I have been informed that I have been wasting time and bytes writing about food and flowers and phones when I could, and SHOULD, have been posting about cats. After all, what is actually important in our house? Not the people and OUR issues, oh no. Life is all about the cats. Obviously I am not going to argue with them. GC is getting scrawnier and less agile every day. WC is quite hard of hearing and has lost weight as well. BC is wonderful – the child of my old age. *grin* I even saw her licking WC’s ear the other day. I’m sure she is doing something she shouldn’t, but other than getting on the table to see what I’m eating, I can’t think of anything that needed scolding. Okay not really true. She thinks any green leafy produce is for her. Any leaves left unsupervised for a moment will have a BC inspecting them. There is also her habit of knocking anything small and moveable off a flat surface. Last night WC and I were cuddling when we heard the clunk of something hitting the dining room floor – plastic dreidel.
I can’t imagine not having cats in the house. Our 3 years renting and the years at college were my only catless years. And when I was at college I came home most years to my cat. Even when we were renting we are only a few blocks from the cat I left with my parents. You know how THAT went, right? A typical ‘Dad’ story. When the time came to move out and find a place to live, we got the whole “you can’t take the cat with you, he’s used to going out, he won’t be happy incarcerated in a small apartment, he won’t have room”. Right. Of course. It was all about the cat. *grin*
While I can’t imagine living without my cats, I will say that living with aging cats can be quite a strain. GC needs meds twice a day and the other 2 should not be eating her meds. That means oversight until all the medicine-infused food has been devoured. Devoured is the correct word because GC is always starving. I know it’s due to whatever is wrong with her besides being 16+ years old. She is still a very happy cat – moving about the house, purring, demanding attention, checking on us to see what’s happening. If my husband opens tuna and begins to decant the water into little cat dishes, GC can make it down the stairs and into the kitchen in no time at all. GC often wants to sleep with me, however, and that IS a problem. It is probably indelicate of me to mention it but she has begun to have significant body odor. 😦 She also thinks that if I roll over to change position, that means that I am awake, and she is right up in my face meowing for cuddles. I often find I have to shut the door to lock her out so I can sleep. BC is HIGHLY offended by that closed door. BC also likes to sleep with me but I can’t lock her IN all night.
WC is also 16+ years, and is GC’s litter mate. We tend to blame everything on WC. One of them, or all of them, has stomach issues. I know cats have delicate stomachs but I’m willing to bet we have more than the average share of cat vomit. We tend to blame WC because we’ve both SEEN her in action. Either she really is to blame or she has no shame. Or both. She has the most demanding meow, more of a yowl actually. She doesn’t purr, she has never purred. I almost keeled over from shock a few weeks ago when for the first time in 16+ years I felt her vibrating while I petted her. What, up to now NOTHING was good enough to elicit a purr?? It was a silent purr, by the way, below human hearing range. WC tends to sit on her red couch most of the day. When she thinks we are not looking she slips into the living room to play with the 2 cat toys on the floor. The orange one is her favorite but I have seen her playing with the blue one too. If you look at her, she looks back denying it all, claiming you hallucinated both the sound and her paw extended into the grooves. When she is feeling cold she will go and sit in front of the fireplace until we come and turn it on for her. 🙂 Such a hard life she leads.
WC also informed us back in July that she was no longer going up and down the stairs for the litter box. She made this point repeatedly on the carpeted landing. When my husband pulled out the carpeting on the landing and the stairs she continued to educate us by going to the upstairs hall and making her point. We ripped out that carpeting as well. When she moved the battle to my relatively new, good condition wood living room floor her life expectancy appeared greatly shortened. When our (wonderful, perfect, adorable, best ever) dog was still alive, she was trained to use wee wee pads in the 1st floor bathroom so that we didn’t need to walk her except for the fun of it. I got out the weewee pads, moved a small litter box into the 1st floor bathroom and lo and behold – peace reigned. Everyone always talks about how clean cats are. Cats might themselves be clean but oh do they make a mess. We have 2 litter boxes there now, 4 weewee pads, and a blue cat litter-catcher pad, and there is still litter on the floor. Always. We are now cleaning the litter boxes several times a day (after all, WE use that bathroom too) and sweeping repeatedly. I’m giving serious consideration to buying a robotic floor sweeper and setting it free at night. WC also has the habit of announcing to me that the litter box needs cleaning NOW. She will stand in the door way and yowl at me to attend to my responsibilities. She is adorable. She is the silkiest smoothest cat ever. She strikes photogenic poses at the drop of a hair (and there are many hairs dropped in our house). But she is INCREDIBLY annoying.
BC. *smile* Ahhh, BC. She’s taken to watching me as I do my little yoga routine. She hangs out with me when I’m working. If my husband makes a noise upstairs she will race up there to check it out. She comes when we call. Okay, GC will often come when we call but that’s because she knows we only call her if there is food. At the moment BC appears to be getting everything she wants so she has not had to complain or otherwise discipline us. We were very lucky when we integrated her into the family. At first WC and GC were less than thrilled, but the 3 of them do get along quite happily now. We often find 2 of them relaxing together on a bed or couch – all the permutations have occurred.
I do wish that mealtime was not such a time sink and that we did not have litter on the first floor. I also know that comes the day I don’t have to worry about mealtime and litter, I will be extremely sad and lonely. For now, I have happy furry faces around.
Ahuva's Blog 
Excellent photo of BC’s “cute and innocent” pose. Also how she helps you with work. You left out that GC is the most friendly of the cats to your SISTER. That BC makes it clear that I don’t count, and WC is a sadistic monster to me. And fwiw, although you WILL miss the cat faces, it is HEAVEN to walk into a room that used to have scattered litter, or get into a bed that used to have stray individual litter granules from bed sharing, and not have to worry about it anymore. (Except that you will have PTLD–post-traumatic litter disorder–and keep looking for it anyway.)
Yeah, those stray individual granules are maddening. GC has always been the most reasonable of cats. She’s probably the one that calls to find out when the parade starts so that WC doesn’t have to do it. 🙂
GC has a beautiful soul.
Awww I loved reading about your three kitties. My cats lived to be 19 and 21. Now I have my neighbor’s cat that practically lives here since THEY are never home. I’d forgotten how busy cats are and how much supervising is involved. But so much fun.