Skip to main content

Sweet 16

Just one year ago today I wrote about Mike, the cat's, 15th birthday making today his 16th in cat years or 80 in human years.


My new camera is fast enough I can take a photo of him actually looking at me.

I was away for about three weeks recently and noticed some differences in him when I returned.

  • He is walking with an ever so slight limp in his left rear hip sometimes more pronounced than others.  You have to be paying very close attention because cats are notorious in not showing when they are ill.  I suspect this is arthritis, or at least, it seems to look like the type of walk I have seen in those suffering from arthritis.  This limp is most pronounced when we take stairs together throughout the house.
  • Paul hadn't brushed him while I was away and it showed.  Older cats, according to the reading I have done, aren't as efficient at grooming themselves as younger cats.  I think I've brushed half a cat of fur off him after my return.  And Mike, he so loves the attention brushing brings to him.  I am not particularly gentle with this process and he seems to like the challenge of standing upright as I brush, brush, brush away the excesses.  Mike seems so proud of himself when I finish, or am I merely projecting?
  • We have this dirty secret about Mike.  He uses a toilet as his source for drinking water.  I know sort of disgusting and ingenious all wrapped up together.  We have to instruct cat sitters to be sure to flush the toilets throughout the house while we are away, something I am sure makes them cringe.  Yesterday Mike was yowling at me for most of the forenoon and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.  I let him outside, cleaned the litter box, made sure he had plenty of food, brushed him until the tool came off his back clean and he still continued to yowl.  (Apparently yowling is another characteristic of an older cat.)  So to get away I took a shower.  While there Mike started licking the outside of the glass shower door and it hit me.  He could not, at least yesterday, position himself over the toilet to get a drink (maybe the arthritis in the hip was flaring up).  So I put down a ramekin of water, he drank and remained quiet for the rest of the day.  Perhaps it is time we give him water like normal cat owners do, from a vessel other than a toilet.
  • What has not yet changed is his appetite.  He remains a good eater, still loving his Purina Cat Chow.  I know some of you might be gasping about what we feed him too, trust me it is his choice not ours.  During our 16 years together we have tried countless wet and other kinds of dry cat food on him.  All have had to be given away because he won't touch it.  Mike is fussy about his food, in fact when he was younger the breeder took him to a cat show.  She wouldn't take the Purina Cat Chow I had put in a container for him.  She intended to feed him one of the higher quality dry cat foods that she was sure he'd eat.  On day three of their being together she was forced, much to her own shock, to go buy a bag of the Cat Chow because Mike had not eaten in three days.  He's still like that.
In his King of the Beast pose
I haven't yet figured out how we will celebrate this year but it will indeed include the water off a can of tuna, about the only human food he'll eat.  Perhaps a drop or two of red wine (he does seem to like it) are in order as well.

It is hard to see the characteristics in Mike's physicality that I also notice in my own aging body.  We are lucky he remains cognitively sound; no forgetting where the litter box is or day-long yowling, yet.  This little guy has been such a great companion over the years.  Perhaps his 16th birthday isn't so sweet for him, but it sure is for me!

That isn't fat on his belly, really it isn't.  It is a primordial pouch, typical in lions and tigers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
1 comment
Read more

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while.  But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf .  I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you?  It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank.  (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls  If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo.  Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left.  Easy to find, right!  Sure but what about the remaining 4
5 comments
Read more