We have 4 cats. They are all supposed to live outdoors. One excuse for this is that they are supposed to be working cats, but mainly the reason is that they don't have a litter box inside (because we have dogs and dogs believe that cat litter contains treats for their pleasure alone- 'nuff said) and so if the cats come in and get comfortable in the winter (or the summer as it gets pretty hot here and the cats are hedonists of the first degree) they do not want to go out (for fear of not being able to get back in) and so leave us unappreciated liquid gifts in the vents and solid ones in the corners.
You would think that something this simple would not be difficult to manage, but like most things in life, carful inspection reveals multiple levels of complexity lurking just below the calm rational surface.
The cats try to sneak in when the weather changes. We have to play the game of convincing them to leave (or cornering them and forcibly ejecting them, which causes wear and tear on us and the cats). I will leave the descriptions of each of the cats with this one note; they all have their own individual and irascible characters.
One of the cats is named Chini (pronounced "cheeny"). This is short for aranchine- Italian for little orange- due to her coloring and original stature. She will always be a "little" cat to me, though some orange cats of her type end up as large as small dogs. Think Morris.
This morning she showed up inside the return air duct that I sit next to in the living room. I knew she was there because I heard her crinkling around gingerly on the insulated duct material inside the grate behind the filter. After a while I hear her begin to purr. No matter how I try to prevent it, she finds a way. I open the grate and she looks up at me lovingly and bounces into my lap.
Cats make their way into your life in the most interesting and varied ways. Once while working at a jobsite, I noticed the random call of a strange sounding bird throughout the day. Finally as we were packing up I traced the source of the bird and found it to be a tiny kitten in the bushes at the front of the house. We had that cat, Ziggy, for several years.
Chini alerted us to her presence in a similar way.
She showed up in our front field (which I have to tell you is at least 5 acres and spans a good 500 feet from the front road to the house). This infant kitten was evidently dropped off at the road and made it most of the way to the house across this field. That is quite a first journey for a tiny new life. She must only have been 4 inches long from nose to tail. Probably she was dumped right after her eyes opened. She probably wasn't alone either, but searching revealed no brothers or sisters. We have hawks.
So I fed this little nothing of a cat from the tip of my finger. It is what we do here; part of the facts of life on a farm.
This kitten developed a large swelling on the back of its neck and became lethargic. I expect it was bit by a spider. It did not look as though it would live and I was not about to spend $50 to $100 on a stray that might die anyway, these too are the facts of farm life, or death.
It is little known that veterinary medications (antibiotics and anesthetics) are more difficult to purchase on-line that are the human counterpart. I can buy valium right now and have it shipped to me from off-shore but there is nowhere that I can get amoxicillin without a prescription (even on-line). On the other hand, farm and feed stores sell castration kits, syringes and tetracycline to just about anyone who comes in off the street. It is perplexing. Other little known facts are that these are the same tools and supplies sold for human use. The conveyer in the Glaxo Smith-Klien factor that manufactures these bottles of antibiotics splits into veterinary and human before the labels are applied. The drugs are the same, the printed dosages are all that differ.
Most of the quantities are for bovines based by weight, which might make you think that the drug is more powerful until you look at the size of the syringe that they are recommending. I long ago got beyond my fear and squeamishness over this sort of personal medical responsibility. I did the math and created what I believed were miniature cat sized doses and gave the little orange thing shots for a few days.
She appeared to rally at first but after three days it looked as though we were going to lose her. On the fourth day I gave her a final injection. She looked bad. The tiny thing was not eating or drinking and lay listlessly in my lap. After the final shot she urinated on me. I put her in her shoebox wrapped in a towel and expected to find her dead.
The next day she was alert and downright spunky. The swelling was nearly gone and she ate and drank like a cat twice her size. She recovered fully –except that some folks around here think she is slightly brain damaged. She also thinks I am her mommy. This is definitely my cat.
Her supposed retardation is probably due to her gentleness and good nature more than any true evidence of impairment. But now that she has matured she has become an exceptional cat, which is all the more amazing because of her inauspicious beginning.
Here is a brief example. She and another cat we have became pregnant by the same mangy tom within a week of one another. Trudy, the other, is commonly referred to around here as The Demon or Tru-Demon. She is pure black and has a low opinion of (and no tolerance for) humans. Both moms had 9 kittens. Trudy nursed hers for a short time but soon abandoned them in favor of sleeping in the sun and eating the wet cat food reserved for lactating momma cats. Chini adopted Trudy's litter and fed all 18 of them at once!
We found out that cats procreate quickly, and we were subjected to another litter of 18 fur balls before we could get to the free spay/neuter clinic in Nashville. Damned if that little orange cat didn't do it again.
She's a good hunter too and certainly holds up her end of the "work-cat" bargain.
But the real proof of her innate intelligence is her persistent and successful attempts at house entrance. It is not strange that all the cats have learned to hang around the doors and launch through them when we have our hands full or are distracted. But Chini has made a fine art of finding entry.
When the idiots that built our house installed the main heating vents they did not match the output and return ductwork between the house and the package unit that sits outside. Consequently there is a 10 foot length of flexible ductwork, outside and on the ground, between the holes in the house that lead to the return and feed ducts and the ports on the metal furnace box. Not only is this ductwork laying on the ground, but the two plastic hoses cross over one another in order to match up. It is truly a cluster fuck of design errors. Why couldn't someone have noticed which side the unit was piped for and built the openings in the house to match? Morons. For one thing, the ducts are made of plastic and wire and even though they are insulated they are not weather proof. The crossing over puts the weight of the top duct on the lower one and compresses it, thus restricting the airflow. And since many outdoor creatures would prefer to live indoors, the thin plastic of the ductwork is subject to the chewing of rodents and the clawing of other beasts – possibly cats.
At the onset of her first winter Chini figured out that the duct led indoors. She showed up inside the air return grate next to my chair in the living room.
I have tried to build a cage around the ductwork. I even hired a sheet metal fabricator to build a box around it. It is no use; every year Chini finds her way through. Little Orange comes to tell me that the season is changing. I guess winter is truly upon us.
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