September 22, 2004
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I’m gonna be a daddy, sort of, and it’s getting rough!
This is about the dark side of being a pet owner. Some weeks ago, my sweety noticed that my cat was getting a tad pear-shaped. Sure enough, Silky is now great with kittens. The idea of having kittens around was wonderful for a while, but now, I dunno. Here’s the deal.
A few days ago, Silky started showing nesting behavior–prowling around and mewing a lot, poking into any and all nooks and crannies in the cabin, and so forth. I made a nice little birthing-box for her with some of my clothing in it, and also put out expendable clothing at three other locations in my little cabin for her birthing safety and convenience. I can’t let her out of the cabin lest she have the kittens outside, and it is getting COLD at night lately–she gives birth outdoors and she may wind up with some kittensickles. So now she is confined to the cabin, and it is getting pretty hard on both of us.
She slipped out the other day. I didn’t panic when she scooted under the cabin, but waited for her to come out, scooped her up, and brought her inside. She seemed okay with that. But more lately, she has been showing her displeasure at being confined in other ways. She claws the woodwork next to the door, for one thing. She has clawed my face at 3:30 in the morning, for another. And she cries and cries and cries and CRIES and cries and cries some more.
And it gets better. I don’t have a normal door, but a sliding glass patio door that is so hard to move that I dislocated my shoulderblade the other day getting the damn thing open, and I hurt from it pretty much all the time. And once that door starts sliding, it doesn’t stop easily due to momentum and all, and I’m afraid she’ll scoot out in mid-slide and get squashed. So I don’t go out as much. I put off trips to town. I let bags and bags of trash pile up in the cabin. When my pee jug gets full, instead of taking it out to the Porta-john to empty it, I just dump the damn thing out the window. When I do come in from going out, I sort of play cat-soccer when my arms are full, or reach down and grab her if my arms aren’t full.
Right now, I have 15 swords, 10 battle axes, and upwards of two dozen knives in the car–they came in the mail this morning and they HAVE to go in the cabin. This morning, when I was getting ready to take four boxes of merchandise out of the car to make room for the new stuff, I tried to pop her into a pillowcase. She would not be popped. The pillowcase flipped and flopped, and Silky flipped and flopped, and I was just about fit to be tied. As I was driving into town to get the stuff, I had a brainstorm. I have this plastic tote bag with a zipper top at home. When I get back, I am going to put on leather gloves, and that cat is going into that tote bag come hell or high water. Then I can take my time getting the stuff into the cabin without worrying about Silky taking French leave. Sadly, cats do not grok that sometimes primates have to be cruel in order to be kind.
As I move furniture and stuff around so I can stow the cutlery under the bed and on my shelves, she will just have to live with that. She’ll probably decamp to the laundry basket that is on top of the file cabinet. That or just pointedly ignore me as punishment for the indignity I inflicted on her.
Oh well–she thinks things are tough NOW, wait until she’s a mother!
Comments (4)
I wish Silky were here, with Doug and me. We are experienced cat midwives, and it has been way too long that we’ve lived with these old spayed ladies. I can’t wait for kittens, and you should see the gleam in Doug’s eye when we talk about it.
Cats instinctively want to wander off and do their thing alone. Too bad you can’t build her a snug little nest under the camper where some warmth from the trailer might be felt, but being only semi-civilized (hope I’m not insulting her) she might go elsewhere anyway, since that’s not her usual abiding place. Maybe you could lure her into the bathroom and shut the door – you do have a door to your bathroom I presume, not that it’s necessary, I understand – it seems far kinder and less scary than a bag. You Alaskans are a rough and tough bunch, you “take the bull by the horns.”
Personally I can’t imagine it being too cold for her at this time of year, so long as, once the kittens were born you could find them and bring them in, but then I’m here in Cal, snug as a bug in a rug. I put my heater on of a morning when it gets down below (I would guess) 50 degrees or so. Well, I guess you can start thinking up names, like Lulu, etc.
erh, I notice you keep saying cabin while I picture you being in a trailer. Sorry ’bout that.
Pictures?