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My daughter and her cat Stella have been gone for a few months now. Kitty drama has settled down somewhat: Sydney hates Blackie, but she has managed not to charge him more than a couple of times. It helps that we try to maintain at least two feet of separation at all times. A door works well, too. Continue reading “Feline update”

And kitty drama.

My daughter moved back in with her needy, spoiled, adolescent cat. Of course Sydney has been, um, tweaked. With good reason, since Stella appropriated Sydney’s space.

Meanwhile, another cat adopted us. We named him Blackie. When he first showed up, sleeping under the rose bushes and sneaking into the garage for food, he didn’t have much personality and that seemed like a good name.

Now that he’s been fed and no longer runs when we look his way, he does have a personality. Soft-serve would have been a good name. Somehow being petted relaxes him, so that he has to run over to the lawn and make a deposit on the grass.

Or we could have called him Faucet. The cat drools when he’s petted. It’s disgusting. Long drips all over our laps. He shook his head once when my daughter was petting him, and his spittle ended up on her face. Ick, ick, ick.

My little friend likes to weird me out at times. More than once she’s stared at a blank wall or at an empty spot on the floor, or attacked the remains of a houseplant that was giving her the evil eye.

Sydney did it again this morning. She stared out through the screen door into the backyard. The first time I humored her and went outside. Maybe one of those freeloading cats was out there. Nope, nothing.

She settled down when I came back in, but then a while later she had to jump down from my lap and go stare out the door again. What a neurotic animal.

Then my husband comes back in the house after feeding the birds and got out the binoculars. “There’s a raccoon in the second oak.”

It was sitting on a branch cleaning itself. If I were Sydney I’d be upset, too; the raccoon was at least three times her size. But, geez, she’s got the spastic act down so well it’s hard to know when to take her seriously.

Updated: Here’s a photo of the tracks we found under the tree.

My little friend Sydney gets a little too needy sometimes. Much like a toddler, she has to go to bed at a certain time, and if I don’t put her to bed (that is, sit where she can crawl in my lap and go to sleep), she has a tantrum.

I think I like the tantrums better than what she did the other night after I went into the living room to read. Cats aren’t allowed in there, but she sneaked in, knelt at my feet, and rubbed her head on my toes. Ugh. An obsequious cat is unnatural.

Sydney and Hobbes sort of have an agreement: Sydney catches ’em, Hobbes eats ’em. Looks here like Sydney’s rethinking that agreement, or at least is making sure Hobbes knows just which of them is the Mighty Hunter.

I much prefer for Hobbes to do the eating; that cat has a cast-iron stomach. Sydney doesn’t — bird, rat hindquarters, whatever gets upchucked, and she has no shame about depositing it on my office floor. You cannot believe how disgusting it is to clean up bloody cat barf that’s still warm.