Hello, darklings!
This heat is just starting, and my cold, dark hearted self is struggling to adapt to it.
I’ve also been so invested in writing today, that I’ve not done a lick of the overtime I planned on, and near forgot to post a blog entry today! However, I think I bring fun times to this blog post, as there is a lengthy tale of beastie drama below.
Otherwise, I’m continuing to improve my diet, finding writing/work/life balance, trying to get into the habit of exercise, etc. I promise this goblin is trying to assure they have a good meat sack and state of mind to continue writing.
Working On: Just fanfic at the moment, but my writing group and I are doing a writing bingo soon where we are prompted with tropes, and I hope to get some good short story ideas out of it.
Research History This Week: Clergy clothing, mushroom leather, Edo period clothing, family tree structures (always forget how twice removed cousins work), air pollution from fires and coal burning cities, soapstone oil lamps, punctured lung recovery, risks of coughing hard with punctured lung, and Tolkien lore.
Writing Whoops: I could not find the spelling for “facetious” to save my life the other day. And tried to type “conspiratively” instead of “conspiratorially”.
Beasties Update: So Operation Parent Trap went okay, with an exception and surprise.
The three kittens we rescued are fully domesticated. The black one, Luci, is settling into his new home and loves to play with the dog’s tail. My roommate, who will be moving end of August, will be keeping the gray and white boy, who is a snuggle butt and loves being held. I decided the tabby girl has enough of a wild streak that she’ll be happier as an indoor/outdoor cat here (but not until she’s older and fixed).
So with homes for them figured out, that just left us to assure no more kittens were added to the already overbearing feral cat population. Best means of that is to trap, fix, and release. That’s proven and what we intended to do with the supposed mom and dad cat.
So, here we have a spay and neuter clinic that loans out humane traps for a fully refundable deposit. I have the same cage myself, but when I went in, I’m like, you know, if I go ahead and rent two traps, means I can bait all three and have a higher chance of caging the two feral “parent” kitties for their appointment.
Thank goodness I did.
The day before the fixing appointment, we herded all the domestic felines inside, baited the traps with sheba soft food and a chunk of meat. The Gray Momma “Knives” cat was trapped first. Easily put a blanket over that cage and got kitty moved to a quiet room not currently in use.
Daddy Vash was trapped shortly after. But he did not go peacefully. No. I get his trap covered, start carrying him to the quiet room, and he flocking hulks out of the clinic’s cage. Bent the bars holding the back door of it it and squeezed out. Into the house.
If you ever need a reminder of why you should never surprise grab a wild cat or force a wild cat into your home, this is it. This gray tabby totally lost it and literally climbed the walls and windows trying to get out. We discovered we kept quite a few breakables high up on shelves, because he seemed determined to scramble through every high place in his desperate search for an exit.
I lost my aloe veras to this scramble. Somehow, the decade old jade plant survived Vash’s stampede with only a few lost twigs.
I opened the window, propped the door open, because at this point, we were just trying to get him safely out before he hurt himself, us, or broke more stuff. Apparently playing possessed and climbing up walls and jumping at the ceiling is exhausting work, though, because he wedged himself atop a bookshelf in the corner and refused to move.
Realizing he was not going to move on his own, I tried to lever him out of the corner with a broom handle so he can run for the window and door only to discover that I am not stronger than a 2-year-old tabby. This wild tom somehow turned himself into the Blob, because while I could shift him about, he would not be budged from that spot.
Eventually, I go ahead and get the other cage. I open up its back wall, put it over him, and kinda used its door to just scoot him in. Thankfully, he is too tired at this point to break this cage or try to claw me through it. I get the cover over him, put him in the quiet room with Knives, and we wait.
The next morning, he was kind enough not to repeat his feat of strength. I gave the spay and neuter clinic back their abused cage, to which they said it was no bother, that it happened sometimes. They assure me they’ll reinforce the cage he’s in so he doesn’t freaking kool-aid man out of it before he’s rested from surgery. (Which they did, with super thick zip ties.)
So day goes by, I roll back around at pick up time to get the two “parent” kitties.
Only to discover that Knives, our gray and white “momma” kitty, was no momma at all. He got neutered, not spayed.
So this cat that’s been hanging out with the kittens all this time, one of which is a matching gray and white coloring, is Not the Momma. Possibly an older sibling (which is my guess, as I’ve observed older siblings doting on their younger siblings before). Maybe a very young dad (he’s estimated ten months old). But he definitely did not birth this litter.
So either we’ve never seen momma cat or she looks like Knives or Vash enough we didn’t realize. I’m actually thinking the former, because apparently in tighter knit wildcat communities, if something does happen to the mother cat, sometimes a caring male will move the kittens to a safer place.
And under our shed near a steady supply of food and water is a nice place, and would explain why they showed up so very abruptly without us noticing them before. We will likely never know, though.
Upon release, the two dashed into the woods like greased lightning. They’re still mad at us for the trapping and removal of their papa-puffs. But that’s okay. They still get food.
Watching and Reading: Nothing at the moment, but plan on devouring the second Omnibus of Harrow County first.
Create hard, corvids, and enjoy some free endorphin courtesy of playing kittens.
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