I'm the O-Man

I'm the O-Man
I kick the other cats' asses
The black ones, both the lads and the lasses
And the white one and the orange one too
The black and white one - he knows what to do
Hides in his house and stays behind his fence
Otherwise we'd talk about him in the past tense
I'm the O-Man
I'm the O-Man
I'm the O-Man

I got no bitches 'cause I got no balls
That's why I don't mark on the walls
Instead I leave my mark on the animals
I'm a killer - anything cute and furry
Best leave my yard as fast as it can scurry
I don't need no stress, I don't need no worry
I'm the O-Man
I'm the O-Man
Yeah, I'm the O-Man

Bet you didn't know Orpheus was a rap star!

Cell Phones on the road: Not just for driving anymore

In a list of the places where one should not use a cell phone, walking around in the center merge lane of Roswell road would have to be close to the top. Not crossing Roswell road. Not on a median strip. Just walking around in the middle of an arterial road.

Of course, jay walking in front of oncoming traffic is also a bad place to use a cell phone. Especially if you have to stop in the middle of a lane to adjust your purse.

On the other hand, another not-particularly-smart idea is arising from a sick bed to buy a final ball of yarn, needles (OMG, I got addi TURBO needles. A slice of heaven, I kid you not.), and some pretty beads. Especially if you forgot to eat breakfast. Especially if people are standing around in the road talking on their cell phones.

I made it home, without a fatality, to have Orpheus greet me in the yard and ask to come inside. That tends to be a problem, because Henry likes to divebomb Orpheus from the new cat tower. Orpheus isn't particularly partial to this. So we went in through the basement door. It eliminated the rowdy crowd at the front door, but discombobulated everybody. To the point where Orpheus was seen licking the top of Alma's head. I'm aware that he intended to pin her to the floor by the back of her neck until she screamed in anger. He just got a little confused.

Here's a couple pictures of the new cat tower.

Alma is in the picture on the right. You can also see Athena - the two yellow dots peering from the bottom hole.

In the picture on the left is Alma and Orpheus sharing (!) the cat tower.

The front door is immediately right of the tower, great for scratch-marking the tower on the way in, or leaping on entering cats from above.

Actually, everybody was acting a little strange that day. Turns out that everybody's favorite feral is a knitty kitty. To the point where I had all her little claws stuck in my leg as she attacked my yarn. I let her play with the yarn - what's a couple of sweater-snags if Athena's coming around? - but I wouldn't let her run off with the whole ball. Who CAN resist Barranco's Soft Twist in Cycle?

Athena's still afraid of my hands but, as long as I don't try to touch her, is getting increasingly comfortable with the whole concept of me.

I have to admit it's getting better?

Albuterol tastes like a combination of cabbage and feet. Though it's better than coughing 'til you throw up. On the other hand, Gatorade isn't half bad to vomit.

Dr. Aubley's nurse said that if I wasn't "turning a corner" yesterday, to give them a call. And I was. I sorted through some paperwork. Made a few calls. Logged in to Bank of America to discover that my mortgage payment went out two days before my paycheck arrived. Uff da. But, so it goes. My current financial system is still better than anything I've had before. At least my mortage payment went OUT. I do wish that I had been conscious enough to have caught it in time.

Went to the yarn store. Got some yummy yarn that wasn't nearly enough to complete the pattern I wanted to do. Found a really, really cool free pattern on the internet (see it here).

Have you checked out the pattern? Are you asking yourself why I'm trying to knit something demonstrably above my skill level? Did you know I have four cats? Perhaps there's a common explanation. Like, I'm completely crazy.

On the other hand, I pretty much quit knitting for six months. I was doing a scarf in a fun yarn (I wanted to give it as a gift). But I now I realize I hate scarves. I've been looking at quite a few patterns lately and there's a certain feeling I get when the pattern is right. It's not the "that looks fun and easy to do," it's "oh my god, you can knit that? I could knit that?"

Today, I'm flat on my back again. Must of "over did" it yesterday. Going to a yarn store and Kroger.

On another note. Since I haven't had the energy to train Athena, I tried running away from her for a couple of days. Every time I saw her, I went in the opposite direction. It was interesting. You know, Henry is steak. Something that you could have every day, and would always be nice. Athena is Tobasco sauce.

She reacted in several ways.

1. She hid, because I was acting weird.
2. She walked toward me to see what I'd do.
3. And she tested whether or not the dining room table was fair game.

After all, if I'm running away from her, then I can't get her off the table, right? So she jumped up. And I made her get down. And she jumped up. And I made her get down. And she jumped up. And I made her get down. What about if she just puts two paws on the table and sniffs? No? What about one paw? What if she sits on the chair in front of the table?

Too smart for her own good.

Excerpts From 'A Cat's Guide To Human Beings'

A cute forward:


1. Introduction: Why Do We Need Humans?

So you've decided to get yourself a human being. In doing so, you've joined the millions of other cats who have acquired these strange and often frustrating creatures. There will be any number of times, during the course of your association with humans, when you will wonder why you have bothered to grace them with your presence.

What's so great about humans, anyway? Why not just hang around with other cats? Our greatest philosophers have struggled with this question for centuries, but the answer is actually rather simple:

THEY HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS.

Which makes them the perfect tools for such tasks as opening doors, getting the lids off of cat food cans, changing television stations and other activities that we, despite our other obvious advantages, find difficult to do ourselves. True, chimps, orangutans and lemurs also have opposable thumbs, but they are nowhere as easy to train.


2. How and When to Get Your Human's Attention

Humans often erroneously assume that there are other, more important activities than taking care of your immediate needs, such as conducting business, spending time with their families or even sleeping.

Though this is dreadfully inconvenient, you can make this work to your advantage by pestering your human at the moment it is the busiest. It is usually so flustered that it will do whatever you want it to do, just to get you out of its hair. Not coincidentally, human teenagers follow this same practice.

Here are some tried and true methods of getting your human to do what you want:

• Sitting on paper: An oldie but a goodie. If a human has paper in front of it, chances are good it's something they assume is more important than you. They will often offer you a snack to lure you away. Establish your supremacy over this wood pulp product at every opportunity. This practice also works well with computer keyboards, remote controls, car keys and small children.
  
  
• Waking your human at odd hours: A cat's "golden time" is between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning. If you paw at your human's sleeping face during this time, you have a better than even chance that it will get up and, in an incoherent haze, do exactly what you want. You may actually have to scratch deep sleepers to get their attention; remember to vary the scratch site to keep the human from getting suspicious.

3. Punishing Your Human Being

Sometimes, despite your best training efforts, your human will stubbornly resist bending to your whim. In these extreme circumstances, you may have to punish your human. Obvious punishments, such as scratching furniture or eating household plants, are likely to backfire; the unsophisticated humans are likely to misinterpret the activities and then try to discipline YOU. Instead, we offer these subtle but nonetheless effective alternatives:

• Use the cat box during an important formal dinner.
  
• Stare impassively at your human while it is attempting a romantic interlude.
  
• Stand over an important piece of electronic equipment and feign a hairball attack.
  
• After your human has watched a particularly disturbing horror film, stand by the hall closet and then slowly back away, hissing and yowling.
  
• While your human is sleeping, lie on its face.

4. Rewarding Your Human: Should Your Gift Still Be Alive?

The cat world is divided over the etiquette of presenting humans with the thoughtful gift of a recently disembowelled animal. Some believe that humans prefer these gifts already dead, while others maintain that humans enjoy a slowly expiring cricket or rodent just as much as we do, given their jumpy and playful movements in picking the creatures up after they've been presented.

After much consideration of the human psyche, we recommend the following: cold blooded animals (large insects, frogs, lizards, garden snakes and the occasional earthworm) should be presented dead, while warm blooded animals (birds, rodents, your neighbour's Pomeranian) are better still living. When you see the expression on your human's face, you'll know it's worth it.


5. How Long Should You Keep Your Human?

You are only obligated to your human for one of your lives. The other eight are up to you. We recommend mixing and matching, though in the end, most humans (at least the ones that are worth living with) are pretty much the same. But what do you expect? They're humans, after all. Opposable thumbs will only take you so far.

Cough, cough, cough

Well, the bronchitis/pneumonia put a crimp into the whole "training Athena" plan. I haven't had time to do much besides sleeping, eating and opening doors for cats. Not even email. I've lost about three pounds too.

On the other hand, I've finished the first sweater I can wear.

My actual "first sweater" was started for my niece in 1999. I learned the basic knit and purl stitches from the premier issue of Family Circle's Knitting magazine that I bought in 1994. Unfortunately, I didn't understand that you had to turn the knitting around at the end of the row. So, I tried to do the next row backwards (right needle to left needle) and ended up with a snarl. I took a class in June of 2003, right after I got laid off from Onity, and cleared up that little misunderstanding. So, I finished "my niece's sweater" in February of 2004. I didn't have the yarn to do her current size, so I did the smallest one. It looks like somebody's been playing rugby in it. But it's done.

So this one, "the first sweater I can wear" was started on 3/16/2004 and finished on 1/15/2006, during which time I also completed a baby cardigan... And, actually, the pieces were finished before my move, but the assemblage got tossed aside... ok. Enough excuses. So, it took me almost 2 years to complete. But I did it.

My current cat collection takes a professional interest in the whole knitting thing. Like, they're cats, so they're obligated to play with the yarn, but it's not an obsession and they're not going to chase the yarn ball across the room, etc, etc. In contrast to a certain Hinge-kitty that I can remember. Though there are teeth marks in my stitch counter.

Alma is much more interested in the "lap" concept. I don't sit much, except at the computer. So she's enjoying the opportunity. As a matter of fact, I'm under the impression that she could find stuff to do on my lap for a whole day. Perhaps, someday when I have a chair that doesn't make my ass numb, I'll stockpile some goodies for me and have a "Good Day for Alma." A whole day of Varda's lap, finished off by a catnip jamboree.

Anyway, here's the sweater:

It's from the Paton's Back to Basics book, an adult cardigan with raglan sleeves. I used Lion Brand's Micro Spun, a super-soft, yummy yarn, in Lily White.


I'm going to change the buttons as soon as I feel strong enough to leave the house. The part of the button band that's behind the neck is a little loose and folds backwards. And there's a jog in the back where I layed down my knitting in the middle of a row. When I picked it back up and knit back along the half-row that I'd just knitted. I realized what had happened a few rows later. Tore part of it out, knitted it back. Repeated that a few times. Too much was done to tear all of it out and start completely over. And I was pretty sure I'd fixed it. Anyway. 99.99% of the sweater is in the acceptable to perfect range, so I'll wear it with pride.

Black Lightning

Perhaps I have a superhero on my hands?

You see, Hinge used to hide under beds during thunderstorms and Orpheus hides in closets.

Alma insisted sitting on my front step, bolt upright between the rails and watching the storm. A little odd for a cat.

Perhaps she's some pagan priestess in disguise?

Or maybe she's just a slightly strange snugglekitty. Who's helped me perfect the art of making a bed one-handed (the other was more usefully employed in scratching kitty ears) - and without disturbing the cat.

Communication

My last post gave me an idea. Training gives animals control over their environment (sorry about the anthromorphization, Dr. Machado). It gives them decision power - in a certain situation, they know that by doing something they will get a treat (or whatever). If they don't do it, they won't get the treat. It's really a form of communication. As I stated, Athena seems to need the communication and control, showing this by her insistance on routine and my opening doors at her demand.

I know it seems strange that by MY training HER, I'm giving her control - especially since the examples that I'm using go the other way. Trust me on this. She's not going to see it that way.

As Jonathan said, when I trained Travis, "What if he thinks that by [performing the action] he's training you to give him tuna." My response was, "He'd be right." Training by positive reinforcement isn't so much one animal forcing another animal to do something as it is a rough-and-ready form of communication. I say "sit," but what the cat is hearing is "If you want tuna, you can get some if you sit." Then they have a choice about whether they want tuna or not.

This also breaks us out of the cycle of our current relationship. So far, it's mostly composed of my giving her treats and trying to pet her and her asking me to open the basement door so that she can go downstairs and hide from me. I should have seperated her from her family as soon as she could eat solid food, but it's a little late now. I hereby do solemnly swear that I will not try to touch her at all during the training sessions. Thus, this will be a "safe" space for her to interact with me without her usual worries.

So - I'm going to "train" her to go to the top bed of her cat furniture on command. It's something that she does already, so it's a point of least resistance.

When I trained Travis, I started by having him jump up on the kitchen counters. Then I had him jump off. He could sit on command, and I was getting him to turn around when we stopped the training. This made it easy for him to understand
First, that he needed to do something for a treat.
Second, that he needed to do different behaviors at different signals.
Third, that when he saw a new signal he needed to watch me for cues on how to perform.
He was a really smart cat, and very trainable.

I think Athena is trainable too, but for different reasons. Travis's behavior was very variable, so he had figured out every possible way to get table food (and a few other things) when I started training him. For him, training was a new way to get table food. Athena is treat-motivated and likes rountine and rules.

I started Pavlovian-style clicker training today. Click-treat, Click-treat. It's impossible to get animals a treat in time to reinforce very specific behaviors, and if they come to you for the treat, they are associating coming to you more than the behavior. The clicker is a clear, fast, distinctive way of telling an animal "Yes." She left the last treat on the floor, so I've got about 6 - 8 chances in one training session. That will keep me from overworking her.

She gets it. Tomorrow, I'll do 3 clicker-treat pairings, then start asking her to do stuff for the treat/click. Let's say 4 training trials.

If I don't get good behavior response from treats, I'll see what tuna can do.

Scaredy cat

Lost cat detection "idea"

Have you ever noticed how a scared and puffy cat has a distinctive odor? It's a faint mix of cat urine and dead skunk, just barely detectable.

So, since we're able to train bees to detect land mines (click here for details), couldn't we train bees to track that scared cat smell? Thus, if you lose your cat (most of the time they get stuck or are hiding somewhere close to home), you'd release these bees and track them over the next three days. Where they start congregating, you know you have a cat in need.

Scary movie

Athena started to relax around me. Then I tried to TOUCH her a few times. My bad.

On the other hand, the most demanding feral in the world (aka Athena) has been having me open and close the basement door for her approximately every 15 minutes. I think it might be her way of feeling "in control" of our relationship. She meows and I open the door. Every time, except when I ignore her. I do not grab her, put her in a carrier and take her to the vet. She's making completly sure about this one safe aspect of our relationship.

In explaining this to Sergie, we evolved a movie idea - a cat terror flick.

Just when you think it is safe to go downstairs and hide in boxes, right there in your favorite corner - it's the VET with the VACCUUM. Snip, snip, snip.

Razor Paws

Alma seems to have provided her kittens with exceptionally sharp claws. Both Sergie and I were pretty scratched up by Henry, and Alma can take apart a shower curtain with just one swipe.

One of my friends got Soft Paws for her kitty when she adopted a baby. I decided to look into them. I bought a pack and, in reading the instructions, discovered that you have to trim kitty's claws before you put on the Soft Paws.

So, I got claw clippers. I haven't tried the Soft Paws yet, but trimming cat nails is surprisingly easy. Get them nice and relaxed in a snuggle, then clip a claw. Pet, pet, pet, clip. It's about the same rhythmn as petting a cat, rubbing the fur backwards, then petting them again. If you can do that for hours, keeping them pissed off, but not enough to leave, you know how to easily clip their claws.

One thing that I do want to mention: it looks like Soft Paws keeps the claw from retracting. It doesn't. I discovered upon clipping my cats' nails that the claw never fully retracts, it's just hidden between the pads in the hair. The Soft Paw cover just makes this more obvious.

On a down note, the ease of clipping the claws of two cats just makes me that much more angry at the people who declawed Orpheus. How could they be that inhumane for such a trifling inconvenience? Of course, I'm sure that people would be equally upset at my letting him outside. And they'd be right. But he LIKES being outside. He's not so appreciative of being declawed.

Black as a mouse, Big as a house, Tail like a snake, I make the earth shake

Sergie was saying to me the other day, "When Alma lived outside, she was slim and fashionable. Now, she's fat and ugly."

He's right, and it makes me sad to think of what I've done to her. But, I thought she was pregnant and spayed her (she, thank God, wasn't), then stuck her in a room where her kittens were free-feeding on kitten food. I'm not sure what else I could have done, but she ballooned up like a blimp. I think it makes her feel bad too.

When I was in PetSmart last, I picked up a Cat Fancy (they're irresistable with their pretty cats and great articles!) partially because they advertised an article about cat diets. Even kitties need New Year's resolutions.

This was a goldmine of information. Instead of the usual "give your cat less to eat and play with him more," they offered usable advice. Such as, wet food is better than dry food for a diet. Wonderful! A cat that is happier as she gets healthier for once. They referenced a cat calorie counter: you enter your cat's age, weight and sexual status, then the type and amount of food and treats you feed him. You are given a comparison of your cat's nutritional needs vs. what he is getting.

To weigh your cat, you should pick her up and get on a scale. Then put her down and subtract your weight.

I found out that Orpheus should have been getting a 1/4 can of wet food and 3/4 cup of food a day instead of the 2/3 cup of food and the can to lick.

Alma and Henry each should be getting about 1/2 cup of food a day, in addition to their wet food and treats, instead of the 2/3 cup food - which is about 1/3 of a cup of food less between them. (I estimated Alma's ideal weight to be roughly what Henry currently weighs.)

Athena, who I wasn't able to weigh, I guesstimated to be about 2 pounds smaller than Henry. This means that she should be getting 3/8 cup food + wet food and treats. She was getting 2/3 cup as well.

Besides the more accurate portion sizes, I'm not doing anything fancy in terms of feeding. I'm just dividing the appropriate amount between the four bowls and letting each cat each as much as they need. It seems to be working - even though, between them, they're consuming about a 1/3 cup less food daily, there's no whining and begging for more food. If somebody gets too thin, I'll start providing their portion separately from the others.

The final vein of information was a sidebar suggesting a new activity: throwing a treat down a long hall. This is especially effective for my pudgy little Athena. I call the game, "Manna from the Heavens." First, there's a lot of running and pouncing. Then, there's an Easter egg hunt as everybody searches for any treats that might have been missed. That's after they wash, of course. It's a real hit and keeps the cats occupied for a surprisingly long time after the treats stop flying through the air.