06.04.07
Happiness is a Purring Kitten
I realize not everyone loves cats quite as much as I do. My husband, for example. But I couldn’t resist posting a few of my favorite pictures of our Cat Pack. Enjoy.
Cyrus is our first cat. He came to my family as a tiny, fluffy kitten about the time Ben and I started dating, and when we got married, he came to live with us. He’s still a big fluffball, and he’s also a major coward. He likes Ben well enough as long as Ben doesn’t stand up (too tall!) or say anything (too loud!). So he usually arrives to be petted as soon as we go to bed or before we get up in the morning, while everybody’s nice and quiet and on his level. If anything startles him, he’s off like a shot to hide under my dresser. It’s a tight squeeze, so he usually flails about a little with his declawed paws on the hardwood floor before he manages to slide underneath. Then we just see his little nose and whiskers as he peeks out. This was a shot I took of him bird-watching one day.
This is Gilligan. He was born about a week before Ben and I were married, and we found homes for the rest of the litter, but he won our hearts and stayed with us. He had this cute, Forrest Gump quality about him — couldn’t figure out how to get out of the cage to play with his mama and siblings even though there was a huge, open door right beside him. He’d sit there looking mournful and meowing for someone to rescue him. Now he’s huge, sleek, and beautiful, but still just a bit on the slow side…
Samantha is our very dainty and… shall we say… pleasantly plump solitary female. We found her being given away in a Hendersonville, NC pet store a few months after we got married. She had been found in an alley and appeared to be about 6 months old and healthy. What we couldn’t see was that she was harboring a bad case of intestinal parasites, which resulted in a very messy ride home in Ben’s newly purchased BMW M3! In spite of this rocky start, she settled in nicely and is definitely our most laid-back cat.
Yoda was born here about a year old. He got his name because when he was a very small kitten, his ears were exceptionally large and drooped a bit at the ends. I was a little sad when he grew into them. He’s a beautiful cat now, with a very fluffy, squirrel-like tail. In this picture, he’s apparently taking a break from writing the great American novel. He really wants to be an outdoor cat, so he makes a break for it whenever he sees an open door. He also has a great talent for knocking things over, then running into the bedroom and curling up on the bed before I can reach the scene of the crime. Then he looks up very cozily as if to say, “What was that noise? I’ve been sleeping here for the past few hours, so I obviously wasn’t involved…”
Damien is just a bit older than Yoda. A lady found him abandoned and brought him to the veterinary clinic where I was working. He was about two weeks old, and I offered to bring him home, where our mama cat adopted him immediately. He grew up with Yoda and his litter. I don’t know anything about his parents, and he’s a somewhat odd cat. For one thing, he’s densely muscular and weighs about twice as much as Yoda, although they look the same size. He also has a singularly evil look, which is how he got his name. We like to refer to him as our “spawn of Satan,” “hell-cat,” or “gargoyle.” He doesn’t seem to mind. Like Cyrus, he’s nervous of Ben and generally spooky, but he and I adore each other. He’s taken to “talking” recently — a long, spine-tingling yowl that can be pretty frightening, especially when you’re half-asleep and it comes out of the darkness!
Samantha snoozing with Cyrus.
Yoda and Damien spooning. I’ve promised Ben that as soon as they’re both neutered, they’ll go outside, because our house is just too small for 5 cats! But I dread the day I actually have to keep my word — there are so many dangers for an outdoor cat, and I’ve lost so many to the highway or to predators. It breaks my heart to think of losing either of these two. Maybe our house will just spontaneously grow three or four more rooms…
Probably one of my favorite pictures. No, I didn’t pose him — he really sits like that! Mr. Biggs is actually my parents’ cat, and he lives outside, but he likes to come in for a visit and a little (non-fat!) buttermilk. Believe it or not, he’s actually lost weight in the year or so that he’s lived here! He’s still close to 30 pounds, though, and I’m lobbying for him to go back on the green bean diet, the best way I know for animals to lose weight gradually and still feel satisfied. Lots of fiber with almost no calories. He can be a little grouchy sometimes, but he’s really a great, cuddly old cat and at the very least, a good conversation piece!
06.01.07
Really Big Claw Marks…
OK, let me preface this by saying that my parents bought this property over 30 years ago. Back then, it was in the country. Very few neighbors, not much traffic, etc. Since then, we’ve been basically surrounded by subdivisions.
The big problem with any development is that for it to go in, all the trees and wildlife have to go out. See “Over the Fence” if you have any questions on this score. 
I don’t think there’s anything uglier than a big cluster of new, cookie-cutter houses sitting on a bare strip of land with a few sickly little saplings staked out front and a big pile of mulch nearby from all the gorgeous, old trees that had to be torn down to make room for them.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, this is a very sensitive issue with me. I understand that people need a place to live, but why is it so impossible to build around a few of the trees? They’ve fought to grow through all the droughts and ice storms this area sees, and then it’s all for nothing when somebody sees the chance to make a few bucks on yet another over-crowded development. Down they come, and then up go the houses to sit there with no shade and no semblance of a natural setting.
OK, to the point now, I promise. When all the trees are gone and the animals are displaced, they have to go somewhere. Apparently something very large has decided to come live with us. Last week it killed my parent’s six new little chickens by reaching into their cage and removing them one by one. It left just bits and pieces of the five it pulled out, and the last one was dead but intact in the cage.
We baited a trap with the dead chick the next night, and the following morning, it was sprung and the bait was gone, but the trap was empty. In the dirt on either side of the cage, however, were clawmarks from a paw bigger than my hand. Whatever it was came back the next few nights and dug up what little remained of the other chickens.
A few days later, our big billy goat was on the other side of the stream. Goats are terrified of water (dragging him back across was quite a job!), so he must have been pretty scared of whatever was chasing him if he was willing to cross it.
Anyway, we’re a bit concerned that whatever it is might come back to the pasture and go after the horses. And it’s a little nerve-wracking to wander too far from the house after dark.
Whatever’s out there, it’s probably more frightened than we are and would much rather have been left in peace in its old home. I pity the creature, but I’m afraid it will end up being killed by someone who’s too scared of it to think straight.
I know we’ll see more confused, displaced animals as “progress” relentlessly continues to push nature back a step at a time. I just wonder what exactly we’re progressing towards?
I’m not a tree-hugger. I don’t pretend to be a scientist. I haven’t seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” nor do I intend to. I’m a conservative Christian who believes that God created our world in six 24-hour days and gave us a responsibility to use and care for His creation.
I believe that our planet goes through many cycles — some of which are relatively brief and observable in our lifetimes, like the drought we’re under right now here in the South. Some are larger, like the temperature cycles that we call ice ages and global warming. I don’t believe that we can do much to affect these cycles, although I know we as humans would love to think we’re that important.
But I do think we’ll be held accountable for how we’ve used the resources God has given us. We douse our crops with chemicals and then wonder why the honeybees are vanishing. We fill our poultry with growth hormones and then get confused when our children hit puberty at age 7 or 8. We chop down all the trees and then can’t figure out for the life of us why our air quality is so poor. For all of our intelligence, we don’t seem to have much common sense.
So I don’t think we’re responsible for “global warming” (do some research and you’ll find the same thing occurred several thousand years ago, with many little spikes and lows in between). But I do think we need to be aware of the damage we do so thoughtlessly to the world around us. I’m afraid future generations will pay the price for our greed.
And praise the Lord, it looks like it might rain…
