Creamsicle has settled in nicely. She and Tonka are buddies. Tonka is an indoor cat, and he likes to greet her at the door and sniff her when she comes in. (She smells good after coming in.) When she goes out, Tonka will often pace and howl because he misses her. Creamsicle chases Tonka as much as she chases her. One will chase the other one direction, and the other is chasing the first in the opposite direction. It was a bit worrisome when she first came. Tonka bullied her, and we thought that she’d have to be re-homed. (The vet’s receptionist wanted her.) But Tonka has learned how to play appropriately. They’re so cute together!
No new pics, unfortunately. The SO took a couple on her smartphone, but it was too big for my email and I never got it.
I bought a ‘denim’ vest and a leash for Tonka. He’s not too keen on it, but we took him outside yesterday. He doesn’t like the vest, but he accepted it and actually sat on my lap. Outside freaks him out a little. He’s stayed close on the few occasions he’s ‘escaped’, but he doesn’t know about cars.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but Tonka has not had an easy life. (We think he was about 7 when we got him.) His tail was truncated at some point. Slammed in a door? Lost half of it in a fight? Hit by a car? Who knows? He had been at the NOAH shelter for six months before we adopted him. He had medical issues, and they said he’d need sub-q fluids once a month. He appears to have occasional bouts of asthma. Before NOAH, he was in a shelter all the way across the state in Spokane for who-knows-how-long. Once we got him home and took care of his ear mites and eye infections, he became quite healthy. We never needed to do the fluids. He still gets horky every couple of days, but they pass. (Poor guy!) He just needed a loving home. I don’t think he’s perfectly happy. He almost never purrs audibly. (I can feel him purr, and can hear him if I put my ear to his side.) Hard life, right? And he seems to suffer separation anxiety. He’s not destructive, and he doesn’t urinate in inappropriate places anymore. But he likes having at least one of us around. I think Creamsicle helps him with that.
We were sitting out on the patio, I having just retrieved the chaise longue from the shed and the SO having turned the cushion over, when I heard a strange sound from Creamsicle. She came out from under the deck, and the SO said, ‘She caught a bird!’ Creamsicle brought it over to ‘mom’, who made her release it. The bird flew away apparently no worse for wear.
I’m guessing her bloody bib a couple of months ago was also a bird, and not a mouse as I had guessed.
So we’re sitting in the living room. I hear what sounds like Creamsicle plucking at the front screen door. I ask the SO if that’s the case. ‘No, but she’s sitting out there.’ The SO goes out, and Creamsicle had caught a mouse. I went out, and there was a mouse’s head and one forelimb. I guess she’d eaten the rest. (Creamsicle, not the SO.) ‘Mom’ went in side to get a latex glove and picked up the remains, and I took it out to the bin.
What I took for plucking on the screen door was apparently the crunching of tiny bones.
Well, you should be doubly honored that she ‘chose’ you to live with. She has been demonstrating to you that she could amply take care of herself in the wild with her sharp hunting skills. She’s with you because she chose to, not because you’re the kibble connection.
She’s a good kitty, yes, she is! Mousies are vermin (unless they are your pet, and then enjoy them responsibly). Where was I - oh yes - what a good kitty!
The Mighty Huntress bagged another sparrow. She brought it into the yard and sat by it, then made like she was going to eat it but didn’t, and then came inside for some kibble. She seemed a little confused when she went back out and her prize was gone. It was almost as if some Authority went out while she was eating her kibble, and put the bird in a plastic bag and threw it in the trash. Or something like that.
Yesterday Tonka came trotting up with a mouse. ‘Mowow! Mowow!’ (His [del]mouse[/del] mouth was full.) He had the head of the little critter fully inside his mouth, and the mouse hung limp. While ‘Mom’ urged him to put it down, I went inside to get a plastic bag for disposing of it.
It turned out the mouse wasn’t dead. Tonka was kind of playing with it. The SO wanted me to catch it in the bag. ‘But it’s not dead! You want it to suffocate?’ ‘I don’t care! I want it dead!’ I went to get an axe that was nearby, thinking I would dispatch it quickly. It climbed up the short, rotten remnants of a fence, and Tonka jumped up. Now the SO didn’t want me to kill it. She said to let Tonka finish it off. The wily mouse wedged itself between a slat and the railing, and was safe. I pried some rotten wood off and dislodged the rodent. But Tonka had become disinterested by that time. Creamsicle was 30 feet away and didn’t know what was going on. The mouse escaped under the neighbour’s house.
