Cat TV!

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To be a pet, or not.

I often wonder/worry about my cats' happiness as pets. I worry more about this with Christian, since he was a stray into his adult life and so has some perspective on this - he knows what he has lost, and what he has gained, in the transition from stray to pet. Shadow, of course, has been with me since she was three month old, and so never had a chance to experience the outside world on her own.

The tally, as I understand it, is this:

Pros of being a pet:
- food is provided twice a day
- clean water is always available
- no predators
- no bad weather, aside from occasional thunder (which may be scary but can't hurt them)
- no cars

I don't add things like veterinary care, since I doubt that they understand its significance.

Cons of being a pet:
- severely constrained roaming area, with
- little to chase
- only one other cat to interact with
- no sex (though they're both neutered/spayed/fixed)
- sometimes a little too much interaction with the resident human (I'm happy to pick them up, pet them, etc a bit more than they're happy to be picked up, petted, etc. But I'm learning to read them and there haven't been any altercations.)

I think there was one other thing, but I forget what it was for the moment. And in any case, the real point of this post is this: when I open the door to enter or exit the apartment, even though they often look out the door (which leads directly into the outside world), they never try to escape. I realized the significance of this only this week, when it occurred to me that that was their vote: to stay as a pet. Which makes me happy.

The Water Bowl

I feel bad for Christian. Every time he finds a new hidey-hole (and hidey holes are important to a cat's sense of safety and well-being) Shadow comes along and evicts him, moving in herself (and abandoning her old hidey-hole (his old hidey-hole) to do so). His most recent find was his cat carrier, which lives nestled in a corner between two bookcases, behind the third book case that's been in the middle of the floor since the roof began to leak last month, and beside the box of papers that I don't know what to do with, but can't throw out because they're valuable somehow. But the point is that he found a place to sit quietly, which was protected but enabled him to see out, and once again Shadow ousted him. As I said, I feel bad, and I don't know what to do.

So about twenty minutes ago, when Christian discovered that his carrier was unoccupied, he went over to it and crept inside. He was mostly in - only his tail was poking out - when Shadow discovered him and headed over there herself. I stepped out of the kitchen to observe, and as I did, my foot caught something. The location of the object, and its weight, and the sound it made when my foot hit it all meant that I knew what it was before I looked down - it was the cats' water bowl - the one by the kitchen.

I have caught and spilled this water bowl before - it's really not in the best of locations, from the not-catching-it-with-your-foot perspective. The cats have upset it, too, when racing around and horseplaying. There was even the memorable time when they knocked into it, sloshing some water out, and then I did the same when stooping to clean up what they had spilled, sloshing yet more water onto the wooden floor. But we have never yet managed to empty the entire bowl onto the floor, until I tonight.

And this is no small bowl, either, because I am paranoid about the cats running out of water. I picture the power going out, and with it the air conditioning, and my poor cats, tongues hanging out, finally collapsing of dehydration because I didn't leave enough water. This is a bowl designed for dogs, which holds a liter of water when full, as it approximately was twenty minutes ago until I caught it with my foot.

(If that bowl proves to be insufficient, there is another, equally large bowl of water over by their water fountain, which itself holds over a liter of water when full, but more on the fountain in another post.)

So, there I was, with a liter of water on my floor, which is rented and wooden, and no doubt greedily drinking in all of that water because it's also unfinished. Or maybe it has lost its finish through years of deferred maintenance, not to say neglect, on the part of my landlord. More on that in another post, too. Either way, it's not protected from water. And apart from the water that was soaking into the Stop & Shop ad ("do you know an employee who deserves an A+?") and that which had soaked my jeans up to the knee, all of that water was on the floor.

No big deal, but all I can think of while stripping my bathroom of its towel and cleaning up the mess was "ooh, what a great blog post." And, "how do I wrap this post up?"

I have been singularly unobservant of my cats

I had thought that Shadow had continued as dominant cat over Christian. Then, perhaps two weeks ago Shadow rolled backwards off of her perch, falling about 7 feet to the floor. There was a flurry of black fur and flailing limbs and then a 'thump' as she struck the ground. She did not appear to have suffered in anything but her dignity, though she was slightly less active for the next three days (she still ran around, but didn't climb the vertical poles as much) and it seemed in the aftermath of that that Christian became more dominant, as if the accident had upset the hierarchy.

But then I thought back over the past few months, and realized that perhaps Christian has been dominant for some time. This would explain why Shadow gave up some of her activities after he moved in (specifically, she no longer climbs the longer of the two climbing posts, even when I attempt to lead her up there with a favorite toy). So, I think she's been bumped.

All of which probably means a lot more to me than it does to her. I am guilty of anthropomorphizing the cats to a degree, and I feel very badly for her not being allowed to do things that she previously enjoyed. I also feel guilty, since of course it's my fault that she's in this position. This is in addition to the guilt I feel for Scruffy himself.

Because Shadow is the favorite. She has been since day one. She wanted attention when I first met her and her brother, Scruffy, at the store to which the shelter had brought them, and when I tried to reach over and pet him, he didn't respond (apparently it had been a long day for both of them) but she came over for further petting and attention. Really, he came to my house because I was enthralled with her, and couldn't see separating them. I liked him well enough, and developed real affection for him, but she was the draw. And when he was removed from their cage for me to meet and eventually take home, he clung to the bars at the door, not wanting to leave the safety of that cage.

And Christian, too, is here in some degree because of Shadow. I didn't want her to be lonely and bored when I was away all day. If both Shadow and Scruffy had died - if I had killed them both, I wouldn't have adopted Christian. There would have been no reason to do so.

Which brings me to my point. I want Shadow to be top cat. I want the best of everything for her, even more so than I want the best for Christian, or wanted the best for Scruffy. All of it is ridiculous - ridiculous and juvenile - but that doesn't change the desire, or the pain at realizing that she's at the bottom of the hierarchy.

My poor kitten.

My poor Shadow.

Christianzilla!

Timing is everything

Christian spent the past half hour asleep in the doorway, in as large a patch of sunlight as he could find on this overcast afternoon. A moment after the shutter clicked, however, he woke up, stood, and stretched. I'm surprised the shut isn't blurred by his motion, but I must have caught him just before he moved.

Christian

Looking fierce!

Christian

Christian chews cardboard

Christian has a habit of biting into cardboard boxes. Initially I though this was becasue he wanted to eat the cardboard, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Once he's managed to pull off a piece of cardboard, he shakes his head to send the cardboard flying, then takes another bite of the cardboard. Through careful application he has reduced what used to be a prime shoe box into a shabby mess.

I'm not really sure what the thinking behind this is - that is, I'm not sure why he does this. My guess is that he sometimes had to pull his food apart to divide it into bite sized portions, and he misses doing that, or has some instinct to do that, but I admit that this is nothing more than a guess.

I sometimes wonder what Christian is thinking...

...as he sits before the window, watching the outside world. He was a stray until this past summer, though I'm not entirely sure that he hadn't spent some time as a pet prior to that, since he seems pretty relaxed around people (or at least around me) It is true that he often briefly finds a position of safety (often on the top stair, but sometimes beneath the table) as I come into the house, but as soon as I'm in, and often before I've closed the door, he comes forward to greet me.

But my point here is that when he sits before a window and looks out, is he glad to be free of being tormented by wind and rain, and having to fend for himself? Or does he miss the freedom that he used to have?

Christian chases his tail

I don't see him do so often, but when he does, I'm never sure if he realizes that it's his own tail that he's chasing.

Christian, Shadow, dominance

I wrote earlier about the first meeting between Shadow and Christian, but as I said at the time, there was not yet harmony in Catsville.

The cats also had another session or two of seeing each other through the crack in the bathroom door. Unfortunately, each of these sessions placed me in the bathroom with Christian - there was no way to properly work the bathroom latch if I was on the outside - leaving Shadow alone. She was pretty disturbed, and when I placed her first into the carrier and then locked her into the bathroom (enabling Christian to explore the apartment some, locking Shadow into the bathroom so that she could get used to his scent, but not confront him directly) I think she became convinced that she was being replaced and I would soon be booting her out.

Christian stayed out in the apartment for the day, but shortly before I went to sleep for the night I swapped them again. Shadow looked up at me with big, sad eyes and went off to a corner to curl up and sleep, and, I suppose, to do the feline equivalent of crying. My last act before crawling into bed was to collect her from her corner and carry her to my bed - something I don't typically do - and this seemed to convince her that she wasn't about to be abandoned, though she still wasn;t too sure about the new cat.

I don't blame her for being uncertain - Christian is close to twice as big as she is (his paunch is also about twice as big as hers). Nevertheless after three or four days they not only were able to more or less tolerate each other through a gate, so I let them into the apartment together - first for only a few minutes, then for progressively longer periods.

I knew that perhaps the largest issue the cats would have to settle was that of dominance. With Scruffy, Shadow was dominant, though she rarely made use of it. She and her brother shared their food very amicably, for instance, each deferring to the other as they ate from the same dish. The only time I remember her showing dominace was at the climbing pole, which she rarely let him use.

But Shadow and Scruffy worked out their dominance issue before I met them, whereas Shadow and Christian would be doing so under my nose. I quickly discovered that I had difficulty determining whether their fights and chaces were in play or in earnest. On the one hand there wasn't any hissing or yowling, but on the other hand their ears were back much more often than when Shadow and Scruffy had wrestled. Shadow sometimes turned sideways and arched her back, bristling the hair along her spine, but just as often she had her tail in the air. Frequently they had standoffs - staring contests which were sometimes won by one cat, sometimes by the other. The issue of dominance was in doubt, and at times it seemed that the issue of Christian's successfully moving in and staying was in doubt, too.

There is one major dfference between the photos

There is one major difference between the photos, though - look at their pupils: Christian is a lot more relaxed than Scruffy.

A better photo of Christian

There is a striking resemblance between his photo and several that I have of Scruffy, such as the one below. I'm not sure what I think about that. Another thing that I don't understand is how Christian fits himself into that condo. At fourteen pound and change he is a bit overweight, but according to the vet his optimal weight is probably about thirteen pounds, so he's a big cat.

Christian? Maybe I should rename him Jewish

One of my concerns, in the wake of Scruffy's death, has been to find a playmate for Shadow. Friday I went down to the Elmsford shelter and filled out paperwork, and I saw several lots of cats, including a beautiful little grey cat with a white chest, who was very affectionate and allowed herself to be picked up. She was absolutely perfect, but then it appeared that she doesn't get along with other cats very well. So, no go. By the time the shelter closed I hadn't found a cat that fit the bill, so I left empty handed.

I had completed the paperwork, however, and although I was up at West Point for the weekend, I did have time to get some of the litter and food that the shelter uses, to make the transition for Hypothetical Cat a bit easier. I returned to the shelter today, and quickly found another nice grey cat, but as I petted him I guess he got overexcited and he bit me with enough force to draw blood. He went back into his cage. The next cat that seemed a possibility, a cute black and white kitty, turned out to be part of a pair, so since I don't have the room for three cats, that cat was also a no go. But the shelter staff led me to a largish grey/brown tabby named Christian, who is about two years old and was a stray until the beginning of the summer. He was very affectionate, and seemed ideal. I guess they checked my references over the weekend, because they let me take him home right then:


For the moment, he is living in the bathroom (which, as was pointed out to me, is much bigger than a cage) so the cats can have the opportunity to get to know each other a bit without having the opportunity to maul each other.

The two cats have sort of met. I had the bathroom door open a crack so they could see and smell each other. Christian seemed curious, as did Shadow, but she also gave a tiny hiss - like a brief bit of soft static on the radio, so I don't think she's ready to accept him yet.