jeff and i were both at our computers tonight when i heard a weird noise, kind of a scratchy scraping.  we turned to look into the kitchen, and saw smudge trotting through, holding his beloved piece-of-fur-with-a-bell-on-a-stick toy in his mouth.  the stick was dragging behind him as he ran, and that's what made the noise as it skittered across the tiles.

i gasped and jeff said, "oh, yeah, i forgot to put the toy away."  as smudge ran past me, i stuck my foot out and managed to stomp down on the stick, as it trailed a good two feet behind smudge, tethered by the bungee cord.  with the stick not going anywhere, the cord ran out of slack and smudge was jerked back -- because there was no way he was letting that bit of fur out of his mouth without a fight. i gave him a "fight" for a few minutes, but i had to put it away and get back to work. 

i just don't understand why a cat as smart as smudge ran past us with his purloined prize when he had to know we'd snatch it from him.  he definitely knows he's not allowed to have the toy all to himself, that's why whenever he manages to get it out of jeff's hand, he usually clamps down hard and heads for the bedroom to drag it under the bed and devour it before we can grab it away.

so why did he run right past us?  obviously, he was so proud of himself for stealing it, he had to throw it in our faces:  "hey, look what i got! ha ha!"  too bad his gloating was so short-lived.  silly smudge.

i went to the bathroom, and saw one of the kitties, minnie-moo, drinking from the flowerpot that catches the drips from the leaky hose.  i tapped on the window, and he came over, but when i opened it, he ran away.  then i saw, poking out of the big metal watering can, the kitty we haven't yet named.  he was staring at me with a look of pure surprise, shaking so much it was more like he was vibrating.  i may call him milkshake.

i ran to get the camera, but by the time i came back, he was out, and staring through the window at me.  his brother dora poked his head out of the can a little, but was too sleepy to do much more than peek.

i can't believe they were all jammed into a metal can on a 95-degree sunny day.

one of the ferals on my mother's deck just showed up one day, very timid. we'd only see glimpses of him -- all of a sudden, there's a little white siamese kitten standing in the leftover food dish, hoovering it up, and the next second he's gone.  at first, it was almost like we weren't really sure he was there, and his ability to disappear, along with his white coat, got him his name: ghost.

he's been here a few months and has grown from a little baby to a preteen.  he's less shy around the other ferals, and  although they don't accept him, they tolerate him.  sometimes, they let him eat with them.  squeak, of course, loves him.  ghost is his only friend.  they're both outsiders, not accepted by the cool kids, and they're probably only 4 months apart.  so we often see the two of them napping on the deck in the stack of chairs we call the condos, squeak on the top chair, ghost a "floor" below.  more often than that, squeak is all over him -- grabbing, biting, wrestling, squashing.

of course, he's still terrified of us, but he no longer throws himself bodily off the deck, limbs flailing as he plummets to the ground, just because one of us has walked outside.  now he knows we're often carrying food, and he runs to a safe position, but does not attempt airborne escape.

today, i looked out the kitchen window, to see who was hanging out on the deck.  picture a table with a large umbrella opened over it.  next to the table are two lafuma chaises.  my mother has hosed them off, and left them to dry - one is on its side, and the other is balanced on top, also on its side but facing the other way - and they are very unstable, since they're just balanced on their skinny side arms. here's the chair, in case you're really needing it to complete the mental picture.

so anyway, perched on the umbrella is a bird i've only seen once before in my life, and i have no idea what it is.  it looks like a cross between an ibis and a crane. or is that the same bird?  anyway, it's larger than a seagull, maybe two feet tall, and it's just standing on the edge of the umbrella.  and on the very closest bar of the top chaise, straining to get closer, is ghost.  the whole chair mountain is wobbling and shaking, and ghostie is shaking as well, doing that tushie-windup they do before they pounce.

i went screaming to the back door and pounded on the glass to make the bird fly away. i was not thinking of the bird, but of ghost, because assuming he actually got off the chair and made it through the air and landed on the bird or the umbrella, without bouncing off to the ground, that bird would have made confetti out of him.  its beak was almost as long as the kitten.

the bird ended up in a high tree in the neighbor's yard, and ghost sat on the deck, watching him and licking his lips.  that's a cat with a dream.

so patches' three little kittens spend a lot of time on the deck with their mommy, occasionally stealing a little of her food.  my mother has been getting angry, because every day she finds more kitten poop on the deck that she has to hose off.  she even sees patches scratching around trying to bury it, which is pointless since it's on a wood deck, and she would save herself a lot of aggravation if she would show her babies how to poop in mr. newsome's lawn next door like all the other neighborhood cats.

anyway, i was watching them yesterday when the one we call dora (for his exploring nature) squats down and tries to poop on the deck, just at the edge of one of mom's outdoor area rugs.  i can't tell if anything is coming out, but it looks like he's really working hard.  he goes three times -- each time moving over a little bit without getting fully out of his squatting position, just waddling a few inches to the right. super cute, although it looks like he's really having a hard time of it.

then he sits down on the carpet and scooches himself all the way down the 6-foot length of it, wiping his tush off on the rug.  he slides around a little more on the deck, but must not care for splinters in his butt, so he waddles over to the carpet and scooches around on his hiney some more.  (how many cutesy ways can i say "butt" in one paragraph?)

it's really adorable, but i hope he's not having digestive problems.

on another kitten note, mom's household kitty, squeak, is right now sleeping on my desk with his head resting on my arm.  good thing, too, because he's not going outside today -- he managed to take his collar off, again, and i can't find it.

rather than googling all over the internet, i thought i'd ask all you lovely cat people out there:  how long is a normal cat?

i took a tape measure, and i did his tail, then from the base of the tail to his neck, then from his neck over his head to the tip of his nose.  (you could try to get them in one shot, but i doubt you'll get your cat to stay perfectly still and stretched out.)

leave your kitty's measurements in the comments.

(smudge: tail 12.5 inches + base of tail to bottom of neck 17 + neck and head 9 = 38.5 inches.)

that's not my mood, that's the name of smudge's new best friend.  (well, i am a little irritated, actually.)  it's a big stuffed crab* he fished it out of the toy bucket one day, and now sometimes i wake up and it's in the bed with us.

last night when jeff and i were at our computers, smudge came strolling in, announcing his arrival with a garbled mouth-full meow.  the mouth in question was full of crabby.  he walked up to jeff, dropped crabby at his feet, and then sauntered off.

we used to think he was bringing his toys to play fetch, because that's usually what would happen - a few rounds of jeff throwing it and smudge retrieving it.  (smudge is a cat, by the way. just a reminder.)

now jeff thinks smudge "kills" crabby and then brings it to him. since it's way more normal for a cat to kill prey and bring it to his parent for approval than it is to play fetch, i'm going to agree with him.

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* jeff says it's not a crab, it's some kind of bug, but if i let myself think that i will never be able to touch it, so it's a crab.

i'm tired.  i woke up after about 6 hours sleep with a tummyache.  the hour or so it took to resolve itself, however, was not the problem... smudge decided that, for whatever reason, he had to attack me.  so my repeated trips between the bed and the bathroom were spent holding him off, prying him loose, spraying him in the face, and running for my dear life.  at one point i got into bed and before i could completely hide myself under the covers, he was on me, jaws locked around my forearm.

i've been using a lot of my new neosporin-to-go spray bottle.

tonight, i was going to introduce you to a particularly endearing aspect of smudge's personality, the one i call veruca salt.  (she's the character in charlie and the chocolate factory who famously whined, "i want an oompa loompa, daddy, and i want it now!") it shouldn't be too hard to understand why i call smudge that.  whenever he doesn't get what he wants, he whines.

usually it's because he's trying to "play" with one of us, which means he wants to rend the flesh from our bones with his teeth.  when we hold our arms out of his reach, or fold them so all he can get to is the unappetizing elbow, he sits back and whiiiiiiiines his displeasure.

tonight's veruca moment was brought on by jeff, who had the unmitigated gall to make a phone call after dinner, instead of smudge's preferred apres-meal activity, which is whipping a stuffed toy on a bungee cord directly at his face a thousand times until he (a) gets tired of jumping, or (b) eats it.

so veruca was stalking back and forth on the top of the bookcase behind jeff's chair, all pouty-faced, occasionally stopping to face him and let out a loud wail of frustration.  i went to get the camera, hoping to catch the charming behavior on film, so i could share it with all of you.

(for some reason, the videos seem to be stuck on "repeat" - sorry, i'm not really sure how i did that)

he just will not perform for the camera.  he'll look right at it, but if it's on, it's like the thing is radioactive - or he's afraid it will steal his soul.

well i was wrong.  patches must be a she, not a he, since mom said she saw the kittens nursing on her this morning.  i can't believe she hid the pregnancy.  just like a teenage mother.

i think i walked in on another nursing session just now when i peeked under the deck...

patches must have heard the door open and jumped up, ready to flee -- look at the kitties, they're all: "mom? where'd you go? i was drinkin!!!"

aren't they the cutest little mini-me's of their mommy?

(ew, and isn't it so creepy under the deck?)

let's zoom in on the babies, and ignore the squalor, shall we?

just a few minutes ago, our little family were how we usually are this time of night -- jeff and i at our side-by-side desks, on our computers, with smudge deep asleep on the area of desk we've cleared between us.  jeff and i were watching a video i had sent him...

and at about 3:48, remi sinks a really great shot, and in my excitement, i slapped down on the desk.

smudge takes off in a great arc, flying over jeff's monitor and almost clearing his entire desk, slapping him in the ear on his way down, landing on the floor, skittering two feet into the kitchen, and turning back to face the desk, crouched two inches off the floor, fuzzed to all get-out, and twitching. 

when jeff and i were able to stop laughing, i checked to make sure jeff's ear wasn't bleeding, and then i went to smudge. of course, he ran away, but i caught up to him and he let me pick him up and coo in his ear.  stroking his fur, i carried him back into the room, and put him on the desk.  the hairs in his ears were quivering.  he was looking around, trying to find whatever had scared him like that, and of course i was not telling him it was me.

************

it's now ten minutes later.  smudge still won't stay in this room, but he keeps coming in, looking around nervously, and running out again.

i definitely took off one of his nine lives tonight.  jeff got another one last week when he turned on the bathroom faucet after the water had been turned off for repairs.  the hissing and spitting as the water came on scared smudge so much, he fell backwards off the bathroom sink, landing between the sink and the tub on his butt.

so i guess that's seven left.