Happy New Year!

Crystal is ready to party! Or maybe she's already been in the 'nip...

Happy New Year to everyone, and let's hope 2009 is so good it makes us forget 2008!

Pyewacket, My Halloween Cat

This is my beautiful boy, Pyewacket. He is truly a Halloween cat, and here's why.

Last year (2007) on Halloween night, while I was giving out candy, my neighbor Cathy came over and asked me if I had seen a big black cat that had been running around the neighborhood for a couple weeks. She thought he had been dropped off by someone, and being a cat lover like I am, she was worried about him. We live on a busy street that runs alongside a major road. I hadn't seen him, but told her I would keep an eye out for him.

A little while later I heard something in the hydrangea bush next to my front porch. I turned, and there he was - the biggest black cat I had ever seen, with these amazing orange eyes - but he took off when I saw him. He was probably right there in the hydrangea when Cathy was asking me about him. After that, I was very worried about him, it being Halloween and all, so I put some food out on the kitchen porch before getting ready to go to my friend's Halloween party - dressed as a black cat, no less.

I got home from the party literally at the stroke of midnight. I went to open my basement door, and the cat came around the side of the house, scaring the bejabbers out of me. I said "Hi there!" and he just stood there. It was like he was saying, "Well, what are you waiting for? Here I am!" I scooped him up and brought him into the house. Then I fixed up the old coal cellar for him, giving him food and water bowls, blankets, and a litterbox. He stayed there for a couple days until I got him to the vet for a checkup.

I had to find a "Halloween-y" name for him, but I didn't like all the typical ones. I loved the movie Bell, Book, and Candle, so I named him Pyewacket after Gillian's cat.

Pyewacket is as nice as he is gorgeous, and he makes sure I remember to fill "his" special dish, the one he had in the coal cellar, every day by running in front of me down the stairs and leading me to it, then glaring at me. He is a wonderful addition to my menagerie.

Update on Timmy

Timmy is still doing well on his thyroid medicine, although he hasn't gained any weight back. He is still very thin, but he takes his pills and is eating and drinking normally. He hates the pills, but it seems like he knows he needs them so he doesn't give me much trouble about them. At his last vet check, his thyroid levels were much better than before he started on the meds. He likes to sleep on the little table in the corner of the kitchen on top of a pile of old catalogs.

One Happy Cat

Drugstore.com rocks! The box of Skin Milk arrived in two days, right in the middle of Christmas shipping season! Autumn is a happy girl!

No, my cats aren't spoiled...much!

So, Autumn likes to hang out in the bathroom with me while I take my shower in the morning. She plays monorail cat on the side of the tub and licks my face as I'm testing the water temperature.

After my shower, I put body cream on my legs. Lately I've been using one called Skin Milk, which has actual milk in it and smells like milk. Autumn has gotten into the very weird habit of licking the Skin Milk off my legs and is now so demanding (actually, she's always been very bossy) that as soon as I step out of the shower she is standing there going "Meow! Meow! Meow!" and she glares at me until I put the cream on my legs so she can lick it off. I know - who's weirder, me or her? It's a tossup.

I'm almost out of Skin Milk, and grocery day is not until this weekend, so I ran up to the local drugstore to see if they had it. They didn't. So I went to the drugstore by my office at lunchtime yesterday. They didn't have it either. Then, like an idiot, I drove 15 miles to Wal-Mart just to get Skin Milk for a CAT! They don't carry it anymore!! Just my luck. But I ran into a girlfriend in the parking lot and we went and had a couple beers, so it wasn't a totally wasted trip. :-)

I did find Skin Milk on Drugstore.com and bought four jars of it (free shipping for orders over $25), plus I got Upromise credit towards my student loans for my purchase. Yay! So that should last a while and keep Autumn happy. In the meantime, since I only have a teensy bit left, I am only putting Skin Milk on one leg and Eucerin on the other so she can still have some to lick off every day until the new shipment arrives.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Meet little Peek-A-Boo, a dilute calico Manx, mama of the beauty queen Pearl. Peek-A-Boo began life as a feral kitten who lived on a farm where they raised bobwhite quail. The farmer, a friend of my ex-husband's, was going to shoot the kitten because she was eating his birds. My ex, also a cat lover, and I already had quite a few cats, but he told his friend to bring the kitten to work. I worked across the street from him at a company that cleaned the sewers. The shop manager was also an animal lover, and he agreed that we needed a "shop cat." When Rick carried the cage with the kitten into the shop, she was literally hanging upside-down from the top of the cage, screaming at the top of her lungs. We put her in the parts room and made up a nice bed, litter box, food and water bowls, etc.

No one saw her for the first three months, but we knew she was there. She lived in the ceiling of the room but came down at night to eat and use the litter box. Soon she ventured out and walked around on the steel beam that went around the top of the metal building, watching the mechanics work on the trucks.

Still nameless, the little kitten was so filthy from being in the shop that she looked like a smoke-grey kitty! But she wouldn't let anyone get near her. Eventually, she started hanging over the loft above the office area and watching the men eat their lunches, and they started throwing little scraps up to her. This is where she got her name, Peek-A-Boo. She seemed to like one of the guys, Brian. After a few weeks he was able to get up on a ladder and actually pet her through the loft railings. I brought in a peacock feather and got up on the ladder and played with her, but still no one could get near her except on the ladder.

Then Peek-A-Boo went outside on the first warm February day, and guess what? She turned up preggers. This seemed to calm her wild spirit down a bit. She was so dirty and matted by this time, I brought in a slicker brush and climbed up on the ladder. She LOVED the slicker brush! After a couple weeks, I had all the mats out of her and you could actually tell she was a calico cat.

One Monday in April we came in to work to find Peekie skinny. Uh-oh, there are kittens somewhere! All work stopped for the next three days (when the boss wasn't looking) while everyone searched for the babies. We looked everywhere! Finally Jim, the shop manager, opened a room that was kept locked and we heard their little mews, very faintly. Jim reached into a large box of truck parts with me, Lisa and Karen right behind him, and out jumped Peek-A-Boo! Jim jumped back into me, and we almost fell like dominoes. In the box were five very tiny kittens. Jim took them out on by one and laid them on my hand. All five of them fit across my hand. Sadly, a little orange striped Manx was dead, but there was a calico Manx, a tortie Manx, a black & white tuxedo Manx, and a tortie with a full tail.

We made up a nice cozy box for Peekie to raise her kitties in, but she would have none of it. Every night she would move them to a different place in the shop. Fearing for their safety, I finally packed all of them up and took them home. Peekie was spayed, and the kittens were all adopted except for Peekie and Pearl, who still live with me. My daughter adopted little Norton, the tuxedo, and two of my co-workers took Casey and Lucy.

Peek-A-Boo weighs only five pounds, still loves her red slicker brush, and has never once shown a desire to go outside since she moved in with us. She knows she has the good life now!