We've all been down with various bugs here....

Everyone is back up and feeling better for the moment.  I thought we might be losing Midnight for a while, but he has rebounded and is back to his usual self.  If anything I think he is feeling better than he has in a while!  I will be back to posting here soon.

Imagination can be a frightning thing if you are a cat!

As Midnight grew several things became clear.

1.  Midnight was going to be an incredibly attractive cat, sleek and shiny black with huge, saucer eyes the color of gold coins and a very regal bearing.

2.  He was also going to be very close to my son.  He followed The Boy around like a baby duck after it's mother whenever our son was home.

3.   Midnight was a kitten with a very strong imagination.

You may think I am totally insane, but I do believe that cats have the ability to imagine things.  It is a part of their keen intelligence and I feel vital to their tracking and hunting skills.  It is very apparent in kittens when they spend hours chasing imaginary prey and batting it around. It can also show up in their sleep. 

Midnight would play for hours with his imaginary toys as well as his wide variety of real toys.  We had every cat toy That my son and I could find that we thought was safe for him and a few he had obtained himself from the household items.  Often, though, he preferred his imaginary toys to the ones strewn all over the house and would go back and forth between them.  This kept him entertained and he really enjoyed his play, but his imagination was to have a dark side. 

Most of you have seen this.  The cat is sleeping when it suddenly and for no apparent reason jumps up and goes running all over the house, eyes wide and ears laid back in total fear, running for his very life.  I had observed this in another cat occasionally and given a name to the imaginary creature, the dreaded Cat Demon!

Midnight did this so much that I was honestly worried that he was not getting enough sleep.  With my other kittens and adult cats, it was a rare occurrence.  Not so with Mid.  He had multiple attacks weekly and often 2 or 3 a day on bad days.  I would scoop him up and calm him when I saw this and it seemed to help but the Cat Demon was wily and waited just out of sight for his next chance.

I actually did a soft sculpt of this beast and will have to post photos of it here on the blog.  It did cause quite a stir around the neighborhood when I finished it.  I used to carry this cat sized creature around with me shopping and stuff.  I think it disturbed people way more than it did the cat.  Midnight sniffed it a couple of times then pretty much ignored it.  I have always wondered what his imaginary tormentors scent was.  Obviously my demon had nothing to offend a cat.

Midnight's Monkey

Midnight is a black cat, as you know, and black is one of my favorite colors for decor.  We quickly learned that a very small kitten that blends in so completely with his surroundings can be a bit hazardous for us and the little kitty.  One of my first projects with our new little baby was to make the house safer for everyone by adding some color to the surroundings.  I bought a lot of red rugs and throws to place in favorite spots so we could see him.  Naturally, he seemed to prefer, and still does, the black surroundings, so he would just move to new areas when the ones he had been occupying became unsuitable. It was a circular thing, I would cover a spot, he would move, I would cover the next spot and he would move again.  Eventually my house was a sea of red with a little black and a good deal of white. (which he ignored completely)  Once I had most surfaces covered in some way he would simply dig his way past the offending item to the nice, comfortable black and that is where I would find him.  Oh well, at least there was the lump created by his moving the throw or whatever and we knew where he was.

He was also fond of my husbands black socks right out of the laundry and newly balled up.  He would dig them out and carry them around with him, dragging them between his legs.  At first the pairs of socks were nearly as big as he was, but this did not last long. He was growing very quickly.  One day I heard my son laughing and looked up to see Midnight coming from the hallway with something quite different in his mouth.  He had a small stuffed toy monkey instead of the socks.  Of course, there were differences in the proportions of this object and the carry method was not nearly as effective.  Midnight's front legs were not nearly long enough for this job, but that fact only slowed him down a little.  He was walking with the monkey between his front legs and this meant that only one of his legs at a time could reach the ground.  He solved this problem by sliding his body side to side in order to put the appropriate leg to the ground so he could walk on it.  Of course this slowed him down a bit, but he was determined. He managed to slip and slide his way to the couch and drag the monkey up with him.  He then dug his way down to the black surface and he and the monkey settled in for a much needed nap.  The trip down the hall from the bedroom to the stairs, then down the stairs and a long hallway to the family room with that monkey had worn him out!

This fascination with that little toy monkey continued on for a very long time and he struggled daily to move it around with him.  About a week later I could hear him coming down the hallway from the stairs again and looked up to see hm emerge, carrying his monkey, but this time he had tipped his head so the monkey was not dragging the floor but was up in the air, allowing him to walk freely.  Of course this limited his field of vision but that did not seem to bother Midnight at all.  He would just turn his head to see around the monkey's body and go. 

He and our son were developing quite a close relationship and Midnight was spending his evenings sleeping in the Boy's room.  I decided to get him a proper bed instead of the makeshift pile of blankets we had made for him so I went to PetSmart and found a really cute zebra striped one.  I brought it home and sat it down in the living room floor for a very curious cat to investigate.  This was where I learned just how opinionated Midnight really is.  At this point he was about 4 months old and it was time for school to start, so I had wanted a comfort place for him for the time of day when the Boy was gone.

Midnight immediately got inside the bed to investigate. He sniffed and sniffed.  He walked in circles and did the little cat dance on the floor of the bed.  He poked and prodded, pushed and pulled, then did the circle thing again.  Just when I thought all was well and he liked the bed, he turned around, looked straight at me, then squatted and peed all over the bed!  He then jumped out of it, kicking it with his hind legs and doing his little Midnight harrumph that he does, he walked off never to look back.  So much for the store bought bed.

To this day Midnight sleeps in the bed with one of us or in his drawer I made for him that is lined with old t-shirts that we have worn.  It is his favorite place in the house.

Midnight Moves In

After Scarlett and Kitty left us I was not really interested in having new cats in my life, at least for a while.  For one thing, our lives changed drastically.  Our daughter was nearly grown, and I decided to go into my family business for a while.

My mother was a bail bond agent and had her own agency, plus she opened a little newsstand in the office where I worked there for a bit.  Eventually that proved not to be a great idea, so the offices reverted to bail bonds only and I took the tests from the state Insurance Commissioner and got my bail license.

Being a bail agent is a very demanding job which keeps you out of the home and occasionally on the street looking for your forgetful clients.  There was little time in my life for much else.  Things continued on this path for a good while, but our lives were about to take another couple of turns that no one saw coming.

The most significant of those changes was the birth of a beautiful baby boy into the family!  He was born 3 days before my 40th birthday and I always say he was the best birthday present ever!  Then, when the Boy was around 2 years old, my husband received a very good job promotion which included a move to Atlanta, GA from our Indianapolis home.  The move was a mixed bag.  It was great living in the South for many reasons, weather being a really big plus, but it also meant leaving all our family behind, which was a very sad side effect. 

Things went very well for us until our son started school, then I found myself  kind of lost.  He was also suffering some loneliness issues, missing family a great deal, so we decided to add a pet to our family.  One day while shopping at the mall I saw a sign on the window of the pet store, "Black Kittens, $20.00".  This store was very good about taking in litters of kittens, giving them their first shots and so on, then selling them for a small fee.  The $20.00 price tag was about half the normal price so I figured they must have quite a selection of kittens.  That plus the fact that I love black cats got me to go look, and sure enough, there was probably a dozen little kittens in the shop and about half of them black.  After spending a good deal of time holding the kittens, one by one, my son finally decided on one of a pair of twins.  He was from a litter of 4, two solid black and 2 solid blue gray.  I wanted all of them, of course, but my husband was the voice of reason.  One kitten it was.  Midnight was 7 weeks old when he came home.

I had been purchasing cat items over the past weeks, so bringing Midnight home was easy.  All I needed was food, which we were able to get at the shop, and we were set.  Off we went to the car, drove the short distance to home with Midnight gripping my son's shirt and mewing like mad all the way and both he and I trying to comfort him.  When we got home and sat him down, he went as straight as he could walk to the refrigerator and plopped down to stare at the door.  I guess that wherever he came from, the refrigerator had been a favorite place.

After a few days, Midnight was completely in charge of the household, or so he thought.

Scarlett - Chapter 7 - Finally

The date came to take Scarlett in for her "little procedure" as my vet called it and we rounded her up to go.  Have you ever noticed how cats seem to have a sixth sense about these things?  Scarlett was nearly always under foot but come time for the vet and you discovered that what you actually had living with you in the house was not an ordinary cat at all.  It was instead a cat of stealth and cunning beyond your wildest dreams and Scarlett was no exception to this.  In fact, if anything, she improved not only her own sneaky skills but those of Miss Kitty as well.  There was not a cat to be seen anywhere.

 

Here we were, two adult and one tween human, crawling around on the floor, pulling out furniture and shaking little bags of cat treats like some primitive noise maker to scare away the evil spirits.  When I think about the things these little creatures manage to get us to do, it is downright embarrassing!  Do you ever wonder what the kitty equivalent of "Watch this!" is?  If we knew the signal maybe we would have a chance to thwart their intentions of making a total fool of us.

 

We finally did find Scarlett after a couple of false starts, thinking we had her but finding Miss Kitty instead, and my husband dropped her off at the Vet's.  Later that day when we arrived to pick her up we were greeted by a our Doctor holding a large book that was open to a page with a photo that for the world looked like Scarlett!  I had to look twice to see that it was not her, but another cat remarkably like her, and this cat was photographed in it's den with it's cubs! 

 

My vet explained that worked a lot of animal rescue cases and that he had worked on a case with a group of these cubs that were found abandoned a couple of times in the past.  He said this was a very rare breed of wild cat that lived in the Louisiana swamp but was being killed off by humans.  I guess Scarlett was from a group cubs such as this.  She was definitely one of the breed of cat, no doubt.  He told me that this was the reason he had questioned me so much about her.  Apparently they went to search the area around the grocery store where I found Scarlett the day I brought her to him the first time, hoping to find other babies but were not successful.  Since he was not 100% sure at that point that she was indeed a wild cat cub, he just left it alone and watched closely. This was the "unofficial" explanation.  Officially, it was amazing how much she looked like one of these cubs at first, but of course, it would be illegal to have such a cat in your home, so obviously she was just a domestic cat who looked a lot like a wild cat and was very smart like they are.  He also told me that she was probably a lot younger than I thought when we found her.  I had thought her to be 3 to 4 months old but he said she was likely 8 to 9 weeks instead. 

 

This was the reason for all the phone calls, to see if she was blending in and not causing issues..  He said they had hand raised the other kittens (cubs) and they had done very well with humans but were unable to return to the wild.  They ended up living in a rescue facility.  He figured that if she did well with us, she would have a happier life with another cat and family than she would all alone in a shelter.

 

So we gathered up our little sleepy bundle of cat and took her home with a better understanding of why she had always seemed a little odd for a cat.  She spent the evening in the bath tub, recovering from her anaesthetic, which was a good thing for her.  She loved the bath tub.

 

Scarlett and Miss Kitty were with us in the as my daughter grew to womanhood.  We moved from Louisiana to Indianapolis and at that time, I guess Scarlett decided it was time to return to the wild.  While the humans were away, one summer afternoon, Scarlett and Kitty chewed and clawed their way out of a screened in enclosure that they had enjoyed lounging in for many months.  They were in a very rural setting at this house and there were lots of other animals around as it was a farming area and there were many farm cats who visited our yard.  I spent months trying to encourage them back inside but they would have none of it.  They would visit from time to time, but the outdoors was home now and confinement to a house was not to be tolerated.  After a time Scarlett disappeared from the group.  She had been healthy and happy when last I saw her so I can only guess as to her fate.  It has been many years, but I still dream of her and wonder what ever became of her.  Miss Kitty stayed with the pack and eventually died at the very old age.  She also visits my dreams and thoughts.  They were special gifts, both of them, and I shall forever miss them.

Scarlett - Chaptern 6 - The Beast in the Chair

When Scarlett first came to our home It was in a bit of turmoil as some of you may already know.  Miss Kitty was at the vet recovering from her miscarriage that day and came home to find a kitten in the house waiting for her.  I was not surprised, then, when my vet's office made several phone calls to check on us over the next few days.  However, when the calls continued past the first days and the questions were mostly about Scarlett, I started to wonder about her.

When she was about 6 months old I took her back in for a check-up and to decide on a date for neutering and was again met with a ton of questions.  "Is there something wrong here?" I asked.  "No," the doc assured me, "I am just really curious as to where she originally came from and how she happened to be at that grocery store.  You do not often see a scene like this and it was even more remarkable because she was so young at the time."

She was examined from head to toe and given a clean bill of health.  The return date was set for a few weeks out  I took her home, again feeling like there was a lot more to know and wondering when I would find out.

Scarlett was getting really big!  I thought maybe she was a Main Coon cat because of her size, but her body shape and tail were all wrong.  Miss Kitty was nearly a year older yet Scarlett outweighed her by a pound.  I wondered how big she would get.

My husband and I decided it was time to replace the old dining room table so we spent a couple of week-ends shopping.  I finally decided on a table with heavily padded chairs and we packed it into the truck to bring home.  When we arrived and were unloading the stuff, both the cats were watching with great interest.  Of course, we had to keep them inside, which was the real challenge, or so we thought.  Since they had learned to open the doors, putting them in a bathroom or bedroom did little good.

This day they were more curious about what was coming into the house than what was going on outside and we managed to bring in the table and 4 chairs before trouble started.  As soon as I picked up chair #5 from the truck and headed towards the door, Scarlett went wild!  She screamed like the demons were on her tail and ran, leaping through the air and attacked the chair!  She was like the Tasmanian Devil whirling and clawing and tearing at this poor chair.  She bit and clawed frantically while I stood there stunned, wondering what had set her off.  All I knew to do was to try and get inside and put the chair down and get away from it before this fit of fury included my arms, hands or whatever else she decided to go for.

Once I was inside my husband could see what was happening and ran to grab a towel to throw over her.  I did manage to set the chair down and then watched in disbelief as she bit the back and seat a few more times, smacked it a few times and then sat on the chair howling like a cross between a lion and a wolf.  My husband reappeared with the towel but by this time, Scarlett was calming on her own.  She started sniffing the chair all over and pushing at it here and there with her paw.  We humans watched this spectacle play out, ready to act if the violence started again, but wisely leaving her alone with her kill.

Poor Miss Kitty had run and hid behind the sofa and was trying bravely to sneak up to the Kid's room for safety.  It was hours before she decided to revisit us.  

After deciding the chair was indeed dead, Scarlett jumped down and came to me purring and rubbing my legs.  She was obviously quite proud to have saved me from a grave danger.  The chair was showing signs of the battle, and since the seat and back were covered with vinyl, it was a mass of bite and claw marks.  We thought about taking it the rest of the way apart to try and see what set her off like that, but on examination of the chewed areas, all we could see was foam padding. Some things are not for humankind to know, I guess.

One thing was for sure, when the vet called to check on us the next time, I had a story for him!

Scarlett, Chapter 5 - The Baby Invasion

The months had passed very fast and Scarlett and Miss Kitty had agreed on the division of the house humans and the sleeping arrangements after a bit of a struggle.  At first it was like having two toddlers.  Mine, mine, mine!  Everything is mine!!!  Finally things settled out with Miss Kitty spending her sleeping time on my daughter's bed and Scarlett with my husband and me.  She would get on the foot of the bed on my side at first and then creep her way up until she was sleeping in the middle between us.  She had to have one set of paws touching me and the other touching my husband.  It was great fun to let her get into a deep sleep then move a bit so that her feet no longer touched.  She would not wake up from this, but would squirm and wriggle around until she again could touch us both.  If the humans were to get to close together making it hard for her to find room, she would use the back legs and push against one or the other of us until someone moved, allowing space for her.

She had also claimed my old wooden rocking chair as hers when we were all in the living room.  There was a small pillow I kept in the seat of this chair and Scarlett would curl up on it and enjoy the company of the family or sleep.  One day the tranquility of the household was turned upside down with friends came to visit bringing with them their 18 month old child.  My daughter was the the only non adult human in the household and Scarlett was used to her and her friends, but they were in the 8 to 10 year old range.  This little one was a totally new experience for poor Scarlett and Miss Kitty.  Miss Kitty method of coping was to retreat to my daughter's bedroom but Scarlett was not going to back off.  This was her house and no small human was going to change that.  Instead of running upstairs for the safety of the bedroom,  she chose to stay planted in the living room.  She did run to the end of the sofa for a bit, watching warily as this child toddled around the room.  The baby, thankfully, had no interest in Scarlett but was entertained a great deal by pushing around my (very light weight) plastic parsons table that served as an end table in my living room at the time.  Scarlett watch this for a bit, then ran the rest of the way behind the couch where she spent the next hour or so emitting a constant low growl.  We were wondering how she could breathe with all this growling but I knew what a fight it would be to try and remove her from the room, so I just kept a close eye on things and hoped for the best.

Have you ever had one of those times when you really wished you had a video camera running?  The next few moments of this day was one of those times.

When my friends did leave Scarlett re-emerged to find that the little table had been pushed up to the front of the rocking chair seat and, to her great horror, her pillow was in the floor!  This would not do at all.  I was walking around the room, putting things back in place when I noticed Scarlett sitting in front of the rocking chair and looking at the pillow in the floor.  My husband and I decided that we wanted to see what she would.  Sure enough, she took matters into her own hands, (or, in this case, teeth) and the next thing we knew she was dragging the pillow towards the chair.  Once she got it to the base of the table, she carefully laid it on the floor and jumped to the top of the little table and reached down to pull the pillow up while she was backing into the seat of the chair.  She dropped the pillow when she had come to the back of the chair and could go no further, leaving the pillow on the table and not in the chair where it belongs.

The events up to now had amazed us.  The next thing she did totally blew us away. We figured she was done with this project and I was getting ready to help her out when she got up from the seat of the chair and went to the table, lying down in front of the pillow facing the back of the chair.  She then used her back feet to push this pillow the rest of the way into the seat of the chair!  We were dumbfounded!  How did this cat figure out how to do something like that?? 

I have known many cats over the years but I have never seen anything like the intelligence it took to figure this out in another cat.  Once the pillow was in place, Scarlett got on top of it for a well deserved nap.  My husband and I figured that she may have learned this little trick from all the times at night when she would push us out of the way.