Say it With Cake: Stray Cat Sayonara

I should have gotten him a buck-toothed Deer cake to celebrate a week since surgery.

SAY IT WITH CAKE

CAKEY MESSAGES BROUGHT TO YOU BY CakeWrecks

Today was a week since Chauncey the Cat’s surgery so it was time to let him go. Somehow he seemed to know this as he was restless. I got to my studio at 10 AM today and pulled back the blankets and he blinked at me all sleepy-eyed and hunkered back down in his bedbox. So I made him a plate of Fancy Feast with a side of dry and slipped it into his cage.

Or maybe a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow parting gift cake

About 30 minutes later he started crying and I saw that he had accidentally pushed his plate out of the cage, out of reach. So I went over to fix this and he started hissing at me. He doesn’t often hiss at me.

Instead of a goodbye note he left me this cake which he must have made in his Kenner Easy Bake Oven

After fixing the plate I went back to work at my computer and heard him crying and this started a pattern of crying till I came to his cage and hissing when I got near. So I did it; I opened the door and also opened the door to the hallway and went back to work. I never heard a sound, but 5 minutes later I peeked over and the cage was empty. Dude was gone.

So I made this cake for him and left it in the hallway, near his new home. It has liver frosting.

I didn’t see him for the rest of the day but just now I walked out to the back hallway and there he was; sitting in his usual hallway spot staring at me. And crying. As usual – as had been our ritual for the past few months – I sat on the floor a few feet away and talked to him and he stopped crying and settled down.When I went back in my studio I saw him peek around the corner to look into the door that I left open for him. I am buoyed by that.

That’s it. We are back to where we were, more or less. I am glad that he is not mad at me I am glad that he seems to miss me.

I thought this was a dog cake but it turns out that it is a ewe cake.

Oh, and before I let him go, we added sheetrock walls to his special new home so that when the landlord’s dogs are here, they can’t annoy him, even when he is in his indoor patio. I even taped a picture me on his wall inside his new catitat.

Stray cat update #I-lost-track

THE STRAY CAT SAGA (back issues of this saga are here. See the Caged Cat Cam here.)

So this whole stray cat thing goes on and on, as things do if you let them, if you are a dramaqueen.

If Chauncey was black and white, he'd look like this inkblot. But he's butterscotchy-ish.

It is a wee bit overwhelming having this little living being in my studio because I feel responsible for his emotional well-being and so I ask my therapist for advice but she just asks me what I think she should think that I should think and do. So, I look to fortune cookies and friends for advice.

(He who hurries cannot walk with dignity.” Thanks ever so much, that’s very helpful.)

Now that she’s a male I have named him Chauncey, as was the popular choice in my naming-the-cat poll the other day. Captain Marvel Chauncey, the amazing (<–for some reason which I don’t yet know, but am certain of) stray cat. Chauncey for short with Marvie as nickname-in-waiting. I mostly think of him as Chauncey but call him Marvie, which rhymes with Harvey which makes me think of spying on my parents’ grownup parties when they’d laugh and eat Harvey Wallbanger cake.

Colored cream cheese Harvey Wallbanger cake sandwiches in blankets

And wear maxi skirts and have little cocktail napkins with funny things on them and eat little colored cream cheese sandwiches. We’d crouch on the top steps to the finished basement and go running every time someone went up the stairs to use the bathroom. I’d help make the colored cream cheese sandwiches and little folded mushroom pastry things and marvel over the jello molds. See how it all comes together? Harvey, Marvel, Marvie, grownups, responsibility, raising a stray cat. But I was talking about the stray cat.

Stray cat update III: Help name the newly male cat

PART I, PART II, PART IIB

POLL WITH MULTIPLE CHOICE AND WRITE-IN OPTIONS FOR NAMING THE CAT AT END OF POST

I finally got an appointment to have the stray cat checked, vaccinated and fixed on Wednesday. I was relieved to have the ordeal nearly over and also to have the chance to clean and rearrange her cage in a more logical manner, so she’d not hunker down in her litterbox in fear. I would put the new bed in a box I had made for her in the back, and the litterbox in the front, so I could clean it daily. This was a logical plan.

The Animal Control Officer was due to pick her up at 5ish and bring her back at 9ish, both in the PM.

It was a big day, that Wednesday.

"CAT" in his bedroom: post surgery

I went to the Doctor at 11AM and she diagnosed shingles and gave me a prescription. She also took blood and ran tests and booked follow-up appointments with her and also with a specialist.

This is not my exact Animal Control Officer, but is a reasonable facsimile

I took the first new pill at 6ish. Then I started feeling nauseous and anxious but that made sense since I have been always been against trapping this little stray cat who had appeared in my hallway months before. I was worried that she would be traumatized by a trip to the vet. When the ACO came I hid in another studio so I’d not get upset if she cried. I was getting really nauseous. As the nausea grew worse I thought, “this seems worse than nerves and worry. I wonder if I am allergic to this new prescription.” Then it hit BAD. This could not be nerves, I recall thinking in that blur of willspareyouthedetails.

At 8:30ish PM the ACO calls. She is out in the alley in the rain with my stray cat, who, BTW, is a boy as it turns out. She waits in the alley for 10 minutes till I can get to a place where I can let her in. I open the door, we put the cat in the newly cleaned and logically rearranged cage, I throw a few hundred dollar bills at her, ask her if she has a gun I can borrow (for me, not the cat) and as soon as she leaves (she would not give me her gun), I call a friend to take me to the ER. Because now I am sure this is some horrible reaction to the new anti-viral medication.

"Cat"'s temporary resting house with layout

By 1 AM I am on a bed and have been examined by a Physician at the ER who has looked at my arm and asked about the needle mark …

Trapped stray cat update

THIS WAS NOT REALLY MY PLAN: CAT TRAPPING PART II (WHICH COMES AFTER PART I)

Rabbits, lots of them. We want to fix Cholla so she won’t reproduce like rabbits.

My daily horoscope warned me yesterday – and last week – about too many goings with flows. But I didn’t listen. It seems easiest to just go along with whatever I am being told/asked/ordered/encouraged to do and then finagle/customize/circumvent and make an end run toward the right thing (to do) at that crucial moment. To please, and then subvert if necessary, toward a seemingly mutually-advantageous ending, has been my aim. I never wanted to trap the cat but was told I had no choice. So the cat-trapping thing sorta fell into this category and I was told, by the expert person; “Here is the trap. Now it is set. Call when the cat is in it and we will pick up the cat and take it to the vet who will examine it, fix it, and return it all shiny and fresh.” Good plan. The cat would be inconvenienced by a day or so. I agreed to that. But maybe I did not ask enough questions?

Poopie Jones, my neighbor’s cat, who Cholla used to serenade every night when she was FREE.

So, the cat was trapped and then the actual plan of now calling around and finding a vet floated to the surface of reality. On a Friday night. It seems there was no plan. I must have missed something. And it seems that vets don’t often work on Saturdays and are not so keen to see strays. This is not a wild animal. I think she had a home once and ran away from it.

Anyway, I am rolling with this. FREAKING OUT about possibly causing emotional damage to this innocent little cat, but I am on it. I’d not have trapped the cat (I’d have actually sabotaged the trapping) had I known

The story of Cholla/Bastette, my studio-mate

This image has nothing to do with my stray cat but links to another post about radioactive cats.

UPDATE: GOT A PICTURE OF HER HAVING A BATH IN HER CRIB.

So a few months ago this stray, possibly feral, cat appeared in our building. I was sitting outside the landlord’s office testing the routers because I had no internet connection and I had plugged my laptop directly into the main ethernet cable, bypassing the routers, to see if we had any connection coming into the building at all. I am not often sitting outside my landlord’s door with my laptop. As if by chance, I am not often in the same part of the building as my landlord, and I tend to ‘conserve energy’ during the days when he is here by turning off lights and music in my studio. On said days, I also tend to practice ‘special tactics’ by taping leaves to my car and parking it in the bushes, on said days. But that’s another story.

Hottie fab men. Click them and they spring to larger life!

By the way, Saturday April 4th is Pacifico Palumbo’s birthday. He and his partner Michael Collins are truly fabulous. Looks like they fired up their restaurant, The Green Emporium.

So on this day I am sitting on the stool with my laptop when I hear my neighbor jumping around in his studio and exclaiming. Then his door flew open and there he was in the doorway, with wild eyes and crazy hair and