EASTER KITTENS

Today is Orthodox Easter.  No one is more Orthodox than cats.  Orthodox means the "Right way" and indicates a conservative opinion.  That's cats.  (Dogs are liberal.)  Do anything three times the same way and it will be the ONLY right way for cats.

The way they feel about bunnies is that there are two kinds: edible (small) and avoidable (big enough to thump you silly with their hind feet and leave you dizzy in the dust).  Eggs are okay.  There's no such thing as Easter kibble.

At present, mostly because I badly dislocated my shoulder on Groundhog's Day (luckily not repeated) and am just now almost out of pain except that my doc prescribed meds without telling me they prevent the use of NSAIDS like aspirin, and I was doing pretty well until 2AM when I woke up in agony so took aspirin.  I only knew about the prohibition because I googled.  I google everything.  If something is not said directly, it can be implied if you use a calendar and a bit of guessing.  Maybe a map.

Aside from pain, the worst consequence of being almost paralyzed for two months (and I DID manage to keep blogging but that's about all) is the stink.  Many cats mean much stink.  I thought it was embarrassingly bad until I woke up this morning and realized that probably the reason I woke up at 2am was that I forgot to lock the cat flap and tomcats had been in the house.  They smell far worse than poop.

So I googled cat poop and it had good advice except all of it will be hard.  Like hosing out the litter box in the yard: there's a blizzard coming in with possible single-digit temps so the advice is NOT to hook up the outdoor faucets yet.  I can't even find the "deposits" out-of-box unless they are fresh enough to sniff, but the advice is to find and plastic-bag all excretions immediately!  I suspect they have sparely furnished houses without piles of books and papers, let alone strange little packing gizmos of styrofoam or broken pens.  A kitten just went by chasing the end of a yellow squash that hopped off the counter when I fixed dinner last night.  I wondered where it went.

In the beginning were two proper kittens when I had a real job.  They had shots and sterilization and grew fat, too soon old and rheumatic, so with many tears I paid for them to be euthanized. 

Crackers and Squibs

 I should have nailed the cat flap shut right then.  Instead, the constant pressure of the Valier sea of cats pushed some ferals through the hole.  I fed them. They didn't eat their whole meals, so I put the leftovers out on the walk where other feral cats and some crows made it their business to do cleanup.  

There was a calico feral in the neighborhood who now (years ago) brought her kittens.   She was old and eventually must have died, disappeared, but I think one kitten persists -- the Mooch, who haunts the garage and the cat flap.  A stinky tomcat.  

Then the neighbors bought an old car with three kittens hiding in it, evidently part "bengals", a strain of cats deliberately inbred to get back to the original cat stock. One died, one was kept by the neighbors, and one came over here:  Finnegan the Homewrecker.  The stinkiest of the stinkers.

Finnegan on the left.

A later pretty kitten from somewhere attached to Finnegan, the way a teenaged girl will fall in love with the worst delinquent in the nabe.  When he began peeing in the flowerpots, the way a drunk at a party can't tell a hat from a drawer, I became hostile and Finnegan left.  Too late.  One kitten from that batch persists only because the Blue Bunny (the teenager's name because she was and is blue -- it's actually the name of a kind of ice cream) took the babies down the stairs and back and behind the water heater in a hole where I couldn't get them.  I know she did because she didn't take them by the nape of their necks which would have made them curl and quiet.  Instead she grabbed them by a foot and as they dangled they screamed horribly.

One was Tuxedo and I'm not sure about the other -- I think maybe Thimble, the most lovable of gray kittens whose lower jaw was ripped off somehow.  She already had the Valier Cat Virus, which infects eyes and respiratory systems, turns aside vaccination like some entitled suburban, and kills many.  I can't afford a vet, but I put Thimble's euthanasia on my credit card, already maxed.

Tuxie and Thimble

Then Tuxedo, whose fur is flat and shiny as patent leather and who has a soul patch on her lower lip, did NOT get the virus but because, raised in the dark, had a scrambled hormone system for lack of sunshine.  Skinny and childish, she still nurses from her mother alongside her own babies.  Pickle is also a kitten from Bunny.  She is shy and independent.  Tuxie and Bunny go along side-by-side, trotting their predatory way through the days and nights.  They despise Pickle and smack her in the head at every chance.  Pickle is hooked on cat treats, which I very rarely spread on the floor like chicken feed.

Sparrows

This brings running eight cats, five of which are Pickle's last batch of kittens who eluded me when I was in agony.  Three of the eights are moms.  These kittens have bulging tummies and are well-licked, half-grown.  I call them en masse, the Sparrows.  One loves me and comes running when he sees me.  I call him "Buddy."  Another one also tells me things.  That's "Squirrel", who has coarse gray fur and a nervous disposition so his tail is often flared.  Two more are identical -- I can't tell them apart so I call them both "Ditto".  The fifth kitten is called "Five".  I constantly count kittens to see if they are all safely inside after an adventure in the garage, or following a terrible shriek of near-death or even  if they are peacefully sleeping in a tangled pile on my bed.  There are always four and I have to go hunt for the fifth, who is never "Five."

So what must I do?  I'll have to get on all fours to find and scrub the illicit poops, but I'm not sure my shoulder will allow that yet.  I need to find kitten homes in a place that is overrun with cats.  I must always remember to lock the cat flap at night.  Can I afford to spay the three moms?  Since all three are still nursing, and the randy tomcats want to start new batches -- maybe already did -- can they be spayed when preggers?  How can I work on a sensible blog for Orthodox Easter with these worries plaguing me?

I was going to do a massive catchup wash at the laundromat, but the forecast is a blizzard.  Oh, well.  Cats and I know how to begin again.