Suzy Says

You can take the girl out of Oakland*, but you can’t take the Oakland out of the girl…

L’il A has taken to acting like a little hoodlum lately. She probably has a tattoo lurking under her fur. Her target: the Notorious D.O.G. gang.

When Rob was helping me with the great Painting Project last week, Star showed her objections to being left home alone by breaking out and joining us. L’il A showed her objections to a rival gang member being on her turf by puffing up hugely and clawing at the unsuspecting (and surprised) Star.

I shooed Audrey away, but she hid under the house, and when Star walked by, Audrey pounced on her. Star was shocked and backed away, wondering what the hell was going on. Audrey was unrepentant.

Rob took Star home again and Audrey ran off to terrorize the local bird population for a change of pace.

Yesterday, Luna was lying on the dusty driveway, minding her own business, when L’il A pulled the puff’n’pounce on her. Luna wisely trotted home, but I have to say I’m worried about this trend. One of these days, Audrey is going to pull this crap on a dog who is less understanding than Luna or Star and she’ll be hurt or even killed. Attacking someone who is about a hundred times bigger than you are is not the greatest idea.

Any thoughts on how to reform this feline delinquent before it’s too late? Possibly a well-timed and well-aimed squirt of water? All suggestions welcome.

*News like this certainly makes me glad I did.

A misty morning at Woodhaven

~Yawn~

Audrey’s been pretty good about her nightly imprisonment. She generally comes in on her own before dark, settling on the bed for her beauty sleep while I watch old movies to escape the present. She usually doesn’t wake me up before dawn, though today she was determined to go out at 5:45 am, whereas I was determined to stay asleep.

Guess who won.

It’s very foggy this morning, so we compromised by letting her out at 6:05, when it was essentially light out, but the fog created a sort of faux-darkness. I even had the light on while I made coffee, as well as a sweater. It was 58 degrees in the house this morning, and as I waited for the coffee to brew, I pondered the fact that if it were winter, I’d put the heat on, instead of leaving the door open a crack to let Princess Audrey in and out.

Go figure.

Yesterday, I did three loads of laundry (light, dark, and Megan). I virtuously hung out my laundry and put Megan’s in the slightly scary dryer. About 3:00, the fog rolled in to the point where it was making the laundry wetter, not dryer, to be outside, so I ended up putting it all in the dryer, propane bill be damned.

So much for being green-ish.

While I was doing laundry, Megan and Rob were winding their way up and down the curvaceous challenges of Highway 20, on their way to visit the surgeon who operated on Meg a week ago. He took out the stitches, some of which were quite recalcitrant, and said she was doing well. She’ll see him again in late August, when he’ll give her a final check before letting her go back to work, nearly four months after the original injury, half of that spent dealing with bureaucracy and fighting to get the surgery done.

Audrey sitting in the shower window

You can see that I’m not kidding about the window actually being in the shower, allowing for more opportunities for flashing meter readers than the average house.

In this picture, I have managed to completely avoid showing you any of this past week’s painting endeavors, though I swear I have painted the shower window white, and also the piece of wood crossing the window.

The door to the left leads to the back porch and the outdoor shower.

Today, I peeled the tape off the now-painted many-pained window on the outside and taped the inside. Still to go: the many-pained front door and the electric lime-green floor, plus et ceteras. It’s true that once you start painting, it’s hard to stop. It also makes sense that “pain” is part of “painting”.

I do have the perfect excuse for not painting, though: taking care of Megan as she recovers from her long-awaited knee surgery. This mostly entails the occasional pillow fluff or juice pouring, along with eating junk food and watching “Harry Potter” movies. Sometimes I make dinner and do the dishes. Exhausting.

Yesterday, I did make an express trip to the farmers’ market, which is open for all of two hours one day a week. With Megan’s list in hand, I zipped through the stalls in record time, mentally cursing the idiots who stand in the middle of the aisle in order to converse while taking up the maximum space possible and their buddies who meander across Main Street without bothering to look for cars or other people.

I selected nectarines, plums, blueberries, and goji berries from the controversial fruit people, off in their little corner past the pointed sign saying “Thanks for shopping LOCAL”. I’m sorry, but fruit like that doesn’t grow well on the foggy coast. And if these people, who grew it and picked it themselves, want to bring it here, I’m happy to buy it. They’re really nice people, too.

Next up was local lettuce, onions, our favorite soap from Lovers Lane Farm, a loaf of bread, and I was out of there! I also picked up some corn and tomatoes for me.

I was parked near the new hardware store beside Mendosa’s, so I popped in and asked about floor paint. The friendly and knowledgeable clerk gave me good advice and a great deal on some light grey paint. On my way back home, I stopped in at the local store. Lu had kindly dropped off an industrial ice pack for Megan. I asked the clerk about it, and she called across the store, “Hey – can you get Meg’s ice pack out of the walk-in?” Armed with an ice pack, I resumed my nursing duties and once more marveled at the marvels of small town life.

Vogue and Vanity Fair are my two luxuries. At $12 a year each, they’re affordable luxuries, even for me. However, my luxuries have been letting me down lately. First there was the Vanity Fair cover with the oily soccer guys in terrifying Speedos; then the Vogue with Oprah and Lady Gaga (a hailstorm of mediocrity – and surely one of the silliest celebrity names ever); now Vanity Fair has Angelina Jolie, the most boring celebrity ever, with her incontinent child collecting and tedious personal life; and Vogue has Gwyneth Paltrow, the former It Girl who once said “I’d rather die than let my kid eat Cup-A-Soup”. Now, there’s a girl with her priorities in the right place.

After yet another hard day of painting, my luxuries may have let me down and my patience may have run out, but there are always the consolations of a cocktail, that never-fail attitude adjustor, and petting little Audrey, seen here having a nap in a box in the yard, recently used for spray painting the flash heater’s chimney flat black:

There is nothing Audrey likes better than a good box. Unless it’s a good nap.

Finally, after three days of labor, the outside wall is finished! As a reminder, here’s the “before” picture again:

And here’s the finished product, with the chimney painted, yellow electrical cord hidden, flash heater painted, and masking tape removed:

I think I achieved my goal of “slightly less crappy looking”, don’t you?

Before

It’s a lovely, sunny Saturday. It seemed like a good day to paint the wall. You know, the one with the flash heater outside and strange, convoluted piping. I should have known better than to start any project during the reign of terror of the comma*, when I tend to be at my crabbiest and least patient – I should have spent the day lying on the couch, watching Marilyn movies, eating PopTarts, bemoaning the utter uselessness of ibuprophen and wondering why everyone acts as if it’s the answer to everything – but I am a) a slow learner; and b) not all that smart. Though I’m apparently the queen of lengthy sentences.

I assembled my appropriately named quart of paint, a brush, a piece of cardboard, painter’s tape, and a small step stool. I figured it would just take an hour or two, easy. In this, as in many things, I was wrong. Fortunately, Rob stopped by to point out the error of my painting ways, such as:

• Don’t wear sandals.
• Use a real ladder, not a step stool.
• Don’t hold the can of paint while you’re painting. Pour some of it into something smaller, in case you Calamity Suzy it.
• It’s a good idea to measure the wall before you buy the paint. That way you’ll actually have enough. Imagine.
• I should have primed the wall first. Oh, well.
• Clean off the spider webs and dirt before applying painter’s tape.
• Yes, it is gross.

  And I thought I’d done so well in picking out a nice color and telling the guy it was for an exterior. I’m convinced that this, among many other things, is in that grown-up manual I never got.

  It soon became apparent that a quart would not be enough, especially when painting this weird chipboard stuff, which lived up to its name by chipping and peeling at every opportunity. It’s also thirstier than F. Scott Fitzgerald after a particularly grueling day of screenwriting.

  While I was swearing and daubing, Rob removed the bright aluminum thing from the top of the flash heater and is spray painting it for me. He also removed the decaying lattice over the bathroom window and rerouted and hid whatever that yellow cord was on the wood part of the wall.

  While we were doing that, Star was escaping from Rob’s backyard, bounding into the middle of the proceedings, annoying Audrey and making her puff up to about six times her size. She clawed and hissed at Star until Rob tied Star up. Audrey sat just out of range, giving Star the stinkiest stink eye you’ve ever seen. Audrey has become much more territorial in this post-June world, and now growls and claws at any dog she sees.

  I’ve used up all the paint, so I can’t post an “after” picture until I go to town and get more paint (don’t hold your breath). But here’s a “during” photo:

  

  *I’m not calling it a period anymore, because that suggests an end to something. Whereas a comma suggests a series of things, possibly even an unending series of things, which is the way things seem to be going.

As I write, the Amerigas truck is outside, filling the tank with gas and the house with a hideous smell. It’s supposed to smell like garlic, but it doesn’t smell like any garlic I’ve ever experienced, raw or cooked. Thankfully.

Audrey ate less than half of the tiny can of repulsive wet food I bought for her birthday. So much for celebrating. She did, however, manage to knock chunks of it on the floor while eating it, so I could have the fun of picking it up as well as putting it on the plate. The gift that keeps on giving…

Megan didn’t have a very romantic anniversary, either. We did the three hour tour during the power outage, and after we got home and decanted our respective groceries, I brought some wine over and we drank it in the garden. So there was some celebrating. They really liked the card, too.

Megan started her anniversary early with a trip to the store for coffee and the local paper, which featured my story about Star on page two. Page Two! I was very excited. You can’t see it on line, unfortunately, but I bought a couple of extra copies on our way to town. Let’s hope that Star finds a great home soon.

The mail was good to me, too: I got a postcard from Quince’s mother, who was visiting her native Scotland, and there was the Motel 6 voucher. Now I can stay for free at any Motel 6 in the country, though it’s most likely that I’ll stay at the one in a seedy part of San Francisco. At least I won’t have to drive a couple of miles to get coffee there.

And finally, my library haul was oh so Suzy, including “The Carrie Diaries”, the prequel to “Sex and the City”, and Elizabeth Taylor’s “My Love Affair with Jewelry.”

Audrey, Quince, and June, July 16, 2007

More celebrating is in order today.

My beautiful niece and my little cat share a birthday today! It couldn’t happen to more adorable beings.

I remember that my niece took her time arriving in this world, possibly because she knew what an unlovely place it is, but more likely because she was putting on the finishing touches before making her beauteous debut. She was just about the prettiest baby I have ever seen, and set an impossibly high standard for those that followed. I have spent the rest of my days being slightly horrified by the appearance of other babies.

Happy birthday, Petal!

As for June and Audrey (above), you can see that they were pretty much the nieces of the cat world. In that picture, they are about two weeks old. Notice that they are together, as they always were.

Audrey is celebrating her birthday by chasing two very loud and argumentative Steller’s Jays in the garden, and she’ll get her very own tiny tin of repulsive wet food tonight, the cat equivalent of birthday cake.

Happy birthday, precious girl!

Audrey’s new hangout

1. I followed my sister’s advice and complained to the Motel 6 manager. He apologized and is going to mail me a gift certificate good at any Motel 6 in the entire US of A. I said thanks, but privately wondered why companies whose products have disappointed you offer you more of the same disappointing product to make up for it. “Sure, we lost your luggage and nearly killed you, but hey, why not try it again for free?”

   I kept that thought to myself, though.

2. Rob did fix the cat door of death. It’s sealed at all times, though I guess I could take the cover off during the day. It seems unnecessary with all the other doors being open, some of them in a so far vain attempt to get rid of the booze’n’condiment smell in the pantry.
3. It looks like we’ll have to come up with a Plan B for Star the foster dog if/when Meg has her knee surgery done. Star is just one of those dogs who like to chase anything that crosses her path, from quail to kitties, and the thought of her chasing my remaining kitty makes me quail, so she can’t stay here post-op as originally planned. Hopefully our collective ingenuity will come up with an alternative which will stop Star from bouncing on Megan in her Tigger-like fashion while keeping the local cats un-chased.
4. Speaking of cats, Harriet got sick of being an invalid yesterday and took off all day. [Update: she’s back!] I’m hoping this means that her leg is feeling better, though still dislocated, and also that she is back home by now (it’s too early to call and find out). Megan is much more philosophic about these things than her paranoid big sister. She says, “She’s lived here all her life, and if she doesn’t come home, it’s because she doesn’t want to.” Whereas I have already called Audrey with treats because it’s 8:00 and I haven’t seen her since I let her out two hours ago. She came, ate the treats, and left.

You can see in the picture that she has a new place to hang out. It’s to the left of the sliding glass doors and to the right of the bathroom door leading to the porch (the surprisingly useful one). I’m not sure why this part of the house is open like that, but I’m planning to put potted plants in there one of these days.

That’s one of my vague home improvement plans, like painting parts of the exterior, finishing the de-hippifying and clean-up of the garden, and doing something about that godawful lime green floor in the foyer and bathroom that may or may not ever happen. However, Mark has promised to buy me new carpet for the sleeping loft, so once that’s installed, maybe it will spur me to get going on the other projects.

Or not.

Drinking bottled water really makes the recycling pile up, my friend. I notified Rob a couple of days ago that one of the recycling bins was full, even by his exacting standards (you would not believe how much stuff he can jam into one bin). The dump is only open on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, so notification is essential.

I was washing the dishes in hose water when I heard a mighty crash. I thought it might be Rob hard at work, but it turned out to be gravity. One of the shelves in the pantry had given way, depositing full bottles of brandy (it’s medicinal!), wine, beer, and partly full jars of peanut butter (organic!) and soy sauce (“low” sodium!).

You can imagine the smell.

I stood there for a little while in my silly sandals, contemplating the mess and how to clean it up. After a period of reflection, I went and put on my trusty sneakers, got the mop, filled the bucket in the shower, and went to work. First, I swept up the glass, trying not to breathe too deeply, and put it in a paper bag, which then went in the not full recycling bin.

Then I mopped the floor, and since there’s a drain in the floor, I figured I could use the hose to rinse it. Alas, the hose was not there. While wondering where the hose had gone (is there a lively hose nightclub scene in Hooterville which I don’t know about?), I decided that this was probably the perfect opportunity to face reality and put away June’s dish after I washed the glass and booze out of it.

I called Mark, and it turned out that he had repo’d the hose. He said he’d bring it back.

While waiting for the hose’s return, Rob came by to really take the recycling. He pointed out the serious design flaw that led to the crash, and also pointed out that it could have been worse. After all, Audrey could have been eating in the direct path of the bottles. And two bottles of beer survived.

You have to look at the bright side.

When Mark brought the hose, Rob quite correctly assessed my hose skills and took over the rinsing job himself. He also took the recycling and went off to make me a new shelf.

What would I do without him? I hope I never find out.

Update: I just sprayed Nature’s Miracle on it. I’m not sure it’s quite that miraculous, though. Is anything?

Further Update: I heard water running, and discovered water pouring into the pantry. Hey, it’s thoroughly rinsed now. It still smells like….nothing I’ve ever smelled.

Mark ran over and fixed it. Nothing like Dial-A-Boy when you really need it.

Audrey chilling in her clubhouse. No grown-ups allowed!

Not ready for her close-up

The girls have always been good at adapting to whatever circumstances they find themselves in. First, they went from the safety of their mother to the weirdness of my loft, the converted woodworking shop of a Victorian coffin factory, where they shared the space with an elegant German Shepherd, the Lovely Rita.

Then they were taken on an airplane far, far away, then in a car, then in a hotel somewhere. After that, they moved into a little house in a scary city. But they always had each other, and no matter what happened, they could curl up together and forget about it all.

Recently, they were driven a long way to a house in the country, where they shared the space with the stray cat their girl had brought from the scary city for no known reason. But they were too busy exploring the woods and the novelty of going outside to worry about that. And anyway, time took care of that problem.

Now June is gone, and I wonder what Audrey thinks. Is she lonely? Does she miss her sister? They were together before she was born, and the reason I adopted Audrey along with June was that they spent so much time together, even when they were just a few days old.

Audrey is adjusting well to her new regime, as she always has. Above, you see her hanging out in the garden on the table left over from Rose’s funeral fiesta, which is her little club house. I bet she’ll be sorry when Mark gets around to taking it away.

She’s been sleeping more, and spending more time in the house and with me. She hasn’t gone bananas asking to go out at night, maybe because the novelty is gone, or maybe because she knows what happened to June, or maybe because she’s one of the best-adjusted cats around.

When I’m reading in bed at night, she sits on my lap, or climbs onto my chest so she covers my face with her fur (making reading challenging), or, my personal favorite, curls up against my side with her head on my chest, purring. She sleeps on the bed most of the night now, which she never did before.

Before June’s disappearance, I complained to Megan that Audrey was like a college kid, coming home for food and laundry and then going out with her friends all night. Now it’s like she knows I need her. Maybe she needs me, too.

Let’s review.

In the past couple of months, I have lost two of my three adored (and adorable) cats. My sister’s dog hurt her leg, then she hurt her leg, then her cat hurt her leg. Three weeks after her injury, my sister is still waiting for a date for her surgery, and woke up with excruciating dental pain early this morning.

It turns out that her dentist is, wait for it, having knee surgery, so she was referred to a different and unknown dentist, who she saw first thing this morning. She has an abscessed tooth, and the replacement dentist wanted to drain it on the spot and do a root canal. My sister said no. The next appointment they had was in July, but she took it and a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers and went home.

Back home, she called Lu, who called in a favor to her own dentist, who Meg is going to see on Thursday. Lu’s dentist recommended that Meg also take ibuprophen to bring down the swelling, which not only worked, but was not suggested by Dentist One. I think Dentist Two is definitely the way to go.

However…the root canal/abscess situation complicates the knee surgery situation, assuming that a date is ever set. They do blood tests before surgery to make sure there’s no infection or high white blood cell count, and there will be until the tooth thing is dealt with. God only knows how this will affect the whole worker’s comp bureaucracy.

And in other fun news, it looks like Megan’s cat, Harriet, may have to have to have her leg amputated. Apparently the fix it surgery is less likely to be effective when the femur is as dislocated as Harriet’s is – you can see it through her skin, the poor thing – so she might go through the surgery and find it doesn’t work in the long term. Supposedly cats adjust well to being three-legged, but I have to say the prospect kind of fills me with horror.

As I was making chocolate pudding for my poor sister today, I pondered the family curse and its remarkable creativity. It never stops coming up with new and horrible ways to mess with us. I’m beginning to think it might be worth finding a gypsy to remove the curse.

I was drinking my thimbleful of coffee and reading Postsecret, my usual Sunday morning routine, when I noticed a movement under the stairs.

It was a mouse!

I screamed, spilled coffee everywhere, and looked for Audrey, who was peacefully sitting on the back porch, having a bath and completely oblivious to the terror of her unpaid and adoring servant. The intruder retreated under the refrigerator, and when Audrey finally meandered into the house, she sat near it, clearly on alert. It’s the first time I’ve seen a mouse in the house since I moved in. Obviously the mice are taking advantage of the abrupt drop in the cat population.

While Audrey was still on patrol, Megan and I went to the Safeway, so she could buy groceries and I could re-up my supply of Vitamin B(ooze) and Vitamin C(hocolate) and get asked for ID by the cashier. I explained that I was twice the required age and showed him my driver’s license. “It’s a fake,” he said, winking.

When I got home, there was bird poop on the leather bench in front of my couch, which doubles as a footrest and a coffee table.

I leave the doors open during the day, whether I’m here or not, so I’m guessing that the Steller’s Jay who keeps flying into the sliding glass doors in the living room finally made it inside. There were no feathers or bodies to be seen, so I’m assuming that both the home invaders have moved on.

Is that a treat, or are you just happy to see me?

Since Megan’s been sidelined by her ongoing injury – two weeks since her MRI and no surgery date in sight – she’s had to ask for help training Star. We want to keep the training sessions going, since the newspaper piece should appear on July 1 and we’re hoping to show Star off to prospective adoptive parents at the big Humane Society event on July 10.

Fortunately, Megan has built up a lot of goodwill over the years, and people have been really helpful, donating their time and expertise to make Star the best Star she can be (and the most adoptable).

Yesterday, we met Carol in the village. We handed Star over to her, and she took Star all over the place, meeting new people and dogs. Just the hand-off itself was a minor triumph, since Star had refused to walk with Carol alone on Tuesday.

While Star was out and about and Megan was stranded on a park bench with the latest Victoria Thompson*, I wandered around and took a few photos for you, so you can walk along with me.

Doesn’t it look like it’s 1945 instead of 2010?

Another sign of the passing times:

I checked, and the phone book is still in there. Just in case.

A water tower for you to live in, with a view of the ocean. Looks like a great place to dream and write:

Star did really well, and today she’s playing with Lu’s dogs, Harlow and Marco. She’s come a really long way in the two months we’ve had her. Tonight we’re planning to have a barbecue at my house with Star in attendance. We have to get her used to being here, because if Megan ever has her surgery, Star will have to sleep with me for the first week or so. Megan can’t risk having 52 pounds of musclebound dog jumping on her leg in the middle of the night. Hopefully Audrey can adjust to yet another night time change. And she can sleep upstairs in the dog-free zone.

*Megan introduced me to these fun, Victorian-era whodunits set in New York a few years ago. So I’m next when she’s finished with this one!

Audrey in sunlight and shadow

It was country dark by the time I got home. The city-dwellers among you would be shocked by the totality of the dark, with no streetlights or ambient light other than the stars and a crescent moon.

Driving through the tall redwoods near the end of the drive (we refer to the steep, switch-backed part of the road after Route 128 becomes Highway 1 as “the home stretch”, even though it’s about 7 miles home from there) was quite creepy, with the ancient trees looming over the road, impenetrable darkness outside the comforting glow of the headlights. I tried not to think about Stephen King stories or monsters bursting out of the woods, with varying success.

Arriving at my pitch-black house, I discovered that I couldn’t park in front of it. There was a bunch of chairs blocking the way, so I used Catrin’s space instead. I went inside my house through the surprisingly useful bathroom door on the back porch, closed it, then opened the bathroom door to the hallway. Audrey ran in, and was trapped again for her trouble, as I took a flashlight and unpacked the car.

Once everything was safely in the house, I released my poor kitten and gave her treats. She was very happy to see me. I don’t think either of us enjoyed our day apart. I later learned that Rob came by to check on her, and she was meowing sadly at the door and so lonely that he came back after dinner to sit with her. She’s never been left completely alone before – she always had June Bug, even before she was born – so it must have been hard on her.

I wonder what she thinks about her disappearance. Both girls knew Henry Etta was dead, having sniffed and inspected her, but Audrey must wonder the same way I do. She seems to be adjusting to her nightly imprisonment. She sleeps with me sometimes – which wakes me up with June flashbacks – and although she does claw at the door, especially once day is beginning to break, I just have to suck it up. Better lost sleep than a lost cat.

On the drive home, I thought that this whole nightmare could have been avoided if I had just stood firm and kept them in at night. In retrospect, I cannot believe I ever let my little girls out in the inky blackness full of unseen predators. It literally makes me sick to know that the loss of the magnificent June Bug is entirely my fault and was as preventable and senseless as my father’s death.

Yesterday, Catrin’s cat Fiona wandered in and gave me a shock. Audrey saw her too, and stared for a moment, then ran over to her at warp speed. Realizing it wasn’t June, she shooed her out of the house, and then came over to me to be petted. We sat together for a while, both thinking of our June Bug and, I think, taking comfort in each other’s presence.

Tiny picture of Harriet as a tiny kitten

It turns out that Harriet managed to dislocate her leg from her hip, if I understood all the medical terminology flying around Dr. Karen’s sunlit office yesterday afternoon. Apparently, this is quite a feat for any cat, and can usually only be accomplished with the assistance of a car or a heaping helping of gravity.

Harriet lost her voice years ago*, so she couldn’t explain what happened to her. Although Megan dodged a bullet with Schatzi, who now has approval for longer leash walks, it hit her fair and square with Harriet, who will have to have surgery. With the lethargy of workers’ comp in scheduling Megan’s surgery, it’s anyone’s guess who will go under the knife first.

As for me, I’m off to the bright lights of Santa Rosa, possibly best-known as the perfect small town in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Shadow of a Doubt”, but now best-known as a traffic nightmare for which ten exits are not enough. It’s not a small town anymore.

While I’m enjoying the swank amenities of Motel Six, Audrey will be in solitary confinement, since I’m trapping her in the house while I’m gone. Better safe than sorry. Megan will stop by and check in on her. She’ll probably be glad to see me go, because last night I successfully and expensively Advantaged her, and she gave me the stink eye all night, running away in disdain and disgust if I dared to approach her.

*Though this did not deter her from yowling all the way to the vet’s office. Megan said it was the loudest she’d been in years, so I guess it’s all about motivation. At the office, a woman asked if there was a Siamese in the carrier. I said, “No, just a really pissed-off tabby.”

Native silk moth on my front porch

As if being a part-time prisoner weren’t bad enough for Audrey, I sort of poisoned her.

Just a little bit.

For the past couple of months, she’s been scratching a lot, and I had several flea bites. Advantage is expensive, and at the time, I had three cats and one tube of Advantage. So I delayed, thinking I’d wait until summer kicked in to get more. Since the Advantage supply now meets the demand, I figured I’d anoint Audrey with it.

Easier said than done. She hates being picked up, and is incredibly squirmy. Once I tried and failed to pick her up, she was onto me and out the door. She ran away every time she saw me coming, so I waited until she was napping and squidged it on.

Unfortunately, I squidged it on the side of her neck instead of the middle, and about two minutes later, she went racing through the house drooling like mad. I caught up with her under the wheelbarrow, where she continued to drool and stare at me accusingly with her big green eyes.

I called Megan, who advised me to call Dr. Karen (why didn’t I think of that?). Dr. Karen said not to worry, Audrey wouldn’t die. All I had to do was rinse out her mouth and wash off the expensive medication, which probably was not 99% effective in the five minutes it was on Audrey.

Since Audrey was already deeply suspicious of her jailer/attacker, she was not amenable to my grabbing her, oddly enough. So I had to resort to luring her with treats, then seizing her before she’d eaten more than one and carrying her outraged self into the bathroom, where I followed the program as prescribed. Remarkably, I was unscratched, though neither of us was unscathed.

I gave her more treats and she seemed to forgive and/or forget pretty quickly.

I’m going to see Dr. Karen today* and will re-up the Advantage supply and hope for a better result this time.

*Incredibly, Megan’s cat Harriet has injured her back left leg, just like Meg and Schatzi, so I’m helping Meg with carrying her there, since she is still on crutches and awaiting her date with the surgeon.

Poor Audrey. In the short space of a week, she’s gone from having a fun, cool mom like Lorelai Gilmore to having a freaky, overprotective one like Mrs. Bates of the famous motel.

If I haven’t seen her for ten minutes, I’m calling her and looking for her anxiously. Unlike her sister, she never deigns to respond, even if she’s two feet away, and when I find her, she always looks at me as if to say, “What now?”

Unfortunately for her, winning the cat version of “Survivor: Hooterville” means that I’ve been locking her in at night. As soon as darkness falls, I lure her in with treats and then slam the prison doors until dawn. She doesn’t even get reading materials to while away the long hours.

The Alcatraz treatment was slightly hampered at first by the fact that the balcony cat door has fallen out and I keep forgetting to ask Rob to repair it, leaving an empty space where the glass should be. I solved this problem temporarily by putting a stereo speaker in front of it at night.

Yes, Audrey does claw the door a couple of times a night, but it’s better than freaking out about her if she’s out and about in the dark. It doesn’t completely eliminate the freak out, either. I couldn’t find her when I woke up at 4:30 on the first morning, and looked all over the place, calling her. Even though I knew all the doors were closed, I was convinced she’d found some secret way out.

Eventually, I found her sitting in front of the heater, staring as if waiting for a mouse to emerge. Then she started chasing something all over the house, just as I had chased her.

The same afternoon Rob put the flyers up at the store and the post office, I had a call from a woman who said she’d seen June.

My heart leaped.

“Where?” I asked excitedly.

“In the long grass by the field where the bull is.”

“Near the store?”

“Yes.”

Now, the store is more than five miles away, and June has never been known to venture as far as Mark’s house, but I raced to the car and jounced down the driveway like a bat out of hell. I made it to the field in record time. Shaking a bag of treats (and shaking), I called for June through all the long grass, to the bull’s curiosity and that of drivers-by, but to no avail.

I saw a cat run down a side road and chased it, only to discover it was the wrong cat.

I went to the two houses across the road from the field. No-one was home at one, and at the other, an elderly lady answered the door. She was sympathetic and asked what June looked like, since there was a black cat with white paws (the one I had chased) and a multi-colored one who were often seen around there.

My heart fell as I realized that the caller had seen that cat, not June.

I gave the lady my name and number just in case, and drove slowly home, checking the ditches.

A couple of days later, another woman called just to say she was sorry and was keeping an eye out for June. Like many locals, she had tales of cats who went missing for a month, five months, a year, and turned up one day as if nothing had happened.

As I hung up the phone, I thought how nice it is to live in a small town, where a total stranger will call you up just to try and make you feel better. I remembered when I lived in Oakland and had left the keys in my car door in the driveway. An African-American gentleman had noticed this on his way to church and came to the front door to tell me. When I answered the door, he had his hands up before I said a word.

Evening light last night

Wondering where I’ve been?

I’ve been desperately seeking June Bug.

As you could probably tell from the tone of my last post, I was worried about her right away. When she wasn’t there in the morning, and didn’t come in for breakfast, a little seed of panic bloomed in my heart.

I’ve spent hours scouring the property from one end to the other, peering inside abandoned trailers, cars, boats, strange shackoid structures and the like. It was like an Awful Warning about hoarding. You would simply not believe the amount of decaying things and stuff semi-hidden in these bucolic woods. Most of the trailers and structures were open in one way or another, so she isn’t trapped in any of them. I figure anything I had trouble wrenching open was outside the possibility of someone without opposable thumbs, but I wrenched away anyway.

I looked up and down the logging road behind the house, on the lookout for signs of mountain lions and bobcats, or even, God help me, circling crows and vultures. At the end of the logging road, I walked down the Ridge, spying an abandoned Werther’s Original package in the ditch, which made me wonder if my mother was trying to tell me something. During her final illness, she ate bagfuls of them, always crinkling the wrappers or crunching them furtively. After she died, we found a huge stash of them. It kind of traumatizes me every time I see a bag of them.

I turned onto our driveway and after searching the structures there, stopped at the front house. I got to meet my new neighbor, a nice woman named Laurie who has a cute little Yorkie named Louie. She hadn’t seen June, and Louie would have barked if she had ventured up there, but Laurie said she’d keep an eye out for me.

Other than bothering Laurie, I repeated this procedure repeatedly all week, with the same results.

I made a flyer, and Rob put it up at the store and the post office. I figure everyone in Hooterville goes to one or the other sooner or later. Megan and I put flyers in our neighbors’ mailboxes and on utility poles. So every time I drive down the Ridge or check the mail or go to the store, I’m faced with them. I’m hoping that someone found her and took her in, since she doesn’t have a collar (too dangerous in the woods).

Finally, I took the flyers to the humane society and animal care and control, and checked the rescued cats. I knew she wasn’t there, but it had to be done. It was the worst of all, since it pretty much removed my last tattered shred of hope.

People keep telling me that she’s off on an adventure, but they don’t know June. She is a real homebody, who slept with me every single night, had a nap on the bed every afternoon, came when she was called (unusual for a cat, but she is an unusual cat), and was almost always visible around the house when she was outside. Megan, Mark and Laurie all say that they have never seen her at their houses, so she never went far. Audrey is the adventurous one, not June.

So I’ve lost two cats in two months. It’s heart-breaking.

Flowers from the farmers’ market:

A beautiful card from the girls:

So true!

The lamp of my dreams. It’s from Monica’s store of fabulosity, and I have longed for it for months. It was well out of my price range, but Lu and Megan chipped in and got it for me! I cried. It’s handmade, with buttons and iridescent beading:

A close-up:

It adds a touch of civilization to the sleeping loft. And it goes perfectly with my duvet cover, seen here, modeled by Henry and June.

Speaking of June: I haven’t seen her all day, and I have to admit to a certain level of anxiety. Unlike most cats, June does indeed come when she’s called – at least, most of the time – and she has never, to my knowledge, let a feeding time go by without paying its due attention. She skipped breakfast, and as I write, I have yet to see so much as her little pink nose or a white paw.

I have called her and looked through the bushes near the house, Junk Alley, and the logging road to no avail. I asked Mark, and he said that she didn’t venture as far as their house, but he’d keep an eye open. I went all the down to my brother’s old house at the very end of the driveway, but nothing.

Given the kitty mortality rate lately (Henry; my friend Dali’s cat Delpi; my niece and nephew’s 18 year old cat Tiffy; and Rose’s lovely old cat Gertie), I can’t help but worry. Think good thoughts that my little June Bug comes home safe and sound. And soon.