is that one or the other cat now coughs up a hairball nightly.  I need to up the amount of cat brushing I do.

On the positive side, ever since his recovery from the surgery, Plum has become a lap cat, which he never was before.  In the evenings when I sit on the couch, he is right there ready to climb on my lap and snuggle.  I assume that pain must have kept him more solitary before?  At any rate, it is rather nice, although Posy would beg to differ, since my lap previously was available to her if she wanted it.

Eek!

Since the weather has just gotten colder, we’ve been having a bit of a turf battle in our kitchen between us and some field mice who would like to become house mice for the winter.  This is not okay with us for multiple obvious reasons, so the battle has begun.  So far, we have caught one mouse in a humane trap, but either we didn’t release it far enough away from our house, or it was part of a couple, because we still have at least one mouse visiting our kitchen at night and ruining our ripening pears.

Now you are probably wondering, hey, what about your two cats?  Shouldn’t they be earning their keep by catching the mice?  Shouldn’t they, indeed.  It turns out that whereas Plum and Posy will interestedly sit in front of the hole by the side of the stove which the mice use to enter the kitchen, they will only do so until it is time for them to nap elsewhere.  And it is time for them to nap elsewhere most of the time.

I’m not being completely fair to Plum, who did start knocking all and sundry off the counter late one night in an effort to keep the mouse from reaching our bowl of pears.  And then he did alert Sean when the mouse had gone into the humane trap.  So he is trying, somewhat.  And also in Plum’s defense, we give him his meds at night, so it is hard for him to stay all vengeancy when the clomicalm is making him happy.  I’m not sure what Posy’s excuse is, except that while the mouse is out and about, Posy is usually upstairs with me, purring and giving me a nice cuddle.

Meanwhile, Owen has started calling both cats Posy (or “Popey”) and it bothers me more than it should.  I keep telling him, when he calls Plum Popey, that the big gray one is Plum!  Popey’s the little cream one who is always sneezing.  But so far to no avail.

Cats In Weird Places

We have an Ikea circus tent that is usually in our attic, but that was brought downstairs for a play session not too long ago, and of course, Plum had to try it out:

Posy eats her meals in the sunporch, so that Plum – who is always convinced that we are feeding Posy lobster and filet mignon, while he gets a half can of cold catfood – won’t push her out of the way and start eating what she was served.  I often will forget to let Posy out of the sunporch immediately afterwards, and the other day when I went to do so after thirty minutes or so had passed, I spotted this:

Yes, Posy had decided she would try out Owen’s little cart.  Go figure.  If it is there, then a cat will sit in or on it.

Cats On a Hot Porch Table

We have a “four season” sunporch, but I use quotation marks there because the porch is really only habitable in winter and summer if the built-in heater/air conditioner is turned on, and although it seems to heat and cool the room quickly, we can’t help but feel like we are also heating and cooling our back yard with the same unit…and that is not really cost effective.  So on sunny days in the winter, and on cooler days in the summer it is a comfy room to inhabit, but in general it is a fall and spring kind of place.

In the afternoons, when the sun pushes the temperature into the sixties, we’ve been opening the windows and enjoying the room, and whereas Dorothy and Owen are always game to go in there no matter what the weather, now that it is temperate, Plum and occasionally Posy will use the room as well.

Here is a picture of Plum reclining on the scratch pad next to my bin of birdseed.  He likes to watch the birds at the feeder and widen his eyes at the particularly juicy specimens.  Occasionally he’s been on the verge of spending the night locked out there, but I have noted his absence during my evening headcount and rescued him before he realizes he has no access to the litter box or food and starts to complain.

Posy too will come out to see what is going on.  They both seem to like it when the windows are open and they can sniff the breezes.

 

Plum will curl up on the couch and go to sleep, which is rather brave of him since Owen will walk up and pet him and then start touching his nose and whiskers and laughing.  Luckily for Owen’s tender limbs, Plum is still being very gentlemanly towards Owen, and an all-around good sport.  What Owen likes best is to join Sean in calling Plum with a “psss psss psss” and then laughing when Plum meows.  Apparently Plum’s a real borscht belt comedian for a twenty-month old's sense of humor.

Plum thinking, take my wife, please!

The Furminator

We have been having a lot of, shall we say, unpleasant furball-related incidents, in which Sean, who is usually the first one downstairs in the morning, will discover furball puddles in multiple rooms, as well as on the staircase.  I’ve been trying to brush Plum more, so perhaps have been making the situation worse by loosening more fur?  It’s no doubt the kind of thing that gets worse before it gets better?

At any rate, the cat comb I had was getting old and not as effective, and my boss recommended that I try The Furminator, a dog and cat comb that was guaranteed to work wonders.  I found a good deal on amazon and so far have been pretty impressed with the results.  Sean is skeptical—he says it looks like a cootie comb in a handle—but it does do a really good job of getting out all the loose undercoat.  And it even finds loose undercoat on Posy, who is extremely type A when it comes to personal hygiene.

The jury is still out when it comes to the furballs, but surely the handfuls of fur that come off when I use the furminator are handfuls of fur that will not end up in vomity ball form on my floors later on, no?  And that is something.

Feline Mani Pedis

I noticed the other day that Plum had a thumbnail that was curving around and on the verge of growing into his thumb pad.  I couldn't get the clippers underneath it to cut, and I was afraid to cut the outside of the curve since I couldn't see where his quick ended -- plus he didn't like me touching that nail at all.  He used to be a cat who wouldn't mind getting his nails clipped.  In fact, he would often give me a paw lazily and lie there purring as I snipped away.  But those days seem to be over.  Nowadays I have to catch him in a good mood, and then he'll still only let me cut one or two nails before he starts giving me warning nips.

Posy has always been difficult about her nails too.  She doesn't mind having me cut them, but she won't stand still for it, and her nails retract too easily.  I usually only get one nail per attempt, and even then I think I end up cutting the same nail over and over.

So I called the vet on a Saturday morning to see if they could fit me in to get Plum's nails clipped.  And when they said yes, I thought about it for awhile and then called them back to see if I could bring Posy as well.  Both cats thus were brought to the vet for a quick mani pedi.  Posy got a little overwrought, so they said they had to put her in an oxygen chamber.  Coughdivacough.  I think they just weren't used to the sound her nose makes when breathing--which is something akin to a permanent snuffle and snore.

Luckily, they didn't charge me for Posy's extra oxygen, and I left ten minutes after I had arrived, with 36 short nails and not as much money out of my wallet as I would have thought going in.

Plum in a picture by Sean, showing some of the offending digits:

Many Little Helpers

There has been much hustle and bustle going on at Bulldogge Manor this week, yet not by me (except on Monday when I left the house to escape it, and moseyed this way and that under the hot sun with Owen in his push-chair.)  We are converting from an oil furnace to a gas furnace and adding central air, which in this age of global weirding has become a necessity in Philly.

And because we have three pets, it is always a bit of a challenge to have workers in the house, especially when they are working in the basement, or as Posy thinks of it, the forbidden, and therefore very alluring, chamber.  We have a makeshift pet fence across the doorway to the basement, and of course Posy lurks right there hoping that she can run through when you open it a crack.  Meanwhile Dorothy, always a floozy, wanted to cover all the workmen in kisses, and help them with whatever they were doing.  And when they cut a hole in our living room floor to add a return vent, or some such vent, they had to alert us to the fact that Plum then sat by the hole and kept putting his paw through it and feeling around, and then soon the purple head and yellow eyes followed.

Amazingly enough, Owen was able to nap through earsplitting noise and drilling and shaking and rumbling both in the morning and afternoon.  I don’t know how this happened, since sometimes he’ll wake up if a pet hair falls to the floor.  But I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  He slept on Monday; and I was glad.

And because Sean is the ant and I am the grasshopper, while I was reading a novel, Sean started a new home improvement project, painting the shed, or as we call it, the barn.  And now it looks more like a barn, what with its spiffy new barn-red coat!  Here it is half completed:

Catsam and Jetsam

I promised a Dorothy post a while back, but I don't have one yet!  This is more or less because everything is calm on the bulldogge front.  She's taking zyrtec, which is keeping her skin allergies at bay, and she spends her days glued to Sean's side, happily following him about and hoping he will take her into the yard for a good play session.

But a few cat moments!  First, the other day I went looking for my book and found Posy using it as a pillow.  I DID remove it from under her chin, but it was a frightening undertaking, believe you me.

Posy thinking, it's your choice, your book or keeping all your digits....

Plum has been seeking out new man-caves worthy of his rest.  At the moment he enjoys both hall closets, and can often be found in whichever one has the door left ajar:

For my birthday a month ago, I received two glittery things for the sunny window on our landing:  a little green glass bird from my friend, Megan, and a prism from my parents:

I haven't figured out how to get a good picture of them yet, but the prism sends rainbows everywhere, which both cats enjoy trying to catch.  Here is Posy after such a rainbow hunting session:  exhausted after not finding a pot of gold, she has decided to just rest in the sun instead.