Betrisher
Well-known member
- Jun 3, 2013
- 4,253
- 177
- Parrots
- Dominic: Galah(RIP: 1981-2018); The Lovies: Four Blue Masked Lovebirds; Barney and Madge (The Beaks): Alexandrines; Miss Rosetta Stone: Little Corella
I don't like cats. Never have. However, I've inherited a male siamese and I'm at my wits' end!
We already had two cats (Genevieve and Reginald), so I felt our cat quotient was full already. Then, disaster struck an old friend and Trant arrived to liven things up.
Some years ago, I had a reunion with the teacher who made a huge difference in my life. She gave me poetry and Shakespeare and logical thinking and theology and a whole lot of other great stuff besides. She was The One for me. You know how there's often one special teacher or person in your life that really changed the way you think? Well, like that. She happened to be a nun, but that didn't stop her country way of swearing or expressing things in a very - ah - biological way. She was fabulous! Still is, even at the age of ninety-one.
And therein hangs the problem. A couple of weeks ago, this wonderful woman who spent the latter half of her life caring for men at risk in rural communities (and winning the Order of Australia Medal for it) was plomped into a nursing home! Mind you, at ninety-one, independent life was getting more and more difficult for Pat, who was having trouble coping with ordinary day-to-day concerns, but she had just three days warning to empty her little flat and find somewhere to put her beloved cat.
That's where I came in.
No one else stepped forward and it looked as if a Visit to the Vet might be the only answer for Trant (named after a village in Thailand). That would have been preposterous, since he's only six years old and a beautiful cat (if you're into cats...). So he's here now, acclimatising. Yay.
The house smells like cat pee. He sprays. He piddles. He poops on the edges of the litter box, not in the middle. AND HE YOWLS in the middle of the night! He doesn't yowl in the way of most cats, where they sit on the back fence and go 'rawwwrrrrrr'. O no! He has an unnaturally basso profundo voice which sounds like a demon from hell and when he goes 'ghrghghghghghrgh' in the middle of the night, it causes me to sit bolt upright and utter a Hail Mary of desperation!
I'm not comfortable. I *know* the cat is needy and feeling terribly disoriented and uprooted and I've done everything I can to make him feel at home (we brought some of Pat's clothing for him to sleep on and kept his old food dishes etc). But he's not a comfortable cat and even after a fortnight, he still roams around looking for a way out.
One good thing is that he's made friends with Reg and will sit companionably with him on the windowsill. He's learned to ignore the dog when she ask him to play (you know how dogs do that thing with the head near the ground the bum in the air with tail wagging). He's even learned to stand away from the door when anyone comes in or out. Which is good of course.
If he'd only learn to stop spraying my blessed bedroom with his blessed aroma, then I'd be a lot happier. I know he's only trying to mark off some territory for his own, but it's *my* bedroom where my marital bed is! Fair dinkum! Is nothing sacred?
Thank you for letting me vent. I'm going over to pick up my friend, Pat, so she can come and visit tomorrow. She'll be glad to know he's settled and happy and of course she doesn't need to know about the spraying. It's my problem now.
Yay.
We already had two cats (Genevieve and Reginald), so I felt our cat quotient was full already. Then, disaster struck an old friend and Trant arrived to liven things up.
Some years ago, I had a reunion with the teacher who made a huge difference in my life. She gave me poetry and Shakespeare and logical thinking and theology and a whole lot of other great stuff besides. She was The One for me. You know how there's often one special teacher or person in your life that really changed the way you think? Well, like that. She happened to be a nun, but that didn't stop her country way of swearing or expressing things in a very - ah - biological way. She was fabulous! Still is, even at the age of ninety-one.
And therein hangs the problem. A couple of weeks ago, this wonderful woman who spent the latter half of her life caring for men at risk in rural communities (and winning the Order of Australia Medal for it) was plomped into a nursing home! Mind you, at ninety-one, independent life was getting more and more difficult for Pat, who was having trouble coping with ordinary day-to-day concerns, but she had just three days warning to empty her little flat and find somewhere to put her beloved cat.
That's where I came in.
No one else stepped forward and it looked as if a Visit to the Vet might be the only answer for Trant (named after a village in Thailand). That would have been preposterous, since he's only six years old and a beautiful cat (if you're into cats...). So he's here now, acclimatising. Yay.
The house smells like cat pee. He sprays. He piddles. He poops on the edges of the litter box, not in the middle. AND HE YOWLS in the middle of the night! He doesn't yowl in the way of most cats, where they sit on the back fence and go 'rawwwrrrrrr'. O no! He has an unnaturally basso profundo voice which sounds like a demon from hell and when he goes 'ghrghghghghghrgh' in the middle of the night, it causes me to sit bolt upright and utter a Hail Mary of desperation!
I'm not comfortable. I *know* the cat is needy and feeling terribly disoriented and uprooted and I've done everything I can to make him feel at home (we brought some of Pat's clothing for him to sleep on and kept his old food dishes etc). But he's not a comfortable cat and even after a fortnight, he still roams around looking for a way out.
One good thing is that he's made friends with Reg and will sit companionably with him on the windowsill. He's learned to ignore the dog when she ask him to play (you know how dogs do that thing with the head near the ground the bum in the air with tail wagging). He's even learned to stand away from the door when anyone comes in or out. Which is good of course.
If he'd only learn to stop spraying my blessed bedroom with his blessed aroma, then I'd be a lot happier. I know he's only trying to mark off some territory for his own, but it's *my* bedroom where my marital bed is! Fair dinkum! Is nothing sacred?
Thank you for letting me vent. I'm going over to pick up my friend, Pat, so she can come and visit tomorrow. She'll be glad to know he's settled and happy and of course she doesn't need to know about the spraying. It's my problem now.
Yay.
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