10 posts tagged “cats”

Charlie, my cat, loves me and would never hurt me. Intentionally. But things can happen, and they did earlier this week.

It was late at night, and I was on my desktop computer upstairs, looking at some websites or working on letters. I heard “Meow-wow!” as Charlie hopped up on the chair next to me and then stepped over into my lap, where she curled up.

This is standard operating procedure for Charlie when I’m on the computer late at night. She will sit for a while, then hop off and go elsewhere. Or she may stick around for a while. Or she may go into orbit around my monitor–climbing up onto the desk, then strolling around the back of the flat-screen monitor (picking her way through some of the junk back there), cycling back to the front and stepping back down into my lap. Or she may go for another orbit. Or another.

It’s rather distracting when you’re trying to concentrate on your writing. But she can get away with it. She’s got me wrapped around her paw, let’s admit it.

Anyway, I was just wearing shorts–it was late, as I said–when Charlie climbed up, as usual, then went around the back of the monitor, as usual, and climbed back down into my lap, as usual. But I may have moved my leg, and that startled her. She started losing her balance. Charlie doesn’t have front claws, if you don’t know, but the ones on her rear paws still work. As she battled to keep her balance, she dug in … and left two long lines at the top of my right thigh …

Me-ouch!!!

I didn’t swear or yell. Charlie fell to the floor and ran off, letting me alone to clean up the blood.

A few minutes later, I went to bed. Soon Charlie hopped up on the bed, next to me. Purr, purr, purr.

****
Outside of that misadventure, I have been doing pretty well while my wife has been gone on her trip. Since I am a novice in the kitchen, you may want to know about that.

On Monday, I baked some frozen twice-baked potatoes. (Does that make them thrice-baked potatoes?) Tuesday, I bought a foot-long chicken sandwich from Subway–had half of it for lunch and the other half for supper, before heading off to a volleyball match. Wednesday, I had got a pizza pasty for lunch from the pasty place next door.

That afternoon, I drove out of town to visit a friend–we had pizza for supper, and I stayed overnight, driving back Thursday morning. I had yogurt and some grapes for lunch–supper was taken en route to another volleyball match, another stop at Subway.

The kitties didn’t get their canned food while I was gone last night. Aside from tha,t they have been fed regularly and their dry food and water is kept in good supply.

As for my wife, she is having a great time, seeing the shows down in Branson. “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked during our phone call Thursday morning. “Oh, you bet!” she answered.

We have talked every night except last night (no cell reception at my friend’s place). She has been updating me on her adventures, while I tell her about my day. Each day down there has been very busy. This is her last day at Branson–they start the long bus trip home Friday morning.

I will not have to drive to Ironwood to pick her up Saturday night–one of the women from our town who is also taking the tour will drive her home. That’s fine–we’ve got an early deadline because of the Labor Day holiday, and Saturday will be pretty busy for me.

Yeah, I miss her, all right. It’s too quiet at home, though I have managed to keep myself busy. The kitties miss her, too, especially Maggie. But she will be back home within 48 hours.

And she is having a good time, which matters most of all.

We had two cats in our house for many years. About 14 months ago, Frisky died. That left Maggie as the sole remaining cat–until we added Charlie last February and then Max last October.

Meanwhile, Maggie keeps on going. She is now 16 years old (in human years) and should turn 17 late this year. She used to be a really heavy cat with lots of calico fur. In the last couple years, though, she has become much thinner–still with lots of fur. Of course, we are watching her closely. She can get a bit cranky nowadays, especially when the other cats are around.

But she is still Mom’s baby. We got Maggie when she was just a little kitten, with a thin little ratlike tail that soon fluffed out magnificently. She got her name from her early habit of sucking my older son’s shirt sleeve as he held her–just the way Maggie from “The Simpsons” sucks her ever-present pacifier. When my wife “loves her up,” she still purrs loudly. She eats very well and will steal from the other cats’ bowls if they decide to leave something for later.

About the time Frisky was getting ill, Maggie started sleeping in our bed, right next to my wife’s pillow. She has done so ever since, for maybe the last year and a half. As a long-haired cat, Maggie leaves fur wherever she goes, especially in spring. Everywhere! I have issued an edict: Maggie will be the last long-haired cat we will ever own.

In recent weeks, we have been seeing something besides loose fur. On the sheets and in the clothes where she naps, my wife started seeing reddish stains. They smelled like cat urine. Lovely, I know. Last Saturday morning, my wife and I talked about it, and a few hours later we had Maggie in the cat carrier, heading for the veterinarian’s office.

We took the cat carrier to the examination table, and the vet said she was going to try get some urine from her bladder with a syringe. No problem–as soon as the needle went in, the table as flooded with urine, and we pulled Maggie away. The vet used her test strips to check the chemistry of the urine and reported they indicate she seems to be in good condition outside of a urinary tract infection.

So she gave Maggie a shot and gave us some antibiotics with instructions to give them to her every day. We have, and since then she seems to be feeling better–a little more spirit, more alert, and no more leaking, at least not so far.

So that’s how things stand now, four days later. As an elderly cat. she sleeps an awful lot during the day but occasionally gets up, walks over to my wife and meows. My wife picks her up, goes back to her favorite rocking chair and holds her for a while. Purr, purr, purr, and she eventually drifts off to sleep. My wife puts her down, returns to whatever she is doing. When Maggie wakes up, the cycle repeats.

And at about 9:45 p.m. each day, when my wife is watching TV downstairs, Maggie (and the other cats) show up and start watching us intently. They get fed a little after 10, just before my wife goes to bed.

After that, Maggie climbs the steps to her reserved space on the bed. Max gets all excited and runs back and forth. Charlie runs a little and wrestles wtih Max, but then she sits in one place. My wife and I go upstairs, and eventually Charlie follows and hops up into my lap as I sit at the computer. We have our little rituals, too.

****
I drove up to Marquette for an all-day meeting on Tuesday. Snow was in the forecast–about two or three inches–but I didn’t see anything until about the halfway mark on the drive home. It was just starting to accumulate then–very wet stuff, and it didn’t break my heart that I didn’t have to drive through that mess. Eventually we got about two inches. With temperatures supposed to get back into the 40s in the next couple days, it won’t be around for long.

Of course … it can’t be gone soon enough.

Well, for not having a plan, our ad-libbed holiday observance went pretty well.

For one thing, we can thank the Midwest's stormy weather for keeping my older son, Phil, around for one extra day. His original plan was to leave us Friday morning and drive back to Detroit via Chicago--he likes the improv comedy clubs in Chi-Town and was going to stay there that night.

But though he doesn't follow the weather closely, he was still aware of the big storms bearing down on the Second City. Forecasts called for much warmer than normal temperatures, bringing in very heavy rain and a good chance of flooding. That was enough to change his itinerary. As he put it, "Chicago traffic is bad enough the way it is."

So he spent much of his Friday playing games at his brother's apartment. In the evening, he, my wife and I went out for a pizza. Then he went out to meet some classmates at a local restaurant--just four, I guess. It was arranged through Facebook. He got back home, we watched some stuff for a little while, and then he went up to bed.

He left for home Saturday at about 6 a.m.--had something going down in Detroit that night involving the new Jim Carrey movie. He made it home OK--had to deal with rain and a lot of fog along the way, but he didn't have any trouble with it.

Back here, I had to do some work on the paper Saturday. Then, some shopping. Some work assignments. Chipping ice off the back porch, in preparation for the freezing rain forecast that night, just before a snowstorm. The freezing rain never developed, and the heaviest snow went east of us. It just got windy.

As for Christmas Day itself: We all got up late. Dave came over late in the morning, and we gathered in the living room to watch some stuff on TV. We had decided to do a giftless Christmas, but I had some "late birthday gifts" for the two boys.

After lunch, we drove down to see my mom at the nursing home. As luck would have it, she was having a good day, and her face positively lit up when she saw Phil again for the first time in a year. (She sees the rest of us fairly often, and I'm there to visit nearly every week.) Very happy. We visited for the better part of two hours and drove back home. That night, we watched "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" together.

Another adventure awaits my wife and I on Monday. We plan to drive down to visit S and her husband. Just a short visit--I'm taking them out to dinner, and then we're going to enjoy the pool at our motel. The visit has been tentative for a while due to the very iffy weather and her husband's back problems--he hurt something while shoveling snow a few weeks ago and has been out of work with back pain. S's letter on Saturday says he is doing better.

Still, I phoned her tonight to make sure. We're also keeping an eye on the forecast--more snow is forecast for Tuesday, the day we would be driving back north. Doesn't seem too bad right now. The weather has been ugly all month, anyway.

I tried to do some writing on the computer last night after my wife went to bed. But Charlie had other priorities. You should know the story by now. She invited herself into my lap to get petted and cuddled. Purr, purr, purr. This time, I was able to take a couple pictures--with one hand!--of the big, happy kitty. And here you are ...

After a while, my leg started falling asleep. I started fidgeting, and she hopped off ...

About five minutes later, I was sitting quietly again, and Charlie came back. This time, she faced the other way ...

One more thing about the cats: They seemed a little confused when the bedroom was closed during Phil's visit. That is usually Max's domain--he liked to lie down on the bed and look out the window--and they aren't used to closed doors.

So at night, Charlie and Max would camp out in front of that door for a while--since it is next to the computer room, I could keep an eye on things. Then they chase each other downstairs. Their usual exercise just before bed.

Our area had a lovely day today. It started cloudy and cool, but then it cleared off and got into the low 50s. I celebrated it after work today by doing something I hadn't done for a while: I mowed the lawn.

Final rite of our rapidly disappearing summer. A cold front is supposed to blow through on Sunday. We may see snowflakes before Monday.

The grass had gotten long because I hadn't mown it for a while. Part of it is basic laziness, I suppose, but the long delay is partly due to the ankle I twisted in early September. We have a push mower, so when you mow the lawn you get some good exercise. I didn't want to push the ankle until it was feeling nearly back to normal. It is now. If I twist it the wrong way, it hurts a little. Otherwise, it's back to normal.

I had to run out for a picture this evening, and when I walked out to the car, I said to myself that the lawn is looking fairly nice. Better than it was, certainly.

The picture, by the way, was at a youth hockey practice. Yes, winter's on the way.

****
Geez, I've fallen behind on everyone's blogs lately. I've got an excuse. Maybe not a good one, but it's better than nothing.

At work, we have been working hard on our winter tourism issue. The official deadline is this weekend, and I fell behind on things last week. Suddenly it came to me--Eureka!--that nobody else is going to do the work for me. So I had to hustle my bustle. Like they say about the butcher who sat down in the meat grinder, "I'm getting a little behind in my work."

So no quiet time at the office this week. Instead, manic work to get a bunch of features written or updated. Meanwhile, I had a pair of friends I wanted to write to, and that took up my evenings at home. And I was already tired, from all the work I had done.

Also, Wednesday was my wife's birthday, and we wanted to visit my mom that evening. So we did. I got her a couple cards. Some of you may remember some of the infamous cards I get for my wife. The stock of clever ones seemed to be down this year. Still, I came up with this one.

Here is the front ...

And this is inside ...

****
On a recent trip to see my mom, my wife and I decided to get a scratch mat for Max. We put it out, and Max seemed to take to it ...

So did the other two cats. Maggie decided to give it a try. She thought it was good to sit on ...

And Charlie decided to give it a try. First, she worked it up with a paw to make a little tunnel out of it ...

Then the little feathery toy on it got her attention, and Charlie had a great time playing with it ...

Oh, she was having a great time with it ...

The cats are getting along a lot better. Still an occasional hiss or growl, but it's gotten a lot better. Last time I wrote, I wasn't sure it was going to work out. Now it's better.

Max's personality is coming out more. He likes to get petted but doesn't like to be picked up that often. But he comes around, rubbing against my legs or my hand when I put it down. He likes to get his head petted and scratched. Purr, purr.

Meanwhile, nearly every morning now, Charlie comes to visit me about 5 a.m., when I'm just waking up. I feel her walking up by my side. I try to lie on my back, with my arm to my side, so Charlie will lie down by my side, with my arm on the other side, so she can put her forepaws on my upper arm. Purr, purr. Sometimes she gets her middle rubbed. Other times, I drift back to sleep.

Did I ever tell you that Charlie likes crackers? Every cat is strange in some way, and Charlie seems to have a weakness for ordinary soda crackers. When I came out to the living room this evening with a pair crackers, Charlie hopped up by me. Meow? Meow? Urrrow? She starts sniffing the crackers and tries to lick them, so I finally break off a tiny corner and offer it to her. She sniffs and then eats it. You could hear a soft crunch, crunch. She had two pieces and was satisfied.

Ironically, my wife said she was sitting with Charlie yesterday. She had a couple crackers for herself ... and Charlie paid them no attention.

Prepare yourself for a shock.

Are you sitting down? (Of course you are; you're at the computer, aren't you?)

The news is: I haven't been feeling particularly creative lately.

It's this, that and the other thing. Maybe my brain is seizing up. Screeech! Summer now seems to have fled the scene for good, and I'm working on articles for our annual winter issue. I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me. Wonderful. Six months of winter, on deck.

Well, like most stuff in life, it is what you make of it. Right at the moment, I'm a bit down at the prospect of winter coming. But after winter there's spring, and then summer. Spring is only six or seven months away, depending on whether it's a late spring or not.

****
There is big news at our house. We have added another cat. May I introduce you to Max (his shelter name) ...

Max--that name may be changed--was acquired from the local animal shelter. He is a male cat who was already neutered. He is about 3 1/2 years old, bright orange, as you can see, and comparatively thin. He is friendly and likes to be petted. Purr, purr, purr.

My naive hope was that Charlie was looking for a friend, someone she can play with, since Maggie still hisses at Charlie when she goes by. Such has not been the case. We brought Max home yesterday, in the late afternoon. Once Charlie realized that the pet taxi came home with an occupant, she started hissing. And growling. Charlie knows cat words that I have never heard before. One sounds like "Oyyyyy, yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoyyyyy!" (Normally, Charlie "talks" a lot as she goes around the house; some cats do, and others don't.)

One time yesterday, she put her ears down (first time I ever saw her do that) and hissed and then chased Max upstairs. They both went under our bed. I followed them and heard them hissing at each other. That's all that happened. For the most part, they have stayed apart today. But my wife said they started having a conversation just before noon. She knew what to do: She turned on the vacuum cleaner. That ended the discussion immediately: One cat went one way, and the other went another.

Another issue must be resolved: Max has not been declawed. We are hoping we won't have to do this. This evening, we tried to trim her claws with a fingernail clipper--something we hadn't done since we had Princess (that cat that preceded Frisky, who is the cat that preceded Charlie). Max must have been declawed before, but he didn't want to cooperate with us, so we let him go. He is not scratching furniture; just the carpets, and most of our carpets at home aren't much to speak of. He does that when he's happy, sort of kneading his paws on the floor. When we had lunch together today, Max went around and around the table, brushing against our legs and getting petted.

I want to tell you a little about Max's history, too. Charlie came to the shelter as a kitten. Max arrived there around New Year's--he had been at the shelter for 10 months until this week. The story is that he was found as a stray, and they discovered he had an abcess in his mouth, which was causing him pain. The vet took care of that. According to the shelter's bio, "Max wants a nice indoors home. He doesn't want to be outside any more." At one point, they told us, he got depressed and stopped eating. He is still thin. Much lighter than Charlie, who had gotten rather rotund in her time with us.

I just hope that he and Charlie will be able to get along better. I feel pretty bad about the way things have turned out. If I had known Charlie would be this way about it ...

****
Tonight, I'm upstairs, writing, with the Red Wings game on the little TV to my left. I'm up here by myself. If this were a perfect world, I would have at least a cat here to keep me company. But this is not a perfect world, is it?

Usually stuff like that doesn't bother me that much. Tonight it is.

I'm back from my trip, and I thought I would be able to write something up and get some pictures ready last night.

I did pretty good, too. The text part of the entry is mostly all done--I wrote that last night---and I was about to start working on the photos when Charlie changed things.

For each of the two nights since we returned, Charlie has come around while I worked at the computer after my wife went to bed. Meow? Meow? Then she purrs and rubs against my legs, and pretty soon I'm reaching down and picking her up. Then she sits in my lap and purrs, and I'm stroking her and she's kneading my arms with her front paws. Nice kitty!

Then, as I try to continue what I was going to do, Charlie starts with her telepathic mind control.

"You don't want to look at all those photos and edit them. That's not what you want to do this late. You just want to pet me and get sleepy."

Yes, I am getting tired, Charlie, and I do enjoy petting you. But I wanted to get this done before bed. Just a few more minutes.

"Well, you can work on the photos in the morning, can't you?"

Yes, but mornings are a little too rushed for photo work.

"Not if you can focus your mind as I can. You can do it if you try. Right now, it's late, and you're getting sleepy. You are getting very sleepy. It's been a long day."

I'm getting sleepy. I'm getting very sleepy. It's been a long day.

"You really want to put me down on the chair, go off to take your bedtime pills, then come back here. I'll be waiting, and you can carry me off to the bed."

Tell you what, Charlie: How about it if I put you down on the chair while I take my bedtime pills. Then I'll come back here, pick you up and carry you off to bed. How does that sound?

"Purrrrr. I like that. That works for me. Just turn off the computer, right now."

OK, Charlie, let me shut down the computer first, and then I'll take my pills. Are you going to wait on the chair for me?

"I'll be right here."

While looking over all those blog entries I copied from Efx2 (all 294 of them), I noticed a few things. When I wrote shorter entries, I wrote more often. When I made fewer photos, I included photos more often. Interesting trends.

So I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the more frequent though shorter entries. You know that some of my posts get kind of long, since I have a lot of things to share with you. So maybe if I go for shorter entries ... I'll have to think about it.

****
One thing I don't like about Vox is that I can't get the font I like (Georgia) for my entries. I have tried to change them bodily here, but they seem to want to switch back to the default for the particular design I am using. (Sigh)

I know some of the designs use Georgia, but when I tried to discover some of them last night, I didn't have much luck. How to burn an hour or two.

****
One thing I didn't mention before is that we are going to take a little vacation next week. A short jaunt down to visit my son, who lives about 525 miles away, in the northern Detroit suburbs. It amounts to four days and three nights on the road. Better get that iPod all charged up.

David is coming along, and we're going to see if it's possible for him to stay with his older brother. My wife and I will stay at a motel.

Apart from his daytime job (at a bank corporation), my older son is into improv comedy, and he has been learning about it. He has been part of improv shows before, and he recently told us that another one will take place on the last Saturday of July. So my wife and I started talking later and agreed this might deserve a trip from the parental units. After all, we haven't visited him during summer for years. Our only visits have been around Thanksgiving, since the trips were paid for by the paper--I was going down there to cover our football team playing in the state finals in Detroit.

We'll pay for this one ourselves, even with gas hitting $4.29/gallon up here. It will cost some money, but seeing your son do his improv thing: priceless.

****
OK, now it's time to show what Charlie has been doing. An explanation first.

I had a pair of athletic shoes I used for many years. Finally the laces wore through the eyelets, and I decided to get a new pair. The laces I had on the old shoes were virtually new, so I took them off the shoes, which I forgot to throw out.

Enter Charlie. Lately, she has been playing with marbles in the living room, batting them around from one paw to another as she runs across the floor. On this night, the marble managed to get inside my shoe, and she wanted to get it out ...

 
She was pawing around inside the shoe for a while, rocking it. Because she heard the marble inside, down by the toe. But there it stayed--until she got the bright idea to tip the shoe up ...

(Since efx2blogs is having a hard time tonight, the good folks at Vox get to be the first people to see this.)

On Saturday, when we took the new member of our family home, she cried all the way.

But it's turning out all right. She's not crying any more.

Last Saturday, we selected our new cat at the local shelter. You saw her picture from the paper last time, and you'll see some better pictures soon. On Wednesday, she had her spaying and declawing operation. The declawing does cause some pain to the kitty (as does the spaying, I'm sure), so the shelter wanted to keep her until Saturday. We were disappointed, but the shelter said we could come over to visit. That sounded fine with us.

So we drove over after lunch Friday, and here is the kitty in her little cubicle, which is a lot smaller than a three-foot cube. She's licking her paw, post-declawing ...

Winter is being a bitch around here.

There. I said it.

It is a mean mofo this year.

There. I said it again.

See? Up yours, winter. Where the sun don't shine. It's not shining here, and it's snowy, and it's windy and it's miserable and it's as cold as your own tit. Or some other part of your anatomy.

If, after reading the preceding lines, you have concluded that I am really getting sick of our wonderful whiteness and coldness and windiness and driftiness and chilliness, give yourself an A for perception. If winter was fun before, it's not fun now. Not when it's midwinter and temperatures are about 20 degrees below normal, as they are here right now. It's midafternoon, and the temperature stands at 3.

And yes, I know it's colder in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Their normal temperatures during winter are colder than ours--and they are as much below normal as we are. I have Winnipeg, Manitoba, on my Yahoo weather list. Yesterday's extremes in Winnipeg: -13F for a high and -24F for a low. That is brutal.

OK, enough about the weather. We have some news. Some good news. Did you see the post recently about the death of Frisky, the cat we have had for about 16 years?

Enough time has passed, and the mourning is over. The time has come for a few kitty. Well, not yet. Around the end of this week. We selected her at the local animal shelter last Saturday, and the shelter won't release her until after she is spayed. We will also have her front-declawed at the same time. Since she will be an indoors-only cat, she will not be able to work down her claws on trees, and we don't want our furniture to serve as surrogate trees. My wife wanted it done, and we're getting it done now so she will only have to be put under anesthesia once.

I wrote about the selection process and the visit to the shelter in my efx2 blog. Won't repeat all that here, but here is the photo that appeared in the local paper's ad from the shelter two weeks ago. "Sparkle" is gray and white with a black nose.

I guess you can see that in that halftone photo. What you can't see is how friendly she was.

I wrote in the other blog: "Very affectionate. She purred right away when we picked her up. She walked back and forth between us, rubbing against us. When I picked her up, she snuggled against my chest and purred."

That's just what I wanted. I wanted a little one to love. Someone to keep me company when I'm up late or to lie next to me when I'm tired. Someone I can pet and feel close to when I'm lonely or sad.

Since Sparkle (her temporary name) is just a year or so old, she will be the first kitten we have had around our place in 15 years or so. We will watch her grow bigger and slower, and before long she will be the main cat of the house. (Maggie is here now, but she is nearly 16, and we have to be realistic about how long she will last.)

I wrote in the other blog, something to the effect that "while my wife and I are both in our upper 50s, we are both feeling like little kids just before Christmas. We can't wait." It's going to be a happy, exciting time for us. And a very big change for the kitty.

Think about it. She is going to be going from a cage that's a three-foot cube to a two-story house with a basement. That means a lot of stuff for a little kitty to explore, and, knowing cats the way we do, she will work hard to get it all inventoried in her mind.

Something very interesting will take place this weekend. We are going to have David over to visit. He hasn't been here for a few weeks. (I don't think he even knows that Frisky died nearly a month ago.) He likes cats, but Frisky and David didn't get along well--she was scared of him. It all dates back to when she was just a kitten.

Around that time, in the early 1990s, the TV show "ALF" was on. Do you remember ALF? He was that wise-cracking alien from the planet Melmac who lives with a sitcom family. One thing about ALF is that the residents of Melmac supposedly eat cats. It was a running joke on the show, with ALF occasionally sizing up the family feline.

David had a stuffed ALF, and he would chase Frisky around the house, holding ALF in front of him. He didn't mean any harm--he was a little kid back then. But ever since, Frisky never let ALF--or David--get close to her. A traumatic time for Frisky.

There was another moment like that, too, during her first months with us. We got another cat--my wife wanted a second cat. (The more, the merrier, you know.) I don't remember where or how she got it, but she got this red-orange kitten, sort of long-haired. And while I won't say it was mean, it was aggressive towards Frisky. To the point where she was scared of this other cat. It became obvious, and within a week or so we got rid of the other cat (advertised it on the radio shopping program, and someone came over to claim it).

A little later--maybe a month, maybe two--we got Maggie. Those two always got along fairly well, but they got into their occasional catfight. Those were funny. For long periods, the two would stare at each other, sometimes balancing on their back legs. Like Godzilla. With one paw up. And then there would be a fast flurry of wrestling and kicking that would end just as fast. We would sit on the living room couch and howl with laughter. Little catnip bags that my wife would make were a major source of conflict.

Maggie was a little kitten when we got her, but she grew to become noticeably larger than Frisky. Didn't matter. Frisky was the boss cat of the house, and Maggie knew it. Frisky walked tall, while Maggie kept her head and tail down when Frisky was around.

So another piece of drama this weekend will be observing Maggie's reaction to the new kitty in the house. I have emphasized to my wife that she needs to pay as much attention to Maggie as she always has. That could be hard, because she loves the new kitty as much as I do. So maybe we will hear an occasional hiss.

But it probably won't be more than that. Maggie is also declawed, so she has a limited arsenal of offensive weapons, and she is not exactly built for speed, either.

As you may know, we lost our cat a week ago Saturday. We were sad, of course, but we are doing a lot better. We have already decided that we will be getting another kitten/cat from our local shelter--once we get over the hurt of Frisky's death a little more.

Frisky, after all, was no ordinary cat. No indeed! She had many talents and skills, some learned, some picked up over the years. She definitely had a personality.

She liked to climb and explore. Did not like to be held. She would tolerate being held for a while, but then she would "get springs," as my wife called it. Many times I would see a little scratch on her breast, the legacy of Frisky's kicking feet when she felt she had been held too long and my wife didn't get the hint in time. Her last little scratch is fading away and getting hard to see.

I never got a picture of that. I never got a picture of her helping my wife read in bed. She would get in bed with a good book and Frisky under her arm. While she did not being held, she didn't seem to mind that, and when I came in to kiss her (my wife, that is) good-night, I would keep my distance if Frisky was there--lest she decide to run off.

The first nine or so years of Frisky's life with us were not documented, not be me, at least. But once I got my first digital camera in 2001, Frisky was a favorite subject. I used photography to document Frisky's many talents.

These photos are in approximately chronological order.

She was very good at holding down the bed. Especially stacks of freshly folded towels ..

While I never got a picture of her "helping my wife read," I did get this picture of her on the pillow ...

On Christmas Eve 2001, she posed very nicely on the post at the bottom of the staircase. That's Maggie closer to the camera ...

Frisky was very good about testing the quality of the different pieces of clothing we buy. All we had to do was place it somewhere flat, and she would be quick to try it out ...

How to get Frisky to come out of hiding? Very, very easy, and it didn't involve opening tuna cans. All my wife had to do was hold up her slicker brush--which we called "the magic wand"--and Frisky would jump up. She loved her magic wand ...

Whenever we had vanilla ice cream, she was very good about helping finish off the melted cream at the bottom of the bowl. Waste not, want not ...

I never got a picture of one of Frisky's strangest habits. Shoestrings. Honest!

When there was an discarded shoestring in the house, she would take it and carry it around in her mouth--while meowing with a closed mouth. I don't know how many times we were in bed and suddenly hear a meow, meow off in the distance. It would be Frisky, climbing the steps with a shoestring in her mouth.

After she died, my wife told me the time she was replacing zippers in my jacket and several others. Frisky claimed the old zipper from my jacket--picking it out among the others--and started carrying it.

Also, when I got home from work in the late afternoon and changed shirts or took off a sweater and left it on the bed, Frisky soon would be curled up on it. So when we went out of town for a day or two or three, we would leave an unwashed shirt or two on the bed. When we came back, we could see Frisky had been lying on it. It had our scent, you see.

Here, Frisky (and Maggie, too, for that matter) helps my wife show off some of her quilts. She was always ready to get her ears scratched ...

She also helped us at Christmas time, inspecting my wife's new wreath ...

And when a mouse found its way into the house ... you might as well turn off the TV, because you'll never see anything more entertaining than that. It was the four C's: chase, command, conquer and consume. In this picture, we are at the conquer stage ...

She would come around to visit sometimes while we were watching TV, and one night she found her own special vantage point. Her skybox, you might say. We kept it up after that ... until last week, when I took it down. It was too hard to look at it...

Would you believe that Frisky was able to look in two directions simultaneously? I know it sounds impossible, but you can't argue with pictures ...

Here, Frisky helps my wife get a few extra winks in the morning ...

By now, I had a new camera, and the Frisky pictures got a little better. It helped me get a picture of her next to my wife, getting her tummy rubbed. She loved that, too ...

It was spring, and the smell of fresh, new, young grass was in the air. Frisky would put her paws on the front door screen and look outside, so we moved a kitchen chair for her convenience ...

That is the season for "grass parties"--when my wife would take several blades of fresh new grass inside. The cats were all excited, meowing happily. Here, Frisky is hooking down my wife's hand with her paw so the grass will be closer...

Frisky was never interested in going outside, though. We never had to worry about that. Last April, though, a rare moment: My wife carried Frisky out onto the back porch--just for a moment or two ...

Those are all treasured memories, and we have many more. We will get another cat. That much is definite. But we are realistic. Frisky was unique, and they broke the mold with her.

Our new cat will be unique in his/her own ways. That is as it should be. And we will love him/her. That is how it should be, also. With our history, the cat who decides to adopt us will be part of our family into the 2020s.