Mitch and Callie Tales

Most mornings I let the paper blinds up in the living room so the cats can look out the window.  Sister Callie and Mitch get excited about this.

I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe they are enlightened by the occasional fleeting bird or passing car. Or they get all riled up by the occasional cat that (right now, a long haired black cat) that happens to wonders up on the front porch.

They get really curious if I'm going in and out of the front door. Especially that Sister Callie.

And they really like sitting on that end table next to the chair. It's to the point where I can't keep them off of it. Let's just say I don't really even sit over there, or eat near that table. They can just have it.

They knock random stuff off the table. Especially that Sister Callie.  Mitch is good about just looking out the window and leaving stuff alone. Callie is just hard-headed.

So one day I was lounging on the couch watching TV.  So one day she knocked something over. And I yelled about it. She glared. I went back to watching TV.

I noticed they were really quiet.  This isn't usually the case unless they are hiding and sleeping.

I looked over and these jokers were laid out sleep.

And they, well Sister Callie, had knocked EVERYTHING off that table. Hand wipes, post cards, random pieces of paper, my wrist blood pressure monitor, scissors, crochet needle...

...And a journal that my Triple F Posse sister had given me for Christmas. Callie made sure to lay her backside right on top of it. Humph.

I wanted to GO OFF on both of them. A peaceful Mitch, with his chin resting lovingly on his paws as he sleeps, was just as guilty. Both of them needed some punishment.

But I decided to leave them alone. 

And enjoy the peace and quiet.

Traffic Jams

Sigh.

I know I need to post.

And I wanted to do some posts about my quick business trip to Philadelphia.  But it  takes awhile to go through pictures.

This morning, Val,  aka Serenity_23, is starting to get all antsy because I haven't posted anything. Well, I think I will appease her. She hates cats, so uh... I will do an update post on Mitchell Lamar and Callie Jo. Just for her.

,

There they are, sleeping peacefully. Callie has gotten the notion lately to go somewhere and hide, as it seems like she likes to get her beauty sleep alone, away from the touchy-feely Mitch.


Callie and Mitch like to roam the beams above the living room, especially when I'm laid out on the sofa or cleaning up the living room. It is most definitely the best vantage point to watch my every move. 

But sometimes, there are problems.  I have noticed that traffic jams occur. And Sister Callie gets an attitude.

She gets all confused because she can't figure out how to get around Mitch and back to the landing.

I have to talk to her.

"Sister Callie, calm down. Don't get your panties all in a bunch!  Just walk all the way around the long way!"

She stares. Confused and annoyed. 

She eventually figures out that she needs to walk the long way around.

And Mitch is left all by his lonesome.

I just don't want any repeats of the fights that use to take place high up on the beams between Kramer and Oscar-Tyrone.

None of that, please.

Mitch isn't all that aggressive. And even though he is 3 months younger than Callie, he is quite solid and heavy pawed, so she doesn't go at him that much.

So there will just be the steady traffic jams.


One of them has fallen before. I don't know which one, but I can tell from the long scratch mark on one of the beams that a cat fell. 

They are both fine. I hear they land on both feet so...

These traffic jams are not much trouble at all.

Sista Callie Jo Part I: A Tale of Convalescence

Look at ya girl Sista Callie Jo!  Trying to mean mug me!

I've never seen her do that before.

I rolled my eyes. "Sista Callie, you ain't ready! You can't mean mug like the late great Oscar-Tyrone, with that doggone jacked up collar around your neck. You ain't ready. Go do some church jogs in the corner, Sista Callie!"

She stares for all of 5 seconds, then she runs off to play.

Oscar-Tyrone would stare harder. For an hour. Without much blinking.

She ain't ready.

But I hope she is ready for her new kitty litter.

Look at me, trying to be all environmentally friendly.

Normally, I don't care. Just give me litter that kills off the litter box odor. But I was looking at some cats at the Pet store (just looking), and I was talking to the keeper and he told me about corn litter and how it is safer for cats. So I decided to try some.

I mixed it with her litter. I have to do that because I noticed she gets PISSED when her litter is totally different and just throws it all out the box. But this time she behaved.

We will see how it works out.

For now, she is still in her e-collar. It has been 14 days since her spay, and she is healing up well enough. But I will leave her in it until this weekend.

For some odd reason she likes it, though. And she has figured out how to sleep in it.

She has managed to sharpen her nails on the scratching post while wearing it.

She has managed to lounge in it.

She can't really eat with it on. It gets all nasty and I have to clean it. And I'm not spending another $10 on one. Yikes.

When I sent a picture of her to my sister Kentucky, she texted back "Whoa! That's a bit extreme!"

I thought so too, at first. But when they said I had to keep her, with her hyper self, from licking her surgical wounds and taring out the stitches... extreme will have to do.

But like I said, she likes the collar. I may just keep it on her.

No... that would be cruel. And extreme indeed.

I am just glad she is healing well.

As for that mean-mugging... she'll just have to continue to work on that.

Prisoner of Love (Sing, Sister Callie Jo)

 "I'm a Prisoner of Love!!!!"

 "I'm just a Prisoner of Looooooooove!"

"GIMME THAT CAMERA, LADYLEE!"

 "I'm just a Prisoner of Love!"

 "Oh yeah, oh yeah... a Prisoner of Love"

 "Yes... I am just a Prisoner of Love."

Yes Sister Callie is a Prisoner of Love. I don't know what about the Love Part. But you're definitely a prisoner, Sister Callie.

I would rather her run free. And she usually does when I am at home. But during the day, she is in her cage, which sits in the dining room. And if she acts a fool at night (where I can't sleep because of her shenanigans), she stays in her cage.

She just has too much energy. There is nothing worse than hearing stuff crashing to the ground in the middle of the night. And the other day, she dragged my hair clippers from the living room to the kitchen. And she has poked holes in my shower curtain liner. Sigh.

Both she and Oscar follow me from room to room. If there is too much ruckus, I go to another room, and here they both come. She has even figured out how to crawl up in the box springs and the sofa. I don't know what she does inside each, but it is noisy.

So she goes in her cage.  I don't even have to tell her to go in. I just give her a look... and she knows, uh... time for me to be a Prisoner of Love.

And even then, she tares up stuff. Tracks it up with litter. Ugh. So it only gets cleaned real good once a week. (She doesn't seem to care.)

I like her better when she is like this....

And even then, you can tell she is looking at something, and her mind is working hard on how she is going to get to it and tare it up. (She is looking over at Oscar laid out on the ottoman. And moments later, she's gonna jump on him... shock him awake. And a fight ensues. And it is NEVER pretty. No indeed).

I really like her when she is like this...

Asleep. Calm.

She looks like she is dreaming... about taring up stuff. (In this one, she'd just finished eating some chinese orange glazed chicken. That knocked her completely out. Hmmmm).


Oh well, the life of a kitten who's getting bigger and bigger.

I'm just glad Sister Callie is happy and healthy...

...And she can be all that in her cage

LOL 

Fake That Sleep

When you don't want to be bothered...

Cover your face with your paw and pretend to be asleep.

From Callie and Oscar's booklet titled "Tips on Ways to Get Your Owner to Leave You Alone".

Lessons in Sharing

So it seems as if Sister Callie Jo is getting big enough to take over Oscar-Tyrone's favorite sleeping spots.

So he tries to make the best of it, be the bigger man, and share. 

As you can tell from the look in his eyes, he's not particularly happy about this arrangement.

But alas, sleep is sleep.  What's the harm in sharing?

So he curls up on his half of the ottoman and goes to sleep. Callie Jo does the same.

Callie Jo is getting her beauty sleep, but she is one of those young chicks that won't sleep in one place.  She has to turn what seems like every five minutes or so. 

Then she decides to just stretch completely out.

And then she throws that leg over Oscar's back end.

All I know is that I laid on the sofa and fell asleep myself. Then something jarred me from my own beauty sleep. A BIG fight broke out between Sista Callie and Oscar. He yelled at her something awful. I wish I could interpret cat language. Whatever he said was brutal.

I guess she moved one time too many and he got sick and and tired of it all.

He kicked her off the ottoman and she went to her favorite spot: under my bed.

"You should have kicked Callie off in the first place, dude," I said.

Let me be quiet. At least the old cat was trying to share.

Trying.

Sister Callie Jo... An Update

Callie Jo...

She's so sweet..

Look at her... She looks like a little baby sleeping there.

Such a sweet girl...

Sweet Sister Callie Jo, with her baby soft kitten hair. Such a sweet little girl.

That is, until she wakes up...

And BAM... it's on. She is turned up, going from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds.

She is a ball of energy.

"I don't know where you get all that energy from," I say as she runs back and forth. "But can I have a little of it?"

She's getting bigger and bigger. Look at my hand in comparison...

I'll take another picture like that in a few weeks just to see how big she gets.

All I know she is LONG. And she stands tall and strong!

I miss the little sweet girl she was, unable to jump up on stuff and unable to get down from anything.

Because now she is a straight up cat gymnast.

Lo and behold, to my complete horror, she has discovered the beams above the living room.

I happened to be upstairs and she was hanging by her paws off the ledge just beneath the upstairs railing. I had to lean over and snatch her to safety. I wouldn't haven't even noticed if she was screeching "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

I guess that is catspeak for "Help me Oldgirl! I'm bout to fall!"

She seems to know what she's doing now. At least I hope she does. I am not building any contraptions or putting up any gates to keep her from going upstairs. Nerp.

Oscar-Tyrone doesn't like her. She does a strange flying squirrel routine whenever he walks into the room, and lands square on his back. She attempts a choke hold and bites his neck.  He's already surly. Dude gets HOT over that. I wish I could catch it on video, but it all happens so fast. Once Oscar pins her to the floor and slaps her a few times, she leaves him alone.

Oscar is 17 years old. He's an old man. He likes calm activity like napping.

That's the only time he deals with her. And as you can see, he has his back to her. (And as you can also see, she is still on alert status).

Now, what's interesting is that she passed a tapeworm back in early June. This did not frighten me. I only pulled it off her butt and threw it in the garbage. And Oscar and Jeremy had tapeworms some 15 years ago.  That happened Thursday before last, and luckily she had a vet appointment already scheduled for that Saturday morning. I hadn't taken her sooner because I talked to them prior to get an idea of when she could get her shots, and it had to be at 8 weeks of age. She was only 5 weeks when I got her. No way I'm double paying for doctor's visits.

The main thing was to make sure she was feline HIV and leukemia free. That can be an issue with strays. The second thing was to take care of the tapeworm problem. That comes from ingesting fleas. So I also had to take care of her flea issue. Granted, I only had seen one flea on her at the time. But she still needed a treatment.

She HATES riding in the car. She screams the whole time. This is a might bit irritating.

Once we got there, she was still crying. But once she saw some dogs, she shut up. It's funny because it is so immediate.

And then she was all over the place.

It took a lot to get her attention. She even fell head first into the trash, which scared her something awful.

She kept diving in the sink.

And then she was trying to eat the cotton patches.

"Sister Callie," I hollered in a loud whisper. "Cut all that out! You're not suppose to do that. Stop it!"

She is like a dog. She likes to pick up random things at home and carry them around. Yesterday she was running with a Wal-Mart bag. O_o.

The vet visit was good. She is a very healthy kitten. No feline HIV. No leukemia. She received her first shots and will go back in a couple of weeks for boosters. I saw the tapeworm that one time, and haven't seen any since then. (I have been lifting Oscar-Tyrone's tail to check his butt, and he has this look that screams "NOW JUST WAIT A MINUTE NOW!" LOL)

Overall, she is a good kitten. She understands "NO!" very well and will immediately stop any of her shenanigans when I speak it, even softly. She is just now starting to respond to her name, but that is still a bit haphazard. For some bizarre reason she responds to:

"Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!!!!"

I am not sure what that's about. It will jump her from her little hiding places. And I have a bell around her neck so I can keep up with her. She's in a cage all day, but I let her stay out all night. And on Sunday, she was out for an extended time during the day when I wasn't around, and she did well with that.

I wake up some mornings and find her cuddled in my armpit or around my neck which is deeply disturbing.  Deeply.

But overall, she is a very good kitty. She is quite healthy. And that's all I ask for. 

Of Faceoffs and Ice

I bought a pair of new headphones last weekend.

I go through earbuds like nobody's bizness, so I had to get them. They aren't expensive, only about 20 bucks, but bass vibrates them something terrible, to the point where I get paranoid and think someone is stomping the floors.

It makes me spin around to see if anyone's there behind me.

Sort of reminded me of my ways when I smoked a bit too much bud.

Anyway, the other day, I was sitting at the dining room table, and I heard what I thought were shrill whines coming from the headphones. I thought to myself "I gotta get back to the earbuds."
I turned around as usual, out of reflex.

And the shrill noises turned out to be angry cat wails.

They were having a faceoff on the beams above my living room.

Now, I know they like to fight. Sometimes it is play-play, sometimes they are for real... But NEVER have I seen them up on the beams going at it. It was as if Oscar-Tyrone had him boxed Kramer in or something.
I snatched off my earphones.

"Hey!!!" I yelled

They stopped wailing and hollering. They peered down at me.

"Ya'll need to CHILL OUT!" I yelled. I put my headphones back on.

They started hollering down again.

I threw a piece of ice from my cup at them. They watched it sail between them and hit the stairs. They looked back at me like I was crazy.

I stood up from my chair. "Let me tell ya'll suckas something. Don't nobody go to the doctor up in this house 'cept me."

They continued to stare, careful not to blink.

"Ya'll don't have jobs, so that means you don't go to the doctors!"

Oscar-Tyrone should know this. He hasn't been to the vet since 1998.

And Kramer... well, Kramer is a permanent houseguest. So you know what that means...I would take him on out on the porch and drop kick him straight down to his Granddady Hen-dog's house, just a few houses down the street.

"That means," I continued, "that if ya'll fall and ya'll hurt yourself, ya'll gonna have to work it out and walk it off!"

I scooped another piece of ice from my cup and got ready to throw it.

"If you fall down and break your leg, we'll just go get some sticks from outside and make ya'll some bootleg crutches."

They didn't move. Even looked like they were about to fight again.

I hurled the ice.

They stared down at me again... then walked off the beams in a most orderly fashion.
I think they knew I meant business.

Funny what a little yelling...

...AND a couple of carefully hurled cubes of ice will do!

LOL

Bet they'll think twice before they pull that little stunt again!

Ya'll have a great holiday weekend... on purpose.

Semi-Wordless Wednesday

I walked past my laundry basket the other night.

And something move when I threw a towel in the basket.

I must've jump 100 feet in the air. Scared the heck out of me!

I moved the towel, turned on the light, and it was the "permanent houseguest", a sleeping Kramer.

That lil' joker was sleeping GOOD.

That's what I call a "sleepy face" for real!

I yelled for him to get out of there, but he just looked at me and went back to sleep.



"Oh, put that camera away Oldgirl. I am going back to sleep."

Humph. He needs a bath. If it wasn't a shame, I'd throw his butt right in the washer with the laundry.

Hmm... a passing thought. I don't need the PETA people burning my house down.

LOL