What Makes Me Laugh

Peaches is currently unhappy with me. I’ve been traveling a lot. Out of town for a wedding, for work, and now for a family get-together, she’s been lucky to get any quality time out of me this month. Doug has had to fill in, waving cat toys in front of her and Cocoa uselessly, getting the grooming brush swatted out of his hand, and opening the door for the special meow that means, “I want out! Now!”

After two nights away she starts to wander far afield from our house, looking for me. I feel guilty, especially when I get back and I get the old “Do I know you?” routine from her. Cocoa is more forgiving. She purrs and purrs and during the night she’ll lie on my chest as if to say, “Don’t ever leave again, ok?” It takes a few days for Peaches to come around. When we left today she was wrapped in a ball in a corner, obviously upset at the thought of prolonged absence from her two favorite slaves. But, we have a great cat sitter, and she can sleep all day in the clothes hamper if she wants. And a few days after we arrive home she’ll decide that I’m back in her good graces and will climb on my side while I’m sleeping and stretch out like the Sphinx to make sure I know that I was missed.

I hate paying the bills.

I’d much rather hide in the sock drawer.

Or climb up to high places.

Hunt in the snow…

Or snuggle with my sister.

It’s hard work paying the bills.

It makes me sleepy.

And a little grouchy. How ’bout you?

Frankly, I would rather have a root canal than take my cats to the vet. My cats would rather I have a root canal then go to the vet. They are not like my friend Leah’s dog who acts as if the vet’s office is the best doggy cocktail party he’s ever been to.

Pant pant pant, “Hi! Hi! Hey, what are you here for? Hi! Hi!” Lick, nuzzle, lick, “Oh yeah? Wow, radical cut dude. Were you in the backcountry when you got that injury? Good luck with that. I’m just here for the shots. Nothing epic. Hi! Hi! Slobber. Slobber. Slobber. Woof!”

Whereas, cats really focus their attention on the pain and displeasure. It starts in the car on the trip over.

Most pitiful meow. “Take me back, please? Please? Please?”

Pause for effect.

“You said you loved me this morning. You said I was a good cat. Meow. Then you pushed me into a tiny box and now you’re letting a stranger drag me out to squeeze my bladder. How would you like to have your bladder squeezed?  Meow. Maybe I’ll walk on you in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping and put a front paw on your bladder. Then you’ll know how I feel. Meow.”

By the time I arrive at the vet’s office, I usually look like a sweaty hairball who feels almost as tortured as my cat from having to run around the house with a towel, grab a squirming animal, and then stuffing it into a carrier without hurting it.

I don’t think it’s just me, one time I overheard a woman explain,

“I’m sorry I’m late. My husband had to vaccuum underneath the bed to get her out.”

This morning Doug had vet duty, and I was quite relieved. I can weep at the vet’s office at the first sign of a diagnosis.

“It’s herpes?” I sob. “Really? My cats aren’t even sexually active!”

Then I bawl the entire way home. “I’m so sorry you have allergies Cocoa. So sorry!”

Who knows why, but I am always so close to complete emotional breakdown at the veterinary clinic that I now insist that Doug goes with me.

I was nervous when he called with an update this morning.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“She has a urinary tract infection,” he said. “The vet said her bladder was small and she wasn’t constipated. I can’t believe he can tell all that just by feel. I told him I wish I could tell that by feel, and he said that when he first learned how to do it in vet school he thought it was so cool that he’d walk around just feeling cat’s bladders.”

And that made me laugh.

The other morning I stuck my head out of the back door to call in the cats before I left for work and got a whiff of eau de skunk. Uh. Oh.

I scanned the yard and since it was daylight I figured the skunk had just left us a little scent tag to say hi.

After work we discussed the eau de skunk with our neighbor who confirmed the odor had made it past our fence onto her property. Doug said, “Huh. I wonder if it’s our compost? It has been kind of ripe lately.”

Sure enough. At 10 p.m. that night I opened the back door to call the cats in again and there was the skunk, sniffing and pawing its way through the compost pile, its huge tail straight in the air and its rearend facing toward me about 10 feet away. I quickly closed the door.

‘Um,” I said to Doug. “Skunk. Backyard. Compost.”

“Are the cats in?”

“Nope,” I said, now faced with a different problem looming. How do I get the cats to come in without them encountering Mr. Pepé and getting his eau de skunk all over them and me?

I cautiously opened the door again and made a throaty whispered sound, “Peaches! Cocoa!” The skunk didn’t seem to mind my whisper and kept on rooting around in leftover potato peels. Fortunately, when Peaches rounded the corner she didn’t even notice him and popped right through the door. Phew! I thought. One down, one more to go.

I walked to the front door to call Cocoa when I heard Doug at the back door scream, “Cocoa, no! NO! GET AWAY FROM THERE COCOA!”

I ran to the back door afraid of what I was going to find when I got there.

Doug looked a little pale. “I chased her off,” he said. “But she was heading right for him.”

“How close did she get?”

“Five feet – she just missed him. You better get her in!”

This is actually no easy task, which is why it is left up to me. Cocoa pretends to have a hearing problem when she hears me calling her. In other words, outside she’s deaf. Inside she jumps when a pin drops. So, I went to the front door to call for her again and got out the big guns. The can of wet cat food. A few taps with the fingernails and the  ripping sound of the tin can opening at a novel time of day did it. Bingo! She slipped inside.

Now that the cats were safely away from the skunk, we tried to decide what to do with the skunk. We love animals (Doug even takes out spiders in a jar to release them outside) so no trapping or killing for this pretty little skunk, but we didn’t want him to hang out in our backyard. It was our fault for not covering up the compost, but that would have to wait for morning. Right then we didn’t want him to stay snuffing around all night around the tomatoes.

I suggested a faint mist of bear spray. Doug was concerned that it would kill him. He suggested clapping and yelling. I concurred. So there we were, at 10 p.m. yelling at a skunk in the backyard, who promptly runs to the front porch and sticks his head in the hole under the porch (where are cats go to find shelter). At this point it’s lucky that the neighbors didn’t call the cops because Doug is loudly jumping up and down on the porch to try and discourage the skunk from hiding underneath it.

Doug yells to me to go inside and peek out the window to see if the skunk is headed for other cover. So I do, and soon I see the bushy tail trot off to the lilac bush where he stayed while Doug tried to cover up the hole in the porch and the compost.

He was a nice little fella, really. He could have sprayed all of us if he had felt like it. Plus, I’d never seen a skunk up close. They are quite beautiful. Doug said he heard they made good pets. I said you’d probably have to remove the scent glands. He said he’d hold the skunk while I removed the scent glands. I said that’s ok.

It’s been a few nights since we covered the compost and the skunk seems to have found more fertile feeding grounds. To tell you the truth, I kind of miss the smelly bugger and I think the cats might too.

It just might eat you! My mom sent me this photo. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. It’s of a Maine Coon, the same breed as my cats, but obviously has a larger frame. My first thought when I saw it was, “This cat needs its own bed. No sharing.”

We sometimes (ahem) let our lawn grow a little long, maybe like our hair. A couple of years ago we noticed that our cat Peaches really enjoyed hiding in the tall grass so we decided to leave a little patch under the cherry tree, facing the street. 

Peaches napping in the jungle

What a hit! She naps there, and watches the birds go by, and the little kids on bikes, and the women jogging with their mondo baby strollers, and the occasional derelict (we have a few in Livingston, Montana) who crashes with a cigarette on our cement wall. Plus, the dogs walking by don’t even see her. What a bonus! 

Our next door neighbor walked over the first summer and said, “Hey, I see you grew a kitty jungle!” and the name stuck. Most recently someone said, “Hey, you’ve got a terrarium!”  I looked up terrarium, and our jungle doesn’t really fit the definition of a small, glass-enclosed natural area for frogs, but it’s pretty cute. 

The jungle in full bloom

So, it’s that time of year again when the kitty jungle is in full bloom, and the cats bed down, and once again we wish we had a hammock and better porch furniture and better mosquito repellant, but all in all, we’re pretty darn happy too.