Category Archives: pets

Fur-Babies and the Other Kind

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Lots of people refer to their pets as “fur-babies.” Other people think it’s disrespectful to human babies and their parents. I’m here to weigh in on the debate about which kind of baby is better.

I’ve had cats for many years. I almost never refer to them as fur-babies.

I do treat them like babies, however. I babble baby talk at them. I cradle them in my arms like babies (if they let me). I give them cutesie nicknames (like ToTo BooBoo). I’ve never had to bottle-feed a kitten, but you’d better believe I would. And I’ve even zerberted a cat whose belly had been shaved. It made a “foof” noise. (Autocorrect wanted to change “zerberted” to “perverted.” It has a point. But I digress.)

When I married, all I could offer my in-laws were grand-kittens and grand-puppies. It wasn’t that we couldn’t have human babies. We just never did. (Fortunately, Dan’s brother took care of that duty, and his kids have supplied assorted great-grands, four of whom are even close enough to visit Mom Reily. She has cats, too. I don’t know if she calls them fur-babies. But I digress again.)

One thing that people who do call their cats (and maybe their dogs) fur-babies do is dress them up in precious little outfits. I can’t approve of it. I’m with cat guru Jackson Galaxy on that issue. Maybe at Halloween, just for the day, but forget about little Easter outfits. Cats are not known for appreciating bonnets. I think they’re almost guaranteed to shred them, and there goes your investment. Dogs may be more accommodating, but they just look goofy (or Goofy).

Many comparisons can be made between baby types. Both kinds have their own little personalities, play adorably, and are great to cuddle. Both human babies and fur-babies are endlessly distracting and good for some laughs.

It takes a couple of years to potty-train a human baby and get them to eat people-food. Kittens come practically litter-trained and are able to eat kitten-food as soon as they’re old enough to leave their mama. (They can also eat people-food, though it’s not advisable. But I’ve had cats that have eaten and enjoyed pumpkin, corn, bread (one would tear open a loaf of bread and eat a couple of slices, making croutons of the rest), doughnuts, and chocolate bars (yes, yes, I know, those are bad for pets, but Anjou suffered no ill effects.) But I digress some more.)

Fur-babies are superior to human babies because you don’t have to save for their college or worry about them boosting cars or getting into any drugs other than catnip. Throughout their lives, it’s possible to pick them up and hold them (unless we’re talking St. Bernards).

Human babies are superior to fur-babies because, after a certain amount of time, they can talk and tell you what’s causing them distress. (Until then, they equal fur-babies in yowling and howling.) They do cool things like graduate from high school and college and get married. (Both fur-babies and human babies are eventually capable of producing offspring, of course. I don’t know of any trap-neuter-release strategies for human babies. That would just be wrong. But I digress yet again.)

I must admit to preferring fur-babies. But human babies are superior to fur-babies in one major regard—you can expect them to live a good long time (barring unfortunate circumstances, of course). You’re lucky if your fur-babies live 20 years—most don’t make it that long.

If you have fur-babies, you must prepare yourself for losing a being that you love dearly. I won’t say that you love them as much as you’d love a human baby, but their loss does leave a hole in your heart that even another fur-baby can’t totally fill. You may swear that you’ll never get another one, but somehow you always do, even knowing that that fur-baby’s life is limited too. They’re addictive that way.

We put ourselves through it again and again for the love of fur-babies. Their lives may be limited, but love and sorrow balance out in some equation that’s emotional, not mathematical. Love never is.

The Joy of Napping

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Dibujo de una nia en la cama preparada para dormir, es de noche, se est tapando con una manta mientras sonrie

Robert Fulghum tells us that he learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten. I can’t go all the way with him on #1—Share everything—especially when it comes to Facebook, but I’m a solid believer in #12—Take a nap every afternoon. (Well, and #9—Flush.)

I love naps—the sensual pleasure of snuggling into my bed in a cozy little nest of pillows, sheets, and blankets; the quiet purr of the fan and the cat who perches on my hip; the knowledge that, for a time, I can let go of the cares of the day; the promise of renewed spirit and energy; the satisfaction of turning off my phone.

Two of the best ways that I know of improving my mood are having a meal and taking a nap. The one often follows closely on the other, a phenomenon I am told is called “postprandial torpor.” (I’ve often wished I could call in sick to work and claim that affliction. Or “rhinotillexomania.” They sound so serious. But if anyone at your workplace knows Latin, you’re busted. (Which they actually did at one place I worked.) But I digress.)

Naps, however, are part of the reason that I can no longer work regular hours in a regular office. I find that bosses get upset if you take the phrase “break room” too literally. In the past, I’ve contemplated keeping a sleeping bag under my desk, but that would never work. Let’s face it—I snore. Prodigiously. Someone would be sure to notice, and object. (When I was traveling with my mother, she used to beg me to let her get to sleep before I nodded off. But I digress again.)

Fortunately, I work at home, so breaks and naps are entirely my own choice, except in case of deadlines. The transition from desk chair to bed is easy. I’m usually already wearing my jammies, and the commute is just up the stairs. (I can’t nap on the couch. It’s too uncomfortable. I used to be able to nap face-down on an airline tray table. This was useful because the flight attendant, seeing me, would think I was dead and leave me alone for the rest of the flight for fear of alarming the other passengers. But I digress yet again.)

Unfortunately, I’m not able to take “cat naps”—a misnomer if I ever heard one. My cats sleep on average 18 hours a day, and invariably right where a human wants to walk or sit. One of my cats even snores—daintily, but audibly. And no, it’s not a purr. (We’ve been thinking of getting a tiny CPAP machine for her, but we think she’d object to the mask. And cats have unpleasant ways of making their objections known. If you have a cat, you know what I mean. But I digress some more.)

Short, 20-minute naps do me no good. They don’t refresh me at all. In fact, they leave me more muddle-headed than ever. But the real reason I can’t take short naps is that it often takes me 20 minutes or more, usually of reading, to fall asleep. Since that’s the case, it’s hardly worth sleeping less than an hour or two.

But some of the time, even two hours of napping doesn’t do the job. Hence I have invented the Mega-Nap, of at least four hours. Mega-Napping doesn’t usually interfere with my nighttime sleep, either. On one memorable occasion, I Mega-Napped for a good six hours, and woke at 9:30 p.m., just in time to go back to bed and sleep for another 10 hours, giving the cats a run for their snoozes. I also suffer from Nap Attacks, when I hit the wall—hard— and simply must nap, collapse into a heap, or bite someone’s head off. Napping is usually the wisest choice.

With apologies to Robert Fulghum, I do see one glaring difference between kindergarten naps and grown-up naps. Children resist them and resent them and get cranky when they have to take one. Adults seek them and savor them and get cranky if they can’t have one.

Chatty Catty

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Yes, I’m one of those crazy ladies who talks to my cats. The thing is, some of them talk back. They’re not often communications that I can understand, but I don’t care. It’s like having the TV on in the background while I write. It’s part of the ambient sound of the house.

(Once one of my cats did communicate something recognizable to me via brain waves. Dushenka was sitting on the arm of the sofa looking at me, and I swear I could hear her thought: “I need a drink of water.” When I checked it out, her water dish, which she couldn’t see from the sofa, was indeed empty. It was a psychic communication, adorable and yet a little creepy. But I digress.)

We had a cat named Shaker who taught a parakeet to speak cat. Shaker went around all day saying r-row (rhymes with now). We’d have little conversations with her. (“Shaker, what’s a kitty say?” “R-row.” “Yes, that’s right.”) Well, Ralphie the parakeet (named after Ralph Waldo Emerson), after hearing all this r-rowing many times a day, began saying it too. (We tried to teach him to say “Pretty bird,” but he only ever picked up the “bird” part. He started saying “Shaker-bird.” He was one confused little guy. But I digress again.)

Some of our cats stuck to the stereotypical “meow,” but they put their own spin on it. Julia, for example, had a little meow that was decidedly bitchy. Her personality wasn’t a bit bitchy, but her meow sure was. Her littermate Laurel had a silent meow, perhaps in self-defense. She would simply open her mouth with her lips forming the word “meow,” but no sound came out. (Do cats have lips, anyway? I’m not sure. Siri claims they do.) Louise would make a darling little sigh when I held her in my arms. I melted every time she did that.

I loved silent Laurel, of course, but I longed for another talkative cat. I went to the shelter and told the helper, “I want a talker.” All the aides looked at each other and then simultaneously pointed at one particular cage. (The kitty in the cage was named Precious Bob. That would never do. We renamed him Jasper. But I digress some more.) Jasper would wait until we were in bed at night, then come bounding up on the bed and meow both incessantly and insistently. We didn’t know what he was saying—just that it seemed terribly important to him. We would ask him what it was all about. “What’s that you say, Jasper? Timmy fell down the well? And Grandpa fell in after him? And all the rescuers sent to get them out fell in too? And then a plane crashed into the well? And caught fire?”

Our present cat, Toby, doesn’t bug us for food (mostly, that is), but when we say the magic words, “Toby, do you want to EAT?” he says mm-weep. He makes other cute noises like mm-wow and mm-woo, but mm-weep is saved for breakfast and dinner. He occasionally snores. (We briefly considered whether he needed a little kitty CPAP, but then we considered trying to put one on him and rapidly changed our minds. But I digress some more.)

But that’s just how our cats communicate with us. There’s also the ways we communicate with them. These vary from babytalk that makes us sound like babbling idiots: “Toto-boo-boo, does you want your noms? Num, num, num—om-nom” to pleading: “Toby, get off my lap. I need to pee” or “Move! You’re standing on my boob. You weigh like a brick!” It doesn’t matter. He ignores both babble and pleading. Just like a cat.

Cat Songs

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My husband and I have some silly traditions, some of which I’ve mentioned in the blog. There was naked cooking with Julia Child impressions, for instance. And we make up little nonsense songs. Well, Dan makes up most of them, mostly about me. (My nickname, which no one else may use, is Bunny, so they often have titles like “When Bunny Comes Driving Home Again.” They’re silly, as mentioned, but infinitely better than the NSFW song an ex-boyfriend once wrote describing my physical charms. But I digress.)

But this post is about cat songs. Not songs the cats sing, of course — their repertoire is pretty limited. Not songs about cats either (“Year of the Cat,” “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Stray Cat Strut,” “Honky Cat,” “Nashville Cats”). No, these are songs that we’ve made up about cats we’ve owned over the years.

Shaker’s song was really more of a poem or a chant than a song. It went:

Shaker in the park

Shaker in the pool

Shaker for dessert

Shaker after school.

Shake, shake, Shaker puddin’

Puddin’, puddin’, Shaker puddin’.

(Shaker was a very dignified tuxedo cat. She didn’t approve.)

The song will make no sense unless you remember a product from the 60s and its jingle (indeed, it doesn’t really make any sense at all, whether you remember it or not). The product was called Shake-a-Pudding. It was a brown plastic cup with a lighter brown plastic lid. If you put milk in the cup and added powder, then shook vigorously, hoping the top didn’t come off, what you got was something that at least resembled pudding. An interactive dessert. At the time, we thought it was neat-o.

Toby also has a song based somewhat on a commercial. It goes like this:

His name was Toby.

He used a Flowbee.

Obviously, this requires some explanation. First of all, it’s sung to the tune of Bary Manilow’s “Copacabana.” So far, so good. The Flowbee mentioned in the second line was one of those products you used to see on after-midnight infomercials from companies like Popeil or Ronco. Exercise equipment. Beauty products. That sort of thing.

Technically, I suppose you could call the Flowbee a beauty product. It was an attachment that you put on the end of your vacuum cleaner hose. It would make your hair stand on end so you could lop an inch or two off the end. I think it was mostly used on children who were too young to know any better and was responsible for the infamous bowl cut. It’s described by the company (yes, you can still buy them) as a “Vacuum Haircut System.” Need I tell you that we’ve never used one on ourselves, much less on Toby?

Louise had a song of a sort, or at least one line of one:

Every little breeze seems to whisper: LOUISE!

Naturally, the name was shouted.

Julia, the most beautiful cat in the world (she told me so) had a whole verse. Obviously, it was ttto “Julia” by John Lennon, which was written about his mother. Our Julia’s version went:

Julia, pinky nose

Pretty fur, naughty lips.

So I sing my song of love for Julia.

(No, I don’t know how the “naughty lips” part got in there. Cats barely have lips at all, and I don’t know how they could be naughty. That’s just the way the song went. So sue me. But I digress again.)

Dushenka had a tune that should be familiar to TV cartoon aficionados:

Shenka-Shenka-Doo

Where are you?

On your little kitty adventure.

Laurel’s song was melancholy.

Pooska-wooska-pooska

Pooska-wooska-pie

Pooska-wooska-pooska

It’s Laurel’s lullaby.

I even sang it at her funeral.

Of course, all the songs are doggerel (catterel?) and make us seem like idiots. But the cats don’t care. They’re used to us talking like idiots. (Does Toby want his noms? Pet, pet, pet, the incredible pettable pet. Mama loves kitty. Does kitty love mama? Ribbit.)

Sir Boinks-a-Lot

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All our cats have nicknames. Some more than one.

Louise was The Queen of Everything.

Garcia was Mr. Underfoot.

Dushenka is Ms. Crazy Eyes.

(Everyone was Baby-Cat except Louise. Other memorable cats have been Matches (Badness, Checkers), Chelsea (Chips), Shaker (What-a-Pie), Maggie (Gelfling, Gertzie-Girl), Laurel (Keet), Joliet (The Silly Pet), and Bijou (Angel Kitty). But I digress.)

Then there was Django. (He was named after guitarist Django Reinhardt. I figured if Dan could have a cat named after a guitarist, so could I. But I digress again.) A robust gray-and-white male, he was the one we called Sir Boinks-a-Lot.

Would you like to guess how he got his name? Hint: It wasn’t because he boinked a lot.

No, he just tried to boink a lot.

Gender didn’t matter. He would go after either boy-cats or girl-cats – neither with any degree of success. He was neutered. His intended didn’t even have to be another cat. Or even animate. We once caught him trying to mount a feather duster.

But the escapade that earned him his nickname was when he tried to have carnal knowledge of my husband’s elbow. Never mind that there was no orifice. Sir Boinks-a-Lot was determined to make one. He kept drilling and drilling, but he never struck pussy (so to speak).

Dan’s theory was that when he worked on his computer, his forearm resembled the shape of an aroused female cat. His hand and wrist were the head, his arm the body, and his raised elbow the…er…target zone. Or it could be that Django was near-sighted with no sense of smell.

My theory was just that he was a horny bastard. (Django, I mean. We will not discuss how pets come to resemble their owners. But I digress yet again.)

He was also camera shy, which is why there’s a stand-in for him here, but then again, who wants their sexual peculiarities displayed all over the Internet? No, wait. Don’t answer that.

Alas, Sir Boinks-a-Lot is no longer with us, though he proved as determined about fighting cancer as he was about finding someone or something that welcomed his advances. We still miss him terribly.

I think even Dan’s elbow misses him a little. Although it’s tough to tell with an elbow.

The Bird Who Spoke Cat

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My husband and I were strolling through the mall after having a lovely fish dinner with a glass of wine. Well, a couple of glasses, really. We ended up at a Woolworth’s, which back then you could find in a mall. (Woolworth’s is what was known as a five-and-ten-cent store. Kind of like a Dollar Store that mated with a Target store, only cheaper, though nothing there actually cost five or ten cents. Except maybe candy. But I digress.) Once we were there, we browsed our way to the pet department, which five-and-dimes had back then. Mostly fish, turtles, and birds.

We stopped in front of the parakeet cage and gazed admiringly at the tiny flock. “Let’s get one,” Dan said.

“You’re forgetting that we have four cats,” I replied. “A parakeet would hardly be a snack for them.”

“We’ll hang its cage from a hook in the ceiling.” There was at that time no hook. Dan loves even the tiniest home improvement projects.

“I want the blue one,” I said. “I’ve always wanted a blue parakeet. We could name him ‘Blue Boy.'”

“He could be a she. How would we know?”

“If he talks, he’s a boy,” I said confidently. “Mostly the males talk.” (I wasn’t totally sure about this, but I was betting on the fact that Dan didn’t know either.)

“I’d rather get the yellow one.”

“Blue.”

“Yellow.”

“Blue. How are we going to decide?”

Then we made one of our famous deals.

“Let me pick the bird, and you can name him,” said Dan.

“Anything I want?” I asked.

“Anything? Even J. Alfred Prufrock?”

“Yes. Even that.” (Well, really, we were pretty sloshed. I don’t recommend buying a pet while drunk, but this turned out okay. But I digress again.)

So J. Alfred came home with us and lived safely in his cage near the ceiling. One of the cats, Maggie, made an ambitious climb up the drapes after him, but couldn’t figure out how to get from drape to cage and had to be rescued.

We tried to teach the bird to talk. “Hi. I’m Alfie,” we’d repeat to him. “Alfie-bird.”

We were also talking to the cats. Not that we expected them to repeat what we said, but we had interesting conversations nonetheless.

“Shaker, what’s a kitty do?” (Shaker was another of the four cats.)

“R-roww.”

“Yes, that’s right.” (We weren’t always drunk. Sometimes we were just silly. Still are.)

Eventually, Alfie started talking. But bird of very little brain that he was, he got a little mixed up. First, he changed his name.

“Ralphie-bird,” he said. “Hi. I’m Ralphie.”

What could we do at that point? We changed his name to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh, no.

Pretty soon he was saying, “Shaker-bird” and “R-roww.” 

Great. We had a parakeet with an identity crisis. And a cat that was hearing voices from above. From her natural prey, no less. (I was going to write that Ralphie also said, “Here, kitty, kitty,” but he didn’t. Also, it’s a very old, very bad joke. But I digress some more.)

I could just imagine the little conversations Ralphie and Shaker could have.

Ralphie: “R-roww.”

Shaker: “R-roww.”

Ralphie: “R-roww.”

Shaker: “R-roww.”

Pointless, boring conversations, but what can you expect from animals that will never master sign language like gorillas do? Sometimes Dan and I don’t do much better when it comes to conversation. After all, we were the ones who had pointless dialogues with the cat for the parakeet to overhear.

Come to think of it, I don’t really know if their conversations were pointless. They may have been plotting against us. But the cat was cool and never said a mumblin’ word. (H/t Hoyt Axton.)

Chill Out, Kitty!

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My husband’s big orange-striped cat, Matches, was so chill that Dan once put the creature into an empty birdcage and hung it from the ceiling. Amazingly, the cat voiced no objections. He just looked around calmly from his unique new vantage point.

Not many cats are that agreeable about being put in a cage – especially when it signals a trip to the vet. Even the cardboard boxes that pass as pet carriers are useless. Just try to put a cat in one and you have a (Your State’s Name Here) Chainsaw Massacre. And cardboard carriers aren’t designed to stand up to a massacre.

We had a black-and-white cat named Shaker, who started with one fang hooked into an air hole in the cardboard carrier and demolished the entire thing until it was a pile of Shredded Wheat. We had to drive the rest of the way to the vet with one revved-up, pissed-off cat. For later visits, we just let her sit on my lap while we drove and while sitting in the waiting room. While we waited, Shaker hopped off my lap and made a break for it. She waddled (she was chubby, okay?) as fast as her little white feet would carry her toward the door. She just hadn’t counted on it being glass. She bonked her head against it and while she was stunned, I scooped her up.

Another cat, Julia, was okay with going to the vet. It was what they did to her there that she objected to. The vet tried to demonstrate to us the proper way to give a cat a pill or liquid medicine. Julia went into her act. She demonstrated her own little invention – projectile drooling. Soon the exam room was dappled with gooey patches of sticky saliva. And so were we, when we tried it at home.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that her cat, known as Mrs. Bompstample (I may have spelled that wrong), had been voted the second-worst cat at their vet’s office. And that was despite Mrs. B. being sedated before she came. I don’t even want to contemplate what the worst cat was like. There was a note on its cage that said, “Do not open!” which probably made it difficult to treat the cat. (Personally, I think most vets coat their hands with a Valium salve that is absorbed through the animals’ fur, which is why vets don’t shake hands with pet owners. Although maybe they should in some cases. But I digress.)

We’ve never had a cat that needed Valium to go to the vet, though we have had cats be naughty. One jumped off the examining table and holed up between it and the wall. We had to get down on our hands and knees to coax her out (something we couldn’t do now). Well, and Drooly Julie can’t strictly be said to have been on her best behavior. Django once scratched my face and various other cats have bitten me. Once it was so bad that I had to ask the vet to treat me too.

Matches, of course, was so chill at the vet that he should have worn shades. He loved riding in the car and never had to be put in a box. Maybe that was why he was so cool.

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I Tried Not to Love Her

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Dushenka came to us as a stray. She hung around the neighborhood for about a week, with my husband trying to coax her closer. Then she disappeared for a week. One day, though, she came trotting through our garden and up to our door. She had chosen us as her family.

It turned out that her former family lived just a couple of streets away from us, which we found out because the vet discovered that she had a microchip. (We also found out that her original name was Carmen, which isn’t a bad name for a cat, but we had already started calling her Dushenka because we couldn’t keep calling her Li’l Bit. “Dushenka” is Russian and means “little soul.” But I digress.)

I tried not to love her. I really did. We had recently lost our darling cat Julia, another little calico, and Dushenka reminded me so much of her. I just felt I wasn’t ready to give my heart to another one yet. But there Dushenka was with her little pinky nose, her smudgy chin, her crazy eyes, her super-long white whiskers, her floofy white belly, and her gorgeous, silky calico fur.

I began to suspect that I was falling in love when a neighbor (not Dushenka’s former owners – they never responded to us) lost their cat, also a calico, and came to inquire about the one we’d found. I found myself quizzing them closely about what their cat looked like. He said she was female. Check. I asked if she had a dark smudge under her chin. What were her eyes like? Then I brought Dushenka out for him to look at, and he said that she wasn’t his. I began to suspect she was ours (or we were hers) and that I was in love with her.

It turned out she is different enough from Julia that I was able to think of them as individuals. Dushenka has shorter fur than Julia did. Julia had a distinctive, bitchy meow. (She wasn’t actually bitchy. She just sounded that way.) Dushenka almost never meows, but she has a strong purr. And she snores. Daintily, but she snores.

She has acquired nicknames. (Baby Cat. Pretty Grrl. (Occasionally Naughty Grrl when she goes walkabout.) The Incredible Pettable Pet. Ms. Muss (rhymes with puss). Shenka-doo. (I may or may not have once called her Shenka-Doodle-Doo.) She even has her own song (“Shenka-Shenka-Doo, where are you? On your little kitty adventure!” ttto the Scooby-Doo theme song.) But I digress. Again. At length.)

I’m not sure exactly how old Dushenka is because she came to us fully grown, though still youthful. Now she seems more like a little old lady, or at least on her way past middle age. Lately, she’s been in poor health. She just can’t seem to pee. She eats and drinks just fine, but nothing comes out the other end. Several vet visits later, it seems – no big surprise here – to be a problem with her kidneys. I hesitate to say how much we’ve spent, what with the weekend emergency vet visit, the blood tests, and the x-rays.

We’re giving her subcutaneous (subQ) fluids, a process we learned how to do over the years with other cats. It involves immobilizing the cat – no easy matter – and sticking a needle under the skin between her shoulder blades. (That’s always my job. Dan can’t bear to do it). We have a bag of fluids and a drip set and let about 150 ml run in. The fluid occupies the space between skin and flesh and makes her look lumpy and weird until it gradually absorbs. Repeat the next day. The idea is to flush out her kidneys. The process exhausts us and Dushenka, too. Afterward, Dushenka has a little snack for her nerves and then we all go have a lie-down. These are the things we do for the little soul we love.

Every so often we look at Dushenka and say, “Who could not love this cat?” Other than the people who had her originally, I don’t know. I couldn’t not love her. I tried.

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Monthly, Forever

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It’s not that I’m a stranger to subscriptions. I started getting magazine subscriptions when I was a teen and began receiving them for Christmas presents when our family finances were impacted by my father’s illness. I chose astronomy and science fiction magazines. My parents didn’t subscribe to magazines much, except for Reader’s Digest and their condensed books.

I also dabbled in record subscriptions, back in the day when they sent actual vinyl records that had every chance of arriving with scratches and warps. (I don’t know if music subscriptions went to tapes, 8-tracks, CDs, or downloads after that. I do have a couple of subscriptions on Patreon and at least one of them supplies me with music every month, but otherwise, I get all my music via the internet. Not that I download much. I already have nearly 670 albums stored on my music app (formerly called iTunes). But I digress.)

Later on, once I was married, I found a pet store in town that offered a “Fish of the Month” club. (For some unknown reason, we referred to it as “Fish ala Month,” although they weren’t, of course, edible. Another digression.) Dan had a fish tank at the time and enjoyed going to the store every month to see what new species of fish was on offer that month. I kept up the subscription until the pet store went out of business. This was back in the days when there were still locally owned pet shops.

Since that time, the idea of subscriptions has blossomed. You can now get blossoms that arrive every month and can be given as gifts. Not just flowers, either. I once gave my therapist a small succulent as a gift and have ever after been pursued to upgrade to a succulent subscription.

Nor are plants the only subscriptions on offer. You can get quarterly subscriptions to goods from Ireland, including food, snacks, and jewelry. You can subscribe to puzzles, either jigsaws or more elaborate ones that require solving a mystery. Other “surprise” subscriptions where you don’t know what you’re getting are for children’s toys (or dog toys), foods from different regions of the country, rare coffees, discount wines, Asian snacks, cocktail mixers (and liquor, if you choose that option), cheese of the month or charcuterie kits (including vegan and gluten-free), cookie dough, pasta, spices or hot sauces, candy, tea, beauty items or perfumes, detox products, vacation souvenirs, earrings or necklaces, socks-of-the-month, replicas of historical documents, dried flower arrangements, candles, and pet foods and supplies.

Some of the subscriptions available leave me befuddled. One is underwear. I buy new bras and panties when my old ones are no longer serviceable. But I don’t subscribe. I go to Jockey, Fruit of the Loom, or another source and order what I need. I can’t imagine avidly anticipating the arrival of three new panties or bra-and-panties sets every month. (Besides, I never wear matching bras and panties. Every victim of a serial killer you see on TV shows is wearing matching lacy undergarments. I figure I’m a lot safer if I were a purple-polka-dot bra and simple green panties. But I digress some more.)

Other subscriptions I don’t understand are oysters-of-the-month (ick!) and monthly sex toys and books (although if they’re delivered in plain brown wrappers, they will spare you embarrassment and make a visit to the local sex shop unnecessary).

The really strange subscription I came across during my research for this post was playable musical postcards, something previously unimaginable to me. Evidently, the postcards from different lands are made of vinyl and can be played on a turntable. (There is an option to receive only a postcard and an online download of a song if you don’t possess a turntable.) The tunes are from indie artists, so you don’t need to worry about getting Mariah Carey in your December mail.

Will I get another subscription to something-or-other? I think not. I already have subscriptions to TV streaming channels. I have Patreon subscriptions to support my friends’ art. I have subscriptions to Archaeology and Smithsonian magazines (offline versions) for my husband. I subscribe to the New York Times crossword puzzles. I probably have a few other subscriptions that I’ve forgotten about and ought to cancel.

But I am tempted by the solve-a-mystery and cheese-of-the-month subscription, though only if I can specify cheeses that don’t advertise the fact that they’re made of mold. I figure that anything the postal workers can smell is a bad idea, even if it’s only once a month.

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No Bitey!

cats, etc., funny things, humor, pets, , , , ,

Our cat Dushenka is really a sweetie. In fact, she’s a love-muffin. She’s a part-time lap cat and is given to nose touches, head bonks, and loud purring. She slurps my husband’s forehead. Sometimes at night, she walks back and forth across our (formerly) slumbering bodies, making sure that each of us gets some of her attention. We call her the Incredibly Pettable Pet.

But, once in a while, she goes a little wild. If we rub her belly a bit too long or scritch and fuzzle her head a bit too much, she changes. When she gets overexcited or overwhelmed by all the play, her teeth come into play, too. She bites the hand that pets her.

Most of the time this is just a love-bite, with no attempt to harm. She just places her teeth on your hand or wrist. When that happens, I tell her, “No bitey” and withdraw my hand. She knows that when she calms down I’ll go right back to adoring her and demonstrating it with more caresses.

This week, however, she didn’t follow her usual pattern. This time she chomped down on my forearm. And drew blood. There was nothing different in the way I was petting her. I wasn’t pulling her tail or touching any of the places she doesn’t like to be touched. (Not that there are many.) I immediately stopped petting her and went to get a tissue to mop up the blood. The mark was gone by the next day. It didn’t get infected the way it once did when Dan’s cat Matches bit me on the web between my thumb and forefinger. And since then she’s been perfectly agreeable.

Why did this happen? Well, the BCSPCA (2022) says, “Many cats exhibit what behaviourists call ‘petting-induced aggression,’ an instinctive reaction to something they find unpleasant, even painful. Compared to dogs, cats are generally less tolerant of petting. When, where and how long cats can be touched before they become overstimulated vary from cat to cat.” Another source compares it to being sensitive to being tickled. When it’s just too much to handle, the tickle-ee tries to get away. If they can’t, they lash out (Shubin, 2022).

(Yes, I’ve been doing some work that requires me to use APA 7th citations, and I can’t quite break myself of the habit. And yes, I have also been tickled past the point of play into pain and know what it is like. Nonetheless, I didn’t bite anyone, though I probably should have. But I digress. Twice.)

Still, while Dushenka’s occasional bites are almost certainly petting aggression, that isn’t true of every cat that’s ever sunk their teeth into my tender (but apparently yummy) flesh.

Anjou, for example, got to me while I was sleeping. She came to me in bed and gave me the ol’ face-nuzzle. I grunted and tried to ignore her. I failed in this, because she immediately nuzzled me again. I grunted louder. Then she nipped me on the tip of the nose, which startled me nearly awake. Reflexively, I caught her up with one hand and heaved her off the bed. My husband said she flew through the air in a graceful arc and never stopped purring the whole time. It’s a pretty picture and I hope it’s true. He’s been known to exaggerate. But she certainly didn’t seem to resent it and showed no sign of harm or even stand-offish-ness the next day.

Another bitey cat was Louise. We got her when she was a tiny little baby kitten. I bonded with her right away, to the point I could even hold her belly up like a baby in my arms.

When we went to bed, however, it was a different matter. Every night, she wriggled under the covers and attacked our toes. Her teeth may have been tiny, but my God, they were pointy! They were like little needles piercing our lower digits. (Afterward, we referred to her as “naughty baby Fek’lhr,” a joke that almost no one gets. But I digress again.) Fortunately, she grew out of it.

Right now, Dushenka is upstairs cuddling with Dan. If I hear a yelp, I’ll know why. It’s not as likely to happen to him, though – Dan has thicker skin than I do. I know it’s not because he doesn’t pet her.

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