As regular readers know, Serena, who asserted herself as Queen of the Cat Sanctuary when she was three months old, is not a cuddly pet. She's very comfortable and confident about humans; she was born in my office, /She's not a mean cat, though she is in charge and has been known to enforce rules by slapping and nipping. I'm used to her; I think she's a very loving and lovable animal, capable of demonstrating good will in ways you wouldn't expect a cat could. She stepped in and taught a younger cat how to nurse and rear kittens. She can purr--not as loudly or as long as many cats, but there's nothing wrong with her purr-box. It's just that she does not, normally, purr, and she does not, normally cuddle. She seems to think those things are beneath the dignity of an adult cat. She is currently in the process of training her silky-coated grandsons, who've been encouraged to purr and cuddle all summer, to think they're too big for that sort of soppy stuff too. I pick them up, marvellng that at not-quite-six-months-old they're already too big for more than one to snuggle on my lap at one time, and Serena looks at them intently, and they sit up and nonverbally say, "Right, that was nice--now I have things to do."
She didn't do this with a previous litter of grandkittens, and one male kitten who lingered at the Cat Sanctuary past the six months I'm usually willing to put up with tomkittens decided that he wanted to be the dominant cat and Serena was not allowed to receive the limited amount of petting she accepts from me. Since then she's made sure all kittens know that I belong to her and they're not supposed to solicit attention from me.
Going into their sixth month, the tomkittens are being prepared to detach from the Cat Sanctuary and move into their Purrmanent Homes. They are Serena's grandsons. Serena herself, although unaltered, has not had kittens this year. She gave birth to some but they didn't live long.
But yesterday I reached out a hand for Serena to sniff, which is generally her idea of a grown-up, non-soppy greeting, and she rubbed her head against my hand. I stroked her back. Her coat felt softer and fluffier than usual. She arched and stretched, encouraging more stroking. And she trilled happily, "Purrup!" It used to be a familiar sound--many cats make it when they solicit a stroke down their backs as their idea of a proper greeting--but it's not a sound Serena uses.
Clearly it was time for a Cat Sanctuary Interview, which is the way an animal's behavior translates into words in my mind, based on observation and best guesses about what animals mean by their nonverbal communication.
PK: "Well, to what do I owe this honor? Have I done something right?"
Serena: "You do some things right every day but you're old enough to know what those things are and not need to be rewarded for them constantly. No, this is not about you. It's about me. I'm not feeling so good today. You remember the evil wind that blew our way last week."
PK: "Yes. We still have a Professional Bad Neighbor who wants to make people think they want to move out of our neighborhood so he can buy our land cheap. He's not doing anything at all with the land he owns, this year. He has made himself too ill. He blames his age and COVID, but none of the rest of our generation in our family notice those things as problems. He has made himself vulnerable to pain from his age and COVID by spraying poison on the land. So he's spent a lot of time at home in bed, and only done a little drive-by nastiness like putting the ants' eggs in the mailboxes down on the highway. But as the storms from the Edge of Hurricane Helene cleared the air, he felt a bit stronger, and last week he came out to spray poison again."
Serena: "Why do humans spray poison, anyway?"
PK: "Some humans believe that poison sprays control the plants and trees in their gardens. You see me pulling up and cutting back plants that grow too big or in the wrong way. Some people are too lazy to control their gardens, themselves, so they want to believe that poisons will do it. They are wrong. When people try to use the chemical our Bad Neighbor has been spraying to kill plants they don't want, maybe wild cherry trees in a cow pasture where the cows might eat the cherry trees and be sick, after a few years their land turns into what are called kudzu graveyards. Everything is so smothered in kudzu that not even the kudzu survives. Because, the more we use poisons to try to get rid of a nuisance plant or animal, the more of the nuisance species we have.:
Serena: "Are humans so stupid as that? You're not. None of the other neighbors is."
PK: "Even the Bad Neighbor is not really that stupid. Unfortunately many people live in towns and are incredibly stupid about the land. The Bad Neighbor sprays poison for only one reason, which is to harm the rest of us. He knows these poisons harm people. He has been thinking that he could spray poison on land near us, where it would harm us, and then go back to his house and be out of its range. But the prevailing wind blows from our neighborhood toward his home, and he has had to stand out in the field spraying all that poison. It's catching up with him."
Serena: "You think that's a good thing?"
PK: "Yes, actually I do. I think people who use poisons to invade and injure other people's bodies deserve to suffer if anyone ever does, and I like seeing the Bad Neighbor moving like a sick, bloated, miserable old man, knowing that nature intended him to look and move like the rest of our generation in the family, and because of his own stupidity he probably never will again. We have been blessed with the kind of genes that used to cause people to say that even his deformed mouth looked cute. Well, those days have gone to come no more. Some of our cousins still have black lamee hair at eighty, and he, not yet seventy, has no hair left at all. The next to oldest man in the neighborhood cleared the dead trees out of the road after the hurricane, at eighty, and this Bad Neighbor can hardly get waddle out of his fancy farm truck to walk the fences on his farmland. I think it's appropriate and educational to call attention to his suffering. I think it would be a good thing if people pointed at him on the streets and said 'There goes that poison sprayer. Doesn't he look like death warmed over!'"
Serena: "Can't any of you just beat him up and make him go away?!"
PK: "Hah. I wonder whether the Bad Neighbor will try hunting again, after it gets cold enough. I look forward to seeing it. He was a marksman. He might have been good enough to compete with my father and grandmother when they were young. I respect skill in a sport, and I've seen our Bad Neighbor use deadly weapons against nuisance animals in ways I had to applaud. And then there was last year's fiasco. Hoot! He'll replace me as the person you only ever invite to shoot if you want to make your own scores look good, or less bad. You think I should go out shooting with him and see who could report the 'tragic accident' first?"
Serena: "Oh, not shooting! Shooting scares me Humans don't have very good teeth for the purpose but when cats misbehave, other cats bite off their ears. Or if they behave worse than that we just tear strips off them. Cats hardly ever behave as badly as that but this cousin of yours..."
PK: "Actually, in sober and literal fact, the word humans use for his behavior is 'psychopathic' and what we do about it, after gathering enough evidence that their closer relatives can't object, is lock them up]. I'd rather see that happen to the Bad Neighbor even than see him roll his truck and fall out under it,, because he deserves to suffer! Or better yet, the whole neighborhood--all of us who are still living, and the heirs of the others--should make a list of all the bad things this Bad Neighbor has done, and everything he owns, down to his shoes if any of the other men wears that size. We could let the Bad Neighbor pay all of us with everything he has, starting with acres of land, then cars and trucks, computers, work tools, and so on down to the kind of screws and nails and planks he's stolen from us just for spite, down to his shirt. Then when he's standing there in his shorts we all give him a good whack with an axe handle or a plank or whatever we've taken, put him on a Greyhound bus, and tell him to stay in the place we've agreed to send him to--I vote for New Orleans--as a homeless beggar. I believe in restitution for property crimes, and this wretch ought to make restitution before strangers, all by themselves, lock him up and fill him full of experimental drugs."
Serena: "Whatever you like, so long as he doesn't spray any more poison. Because I was going to have kittens again. Beautiful Borowiec kittens like my daughter's. Cats don't really mind sharing a mate if he gives us good healthy kittens. I know you felt bad when my granddaughter Dora died and I was looking forward to showing you a calico kitten even cuter than Dora. And after the evil wind blew, I felt those kittens die inside me. You can feel them if you like.. Or keep stroking my back; it helps start the contractions, which is why I so often tell humans not to do it. Humans don't usually realize when I'm pregnant and want to give the kittens a fair start in life."
PK: "Well, being wider-framed than most cats in this part of the world, you don't show when you're pregnant as clearly as they do. Nobody'd guess you were pregnant now."
Serena: "I won't be pregnant long. I know my grandsons still like milk. I'm just about ready to start lactation, which will get rid of these poor dead kittens. Gather round, grandsons. You could use your human hands to pour me a drink of Pure Life water Is that Pure Life water? The bottles look different."
PK: "It's Pure Life water inside. Your deliveryman said people were buying up all the regular pint bottles for the hurricane survivors in North Carolina, because their water's still foul. He and I went to look in other stores, and the best we could do was these baby-size bottles."
Serena: "It's all good. The water tastes good, anyway, even if there's less left for you in the bottle. Humans seem to think the way to show good will is always to stroke a person's back, which might cause the person's kittens to be born prematurely, Actually, the way cats recognize good will is when you share something you eat or drink with us. Of course no cat would want to touch some of the stuff you eat, even if it doesn't seem to kill you. But seeing you crack the cap on a bottle and pour out drinks for us and for you shows that you;re trying to share food, even if the only thing on the table that we can share is water." ''
PK: "It's an understandable mistake. For most humans, including me, there's no chance of our being pregnant and a high probability that we could use a back rub."
Serena: "Well, if the Creator had wanted us all to be the same, we'd all be the same."
PK: "I'm glad we're not. Serena, if humans had purr-boxes, I's puee wcwey rimw I look at you. As you well know."
Serena: "Anyone would. That's why I'm a Queen Cat."
PK: "What happened in North Carolina was that a dam broke. It wasn't a matter of humans being able to load their cats and dogs into a car and drive away from the rising water. They were hearing the wind and rain roar, and then they might or might not have heard another note in the roaring, and then a wall of water hit them, maybe smashed their house over their heads, sucked them away in a blast of polluted water. The only question was which ones drowned first, and which ones were injured by collisions with other objects before they drowned. Then there were the ones off on the side of that blast of water. They had some chance to escape from the flood before it reached them, but the water was rising so fast that they might not have had time to get the animals into the car. There's already one story of people who thought their cat had drowned in the rising water, but the cat survived and found his way home, not long after the humans did. I don't know whether Petfinder will make any more stories like that happen, but I hope it can. I'd like for this web site to be part of that. Wouldn't you, Serena?"
Serena: "Whatever. If it involves your Lap Pooper, don't bother me about it."
Serena never has liked anything electronic. I think she sees her reflection in screens, doesn't recognize it, and thinks something like "Whoever that arrogant cat is, I'll run her off my land," but she may be sensitive to the radiation these things emit--who knows?
Anyway, it's a dog week, and this is the day to tell you that I've decided to try moving the Petfinder posts to Friday in order to join a link-up. #TortieTuesday was on Twitter, and Twitter's dead.
Here are the last Tuesday dog photo contest winners, the most appealing pictures of adoptable dogs on Petfinder. Hmmm...the last web page I visited was a long forum page where people post aobut many things; the last post I read that mentioned animals mentioned pug dogs. Pug dogs can be pricey if they ever are listed on Petfinder, but Petfinder just happened to have some adorable "Chugs" (Chihuahua-pug crossbreeds). So, today's category is Chugs.
1, Susu and Lulu from Candler, North Carolina
Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/susu-and-lulu-71136968/nc/candler/mountain-pet-rescue-asheville-nc1033/
Their hurricane story: They were not actually in Asheville or at the shelter that's handling their Petfinder page.
Susu and Lulu are described as a bonded pair--mother and daughter. They lost their human suddenly and don't need any more bereavement, so they must be adopted together. They are described as healthy, calm, and well behaved. Their human was old and sedentary, and they're said to be very good at sitting on the couch beside a human, watching television, though Lulu is apt to zoom around the room for a break now and then.
2. Captain from Kinsey, Alabama
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/captain-72722337/al/kinsey/southern-chihuahua-rescue-and-adoption-al527/
His hurricane story: He was already in a shelter out of the disaster area.
Captain is described as a sweet, affectionate couch dog. He's another Chug with a puggy face. He is known to be seven years old. Beyond that he doesn't seem to have much of a story. He has been vetted, though, and warranted healthy.
3. Prissy from Austell, Georgia
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/prissy-tail-73619775/ga/austell/shelters-and-shelves-rescue-ga1084/
Her hurricane story: She was in a shelter out of the disaster area.
More pug than Chihuahua, Prissy is described as shy with new people but friendly and cuddly when she gets to know people. She is rated good with dogs, cats, and children and fully housebroken. She's known to be five years old.
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