Cat and mouse

My cat caught a mouse the other morning. She brought it to me, all proud of her new real! live! toy, wanting to show off her hunting skills. She was making her chirping meow when she's feeling playful and has "caught" a toy or caught a bug.

Naturally, I didn't realize it was a LIVE mouse. I've been in this apartment for over 2 years now with no evidence of mice or mouse sightings. So I thought it was a toy. I reached down to take it from her, thinking Capri wanted me to toss it (we play "catch").

And then it twitched in my hand.

::SHUDDER::

It was ALIVE. This was no toy mouse. It was a real live fuzzy mouse she had caught. ::GASP::

Needless to say I dropped it pretty quickly.

The cat resumed her play while I danced around shuddering and chanting "ick ick ick!!" at the top of my lungs and tried not to hyperventilate from the shock.

Once I got over it, I retrieved a few tissues and confiscated the poor creature once again. It was clearly mortally wounded, so I put it out of it's misery (kinder than letting it suffer), and deposited it in the trash outdoors. And then washed my hands in the hottest water I could stand at least a half a dozen times.

The cat watched me do this while meow-screaming at me, baffled and annoyed that I had taken away her toy. I soothed her with some cat treats and lots of praise for her skills. This was our first live mouse episode in this apartment and the first time she's caught something other than a bug, and I truly hope it's our first and ONLY mouse. The bug catching? I encourage it. Praise her for it. It keeps the flies under control in the summer when the balcony door is open. But I can live without another live mouse incident.

Capri now spends at least a few hours each day staring intently under the stove. I'm guessing she's standing guard against further fuzzy intruders.

Good kitty. That's my good little huntress. Keep the mouses away.

::SHUDDER::

Drama update

They came and laid new carpet last Friday. Poor Capri had to spend her first full day back in the house locked in the bathroom, this time with the window shut (the damaged screen she escaped through was finally replaced, only a little over a year after I reported it). Needless to say, she was displeased when I got home and let her out. But she was still here, so I was not sympathetic to her grumpy mood.

The carpet is a nice shade of neutral, and it's in. Well, all except for the small patch in the hallway in front of the door and extending to the bottom of the stairs. They cut a small square off of what they took out to try and match the color. So when the hall carpet gets patched is all dependent on when they can find something to match. So right outside my bedroom door is the plywood sub-floor for now. I need to find a small area rug...

Anyway, so about my bedroom furniture. It was offered for them to come move it back into my room on Saturday, but unfortunately my plans weren't working with their schedule. And I'll be damned if I was going to sit around and wait for most of the day for them to show up. Sunday didn't work either (they weren't available). Or Monday after work. Today, Tuesday, my furniture is finally back in my bedroom. My bed (and mattress!) is back where it belongs. And I can't wait to put fresh sheets on the bed and sleep in there tonight instead of my living room.

My bedroom is pretty simple. All I have in there is my bed and my clothing (in dressers). That's it. No radio besides my clock-radio-alarm, no TV, no electronics beyond a phone. And I did that on purpose. I've had a really hard time sleeping this past week. Partially because I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and partially because there was just too many distractions upstairs in my living room. I had a very hard time quieting my mind so I could sleep. Blinking lights, electronics, stuff. Too much stuff.

The drama is nearly over. There's been no more leaking when it rains. Believe you me, I've been freaked out with each thunderstorm we get. The new carpet is still dry. And I am overdue for a good night's sleep.

CAPRI IS BACK IN THE APARTMENT!

The cat is back. Safe and sound. Capri walked through the open door into the kitchen at about 11pm. I managed to slam the door behind her. OMG SHE'S BACK IN THE HOUSE. About 20 minutes earlier I had seen her eying the open door to the kitchen, and the wet food sitting on a dish in the middle of the room. Guess the hunger and temptation finally got to her. As soon as I slammed the door I collapsed on the floor and just shook with relief.

She doesn't seem too apologetic about being gone, and won't let me touch her at the moment (needs to settle back in?). She's just been enjoying eating the wet food, and right now, I'm OK with that. She can eat the whole bloody can. I'm just so very very glad she's back in.

Whew. It's been a hellish experience and I hope and pray she never gets out again. I'm exhausted from being so worried about her. I'm going to go collapse with relief and joy and sheer exhaustion now. Right after I eat something (I've been too stressed and worried to eat tonight).

And I swear on all that is holy, as soon as I can get close to her I'm putting her collar back on whether she likes it or not and never taking it off of her again.

And the drama goes on...pt. 2

[continued from pt. 1]

Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009

I get up and get ready to head into work. My landlord promises to be here when they come to spray, so I don't have to wait. All I have to do is lock my cat Capri in the bathroom so she's out of the way. I do that, knowing that I will pay for it in the form of cat retribution when I let her out that evening. I head into work.

At 4:30pm I call my landlord to find out what's up. They came and sprayed around 1pm. They also left an industrial strength fan in my room to help dry things out. They will be back to pick up the fan on Thursday evening (so they say). The floor should already be mostly dry, it's just the walls. Still, it is recommended I shut the door to the bedroom to keep the cat out. No problem. I head home.

I get home, change, and shut the bedroom door. I then go to let Capri out of the bathroom. She's not there. She's not anywhere in the house. PANIC. I discover that she escaped via the bathroom window. I had left it cracked due to the heat, and she pushed the window open farther and got out. The screen in that window wasn't secure. It needed to be fixed. I reported this to my landlords LAST YEAR when I moved in. It was never fixed. So she escaped. Because ONCE AGAIN they didn't fix things in a timely manner (or, in this case, not at all, which is also not unusual...there are several other things that were never fixed too). Clearly basic maintenance is not something they actually do consistently, if at all, and now it's caused two major problems: flooding and my cat escaping. I am livid. And terrified. I have no idea how long she's been out or where she is. She's an indoor cat, just over 2 years old, and I've only had her about 11 months now.

What's worse I took her collar off of her before locking her in the bathroom. Why? Because the last time she caught herself on the corner of the cabinet and freaked out (fortunately I was home so I freed her promptly). I didn't want that to happen again, so I took off her collar. So now she's outside, running around gods knows where, with nothing but a microchip. MORE PANIC.

I call my friend Plum and freak out. She comes over and as soon as I see her I start crying in the middle of the sidewalk. I've been walking around the blocks near my place calling for Capri, meowing (she actually answers to my meows, really), and shaking a treat bag. I can't find her. Then we hear her meowing. I meow back, and she responds (typical, we have regular "conversations" in meows). So we start trying to follow the meows. Plum and I start looking in the neighbors' backyards and Plum spots her up a tree. OhMyGodsThankTheLordShe'sOK. I coax her down, and right as I'm about to grab her (I even have my hands on her), a car alarm goes off and she bolts. SH*T!! Plum and I take off after her, cursing the car alarm as we run. Capri runs for the street. Fortunately a nice woman out for a run (happens to be running in our direction) heads her off and the landlords' kid (elementary age boy) keeps her from going into the street and she turns around and runs back into the yards behind my place. Whew. She goes back up the same tree, only even higher this time, clearly scared and now panting slightly. DAMMIT.

So Plum and I camp out in the yard where the tree is. My ankles are a buffet for mosquitoes (really, they are now polka-dotted with bites and I'm using anti-itch cream like lotion). We wait. I try tempting her down with treats. No dice. So I try milk which she loves and is notorious for trying to trip me when I get the carton out of the fridge and shake it. Also no dice. Capri sits up in the tree, and looks at me, quite comfortably, meowing periodically, from her branch (a good 20 feet off the ground). After a bit, Plum goes to Fu-Wah Mini Market nearby to get tofu-hoagies for us to eat for dinner. I continue my stake out of the tree, fighting a losing battle with the mosquitoes. [Side note: the tofu hoagies from Fu-Wah Mini Market are fantastic. Definitely recommended...it's a vegetarian banh-mi sandwich!]

After waiting for over an hour, watching Capri move around on the branch 20 feet off the ground with no movement downwards, we give up around 7:30pm. Plum heads home to take care of her own 4-legged furry brood, and I head inside. I go back outside to the tree to check on her at regular intervals, and she keeps refusing to come down out of the tree and back inside. I try tempting her with wet cat food (a major treat) but still no dice. At one point when I look up the tree she's descended to a lower fork in the branches (now only about 10 ft. off the ground) but still looks far to comfortable. I am also alarmed to see a raccoon in a neighboring branch. They are ignoring each other and quite calm. I'm freaked out. I decide to not try another food temptation for fear I'll get the raccoon instead of my cat. Yikes.

Around 10pm when I check on her she's out of the tree and lying on the ground, but as soon as I walk towards her she runs from me. She climbs another tree, this one right in my backyard, and meows at me. For the next 3 plus hours we have regular conversations of meows, her in the tree and me on the ground, but she won't come near me or come inside. I call my mom and freak out at her on the phone for 2 of those hours (good thing she lives in Australia where it's mid-day...I can always call my mom at midnight and not worry about waking her up!). At nearly 2am I finally give up and try to get some sleep.

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

I wake up after only about 3 hours of sleep, and still no sign of her and now no meowing. She hasn't tried to come in. It's also raining. I head into work, hoping that when I get home later she'll be waiting to let in where it's dry and there's food. I spend the day surprisingly productive, fueled by coffee and worry.

I get home shortly before 5pm, and look for Capri. She's nowhere to be found. I meow. No response. I let my landlord (the father who owns the property) know that I'm extremely displeased with them because my cat got out because they never fixed the screen on that window that I reported a year ago. He looks shocked. I explain again that she got out because they never did a repair I reported several times and I'm really really upset about that and it's inexcusable on their part.

[Side note: I also notice when I get home that the Stanley Steamer people haven't been back and their fan is still in my bedroom. Wonder when they're going to come get that...]

I go inside and retrieve the milk carton, take it out back and shake it, hoping to tempt her. Nothing. No sign of her. I try shaking the treat bag. Again no sign of Capri at all. I meow. Nothing. I decide to walk around the block once, shaking the treat bag and meowing. There's absolutely no sign or sound of her at all. OMG. I'm afraid she's decided to go exploring farther away from home, has gotten trapped someplace, or someone has trapped her. I can't stand it! I just want my cat back home and safe!!

Now there's really nothing else I can do besides wait for her to come home. And it's killing me. I also print out signs to put up on the corners near my house, hoping people see them and if they've taken her in they'll call me.

My landlord (my regular contact) comes by to measure the bedroom for the carpet. She tells me people are supposed to be coming tomorrow to actually lay the carpet and then they'll put my bedroom back together. I also take the opportunity let her know about the window screen (since she's my "official" contact), and how upset I am that pretty much all of the recent problems could have been prevented if regular and basic maintenance/upkeep was done on the property, such as cleaning the drains/gutters, repairing exterior windows/screens, etc. All the little things you have to do when you own a house just to keep it standing. And I tell her I hope that they can see that specifically the flooding, etc. that's happened this week is an indication that maintenance is needed and I hope they use it as a learning experience and start doing said regular maintenance. We shall see. I'm not holding my breath. But I'm *this* close to putting a hex on their entire family, I swear.

I know all I can really do is hope and pray that Capri is OK and comes home soon. And try to get some sleep despite how worried I am. She's got to get hungry eventually, right?

Capri the alarm clock

At 6:30 the other morning I was still lying in bed, fighting with the alarm and banging the snooze button. The bed was warm, it was early, I was cranky and facing a day full of meetings, etc., all of which made me hit the snooze button a few times more than I should have.

Along comes Capri. She knows it's time for me to be up. So she lies down right in front of my face (I'm on my side), and stares at me. Every minute or so, she'd say "mrow?" and then wait for me to move. We did this for a good 10 minutes. I kept expecting her to start tapping me with her paw or something. But all she did was lie in front of my face and stare and meow at me at regular intervals. If I opened an eye to peer (glare) at her, she'd let out a very excited "MROW!" and stand up. If I closed my eye again, she'd sit back down and go back to "mrow?" questions every minute or so.

Such a good little alarm clock. But there's one problem: she doesn't have a snooze button. Sigh. I'm a bit worried she's going to pull this act on the weekend when I don't have to get up.

Small victories

It really is the little victories in life that carry you through. Yesterday I had two small victories, in addition to the big victory of my asthma drug cocktail kicking in so my painful coughing stopped.

Victory #1: I successfully trimmed my cat's nails with no bodily harm to my person and a minimal amount of yowling and squirming. The last time I tried this I only got her two front paws done and had lovely scratches on my arm that are just now fading. The key? The element of surprise. I snagged Capri with a towel, wrapped her up, sat on the edge of the tub trapping her body between my knees, and had one front paw done and was half way through the second before she realized what had hit her. Seriously. All. Four. Paws. Trimmed. Even her dewclaws. A victory indeed.

Victory #2: I finally managed to get my cell phone number switched to a local Philly number. I hadn't changed it from my previous city of residence due to all the identity theft issues. But that's (hopefully) over now, so I'm free to finally separate myself and stop paying taxes to that previous city so I can keep the number. Yes, they really were charging me both a city and state sales tax as well as a business license surcharge, for a total of over $7 a month. Ridiculous!! Once again I had a very pleasant interaction with the customer service at Verizon, making the whole process smooth and easy. Somehow I also feel a bit more "settled" in Philly by having all local numbers.

What small victories will I have today, I wonder.

My new cat

Introducing the newest member of my four legged furry family: Capri.

Pretty kitty close-up

She's a tortoiseshell, about 1 1/2 years old. The kennel Aussie goes to found her when she was around 5 months old. They spayed her, got her all the necessary shots and tests, and put her up for adoption in a cage in their main office. I saw her for the first time last May, when she was about a year old. She had been living in their office for over 6 months at that point. When she still hadn't been adopted in August, I crumbled. In mid-September I drove out to the kennel and brought Capri home. It's been 3 1/2 years since my cat Snip passed away, and when I couldn't get Capri out of my head, I knew it was time to get another cat.

It's been an adjustment. It's been over 15 years since I had a kitten in the house, for one. Fortunately, Capri likes dogs, and since Aussie was raised with my first cat, Snip (also a tortoiseshell), she accepted Capri's presence quickly. But since Capri had only lived either as a stray or in a cage in an office, she had no idea what life in a home was like. It took a good week before she'd come out of hiding in the bookshelves (that space behind the books on the bottom shelf is ideal for hiding). It took another week after that before she'd let me touch her. I've had to adjust to having my toes attacked at 2am (silly me for moving in my sleep) and training myself to watch for cat toys (I've already crushed one ball by stepping on it and almost falling in the process).

Now, two months in, Capri has made herself at home. I've learned she LOVES treats. Specifically the kind that are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Catnip has no effect on her (WTF?). And she loves toys that make noise (little mice, balls that jingle, etc.). Capri is a talker, proving to be quite the mouthy cat. She's learning to like being brushed, but clipping her nails is a battle that involves wrapping her in a towel in a futile attempt at protecting myself from getting scratched.

Lounging comfortably on the back of the couch

Today we made our first trip to the vet. It took me a good 15 minutes to catch her and stuff her in the carrier. I almost had her once, but the dog decided to "help" and Capri escaped. Eventually I caught her again and we made it to the vet with minimal damage to my person (a few scratches, but nothing severe). She got all her boosters, and has been given a clean bill of health. She's also been microchipped, which I highly recommend. We'll see how long it takes her to forgive me for the injustices she suffered today.