I’m not usually superstitious. Maybe a “littlestitous” (thanks Peyton Manning). Last week I was walking to synagogue when there were three or four cats in front of me, and I began to think the Mets history with cats.

On September 9, 1969, the Mets were playing the Chicago Cubs, who they were 1.5 games behind in the division. A black cat was released onto the Shea Stadium field, and the Mets went onto win the game, and the division, and never looked back, eventually winning the world series.

On April 13, 2009, it was the first inning of the first game ever at Citi Field, and a cat went on the field. The Mets went on to lose the game, and never looked forward.

Keeping that in mind I hope that these black cats are good luck and the Mets.

An Older Me
Samantha Neugebauer

Drawn by two black cats,
my chariot–
the fleeting color of
glowing igneous
on its cooling journey from
underworld magma to
basalt newborn–is petrified
by what is to come.

Twenty-two, I stand astride
the dray’s semicircular framework,
unafraid of the open back.
Testing the tectonic plates,
with primogeniture confidence,
I am pulled through the
conditions of time to a holding cell,
called Oak Hill or Apple Meadows or
Maple Grove, the same monikers
of summer camps, yet
the babies put here are
neither tanned nor canoeing;
these places are the hors d’oeuvre
before cemetery, where America
keeps her rotten parents.

And in the window,
under a black nurse’s thumb,
is a woman I
already pity,
and fear.
Edging nothingness,
she is me times
a billion mouthfuls of water,
a million Facebook logins,
a thousand fucks,
two loves;
she spoons nonexistence every night
and makes memory her bridegroom.
Inside her gray-laced bones,
her mediocracy accumulates and
flares like silvery plutonium.

With sudden decision,
the dark felines pause and lick their noble paws
unconcerned,
and the chariot hardens to rock.
It is all done for me;
I am inside with my older self
and she tells me to stop.
I try to stop.

But the clock-less
forces me to her.

I meld into her;
my unlined forehead,
my young girl breasts,
my verdurous ambition,
becomes wrinkled,
sagged, goblin-footed.

I cannot run or type or
see or hear and my
mouth drips with drool
I cannot feel.
I am no longer able to
produce children
nor passion in myself or others.
As the old, I am never old;
only an impounded young women,
with the human sentence

watching the cats slink away from the pasture.

Peaches apparently makes a great pillow.

Peaches and Giuseppe

Mewsette Uses Peaches as a Pillow

She is purportedly 19 years old. She came to me four years ago, and a friend of her former owner, who had died told me Peaches was about 15. She looked entirely her age at that time, perhaps because, although  people had been caring for her and her sister in her former owner’s home because the cats were familiar with it, older cats need a little more attention.

Peaches, Giuseppe and Sunshine

In the cold weather, Peaches tends to sleep in front of the heater vent here in my office/living room, and generously shares it with the Cuddly Kittens, now 2-1/2, who just love their older sister who is less than half the size of the smallest of them. They give her little baths, too, and try to get her to play, but Peaches is all about, food, warmth and sleep.

Peaches is a real joy as a senior foster-turned-household-member, all 5-1/2 pounds of her. I write about her now and then: Feline Faith and Understanding about Peaches’ understanding of the world; Senior Mentoring, Youth Warming Program?, a photo of Giuseppe using Peaches as a pillow on my desk from last year; I Follow My Cats Around With a Sketchpad, showing a little painting of Peaches;  and Senior Pet Adoption Program, showing one of my favorite paintings of Peaches, and an offer to donate to a senior pet adoption program of your choice with the purchase of a print.

Also, on my website, is another article about Peaches and her new retirement hobby of photography written after she had commandeered my digital camera, Area Senior Cat Finds Muse in Photography.

Mimi at the Window

“Here,” she said, “she’s in here with the kittens.” My neighbor handed me a medium-sized box with the flaps closed.

I gingerly took the box, supporting the bottom, thinking of the little black cat and her kittens inside and afraid that if I jostled the box the wrong way she’d step on a newborn kitten. This was Sunday; the kittens had been born on Thursday.

Carefully carrying the box upstairs, I could feel little movements inside, whispers of paws on cardboard, but no cat noises.

Her name was then Maia, and we never did get along well. She lived across the street but I was constantly finding her in my garden and backyard, so full of life and little critters. She never came to me when I called her or acted in any way friendly. Later, when I caught her hunting and waved my arms and said, “Go!”, she cringed and disappeared under the squashes along the fence and was gone.

She was Lucy’s mom, though, the 15-month-old kitten I lost to FIP. I’ll tell the story of Lucy some time as I study and write about FIP, but I was bereft after losing such a young kitten, and to that disease in particular.

A few days after I lost Lucy, I saw Maia in my garden but felt a sudden rush of fondness—Lucy had resembled her mom in so many ways I couldn’t tell her to leave.

It was one of those wonderful hot July mornings I’ve always loved in my garden, moist with dew made into diamonds by the sun just coming over the trees. Maia was expecting again and near due, her tiny body distorted by the kittens she carried. I watched her from the basement, waddling awkwardly across the brick patio outside the basement door to the little water bowl I always kept outside for Cookie and Namir. She had a little drink, a little face wash, then walked down one of the brick paths to observe wildlife.

Garden With Maia

And I knew, as I stood in the spot where Lucy had spent so much time, that I needed to take Maia and her babies into my household. I quickly debated the pros and cons. I knew it was right to get Maia off the street and get her spayed, and raise and find homes for her kittens, in the meantime learning more about the FIP Lucy had died from. I had no idea where Lucy had encountered the FIP and I understood how it spread, but really didn’t understand how contagious it was. Maia and her kittens could be carrying it, but then the remaining cats in my household had already been exposed. Still, getting Maia and her kittens out of the population of other cats could only help stop spreading it if they were carriers.

But the real reason was to heal my own heart. I had lost my four oldest cats in one year and tried not to adopt any kitten in the years they were growing older. Lucy and her siblings had come along in the middle of those losses, and while I found homes for the others, Lucy stayed on and I didn’t try to hard to find a home for her. Once I lost Stanley and grieved his passing, I turned all my love into raising Lucy, then 9 months. At one year I had her spayed, and immediately afterward she showed symptoms, then was diagnosed with, FIP. I lost her three months later.

Worst of all, I had begun to look at my other cats, all in their teens, as walking time bombs for hurting me with their illness and passing. I’d use the analogy of getting right back on the horse after you’ve fallen, and fill my house with new life lest I begin to fear and avoid my cats. I checked with my veterinarian to discuss the risks and see what she thought, and to my surprise, she hesitated, then agreed. Perhaps she understood my emotional predicament.

And heal my heart they did. I knew I’d love the kittens, but didn’t realize how wonderful little Maia was.

I had the room all ready and set the box on the table next to the cage where they’d live. Still no noise, no scuffling. I knew momcats could be fierce, though, and she could be ready to launch as I opened the box. I slowly pulled the flaps apart and looked inside from an angle…

I saw one round green eye glowing in the darkness. Round is good, round is curious, and round is encouraging. I opened the flaps a little more, and Maia poked her head up like a periscope and surveyed the room, then relaxed. Oh, I could imagine her thinking, I finally made it into the house. Our former relationship forgotten, she looked up at me as if to say, can you help me unpack these kittens? I felt such a strong sense of Lucy in the room I turned around to look at her; of course she was not walking into the room, but of course she was there.

Maia With Her Babies

This was Sunday, and they had been born on Thursday so they had barely any features to distinguish them. She laid down and nursed them once we got them in the cage and we proceeded to get to know each other.

I renamed her Mimi for the lead female in the opera La Boheme, the embroiderer Mimi living the Bohemian life in Paris in the late nineteenth century. All the kittens began with names from the opera as well.

Mimi (formerly Maia) on Drawing Table, with Lucy's Rainbows (more on that another time)

Mimi was only a few years old and is very tiny, yet she had had several litters of kittens. I think she sensed this was her last and that I would share the nurturing because she spent quality time with them, but she was really tired of kittens, and physically tired as well. She began migrating downstairs to my office, sleeping by the door and even curling up on my desk, fitting quietly in with the other cats as if she’d always been there and falling into our routine.

And so she continued, always settling on my desk; in the time I have written this she has walked in front of me four times. I added a shelf over the phone and adding machine on one side so she could keep watch on the neighborhood as I worked, and that is where she sits, looking out into the night. I write all the time about her kittens, the Fantastic Four, Mimi’s Children, but she doesn’t get the notice she deserves.

Even though she’d always been an outdoor cat, she had no interest in going out. Once she looked intently out as I came in, so I held the door open and she looked more intently, then looked up at me, Why are you holding the door open? Aren’t you coming in?

But even though she hangs near me, she is a little distant. Sometimes when I reach to pet her because she’s walking right in front of me, she draws back and gives me a horrified look, Who the hell are you, and why are you trying to touch me? She can modify her shape so that my hand glides just one-quarter inch above her fur, then she moves away gracefully.

But not always. Tonight as I was sorting end-of-year stuff in my office, she was all over me, mewing in her squeaky little mew, rubbing her little face all over my hands and my legs, trotting after me and purring so nicely and looking at me with her round eyes, then walking on the two piles I was sorting, biting the edges of the papers I was holding. She thanks me for saving her all the time in her quiet little ways and her sudden bursts of enthusiastic affection and I’d have to be a fool not to recognize it.

I had had a home for her that didn’t work out, and I’m glad. I think she and I will be friends for a very long time. Every home needs a sweet little black cat.

Lately the kids have really been after me to get some sort of pet. We lost our little dog Rolly almost a year ago but I don’t feel ready to have another dog. It’s been nice to not be tied down with a dog and Rolly was old- 16- and very needy and tempermental.
I have never gone this long without a pet, so we talked about having a cat.
Well, it ended up being two cats and we adopted them from the “Friends of Manchester Animal Shelter”.

Richie and Fontana

My daughter went by the FMAS (shelter) and of course wanted every animal there – mostly they had cats, but she settled on “Richie” because he was so friendly. Then my son wanted one too and I thought, what’s the difference as long as they get along.
So we put Richie and Fontana (their shelter names) in a closed room together and they didn’t fight so we thought they would be fine together and it has worked out very well. They sleep together on the front window ledge, eat side by side, and have recently begun to roughhouse play together too.

Watching the Squirrels

For $75 we got two nice cats who are spayed and neutered and have had all their shots. A friend of ours recently found a stray kitten and after taking it to the vet – one cat- the cost was over $200.
So Fontana and Richie have a new home and I think they are pretty happy.

Their Favorite Spot to Rest

An Old Memory

This was my most recent holiday card, from 2009. I took the photo in 1983, just a few months after I got my first camera and I was only shooting black and white so I could learn how to use the camera. Even though it was black and white film, it was processed in a one-hour development machine intended for color and the black and white ended up sepia, which I really liked better than when I had it printed in black and white. It always looked like an older image and the sepia really reinforces that.

The holidays are a time for celebration as well as a time for reflection and remembering.

An Old Memory

Cut-paper snowflakes taped
to a wavy glass window reflecting
the big front porch from an apartment I lived in long ago,
and a cat I will always remember from when he and I were very young,
just beginning,
me just getting to know my camera, and my art;
how did I capture a perfectly blended image to reflect those times?

Officially I am under the Black Cat’s Christmas Spell. Will there be snow?

Picture find: Witchdoctor

White whiskers…what else could one want for Christmas?

This download package contains 24 black cat graphics with different colored/patterned eyes. Includes a bonus halftone kitty. Each graphic is high resolution PNG @ 300 dpi, with transparent backgrounds. Perfect for Halloween, Goths, Punks, card making, scrap booking, decorating, designing Zazzle and Cafepress products, Halloween candy wrappers and whatever else your creative head can dream up. 100% royalty free.

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It was a dark and stormy night. The wind had picked up wildly, pushing and pulling the palm trees and the gum trees, their branches vainly attempting to hold on.  The lamp illuminating the pool area shook wildly, casting shadows where no shadows had gone before. The metal fencing creaked, the gate rattled. Unknown creatures lurked behind every noise and shadow, waiting for me to get out of the pool.

I was swimming after dark, the water was warm but the wind was almost icy. It was best to keep all bare skin under the surface, except the face (because, as much as I like to pretend otherwise, I’m not really an amphibian). I was all alone. I was surrounded by townhouses but everyone was inside, behind screen doors and open windows. I let my body go dead weight, to see whether I’d float or sink if I were to… no, better not write the next bit; my temporary housemate might forcibly send me to the shrink. My legs and most of my lower torso floated; my upper torso and head sank. I got a lot of water up my nostrils, spluttered — it was scientifically proven right then that chlorine water is sharp up the nose. Another thought entered my head: what else is in that pool other than chlorinated water? I had heard kids splashing in it earlier after they’d come home from school… I coughed a little harder. Expectorated outside the pool. Contemplated getting out but it was warm in the water, cold outside.

A loud bang! So loud that it made me jump out of my skin. I wasn’t wearing my hearing aid yet I heard it so clearly. It was so loud. My heart pounded hard. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Well, as much as wet hair can stand. I spun around in the pool, treaded water and scanned the dark corners and shadows. Oh my God — what was that? Did I just see a dark figure moving around past the cars in the carpark just beyond the fence? Oh God — maybe it’s Bill or one of those vampires from True Blood, which I’d been watching all day long. They’re on my mind. The theme song is permanently stuck in my head. Inexplicably, I even found the sex scenes a bit disconcerting. And I had been planning on having a medium-to-rare steak for dinner. Nothing else, just steak. Bloody, juicy steak.

True Blood. True Blood. I did nothing all day except cruise porn job websites and watch True Blood. They’re on my mind, they’re in my blood, they’re in my veins. Vampires. Fangs. Awesome white, shiny, dead-straight American teeth. Anna Paquin’s front gap teeth.

God hates fangs. Ha ha ha. Good one.

Then out of nowhere, guilt struck me. My conscious berated me for spending all day on the couch, sometimes with laptop, sometimes without, watching True Blood. Shit, Bron. You quit your job, you moved interstate, you wanted a new start. And you’re wasting time on some television show all day long.

But… but… but I was surfing job websites and bookmarking interesting jobs! Besides, it’s the end of the year, there aren’t that many jobs going at the moment.

Oh sheesh. Get a clue, ya unemployed bum.

Irritated, I told myself to stop being silly and stop jumping at shadows. Just when I was starting to be a little more mature, something long, thin and … something wrapped itself around my left arm. I opened my mouth to scream but swallowed a gallon of God-only-knows-what’s-in-this-water instead.

Right, that’s it, I’m getting out now, I thought. Too many noises, too many shadows, too many strange objects in the water that I can’t see, too many vampires lurking in the dark. They come out at night, you know.

As I scurried back home, I thought to myself, wryly, all I need now is a goddamned black cat to walk in front of me and my paranoia and being spooked out would be complete. Yes, yes, that’s all I need…

… and right on cue, A FUCKING BLACK CAT CAME HURTLING OUT OF THE BUSHES YOWLING ITS HEAD OFF.

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. Babble babble blubber blubber.

Before I grabbed the nearest stake, I realised that the black cat was in fact the local cat, Sox the Third, named so by me with no consultation with anyone whatsoever, because I’ve previously had cats called Sox the First and Sox the Second. Black cats with white paws, see. Little bastard.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will get out of the house and forget Bill, Eric, Sookie (what a fucking stupid name for a character — but it is the Deep South after all) and the rest.

I’ll start exploring Brisbane. I’ll beat the heat. And I’ll go get a job. After all, I don’t want to be another unemployed Queensland blogger.

Addendum:

This post has absolutely no purpose, no point, other than to fill in time as an unemployed bum and write in an erratic manner. It was also inspired by my fright night, what with vampires, things in the water, diseased water and a hungry black cat with white socks. Oh, and also because I had some help from my friends on Twitter. You know who you are.

A 3-D Five-Cat Puzzle

…so we’re not moving. All FIVE of the family, including mom this time, took a nap while I was trying to figure out the new blog system and lost interest in moving. They just can’t understand why mom spend so much time staring at the computer and saying bad words—just when they’ve completely cuddled and dropped back to sleep, she makes some loud remark that wakes everyone up and they all have to mill around and settle down again. It takes time to fit five cats together like that! Stay tuned.

WordPress added a widget to make signing up to receive postings so much more easily than the old sign-up procedure. Stop by and say hello!

Ms. Kiev: She Who Rules The Roost, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It’s been a long week. Except for the house noises, it’s quiet as the wind. Liz went to the hardware store to buy a new shower head. For the first time this week, I’m alone. It was a hard week. I felt sick on Tuesday but went to work anyway. After becoming a national statistic earlier this year, for the last few months I’ve been driving a truck, delivering parts to machinists to be electropolished, drilled, deburred, picking them up again. It’s Saturday morning, a sacred time when I can actually catch up on reading my own blog.

Weekend hours are sweet. I promised Kiev during her morning ritual with Liz that I’d post a photo of her. She’s the only cat in our family who hasn’t made it to the cover of red Ravine. (Mr. Stripeypants was published for his support of Obama; we lost sweet boy Chaco this year.) I was sitting on the couch, writing. Liz called me on the BlackBerry from the bedroom; I picked up to hear her whispering that I should come and see the cats. I tiptoed in and took these camera shots. Family time.

The first photograph is alpha cat Kiev in her favorite position. Liz places her arm just so; Kiev curls up in the crook, same position every time. I have discovered that Kiev is difficult to photograph. She is jet black and her catty panther features all blend into night. I guess I need one of those umbrella reflectors. I do the best I can.

How do you spend your days and nights? What are your weekends like? Do you take any downtime, time to do things you can’t get to during the week? Or are you retired, off of work, and every day is the weekend for you. It seems like when I have time, I have less money. More money, less time. Where’s the balance?

In catching up on red Ravine, I see that Bob was moved by Anna Deavere Smith in our Writing Topic — 3 Questions. Our guest Buzz explained some of the nuances of basketball banter in his poetry post Hoops. ybonesy wrote about art as play, community art, something dear to our hearts on red Ravine. The renga has heated up in the Daily Haiku. And we made April plans to go to Lake Pepin in the Midwest writing group I am a part of.

I’m relieved to know that even though I feel dead beat at the end of my truck driving day, the creative world goes on around me. And sweeps me along with it. I’m grateful for that.

For Christmas, I may ask Liz for a pocket protector and a few cotton work shirts with my first name stitched above the pocket, but I’m still a writer, a photographer, an artist. Still full of wonder at the animal track flannel sheets in the photo behind Kiev. Making a living as writers and artists isn’t easy. All of you make it easier. Thank you for that.

Morning Rituals, Mr. Stripeypants: Paw Over Hand, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, December 5th, 2009 with gratitude to Liz who holds up the other half of the sky, my family and friends who check up on me, and Roma, the best blog partner a woman could ever have

Sunderland Reserves 3 – 0 Wigan Athletic Reserves

Tuesday 1st December at the Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground

Wigan’s reserves suffered a backlash from the Black Cats on Tuesday night as they lost 3-0 away to Sunderland.

Graham Barrow’s men were hoping to emulate the first team’s success at the weekend and bounce back after a poor run of results.

However a first half hat-trick from Ryan Noble condemned Latics to their sixth defeat in eight Premier Reserve League North games.

Tomasz Cywka almost scored a late consolation but his penalty was saved by goalkeeper Trevor Carson.

Everton defender Moses Barnett was the main feature in the Wigan line-up, as he looks to impress during a trial period at the club.

The reserves’ next match is away to Manchester City on Tuesday 5^th January. Kick Off 7pm.

The day, after Thanksgiving, in which black cats are celebrated with catnip, feather wands, toys, treats, stinky goodness, crunchy goodness, …

“Get my stuff! Now!”

NOTE: This “Black Friday” shopping is immaterial, unless we’re talking about kitty stuff. Then, it’s okay.

We drove back to the city to rendezvous with our Latvian guide for the afternoon who was going to take us on a walking tour of the city.  We had no idea when we started the tour that this experience was designed as a severe endurance test based on the welcome to the Soviet Army initiation week for new recruits.  She was a lovely woman, and rightfully very proud of her city but she hadn’t fully made the transition out of the communist era and she pushed us through the city at a punishing pace, even at one time refusing a perfectly reasonable request to stop for a just a brief moment to purchase drinks. 

We saw all of the major tourist sites including the House of the Blackheads where we were chastised for buying postcards from a street vendor because she considered them too expensive; the Cathedral, where we took a ride to the top of the tower and marvelled at the view over the city; the house of the Black Cats with its graceful feline art nouveau statues; and the city main square with an inviting selection of pavement cafés where sadly we were not permitted to stay and sample the wares.  After an exhausting afternoon we eventually said a relieved goodbye to Rosa Kleb and to celebrate our liberation looked for a bar to sit and recover from the ordeal but sadly the weather had changed very quickly and some threatening black clouds were rolling in and it was starting to rain.

We sheltered for a time while we had a tedious deliberation about transport back to our respective hotels and dining arrangements for later in the evening.  I knew that there was going to be trouble when Alona revealed her plans for a table dancing restaurant and Kim’s jaw dropped like a brick.  There was only one thing to do, go into the canvas topped open air bar and have a drink, which we did while the others continued their debate about proposed evening activities.  After a while we were conscious that we were left alone and it appeared (to our relief) that we had been forgotten and they had all made their way back to their hotels without us.  No such luck.  After a while David came back to find us and we were reunited with the Hotel Albert contingent.  I could tell that Kim was getting somewhat irritated and another unnecessary discussion about taxi passenger arrangements didn’t help matters or improve her humour so I was extremely pleased to get back to the hotel without a major incident.

It didn’t take long for Kim to decide that she wasn’t going to the table dancing restaurant and I wasn’t especially keen either, but this put me in an awful dilemma.  I wanted to stay with her but as tour leader felt obliged to meet up with the others.  We washed and changed and met in the bar and I hoped that she might change her mind, but she did a Margaret Thatcher and refused to turn and so, reassured that she was comfortable about being left alone for the evening I took a taxi into the city and joined the others.

Kim had displayed better judgement than me because the place was awful, loud, cheap and with young girls employed as female enticement to dance in the window in bikini tops and draw in the leering stag parties.  This was sexual exploitation and I didn’t like it, they were roughly the same age as my own daughter and it occurred to me that I would hate it if they were my children and I was somewhat ashamed to be there.  I ordered my meal and paid for it but left before it arrived and I walked back swiftly to the Hotel.

About half way back I realised that I wasn’t really sure where I was going and although I knew that I was close I felt a little uneasy in the heavy shadows of the buildings where I imagined danger to be lurking in every suspicious corner and I decided to complete the journey by taxi so located one and asked for a price.  If I was anxious about being mugged on the street I should have been more bothered about the taxi driver:

“How much to the Hotel Albert? I enquired

“5 Lats”

“5 Lats, that’s ridiculous, it’s less than half a mile, I’ll give you 2”

“5 Lats”

I decided not to argue and got in but then tried again: “Look, I’ll pay you 2 Lats, that’s fair”

“5 Lats”

“That’s ridiculous!”

And then I realised why I would not get the fare for 2 Lats and also had it confirmed for me just what sort of hotel I was staying at:

“If you can afford fucky fucky at the Albert you can afford 5 Lats for a taxi!”

I indignantly pleaded my innocence and when we arrived I paid up and called him a robber, he laughed out loud as though in total agreement with the total accuracy of my character assessment and drove off pocketing the result of his sting.  Actually the journey was only about two hundred metres so at the official basic rate of 1.5 Lats and .5 Lats per kilometre he made a handsome profit on that trip of about 215%! 

Today is Friday the 13th – to some, the most unlucky day of the year.  And where did that come from?  It couldn’t be those horror movies by same title.  The earliest recollection of this superstition is 1869.  Superstitions are fun because most people believe they’re cocky-pot (loony).  I grew up with all of the oldest and most well regarded of superstitions in our home.  This was probably because of my draw to the unexplained more-so than my parents encouragement.  Black cats, broken mirrors, killed spiders, tall ladders and Friday the 13th.

Now that I’m out on my own, living my life, I’d have to say that I don’t believe in these superstitions any more.  I never throw salt over my right shoulder for luck and I certainly don’t believe in the luck of a horseshoe.  Especially after playing horseshoes.  No, I threw away my lucky rabbit’s foot a long time ago. But, and this is going to sound silly, I still try to avoid a black cat crossing my path and I don’t trudge under tall ladders that block the sidewalk.  I certainly am careful with mirrors and my arachnophobia keeps me from going near any spiders. So what does that say? That I’m a dreamer? Well duh.  But maybe we program ourselves as kids to remember not to do things.   Then when we’re all grown up, we still try hard not to do those things.  Even the most silly things, like trying not to worry what a Friday the 13th will bring to a guy named Jason (Yeah, that’s my first name, please don’t spread it around – I’m much more of a Jay.  Also my mother is the only one who calls me Jason).

Superstitions are a relic that I’d like preserved for the next generation.  So, what are you still carrying around with  you after all this time? Do you do the same things I do, even when you don’t believe it?  Or in your mind, is it all very true?

“When the human race has once acquired a superstition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it”  Mark Twain

Ahhhhhhhh!  Satan and death and blood and the end of the world!  Ahhhhhhhh!

Ok, I’m done with that.  Friday the 13th.  Why do we make a big deal out of this stuff?  Do people actually have worse luck because it is the 13th?  Personally, I am not into the whole superstition thing.  I have never been about knocking on wood or jinxes.  I am not worried about black cats or walking underneath ladders.  None of that stuff gives me bad luck.  I don’t care about rabbit’s feet or breaking mirrors.  I don’t pick up pennies tails side up, but that is because I don’t pick up pennies heads up either.  What am I really gonna do with it?

But today is scary!…right?  Do things like this get to you?  Do you knock on wood just in case?  Do you have paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th)?

How providential that today, Friday the 13th, happens to be the draw date for our BEATLE MEETS DESTINY competition! I totally didn’t plan that. Thanks to all who commented on last week’s blog post.

My magnificent black cat, Pinklepurr, took time out of his busy napping schedule to randomly draw a winner. And that person is…

..Llehn!

Congrats, Llehn! Please email your postal address to ness (at) vanessa.barneveld (dot) com and I’ll send the book to you asap. And, everyone, please give Pinklepurr a cyber pat for helping out today.

Speaking of Friday the 13th, what’s the luckiest or unluckiest thing that’s ever happened to you?

I’ll start. UNLUCKIEST THING? Tumbling all the way down a big set of stairs on my first date with a gorgeous guy. You could say I fell for him. Love was the last thing on my mind as I lay sprawled at the bottom of the stairs with my dress hiked up to my chin. LUCKIEST THING? The same gorgeous guy asked me to marry him. Sure, it only took him 10 years, but at least by then I had emotionally and physically recovered from that spontaneous stunt.

Fromage at eight weeks

This is my “little baby foster kitty”, six weeks later. Quite the big girl compared to the little uncoordinated fuzzball who arrived (read “A Little Baby Foster Kitten” for the beginning of this story).

She went to her forever home over the weekend, and while I miss her vibrant personality and the daily progress and development of a kitten I am also glad to hand over a happy, healthy kitten to an excellent home, and the Festive Four are happy to have their bathroom back.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had one this young, but I’ve fostered a few dozen cats and kittens in the 20-plus years I’ve been fostering, and while I hope to give them a good beginning I never feel the need to keep every one of them unless a good home just isn’t available. I’d prefer to share the love of a wonderful kitty, and if I know a forever home is available I can love them all the more knowing I won’t need to worry about the expenses of another cat in the household, since I’m already pretty full for a house this size.

Six weeks passed so quickly in my life, but in terms of her development during those weeks she went from toddler to second-grader, perhaps third-grader, in physical ability, judgment, social skills—and consuming food!

I remember when Fromage first arrived and I initially tried to bottle feed her. She wanted no parts of the plastic nipple, but was very attracted to and comforted by the warmth of my forearm. Some of the formula dripped on my arm and she found it, licking it off right away and purring, then nibbling me looking for a nipple on my arm. I dripped a little more on my arm then filled in the little pool at the crook of my elbow where she lapped the formula, warmed by my skin, and kneaded, no doubt she could feel my pulse there, too.

The next day we began transitioning to a dish for her to lap from, and after a week added some canned food and quickly left the formula behind.

Wow, his tail—it's moving!

With neonatal rescues like Fromage, the danger of delayed physical or social development is common, so I studied her coordination, voice, apparent vision and hearing, eating habits, everything that was a clue to her progress. She was an early star with litterbox use, played with toys and with me, and was very affectionate with me. However, she didn’t play for very long when I wasn’t in the room, and she was very shy with other people, even a little hostile.

Social interaction with people is important, and if I had had the time to spend more hours with her I may have sufficed—plenty of others have done that with foster kittens. But she really needed the company of other cats to develop both physical agility and social skills. Kittens, puppies, and young of all species when they are born in litters, play all day long at her age, wrestling, chasing, stealing toys from each other and sharing toys with each other, eating together, bathing each other and sleeping in a pile together. Aside from eating, it’s the most important thing they do at that age.

Giuseppe is patient with this.

Call in the Fostering Four. One night I was sorting laundry on my bed and had the four and several other of the adult cats in my bedroom. I put her on my bed among the piles of laundry and let her explore and, one by one, meet the other cats. There was a small amount of hissing, but no one left.

Now she has to learn a lesson.

Jelly Bean had known what was expected of him right away, and was the only one never to utter a discouraging meow, but purred at the shrieking kitten the first night, sniffing at the door and asking to go into the bathroom from then on. Giuseppe and Mr. Sunshine were a little doubtful at first, sitting and staring when possible, growling and swatting when necessary, for about a half day, then they began chasing her in play and swiping a little bath at her now and then. Mewsette was the only holdout, and as soon as she realized the irritating little thing could play was dancing on the top of the baby gate so the kitten could try to grab her toes.

I blocked the top of the stairs with a baby gate, closed the door to the spare bedroom and let Fromage run around the upstairs for an hour or so once or twice a day. While she could still be kept corralled by the baby gate, the adults could visit when they wanted and escape whenever they got tired of her then go back for more.

Playing Paws Under the Door

She blossomed as she quickly developed greater coordination and learned to play with four adult cats in turn. And not only them, but in the meantime I took in another adult foster who is staying in the spare bedroom, and Fromage stopped to play paws under the door with him as well!

None of my other adult cats developed any interest in her, and Mimi’s reaction was almost funny—a hostile look and a big, long hissssss. I guess she’s had enough of kittens for one lifetime.

Fromage makes it down the steps

Kittens never cease to amaze me at this stage in their development: one day Fromage got into the tub and couldn’t get out, but two days later she was hopping in and out often without touching the sides, the change comes that fast. She climbed the baby gate but couldn’t get to the top, then suddenly she was over it on the other side—where she shouldn’t be. I heard her tumble down the steps once and for a week she ignored the steps, but eventually it was too tempting and I turned around to find her crouching near the bottom studying the new room and trying to decide where to start her exploration. The next day she was running up and down the steps with a concerned Jelly Bean accompanying her; I guess he remembered those days when he and his siblings were only allowed down the steps under my supervision.

Fromage in Motion

At eight weeks she can run and run and run and keep up a pace I can’t even match—and except for the fact that she’s about one-tenth their size and therefore has shorter legs, she can outrun the adult cats. As small as she is, she can outmaneuver them under the bed and around corners and if all else fails she can just run under their bellies and they have to spin around to see where she’s gone.

And she developed into a little sweetheart. Aside from leaping up my leg whenever she saw me, I would hold my hand out in front of her and she would stand on her hind legs with her front paws up then fall on my hand so I could scoop her up, holding her close to my face and cuddling. When I sat on the floor she would walk all over me, purring vigorously.

She also loved company. The first time her forever person, the person who had rescued her, came to visit, Fromage was less than social, not interacting with her at all—but that was before her socialization by the Communal Quartet. I marched every visitor to the house up the stairs to see her (and I had to twist very few arms to get people to visit with her—most people asked). The next time her forever person came to visit, Fromage strolled out of the bathroom and executed a luxurious cat stretch and furled and curled her tail and walked over to her.

Already those predator eyes

But it’s the arrogance of a kitten that age that I love so much. They think they own the world, exploring fearlessly, challenging other cats and animals in their environment, playing with toys, climbing anything they can grasp, developing a vocabulary, yet they are so tiny and delicate, easily hurt, susceptible to so many diseases.

The night I took her to her new home, much larger than mine and with only two other cats, she cautiously explored the living room at first, finding a safe place behind the couch, then moving through the dining room with a little less fear all the time. She was at first a little startled at the sounds of so many voices, especially loud men’s voices, but after being around our conversation just began to ignore it. She’ll have her own room for some time to come, but run of the all but the basement whenever possible. She runs off to explore, then comes back to her person arching her back and rubbing herself against a leg with a vigorous purr, then she’s off to explore some more.

I was glad for my role in this, knowing how to handle a neonatal kitten. But it was really the people who rescued her who played the biggest role in Fromage’s life, and without them her future would be very different, if she had one at all.

If her strident shrieks hadn’t been heard that night, or if they had chosen to ignore her, chances were slim she would have lived a day or two more without her mother. If she somehow had, she should have ended up as another stray cat on the streets dodging cars and people and fighting off illnesses that cats with owners are vaccinated against. If she had survived the coming winter, next year she’d start producing kittens at two to four litters per year, and since she would have grown up without human interaction they would be considered feral, adding to the overpopulation already on the streets. Her life would likely be short and unpleasant as are the lives of most cats who live entirely on the streets with an average life span of three years, and kitten survival at less than 50%.

How much better that she has her own house and her own person and two cats to boss around, enough to eat, spaying at the right time, and she can live a good, long life with people enjoying her gregarious, affectionate personality and admiring her intelligence and beauty! I can’t wait to hear the progress reports.