Tuxie Thursday: Sommersburr Complains

Sommersburr complains. (So what else is new?) But it's time for a cat post...

PK: Apart from the fact that you're an elderly neutered tomcat, Sommersburr, what else are you complaining about today? Not that I really understand what you're saying. It sounds as if you had worked out a whole private language of "meows" to communicate with a human, humans, or even cats, where you used to live, but I have no idea where that was or what you used to be able to tell them, whoever they were.

Sommersburr: I am an elderly neutered tomcat. I've lost my original home and my human and all my other friends except Serena and her daughters. I'm not feeling well. It's so humid that everyone's fur is instantly wet if they venture outdoors.

PK: Yes. (My hair looks as wet, after coming into town to work online, as it did yesterday, when it was actually rained on.)

Sommersburr: And then there's the awful thing that happened to my young friend Serena and her kittens.

PK: Did you see anything, toward the end of their misadventure?

Sommersburr: I didn't see much. I've been spending some time with Suzie's humans, trying to get them to let me come into their house. What happened here this week was the kind of thing that motivates a cat to spend time at some other house.

PK: Agreed. Just don't try to lure Serena away from me.

Sommersburr: Well, a lot of help you were, to her!

Serena: Oh be fair. She tried.

Sommersburr: She told you she was going to have kittens. She asked you to let her use the box at the back of the office closet.

PK: Yes. The box where Heather had her late-summer kittens, who lived about three weeks.

Sommersburr: You knew she was about to give birth, didn't you?

PK: Yes, though only when her milk came in. She didn't look very different before and after the birth.

Sommersburr: She's a fine figure of a cat. Burly...cobby...sturdy...a big strong healthy cat.

PK: She was beginning to look just slightly fat. She still does. She had only two kittens.

Sommersburr: Yes, and they were her kittens...

PK: Yes. And she made a point of showing them to me as soon as they were out and moving about. I suspected that might mean trouble because, social though Serena is, cats usually try to keep their kittens away from everyone else's germs and fleas for the first few weeks, until the kittens have absorbed a few antibodies. Serena put those two right out on the porch. I thought she was asking me to move the kitten box to that corner and put a clean blanket in it. I did that. I'd washed my hands, and then Serena had rubbed against them. The kittens smelled their mother on my hands. The calico kitten, especially, sniffed all over my hand, looking for Serena. A bond began to form.

Sommersburr: What do humans know about bonds?

PK: We do bond with kittens, in our way. I noticed how well grown these two were. Nothing premature about them. The calico kitten was large for a newborn kitten, and the black-and-white one was extra-large. They were lively and alert. I remember, though, that other times when Serena has had kittens, the biggest and apparently liveliest one in the litter has been the one who didn't make it.

Sommersburr: They made it through the afternoon, the next night, and into the next afternoon. Then when we heard you cough...

PK: Just a whiff of dicamba on the air. It doesn't smell like the tear gas cartridges in the pistol I used to carry, but it affects the throat the same way. It doesn't feel like a cold or like strep. It's a highly abrasive poison gas. But as I wondered who'd been the fool this time, I could imagine that poor old Grouch down in town, locking himself away in his house, thinking he's got the coronavirus again...

Sommersburr: Whatever that is.

PK: A sort of cold some humans get. So far the only one in our town who's had it is the Grouch, after his grandchildren came to visit. They live somewhere in the North, New York City, New Jersey, it's none of our readers' business. None of them was ill, because they're young and healthy. But after they'd gone back, their grandfather was ill. Well, he had a cold--runny nose, sinus headache, cough, sore throat, and fever--but he said they felt worse than a cold and lasted longer. He said he called his doctor, and the doctor said, "If you think you've got the coronavirus, go straight to the hospital and stay away from me. I have to work with fragile, sickly patients." So he called the hospital, and people there said, "We have to save rooms for the sickest patients, so if you walk in on your feet we'll send you home. We will try to save a bed for you if someone else carries you in." So he stayed home and quarantined himself, and after several weeks he felt better. Then the doctor let him come in for a regular check-up. He asked for a blood test. He says the test showed he had the coronavirus.

Sommersburr: Who cares?

PK: You remind me of the Grouch, Sommersburr. Humans care very much about any facts we can learn about the coronavirus. People are saying it's a hoax, calling it "the controlavirus" because a certain political party that does not have a majority vote is trying to use it to control our legislature.

It's not a hoax, Gentle Readers. Coronavirus is real. It's been around for a long time. For most people it's less likely to cause even ordinary cold symptoms than rhinovirus, which is what we call the Common Cold. For people like the Grouch, who is an old mean drunk but not really fragile, it can be extremely nasty. For people who have cancer or AIDS, it's likely to be the end.

The message from our government has been, all along, that the government is trying to force everyone to react in exactly the same way to something that's actually not going to be the same for any two people; which is not right. Healthy people shouldn't try to live like sick people. But this web site has already discussed a phenomenon we called "Virus Karma," even if some Christian correspondents don't like using a Hindu word. When healthy people sneer at weaker people's reactions, sometimes it seems as if their consciences kick in, their resistance goes down, and they're worse off than those weaker people were.

I don't think anybody should be ordered to observe quarantine by the government. I think everybody should respect, without question, other people's observing quarantine for themselves, which is what the coronavirus panic has really been about. There are people who need to stay away from work or school for fear of the coronavirus. If it hadn't been for the panic, a lot of those people's teachers or supervisors would have penalized them for "being scared of a silly little cold"--and the fact is that a lot of people have valid reasons to isolate themselves from a silly little cold.

Tomorrow people in North Carolina have been ordered to cover their faces when they go anywhere. They're naturally unhappy about that; especially the ones in the part of North Carolina near us, who may not be in real danger anyway. They think covering their faces won't be enough to protect them if they have to stand in a cloud of airborne virus, which is true. They think they shouldn't have to think about not picking up a silly little cold--that nobody else they know is going to be more vulnerable than they are--which is probably not true for many of those who think it. They think the coronavirus isn't real anyway. Well, news flash, North Carolina neighbors. I don't know how many of youall know the Grouch, but everyone in Gate City does, and the virus is just as real and solid and annoying as he is. Only smaller, and harder to hit.

However, even though we can't rule out the possibility of his losing immunity to the coronavirus or to any number of other infections he's had in the past, the probability is that what's made him cough this week has not been coronavirus.

Sommersburr: Well, anyway, the important thing is, those kittens started crying. Healthy kittens don't cry. They squeak when they're hungry and when they're being cleaned, and they purr when they're being fed, and that's about all. Nature did not intend for anything as helpless as a day-old kitten is to make a noise. But we all heard tiny screams coming out of those kittens.

PK: I wondered why they weren't in the kitten box. I went over to put them back in, but they screamed so piteously as I approached that I didn't want to touch them.

Serena: They screamed like that at me too. They were in pain and they hoped you might be able to do something to help them. To bring me, anyway. Baby kittens can't see or hear much, so they rely on smell. Anyone who smells of their mother is obviously their mother's friend, so they trust their mother's humans...at least until they are able to see them.

PK: I said, "Oh for pity's sake, kittens. If you want to lie on the bare floor, lie on the floor." I set out dinner for the adult cats and went in for the night.

Sommersburr: Leaving them to die.

PK: Humans can sometimes help adult cats who are ill but we can't do anything for day-old kittens. I came out in the morning to see whether Serena had brought them back into the box and it looked as if they hadn't moved all night. The bigger one had died first, and was completely stiff. The calico kitten had been dead for only a few hours.

Serena: That's why I'd brought them out of the box. Young though they were, they had had a few good meals. I didn't want smells or mess in that box. Of course it's too small for me, anyway.

PK: Bah, humbug! You're a big strong Queen Cat, Serena, but you're not really oversized, the way our Graybelle was. I don't think you're much bigger than your grandmother Irene. I know you're not as big as Burr or Sommersburr, both of whom are big tomcats, but not giants. When Graybelle told me she was too big to use a kitten-size litter box, it made sense that she might have needed room to assume a specific position...but you do fit into that kitten box. Even Sommersburr could fit into it if he wanted to. Your problem is that you don't like to curl up in a box the way most cats do.

Serena: Well, no. I like to sit up and look down on what's going on from a place where I can climb out of reach of any danger, rather than be boxed in where danger can come in after me. I like that open-topped cardboard box that Heather used.

PK: Because of the risk of poison spray vapor drift I let Heather use that box. It did no good. The vapor drifted through the door when Heather and I went in and out. Those kittens lived long enough to get used to the way I looked, but not long enough to try to climb out of their box or eat solid food. Since you seem to understand more words than there is any logical explanation for a cat understanding, I said to you, "If you really want to bring them in, bring them in, but I will be spending more time in town, and you'll have to wait outside while I'm in town." You thought about that, and did not actually bring the babies in. And it probably wouldn't have saved them if you had.

Sommersburr: Why do humans do things like this?

PK: Because some humans are unbelievably stupid. Dicamba has been taken off the market because it makes humans ill, but the poisoners screamed because they wouldn't have any other kind of poison to spray on the pretty flowers and nutritious vegetables they call weeds, so our Environmental Protection Agency told them they could "use up existing supplies" this year.

Right. "Joe picked up a pistol, not realizing it was loaded, and shot himself in the foot. So then he fired all  five remaining bullets into his leg, to use up existing supplies." ???

Gentle Readers, the way to use up supplies of glyphosate, like "Roundup," or dicamba, like "Spectracide," is to take them back to the store where you bought them. Say, "I want to send this back to the manufacturer." You're not asking for a refund; the product has probably been opened. You're telling them to get the nasty stuff away from you. And if they don't, you might consider spraying it all over the store! Just be sure you don't spray it outdoors where it can harm innocent people, crops, and animals.

Sommersburr: You didn't even bury the kittens. You just rushed away to wherever it is you go...

PK: To work. And on the way I saw the browned-out plant life along the road. There's a huge swath of browned-out lawn grass above the drainage ditch all down the block just beside the Grouch's house. The people who live on that block had faithfully mown and weeded and fertilized and probably sprayed the disgusting Bermuda grass above the ditch, but some fool had sprayed dicamba on it anyway. We know it was dicamba because glyphosate browns out everything but Bermuda grass and a few other obnoxious invasive weeds. This poison browned out somebody's perfectly kept lawn.

I walked all the way home and got caught in the little shower that came just an hour or so ahead of the real storm. I had time to come in and eat dinner before the storm rolled in. We don't have a storm as dramatic as that one every year. Usually thunderstorms at the Cat Sanctuary last about as long as it takes to unplug things, but this one raged and roared for more than hour. I kept thinking that I hoped whoever had sprayed the poison was out in it, right under a large dead tree, as I dozed off at the computer.

Sommersburr: You still haven't buried the kittens.

PK: No. Because somebody, some body with much lighter feet than even a small human has, dragged the bag with their remains in it up toward the barn, then left it when the storm blew up. Somebody who comes out around sundown and takes an interest in the dead bodies of day-old kittens does not need to be living in the barn. Right at sundown suggests another raccoon, a species on which I've gone completely sour; but I suppose this somebody could be a possum. Whatever this somebody, and the storm, left of those kittens is now bait for a trap.

Sommersburr: You're heartless. I do not like you today.

PK: That's a pity and a shame but, if it helps us eliminate a threat to other kittens from the Cat Sanctuary, I don't actually care. You keep trying to get Suzie's humans to adopt you. The question is whether Serena wants to adopt any homeless kittens out there.

Serena: How would I know? Are there homeless kittens out there?

PK: Somewhere in the world I'm sure there are. Whether they're near us and want to stay at the Cat Sanctuary, I don't know.

After you lost your original litter of eight kittens this spring, Serena, I looked at web pages set up on behalf of alleged orphan kittens. I even e-mailed somebody who advertised barely-weaned kittens. She sounded like a young, poor student or even a single mother, with a story of how she'd found kittens and their mother in an alley and the mother had disappeared and she couldn't bring the kittens into her apartment and so on. I said something like "I can't guarantee that my cat will adopt your kittens, but if they can eat solid food you don't have to put them in the shelter," because the shelter in the town she claimed to be living in was a gruesome place to visit when I last did.

Her reply was an eye-opener. She said something like, "The kittens are in no danger of a shelter. I have three or four different fancy breeds. Adoption fees start at $175." In other words, the "animal welfare" lunatics who harass people who simply advertise that they have unwanted kittens, on advertising sites, have driven a commercial cat breeder to misrepresent herself as this student who's rescued feral kittens from an alley. And as a further precaution against harassment, she'd also misrepresented which town she was in!

Serena: Why would I want to adopt kittens anyway? If they're already eating solid food they'd be the wrong age for the milk I have. It might not be good milk anyway.

PK: Whether you want to adopt kittens is entirely up to you, Serena. Nobody can force a female of any species to nurse a baby, even if it's her own. But although you're the most dominant cat I've ever tried to live with, you're also one of the most social and friendly cats I've had the pleasure of knowing.