Friday Cat Blogging for June 1, 2018

If between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you don't have enough time suck in  your life, may I introduce you to Tiny Kittens Society?  This is a rescue in Canada that for three years has been doing TNR (trap, neuter, release) and rescue in a colony of over 200 feral cats in Canada.  Pregnant females are rescued and their kittens born in safety and comfort.  The kittens are then adopted out, the moms spayed, and if they can be socialized, they too are adopted out.  Otherwise they are released back to the colony, where they will produce no more litters.

And of course they have their own YouTube channel, including a 24/7 Kitten Cam of their latest litters.  At the time of this posting, there are nine kittens, born to two females they rescued in March.

You're welcome.  Or, I apologize.  You pick.

Cat Guys

Mr. Brilliant and I got our first cat in 1984, shortly after we moved in together.  She was a calico, her name was Cindy, and she only lived a year and a half, succumbing to nodular pancreatitis.  Then came Wendy, then Oliver, and later Maggie and Jenny, and we were always cat people, and Mr. B. became a cat guy. 

When we finally bought a house in 1996, we toyed with the idea of getting a dog.  He'd had a dog as a child, and I'd always had a dog, but after interviewing a few dogs, we realized that with our work schedules, it just wasn't going to happen.  So we were Crazy Cat People.

Mr. B. with Wendy (1985-2000)

I think Mr. B. preferred cats because they were easy, specially when you live with someone who does all the litterbox cleaning.  But it was more than that.  When cats love you, they love you because you deserve it, not simply because you walk the earth.  Cats have a badassery that dogs just don't have.  It takes a certain kind of guy to appreciate a cat, and that's why I think cat guys  have a mystique that dog guys just don't have.  Cat guys don't expect to be attached to you at the wrists and ankles 24 hours a day.  Cat guys get that sometimes you want to be with your women friends, or that you need down time, or that you are an adult capable of your own decisions.  Cat guys can be needy in a different way, but they don't need to be slobbered over all the time in order to feel wanted.

After Mr. B. died, I used to joke about how it used to be "Jill and Steve live in Washington Township with their two cats," which made us sound sort of hip and artsy, but now it was "Jill lives in Washington Township with her two cats", which made me sound sad, lonely, and pathetic -- a walking stereotype of the crazy cat lady.  I don't know how the crazy cat lady image came about, except that it tends to be women who end up feeding feral cat colonies rather than shooting them.  But it's a stereotype that unfairly maligns women and keeps far too many men from discovering the amazing mystery that is felis domesticus.

When we used to listen to "Morning Sedition" on Air America Radio over a decade ago, Marc Maron would talk about "Boomer the dirt cat" out at his home in L.A., and about the three feral cats he'd rescued in Astoria -- Moxie, Monkey, and LaFonda.  If I recall, Moxie was part of the settlement with his ex-wife, but Monkey and LaFonda live with him to this day.

Maron is funny and cool and the cats still figure prominently in every interview now that he's a Really Famous Guy Who Interviewed The President And Was Nominated For a SAG Award.  In a 2013 interview, he said about cats "You don't really know what they're up to, and they're always sort of fascinating, and they seem to have their own thing and they're always sort of surprising.  I think dogs are kind of emotionally consistent -- either they're very needy, or they're a little bit aggravated.  I think cats, you assume, have an inner life, because they get focused on things, and they're kind of effortlessly cute with their own obsessions, and that makes people into them."

I think he's on to something here.  Perhaps it's that mysterious inner life where they DON'T share their obsessions with the world that resonates with men, especially those who are uncomfortable with too-open displays of emotionality.  Cats also have a certain "Screw you" affect that I think some men find appealing.  Women, on the other hand, are attracted to an animal that handles its own inner life because we have enough trouble dealing with our OWN inner lives and the inner lives of our parents, spouses and children, thank you very much.  So an animal that goes about its own business and doesn't ask to be understood provides a much-needed respite.

Cat guys tend to be the dirty little secret of masculinity, though that's changing.  In the online world, Dwayne Molock, whose cat guy alter ego is "Moshow", raps about his cats.  What makes Moshow compelling is not just that until you see the cats, he's just another rapper with an unfortunate tendency to use autotune, but that he has four sphinx cats, which are the weirdos of the cat world.  Moshow's sphinxes are endlessly patient and seem to thrive on wearing clothes, including, apparently, matching pajamas:

Moshow shows the kind of gleeful, all-encompassing love for his cats that you usually see in women.  So perhaps it's Moshow who made cat-obsession safe for macho guys like....

Keith Hernandez.

Yes, THAT Keith Hernandez, the 1979 MVP award winner and holder of World Series rings with the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Mets; the carrier of cocaine usage rumors, the chain-smoking first baseman who along with the couldn't-be-more-different Gary Carter were the missing pieces that when added, created the 1986 Mets, and now the lovable curmudgeon of the SNY broadcast booth, and yes, cat guy.

Hernandez is one of those people who really found his voice on Twitter, but does it in a way that doesn't piss people off, but instead, shows him as a kind of Tweeting Man of Letters.  But it was a single video of himself picking up the paper with his cat Hadji (named after a character in a Jonny Quest cartoon, which may be the endearingly dorky thing done by an ex-jock EVER) that put Keith Hernandez into the Exalted Pantheon of Internet Cat Guys.

Perhaps it's going to take a curmudgeonly ex-jock to make cats as acceptable a pet for men as women have known for decades.  On the other hand, it seems kind of a shame that we may have to share that with them too.

Friday Cat Blogging: The Next Generation

Has it really been 15 years since Kevin Drum first posted a photo of his cat Inkblot on his blog and started a trend that continues lo unto this day? 

Since it's Friday, I ain't got no job, and I ain't got shit to do, and since we have made the lunatic decision to start this blogging thing again, I thought I'd introduce you to the current generation at The Southern Casa la Brilliant.

Meet Eli and Sam.

 

 

Eli (tabby bicolor, left) came to live with us in July 2013, after Jenny died.  This makes him the last cat-tie to my old life.  Poor Eli has had a tough time of it, and suffers from some PTSD as a result.  He was found as a stray, spent time in two foster homes, and then we adopted him in the middle of Mr. B's chemotherapy.  He spent the better part of two weeks under the bed in a room where Mr. B. was pretty much living, as wiped out on chemo as he was. 

Eli bonded with Mr. B. well before he bonded with me, and it was Eli who knew that something was Very Wrong with Mr. B. two hours before I did.  I wonder to this day if things might have been different if I'd checked why on September 22, 2013, Eli did not want to eat his breakfast in the bedroom.

This was Eli's first 2-1/2 years with me:  New home where New Cat Daddy was sick.  Then something was wrong with New Cat Daddy and men came in with scary equipment and took New Cat Daddy out of the house, and he never came back.  Then New Cat Mommy cried a lot, but at least he had Maggie, who he learned quickly to love, and she loved him back.  And things were quiet for a while, but then Maggie got sick and died and Cat Mommy cried a lot again.  Eli was very lonely, so Cat Mommy brought in a new kitty, and he was fun so things were better for about six months.  But then Men With Big Shoes came in and changed things upstairs, making a lot of noise.  Then a few more months of quiet, then the Men With Big Shoes came back and closed off the kitchen, and two months later THE KITCHEN WAS ALL DIFFERENT, and that was very scary to a traumatized kitty. 

Then, after a few more months, Cat Mommy started putting stuff in boxes, and then he and Sammy stayed two nights at the vet, and then Mommy put them in carriers, but instead of going to the vet, they were in the car for 11 hours, and when they came out, they were in this strange place where all their stuff was there, but it was DIFFERENT, and that was very scary to a traumatized cat.

It is now 2-1/2 years later, and Eli is finally starting to feel a bit more secure, despite having to have a mast cell tumor removed from his ear last December, which required tests and surgery for him and  a radical cash-ectomy from me.  He misses his sunny windowsill, but he enjoys the screened porch in the new house.  He's learned how to purr, he now enjoys being held (but not picked up).  He is very bonded to me now, and has separation anxiety and other anxieties which manifest as occasional peeing accidents.  He is very sweet, very sensitive, and very nurturing with....

Sammy.

Sammy chose me.  I was not ready for another cat after Maggie, who had been my baby for 13 years.  I had been looking at another cat, and Sammy reached out his paw and swatted me on the arm.  I'd always had a thing where I wanted a Russian Blue kitty, and he sure looked like one.  Eli had needed another cat-buddy, so he and Sammy bonded quickly.

Two vets have told me that he IS a Russian Blue, and aside from wrong eye color, he has all the physical traits, plus the Blue tendency to play fetch.  For hours.  It took me a few months to warm up to him, because I was intensely grieving Maggie, whose illness had been very traumatic.  He was only five months old, which means that he had all the kitten-badness, and he was driving me insane.  But he is a very confident, self-assured little cat, and bonded with his new brudda, and over time, his utter silliness and adorableness won me over.

Sammy is a bit of a bully, though.  He is very territorial and bullies Eli relentlessly, including redirected aggression when there is another cat in the yard, and nonrecognition aggression after Eli came home from surgery.  Eli, being somewhat gender-fluid, is like a long-suffering mother, and spoils him.  In some ways, they are like Maggie and Jenny were, except that Jenny, also a shy, timid cat, couldn't stand Maggie, and Eli adores Sammy, for all that Sammy drives him crazy. 

And that, here in our no-longer-new life in North Carolina, is our little family.