The Abominable Snow Cat

Winter has officially come to our household. Spike the deaf white kitty has moved back indoors.

What difference a week and 1,038.72 miles makes. There I was happily tossing chocolate covered graham crackers to an alligator and this morning I am wondering whether I should have started the snow blower up last weekend just to be sure it would grumble to life this year.

Lili our seven month Pap pup didn’t quite know what to think about the white stuff sprinkled across the lawn – but acclimated to it fairly quickly – barking at the kids walking past our house to the bus stop took priority over the snow underfoot.

Now Spike has seen this pattern for almost a decade and he knows that when the snow flies it is time to hunker down next to the window and wait for Spring. In fact December is his birthday month – and if he recalls he was born outside in our garage to a neighborhood stray along with his sister Buffy (who is decidedly an indoor housecat) and his brother Oreo who moved in with my sister and subsequently disappeared. The trio’s mom had moved into our garage which was left open by construction workers who were putting an addition on our house unbeknownst to us.

Buffy was the first to be discovered. She was a tiny little ball of fuzz crying, crying, crying,  out in our dark cold backyard. Her little eyes were swollen shut from infection and her whole body was shivering. I scooped her up and took her to my sister’s, the veterinarian,  house where she got pumped full of antibiotics and food.

A week or so later my son Max and his friend Andy heard some mewing from the garage. Andy, who has since become a chef, had attempted to pick up Spike, the source of this meowing. Spike hissed at the cat loving cook who then backed off in fear of the little six ounce ball of terror.

The two ran into the house and told me about the second cat just found in the garage and of its ferocious disposition making it impossible to retrieve. Of course I questioned their manhood and went out there to show them how to deal with a feral kitten.

I found baby Spike and scooped him up, chiding Andy for being such a wimpy kid that he was afraid of this teeny tiny little feline. This is when Spike sunk his teeny tiny little fangs into the ball of my hand. He didn’t just bite and let go – he dug in, shaking his head like a pit-bull putting the finishing touches on a punctured football. Blood was streaming down my arm like a prom queen in a Steven King novel while I continued to tell Andy and Max what poor examples they were of their gender. So, Spike was taken to my sister’s as well and the next day Oreo was found and all three kittens received shots, spaying and neutering.

Now Buffy lives in the house where she has grown big and fat and Spike is the neighborhood tomcat – killing moles and baby birds while spending his time more with the elderly couple next door than with his real family here. Spike acts as if he doesn’t know us most of the time – but will rub up against the leg of the old man while he works on cars in his garage and can often bee seen sporting long grease streaks on his head or tail. I don’t know if it’s just an affinity for garage living brought on by birthright or if he remembers me as tasting bad but it seems all we are good for to him is soft food in the morning, first aid when he has been in a fight and  a warm place to sleep in the winter.

So like some hobo hopping a train to Florida in November – Uncle Spike has moved back into the house. Yep, Winter is here.

Hook Line and Sinker

Spent Memorial Day at my sister's farm - Here's a pic that she took of my son Frank that just defines bucolic. The tall blond is Stella and the short salt and peppered one is Mabel.

91 years old and crawling around the house on all fours.

At least that’s what her age would be if one uses the standard seven to one ration when determining a dog’s relative age. Maggie is a miniature dachshund who we are dog sitting for my sister while she is visiting her fiancée’s family in the DC area. I’ve known her all her life (the dog that is – I’ve known my sister all her life too – but this post is about her dog) and she is a good wiener dog.

For being a nonagenarian she gets around pretty well. Granted she lists from side to side when she totters around the house her rat tail clicking back and forth with the precision of a German cuckoo clock’s pendulum and she does sleep most time – but all in all she’s hanging in there.

Mag’s hearing isn’t what it used to be – one needs to be relatively loud to get her attention. Standing ten feet away I pretty much have to yell to get her notice and even then when she cocks her head it’s more akin to her remembering what it was like to perceive some high pitched noise in the far distance rather than actually hearing it. Eventually she gets the idea that I want her go outside once she sees through her cataracted and milky eyes that the rest of the canines in the household are headed out the open door. She dodders behind our other two dogs not exactly sure where she is going or why but she doesn’t want to be any trouble and if they are all going this way, well then she probably should be too.

She reminds me of old women one sees on the street in an ethnic neighborhood. Insert whatever locality modified by the adjective "Little" – Italy, Greek Town, Poland, or India whatever – these ancient women are ubiquitous to the sidewalks in these enclaves. Babushka-ed and wrinkled, long sleeved black sweaters in 90 degree humidity - hands as if carved from apples left to dry clutching a hardwood cane.

They stand outside of church entrances or at bus stops with wire wheeled shopping baskets that for the life of you, you would never believe they could move. Seemingly frail, but sinuous and tough as worn leather these are the old women one reads about in the news of the weird section of the paper. The ones who subdue would be purse snatchers with a crack of the cane across the mouth, using the muscle memory of countless chickens beheaded.

This is who Maggie is – a tough old broad who can be forgiven peeing on the carpet every now and then.