Babe

My cat Babe has just died.

She'd been having a little trouble eating for a while, and a lot of trouble eating recently, and it turned out to be a cancerous growth underneath her tongue, for which the long term prognosis from treatment was virtually non-existant. The vet was very nice about it - he let me sit with her for a while alone before he put her to sleep, and after, and gave me lots of tissues and things. I know that this was the best thing for her, but I still feel really bad about it.

She was both the sweetest and most stubborn cat I've ever known. I inherited her from a flatmate about eight years ago, and through that she turned from an incommunicative scaredy-cat to one that thought that cuddles, and play, and purring was the only way to go. She's been the most constant thing in my life through three moves, a new city, a new job, and giving up that job to go to University again, and she took all that disruption in her stride. She's taken her various health problems, the most serious of which was blindness, also in her stride, and despite everything has always managed to be happy about life.

The funniest thing I ever saw her do was claw open a bag of catnip on my bed. I found her a little while later sprawled in approved Take Me Now position, with little green leaves spread all over her and the bedspread. The second funniest thing was when she fell in a fish pond - she was the most dignified bedraggled cat I've ever seen. She used to decide that it was time we went out into the garden, she used to decide that it was time we went to bed, and when she'd decided these things she'd jump up and run to the door everytime I got up, and keep on doing it until I followed her. She had the most delicate paws. Since I've been home I keep expecting her to wheeze into the room and expect a cuddle, or thump down the stairs after me because she wants me to let her out the back door.

Catherine once said of her that she was like a dreadfully polite old lady who yet managed to indicate to Cat that she was less than the chewing gum beneath her shoe. She also said this: To My Sister's Cat. She liked sitting on computer keyboards and boxes. She liked sleeping next to something warm. She liked to purr.

Babe

My cat's new favourite spot to perch is a box of books in my room. I have no idea why: it isn't the nearest she can get to the heater, there is no sun beam handily situated there, and I challenge any feline bum to find books more comfortable than carpet or a cushion. Go figure.

A Blog With A Cat In It.

Yesterday I got home around 8.30 and wondered where the heck my cat was (she's usually camped out in my room or the living room and was unusually not in sight.) Then it occurred to me that I hadn't seen her when I left the house earlier in the day which was a little worrying. It turned out that she'd gone into the back garden and been stuck there for around 8 or 9 hours because the gate had swung shut in the wind and she can't jump over it anymore. She was sitting in a corner of the garden in the dark, very meekly, when I came out to find her. Poor Babe. Resignation is one of her virtues, but I could wish that she doesn't need it quite so often.

On a slightly more optimistic note, I've started giving her cod liver oil, and not only is her coat looking less scruffy, but she seems to be moving less stiffly as well.

Hooray For Being An Unemployed Bum

Well, not that I'm actually unemployed, just that I've finished up my holiday job, and I have the rest of the day to enjoy it.

Things that have been happening lately:
-I went to a Haunted House. It was very noisy, with lots of heart pumping frights along the way. I find it interesting, though, banging things and blood spatters will give me a fright, but for true serious fear it's generally the quiet psychological getting-into-your-imagination that really creeps me out. There are some photos.
-I went to a leftover party at Malcolm, Judy, Gordon and Lisa's house. The food and company were lovely, as always. Then we climbed Mt Albert. I can remember back when I thought that that was a big serious hill...
-I've been having royally awful computer problems all week, which is why it's taken me until Friday to clear out my workload. Grrrrrr.
-I went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie with John on Monday. Premieres are interesting. On the one hand, they decorate the theatre and have actors dressed up as pirates having fights, clambering out on ropes, and generally haranguing the audience. On the other hand, you have to hang out in Very Long Queues and then sit in the theatre staring at a blank screen for half an hour before the movie starts. The movie itself was great, lots of sustained and well executed silliness, combining gorgeous stunt scenes, well timed acting, photo realistic CGI and the ever pressing question of "Will Keira Knightly get to kiss Johnny Depp?" I loved it.
-I went to a frisbee training session on Wednesday which involved teaching us the basics of speed mechanics. It was lots of fun, and now I have sore muscles in unusual places in my legs.
-I have worked out the precise cutoff temperature at which Babe will cease to be a hunched up miserable cold feline, and start being a lolling relaxed happy warm cat. It's 16.5 degrees. The pair of us have been hanging out in my room for most of the previous three days because it was easier to heat, and the new clock that Cat gave me happens to have a thermometer on it. It was fascinating watching the change that half a degree in air temperature can make on my cat.
-It's nice and sunny today. I think I'm going to go have a walk.

Babe Speaks:

Arrgh! I've been kidnapped by aliens! They stuck things into my private parts and then they cut me open and stuck tubes into me as well. While I was awake. I'm still looking for the microchip tracking device. Even when I thought Steph had come to rescue me it turned out to be a foul trick involving a Mad Russian Taxi Driver. And now I'm locked into a pathetic simulacrum of my house and I CAN'T GET OUT!!! Someone save me!

Note from Steph: It took her precisely the length of the taxi trip home to work the shunt out, so now I have to clean her bleeding wounds 4 times a day so that they won't close up. Babe, you better be worth it, is all I can say.

(My contribution to the Suppurating Wounds Club.)

My Cat Does Not Cost More Than A Car...

But she's working on it. It turns out that the scratch at the base of her tail wasn't her only injury while I was away, she has a nice juicy abscess. Also, because I didn't spot it until yesterday, it's grown large enough that the vets can't just give her antibiotics and are weighing up the relative risks of trying to drain it in a half-arsed fasion with her awake or putting her under general anaesthetic and doing the job properly.

How does Babe get an abscess? She spends 98% of her time inside sleeping. Bah! Humbug! I'm worried. :-/

And Another Just Because...

My sister Catherine wrote this poem. It made me laugh a lot and I feel like sharing.

To My Sister's Cat
For you have been radioactive in your day, and petulant when we shunned you.
For your blindness is very audible.
For your voice is distinctive and your appetite a Thing that waxeth, yea, and waneth in its own Time and Measure.
For you complain about this.
For you will sit and sit and sit
And sit and sit
And sit.
For your rest is peaceful,
And you are very stubborn.
For you will never brisk about life, but for one case:
For you will throw your heart and small body at the door and, lo!, it opens.
For you will never admit that it won't.
For you are as soft as the Sea bathing ancient bones and as stubborn as the Sea in your striving.
For you are happy to see me.
For you love my sister.
For you are happy.

--Catherine Pegg

(To people who read this who have never met my cat, she is getting old and blind. Several years she was treated with radioactive iodine for a health problem which meant that she couldn't sleep in my room for several weeks. My nights used to go like this: THUD, slide, patpatpat, THUD, slide, patpatpat, THUD, slide, patpatpat, THUD, slide, patpatpat, meow, THUD, slide, patpatpat and so forth ad insomniam. I had to barricade myself in because the catch on the door wouldn't keep her out by itself. After a couple of hours she'd change tactics and sit outside my window crying. It was a very long three weeks.)

And She Is Now Back!

I got woken at 5am by a very loud and gravelly pur.

Phew! She has no broken limbs, is very hungry but hasn't had time to lose weight, and is purring fit to burst. I have no idea where she's been or why she turned up now, but I've never been happier about broken sleep in my life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Bast, St Francis and any other deity or saint or helped in this. And a big cheers to the SPCA who weren't able help to me in particular but save many pets in general and were friendly and helpful in advice. Also three cheers to the National Pet Database at http://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/.

Steph

...And She Is Now Missing.

She seemed pretty happy to be home, but around 1am I realised that the reason she was so restive was an inability to get out of the house owing to my flatmate locking the catdoor. So I put her outside and realised an hour later that the catdoor was locked from the inside as well so she hadn't been able to get back in. But now no cat, her breakfast is untouched and the neighbours who are home haven't seen her. My new flatmate, Mark, thinks he heard the catdoor flap and the sound of feet earlier today, but that could have been the neighbour's cat.

This is extremely uncharacteristic behaviour and I am worried. She's not really the type to storm off because of a snit. The only good sign so far is no corpses on the road.

*%$&^%$

Stephanie

I Sprang My Cat From Quod Today...

And boy did she create hell about being in the car again. She's now purring lots and obsessively patrolling the house, which I choose to interpret as being glad to be home.

Steph

Watch Out, Palmerston North

I'm here.

It's gone pretty well so far. Babe made an ill-judged dash for her food bowl about half past 11 and found herself unceremoniously stuffed into the bathroom for the rest of the day. She seems to like her new cage, which is reinforced plywood and very enclosed. At least, she spent most of her day hiding inside it. Was highly unimpressed about the plane trip (OK, so I might have told her that she was being sold for medical experiments), but took it pretty well and is very relaxed about wandering around Catherine's house.

Watching a cat explore a new house always make me think of a Feng Shui dragon. She keeps making circuits around the house checking out all the nooks and crannies that she can find and checking them for fit and smell. She has been very quietly and gracefully trying to ooze herself out through a window so I'm guessing she's not hugely worried about life right now.

(I should add that I found when travelling to South Africa for a holiday that having Catherine along meant that I had someone to fuss over, which was a good outlet for travel nerves. I think that Babe has taken over that role, hence my obsessive detailing of her movements. ;-) )

Stephanie

Up, up and away...

OK, I'm moving tomorrow.

My life has been condensed into 4 cubic metres of stuff (or at least that's what the nice people at the moving company are charging me for), a suitcase of clothes and a cat. My pot plants are on long term loan to a friend, I have purchased an industrial grade cat cage that the airline will accept, I have purged a lot of books I don't read anymore and clothes I don't wear anymore and my room is almost down to remnants of furniture with set squares, miscellaneous CDs, a padlock, a letter holder, unused envelopes, scissors, hair stuff and all the little bits and pieces that just don't pack up easily.

Most of my forms have been filled out, the movers turn up tomorrow at lunch time and my sister is expecting me and the cat. Her name is Babe by the way. Somehow I suspect that with all this, she still hasn't worked out that we're moving yet. She's purring far too much to have pre-move nerves.

More later. (Wellington, here I come.)

^%*^%$ I can't find my cat!!!

I guess she's figured out that something's up after all.

I have six hours and twenty one minutes to lay my hands on her scruffy little neck.

F**k.

Stephanie