Headliner

           This week, in the Luby household, we have adventures in tryin’ to adopt a cat.

          “It’ll likely be the headliner in this weekend's letter blog,” I told my peeps in my morning love note. And so, it shall be. Then somebody got the bright idea just to name this week’s letter blog Headliner since it’s such a ‘star’ of a word.

          We lost two cats in a short period of time and now have only two left in the house (and two outside), and since I have six litter boxes, we definitely had room in our house and in our hearts to adopt a kitten.

          The Bradford County Humane Society is a page I like on Facebook. When they post pictures, it comes up in my newsfeed. I saw they had kittens and begged for one.

          “Bondi needs a kitten to play with,” I reasoned. “Our cats are too old to play with her much.”

          We had to be in Towanda on Tuesday to meet with our insurance man. I was up early and took a sunrise picture.

          It was one lane going down Welles Mountain. They’re replacing the power poles. On a whim I took a picture of our flagman. I know. I’m weird. Even Mike says so.

“He saw you take his picture,” Mike said.

“Yeah?”

 

We get to the other end and the flagman there is on his radio.

          “The other guy’s probably telling him to watch out for that weird lady with a camera taking pictures.”

          He looked right at me when I took his picture.

          “He’s got a big beard,” I said.

          Geese on Claverack’s Pond.

          We took Bondi with us. We take her with us as much as we can. She rides really well and if we leave her home, she’s frantic when we come back. Jumping all over us and piddlin’ a little bit.

          We spent about an hour with our agent and when we came out there was flow snurries — er snow flurries.

           “You want to go to the shelter?” Mike asked. We were halfway there.

          “Yeah. Let’s go look. We don’t have to get one.”

Most of the kittens were a few months old and already fixed and I liked that. It was one less thing I’d have to fool with. And adopting wasn’t that expensive either. Fifty bucks. I couldn’t get a kitten, have it fixed, dewormed, and up-to-date on shots cheaper than that.

Some of the kittens were roaming around, others were in cages. This little girl claimed us as hers as soon as we walked in the cat room. We took our time and looked at all the other cats but eventually decided she was about as good as any of them.

We had Bondi with us. They had named her Joy when she lived there. One of the gals took our picture and posted it on Facebook.

Joy came to visit us today! She was one of the first pups to come up from North Carolina with Rusty’s Legacy, and she is beyond adorable! Her folks were here so Joy could help pick out a kitten friend today, it reads.

We hadn’t really planned on going to the shelter, it was a decision made after we left the house, so we didn’t have a carrier with us.

          “We have these cardboard ones you can purchase for six dollars,” Bobbi said.

          I didn’t want to buy one. “We’ll just carry her and I’ll hold her in the car.”

          “Okay, but the dogs barking tends to freak ‘em out,” she told us.

          “We’ll just buy one, Peg,” Mike said.

          I shrugged. “Okay with me.”

          “People have tried to carry them out before and have lost their cats. We found one but the other one got hit up on the road,” Bobbi said.

          Ayla, a shelter helper, came in. “They want Layla,” Bobbi told her and handed her a cardboard carrier. “Would you get her?”

          “Sure.” Ayla took the carrier and left.

          We did all the paperwork and Ayla came back with the carrier. We get out to the car and I’m putting the carrier in the back when a thought occurs to me. “Maybe we should check to see if we got the right one.” I opened the carrier and it wasn’t the one we’d picked. This was a littermate and looked similar. I took her back in.

          “That’s Layla,” Ayla said.

          “The one we wanted had white across the shoulders,” I told her.

          “That’s Pansy.”

          Ayla went to get the right kitten and Bobbi apologized. “I don’t spend as much time in the cat room as Ayla does.

          “No worries. I’m just glad I didn’t get the whole way home before I found out.”

          On the way home, this little girl had a cricky sorta meow. “We could call her Cricket,” I suggested.

          Mike didn’t care.

          The sun broke through the clouds.

          The site of our new Aldi’s store.

Cricket’s very loving. She wants constant attention. Eventually, though, she’d settle down and sleep on you. I was really starting to like her.

“What happened?” you ask.

          It became apparent that she had medical issues. First and foremost, she stunk. She smelled like poo.

          “Give her a bath,” Kevin, our handsome son, suggested when we told him.

          The next day I did just that. I stripped down to my underduds and got in the shower with her. She freaked out at first but never scratched me. I let her jump up on the glass doors until she tired herself out then I shampooed her from the tip of one end to the tail of the other.

          She dried and she still smelled bad.

          I Googled it. We’ve already ruled out dirty fur and dirty litter box. Change in food can cause it but by day three of being on our food she wasn’t any better.

          There are other, more serious health issues that can cause a bad smell. Dental and skin problems are two that I recall from reading and neither one of those would be a cheap fix.

          You can top a bad smell off with a respiratory something-or-another going on with her as she wheezed when she breathed, sneezed, and one eye was a little matted. Then there’s something wrong with one of her ears too. She’d shake her head a lot and had scratched at it so much her ear was red and swollen.

          “I think we should take her back and get a different one,” I told Mike.

          “It’s not fair to take her back just because she’s sick. You didn’t get rid of me because I got sick.”

          “Fine. We can keep her. I like her well enough. If you don’t mind paying the vet bills.”

          “We can take her back and not get another one. She’s disrupting the whole house and you can donate the fifty bucks,” Mike said.

          He’s right. She did disrupt the house. Tiger and Spitfire both reacted badly towards her, giving her a wide berth and hissing at her if she got too close. “They’ll get used to her and that’s why I wanted a kitten. They tend to integrate into the clowder better than adult cats do.”

          Then it was Thanksgiving and we agonized over our decision all day. Should we? Shouldn’t we? We both felt really bad about trading her in but we don’t need to adopt a huge vet bill and they only give you three days to decide. We took Cricket back on Friday.

          “They’ve got our money, I’m getting another cat,” I told Mike even though I did consider his idea.

“You pick out the next one,” he said. “I’ll wait in the car with Bondi.”

          When I took Cricket in, I lied to Bobbi. A lie of omission. I even told Mike ahead of time that I wasn’t going to mention the health concerns I had about this cat. “I don’t want to diminish her chances of being adopted. Maybe the next people will love her enough to get her fixed up.”

          “They should make sure they’re healthy before they put them up for adoption,” one of my peeps said and I just assumed they did.

          “What’s wrong her?” Bobbi asked.

          “She’s too needy. Once you start petting her, she won’t leave you alone.” It’s the truth but not the whole truth.

          Back in the kitten room, Bobbi let Cricket out of the carrier.

“I brought my carrier so you can keep that cardboard one.”

“Alright,” Bobbi said and left the room with it.

I checked out the kittens roaming free. Looking at eyes, I saw others like Cricket’s. In a cage I found a small male. He was one of the few males they had and he was the youngest of them. Some of our favorite cats were males, I thought. The tag on the cage said six weeks and neutered. There was another smaller black one in the cage above. The tag said female and not fixed. Ruling that one out, I opened the bottom cage and took the male out. His eyes looked clear and he didn’t smell like poo but he did smell like he’d had a bath recently. He purred when I stroked his fur then he gave me a little love nip.

“What’s a love nip?” you wanna know.

It’s a nip that lets you know they’ve had enough but not so hard it draws blood or even hurts.

Good, I thought, he needs a little fire in him to put up with Bondi.

Bobbi came back in the cat room. “So, you didn’t want the other one because it was too affectionate?”

She knows, I thought. “I’m a blogger. When I’m working on the computer, she just won’t leave me alone.” I’m stickin’ to my story. “It’s a good one to recommend if someone wants that. She’s really a good kitty. She didn’t scratch the furniture and she used the litter box.” We were quiet for moment. “I think I’ll take this one,” indicating the little black male.

I went out to the car to get the carrier while Bobbi swapped out the paperwork then we headed for home.

Looking the paperwork over, I see his age listed at five months and he’d be due for a shot in early December.

“You’d better call and get him an appointment then,” Mike suggested.

On the phone with the vet tech, I gave her what information I could about the new cat, including the conflicting age.

“He can’t be six weeks and neutered. They have to be eight weeks and two pounds before they can be fixed.”

“He must be five months then.”

Brenda went on. “Dr. K see’s kittens on Mondays but this Monday is full. I’ll have to get with Dr. K’s scheduler and see when they can get you in but she won’t be in until Monday.”

I thanked her and hung up.

“Mmmeooow,” came a throaty call from the backseat cat carrier.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “The last time I heard a meow like that was just before Macchiato puked.”

Jet, as he was labeled at the shelter, meowed another mournful meow.

Then the smell hit.

“Yep. He’s not a good traveler.”

Just like Macchiato, on the first day of every trip in the RV, he’d empty from both ends.

When we got home, I put the carrier in the shower, stripped down to my underduds, and opened the carrier. Two little black eyes blinked up at me. “Meow.”

“I hear ya, buddy.”

I got busy, got the dirty box out of the shower and up out of Bondi’s reach, then turned the shower on. Jet freaked and tried to climb the glass. It didn’t help that Bondi was on the other side scratching to get in. Then he turned and looked at my bare leg. “Don’t even think about it,” I told him and felt the water, adjusted the temp and shampooed his dirty little bottom.

Speaking of his bottom, and I know this is TMI, but do you really expect any less from me?

I was shampooing his bottom and felt two little hard nuggies where there should be no testicles. Having never been so familiar with a neutered male cat before in my life, I wondered if this was normal. Then, on his belly I feel a scar where a spay scar would normally be. See it? Cricket had one of those.

Now the story-maker in me is making up a story. Whomever prepped him for surgery thought he was female and the vet doing the procedure never checked the sex before she opened him up. I’m probably way off base, but why else would he have a vertical scar on his belly?

All I can say is he’d better be fixed.

The rest of the day he spent exploring the house.

“What do you want to call him?” I asked Mike. “Jet like the shelter called him?” Then I remembered where I’d head that name before. “Joe Snedeker has a Jack Russell named Jet.” He’s the weatherman on our local TV station.

“I don’t care. You pick the name.”

“Kevin had an all-black cat named Eclipse. Or how about Midnight, or Ebony. Yeah! If we had a white cat, they could be Ebony and Ivory!”

“I don’t care,” Mike iterated. “Just pick one and stick with it.”

I kept throwing names out hoping something would stick. “He’s black like a cricket, so we could keep the name Cricket.”

“That sounds like a girl’s name,” Mike said.

“So? He’s not really a boy anymore. Neutered male cats are called gibs.” For the next few hours, I tried out more names.

Last week my beautiful cousin Stacey sent me a short video of Tiger’s brother. “He fetches, too!” she told me. “He’s very sleek like a panther and so much bigger than their mom!”

Curious as to what they named their black cat, I asked.

“He’s Ean's. They call him Geralt from the Witcher series,” Stacey said.

That didn’t help me much but I kept thinking up names. “Mike, he’s black like coal, how about Coal?” I could tell by the silence that that one wasn’t a winner. “Black Beauty. Black Knight — or just Knight — or just Black — Blacky!” Simple and maybe a little obvious but I was running out of names to suggest.

          More silence. I puttered around in the kitchen.

          “Here Blacky,” I hear Mike call. “Blacky…”

          I grinned. Okay then, Blacky it is.

          I spent Saturday working on pictures for my letter blog and it looks like Blacky is going to be a big help, just like Tiger was when he was a baby.

          Blacky sees my mouse pointer moving around the screen and tries to catch it. His little paws activate the touch screen and he makes changes to my pictures. 

“You little rascal,” I fake scold. “Take a nap with Bondi.” I put him on the seat behind me.

And this, my dears, is how I sit in my computer chair 90% of the time. Behind me’s been Bondi’s spot since the first day we brought her home and now, even if she’s not in the chair with me, I always sit on the front third of the chair. It’s a habit at this point and hard to sit any other way. Even if I sit the whole way back in my chair, I’ll scootch around and eventually end like this anyway.

I feel like I have to explain my attire to you. These clothes are not for public consumption. They’re my comfy around-the-house clothes. A 4X men’s shirt and leggings are the way to go when your goal is comfort. 

You know something?

I know you know lots of somethings, but did you notice Cricket’s leg in the first picture? You can see where they’d had a bandage around her leg. That’s where they’d taken blood to do a feline leukemia test. I saw it on the paperwork and didn’t think anything about it. It’s the first time we’ve ever adopted a cat from the shelter and I just assumed it was SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.

Blacky didn’t have the test. There’s no marks on his leg. Does that mean they knew something was wrong with Cricket? I just have to wonder.

 I don’t know about Spitfire but Tiger is more accepting of this cat, even sharing his food dish that sits on my desk. Whether it’s because he’s male or not sick, I don’t know.

And Bondi is having a great time playing with him whereas she wasn’t interested in playing with Cricket.

When it came time to settle down and watch TV, they laid together beside Mike in the recliner. I think Blacky is going to be a good addition to our family.

 We put the brush hog on Mike’s new tractor this week. It’s been way too wet to mow but once the ground is frozen, Mike can cut the field that we let grow all summer.

And we laid stones for a walkway through the dog run. I try to keep the poo cleaned up but invariably I’ll step in one as I haul stuff out to the burn barrel. It’s a lot of fun cleaning poo out of the treads of my sneaker.

Mike bought wood a few weeks ago to build me shelves with. There was just enough nice weather for me to be on the patio and sand the boards.

Then the weather turned and I couldn’t get them stained.

“Bring them in and stain ‘em in the living room,” Mike suggested. “We can put an old sheet down.”

I took a break and went for the mail. Flurries.

 I’ve got these beautiful baker’s racks but they don’t use the space efficiently. Here’s the before picture — and the after.

We woke to snow! I made a snowball and tossed it. Bondi brought it back to me.

Most of this snow melted but Saturday night into Sunday we got more. This time Bondi took off running through the snow, making figure eights around the flower bed and tree stump. I laughed.

Okay, my loves. All that’s left in my folder for this week is road pictures and a couple of sunrises. We never get tired of either of those things, right?

Let’s call this one done!