Home life

Well, Goodman is better. But now Squeaky really does have to go to the vet tomorrow…because the abscess definitely isn’t his only problem: the limp continues. (sigh)

After a long day of arguing with the computers, the cats, and the outer world, it’s going to be nice to fall down in a little while. Zzzzzz….

Squeaky has thoughtfully pulled the fur off the hurt spot. There is an abscess there from something’s bite — cat? rat? Probably not bat — which is now draining. Relief all around. Antibiotics tomorrow, though…

So as a way to keep this dry-ear problem of mine from recurring (the condition having been, apparently, what caused the ear infection of early January), the doctor told me to shove little soft cotton pledgets soaked with olive oil into my ears while showering. Fair enough.

Now, this requires keeping olive oil in the bathroom, which is slightly unusual around here. So Peter brought me up one of the little oil drizzlers and a small dish that paté originally came in. Before each shower, I pour a little olive oil in the dish, pull a cotton ball apart and make my little earplugs, soak them in oil and shove them in place.

Fine. So this morning I’m having my shower and thinking about other things — story stuff mostly: like Peter, I get some of my best ideas in the shower, which is why I like to go to Leukerbad when I’m outlining — they have these showers up at the Alpentherme that spit out about a liter a second of hot mineral water (you can see one in the picture on the Leukerbad homepage-link above) —

Sorry, that could have been a fairly long diversion. Anyway, so I turn off the shower and stand there for a moment, and suddenly become aware of a little sound that had been masked by the water noise. Sounds a little like something dripping, at first. Plip plip plip plip…

I open the shower door and look out. And what do I see but Pip, the youngest cat, standing up on his hind legs on the toilet seat, with his front paws braced against the top of the toilet tank…somewhat noisily drinking the olive oil that’s left in the little dish.

So the question of the day: How do you find out if your cat has Mediterranean roots??

And he’s a trip.

Like the vast majority of our cats, he was a rescue. We were walking down to the pub a couple of Sundays ago, and (as usual) passed a neighbor’s house just outside the village. In their yard, as usual, were a couple of dogs: a terrier and a basset hound. Also there — not as usual — was a dead kitten.

We “tsked” at this and then made some inquiries when we got to the pub. The family was on holiday: no one was sure whose the kitten might be — whether it was theirs, or had wandered in from the barns of the farm next door. Peter managed to find the guy who’d been taking care of the property while the family was away, and let him know about the dead kitty: the gent was properly shocked, and went off to bury it.

Some hours later we headed home from the pub, glanced in through the yard’s gate again…and were horrified to see another kitten being chased by the terrier, which was plainly intent on killing it. (Possibly it thought the kitten was a rat: he was about the right size…)

We got into the house’s yard over the wall, extracted the kitten, and took him home. There we kept him isolated from the other cats until the following Thursday, when the family down the road were scheduled to come home from their vacation. Those few days were kind of sleepless: the little one didn’t seem too clear on some of the finer points of toilet training, and the sheets on the bed got changed a lot for the first day or so. Thursday, when the family down the road got back, we made contact with them and asked, were their children really attached to the kitten? — because we were. (When Peter male-bonds with somebody, he male-bonds. Me, I’m just a sucker for those big eyes. Probably the reason for my fondness for anime.)

Fortunately, the folks down the road weren’t all that attached as yet, and they understood the situation. So now he lives here, and his name is Pip. (Since we also have a Squeak…)

Here’s a little photoset of pictures of him over at Flickr. (We’ll add more later: Peter has more pics of Pip than I do at the moment.) Meanwhile, behold the reason we’re only going to be at Worldcon in Glasgow for three days. He’s too small, as yet, to be left home alone with the other cats (even if they were all used to each other by now, which they’re not: there’s been a certain amount of slapping around and growling going on). So he has to be kenneled for the long weekend…but we don’t want to leave him there too long, at such a tender age. (The vet thinks he’s about twelve weeks.)

He’s another vocal kitty, like the late lamented Bubble. When excited, he makes a truly hilarious “Rowr!” sound which is completely out of scale to his size. He bounces up to everybody as if he’s on springs… especially to Squeak, which is both a tactical error and hysterical to watch, kind of like a lamb attacking a lion.

What a kid.