5 posts tagged “cats”

Recently I realized how long it’s been since I cat-blogged (actually it’s been awhile since I’ve anything-blogged; the teeth are fine, thank you, although my gums are still plenty sore where they were) and of course that’s just wrong so here are some Sadie-pics from when she was being particularly boneless last week.

I never realized what makes this cat so funny-looking until my friend Brandy pointed it out, but damn does she have some big ears.

She knows by now what the camera-snap and the flash means and she just had to start mugging.  Little shutter-whore.

Actually a very pretty cat, I guess, if you downplay the ears.  And when she hasn't just come in from rolling in the patch of bare dirt. 

From the top of the couch she can see everything that goes on in the apartment and she defends this spot fiercely against Malcolm.

Unless of course she’s mugging again.

As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about with two partially-outside cats, this morning brought a report of coyote sightings in town.  As in 45th and Red River, which is c. 12 blocks away and pretty damn people-dense.  I ought to know from having worked it for the census last year.

Coyotes.  In Central Austin.  “We are living in the Wild West,” according to the person who posted the sighting to the Hyde Park list-serv.

I dunno if I’d go quite that far.  Urban Texans are still keeping pistols in the glove-box rather than wearing them on their hips, mostly.  But the thought of these critters roaming the Hancock golf course is pretty scary nonetheless.

When I was visiting with E. last spring I was surprised at him saying he had coyote problems, as they’re not predators I’d have ever thought to associate with New Hampshire of all places.  But apparently they’re quite a nuisance in every county there.  E. says he’s lost several house-cats to them over the years, usually only finding their partially-eaten remains months later.  Ouch.  

I’m glad I didn’t read about this before Sadie failed to show up for dinner the other night.  Little booger never misses a meal, so when she skulked in the following morning I was quite happy to blame her absence on full-moon craziness.  Now I think I’m going to keep her in awhile no matter how crazy she gets.

My neighborhood being ringed with open spaces – Hancock, the IM fields, the Triangle (OK, scratch that by now), even the park behind Central Market and the Heart Hospital – and sectioned by creek-beds, we get plenty of the usual urban wildlife.  Dead possums and the occasional dead coon in the road.  There’s at least one owl I’ve heard in the trees on my block over the last few years.  And someone even reported an eagle near the soccer fields.  But after this morning’s news, I suppose the Soprano’s garbage bear isn’t too far off either.

Admittedly, proximity to nature is one of the things I love best about Austin.  Not just the flora, but the fauna too.  But please don’t expect me to sacrifice one of my kitties for its sake.

Still planning to take the cats to the vet Saturday (nothing’s wrong, just a checkup as neither have had one since they got their respective reproductive workings taken out) but it looks like rain again so I’m reconsidering the vehicular method, which was supposed to be bicycle.  Last spring I bought a perfectly good bike trailer which to date I’ve used exactly once.  I’d post a picture if the trailer – a one-piece fiberglass jobbie, very yellow – hadn't collected a lot of gunk sitting unused under my stairs and will need a good hosing off before it’s presentable.

So instead I’ll use my landlord’s truck, or the Carshare option, and I’m well-covered.  Nonetheless I feel a little cheated.  I was so looking forward to hauling my kitties around the hood in the back of an open trailer (them no doubt mewing their bewildered little heads off) to demonstrate my commitment to this biking-as-transport thing.

The vet’s isn’t far, the University Animal Clinic at 37th and Guadalupe.  I put a recommendation request out on the neighborhood list-serv and 3 out of 4 responses recommended the place, so there we go.

Something that slipped by a few weeks back was my 5th anniversary of going car-free.  I was reviewing old OLJs last night and found the entry where my car died: July 1, 2002.  It wasn’t sudden and totally calamitous and in fact I had been gradually transitioning over to bike/public transit for 9 months prior; still, it comes through pretty clearly how freaked out I was to finally be thrust into walking (yes, sometimes literally) my talk every day.  

In an entry a week before that I’d written about seeing Julia Hill speak and how she called on each of us to develop our idea of the world we want to create.  It concluded:

I have my own vision – that of the streets of Austin filled at any given time with a constant stream of bicyclists going everywhere, people riding for business and for pleasure, to commute and exercise and enjoy life under this vast vault of wide-open sky that god has seen fit to give us instead of being shut inside an air-conditioned, sterile-environment isolating vehicle, packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes and thus missing out on some of the finer things life has to offer (Nature Boy?  Yeah, that’d be me).  People riding everywhere, and liking their lives better for it.  I’m too new to this vision to know how I’m going to work to bring it to fulfillment – but I’m patient with it.  I’ll figure something out.

My, how time does fly.

It’s been a very fruitful five-year span in the life-experience realm, learning how to opt out of car-culture America and still maintain some sort of viable lifestyle.  Some aspects have been challenging as hell but in the end I regret very little of the decision.

The cats might though if I were to try to pedal them around in a thunderstorm. It’s my commitment, not theirs.

No doubt about it in my mind any more: Freecycling works great.  If you want to jump full into the stream of material goods constantly moving hand-to-hand through this society without the hassle of yard sales and church bazaars and Craigslist or the messiness of cash exchanges, this is an excellent way to do it.

Austin certainly seems to think so.  As of today our Freecycle list-serv numbers over 13,500 members.  However you want to look at it, that’s a f*** of a lot of people pitching in for a city this size.  

This morning, items being offered include: stuffed animals; women’s clothing sizes s/m and size 6 shoes; DVD player; older model fax; satchel; 6x9 storage shed; futon frame; and cantaloupe plants.  All you have to do is show up and get the item you want when you say you’re going to.

In the past month I’ve used the Freecycle list to place a friend’s VCR, a stack of futons, and a microwave oven: all perfectly serviceable, just no longer needed.  A lot of unserviceable items get placed too, as the list seems to be a good resource for people dedicated to fixing things.

The list has grown to the point where “wanted” item posts almost equal the “offer”s in number.  When I first signed up the “wanted” posts bothered me: I think it was the residue of my “take what you’re given, shut up and be thankful” conditioning that was offended.  But now I’m guessing that people wouldn’t do it so much if it didn’t work.  Hell, that’s how I got rid of my old Powerbook a few years back.  Responding to a “wanted” post is the best way to make sure a person truly appreciates your goods.  The tendency to grab something just because it’s there is too strong in us Pavlovian-trained consumers – even Freecyclers - to be easily discounted.

And a couple of days ago I tried it myself, asking on the list for a cat-carrier. Which is how I came last night into the possession of a small but perfectly-good box in which to haul Sadie to the vet this weekend.  I was surprised how quickly I got a response.  “I’ve got two cats myself,” the person wrote.  “I’m glad to give the carrier to a good home.”

It’s also a good way to make friends.  That’s how I met my neighbor four doors down.  We need some kind of community we’re not getting otherwise, it appears.

Malcolm, my tiger-stripe, got up on the roof this morning.  I discovered this when I sat down for my daily “if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention” surfing – Pandagon, Gilliard, Huffpo and the other usual suspects – and there he was looking in at me through the window above the computer.  I’ve never seen even a squirrel up there before.

He was still there when I was getting ready to leave for the doctor’s, walking in circles on the metal slope and mewing.  I have no idea how he got on the roof – something Sadie, my quasi-calico, has yet to accomplish in the year and a half we’ve lived here – but I knew he’d need help getting down.  Malcolm has enough trouble negotiating the descent from the six-foot fence around my little yard without making a major production out of it.

On my front porch the edge of the roof isn’t too far above my head so I stood there, coaxing him close.  He balked at first but after a few minutes of kitty-talk – “c’mere, that’s right, c’mon, yes c’mon little weenie-brain, oh that’s right, yes, come here poo-poo” – he slid up to the edge and stuck his head far out enough for me to pet it.

Which is when I hooked my finger under his herbal flea collar and hauled the little bugger close enough to grab his ass and get it down to the porch.  He didn’t like it much and I got one or two small scratches in the process, but half a minute later he was mewing again, rubbing against my ankles and trying to shepherd me inside where I would doubtless give him a second breakfast.

Someone passed by on the street walking her dog and called up, “From here it looked like you were pulling a duck down on top of you.  Or maybe a goose, the way his tail and body were thrashing.”  I felt totally sheepish for the next half-hour, having forgotten what theater us balcony-dwellers make for the rest of the world.

Then I got to the doctor and she gave me a prostate exam and I forgot all about the damn cat and the damn roof.