Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Finally awake again. Interrupting editing my con report for a A long overdue cat update ...

The cat has a name now: Perrine. The name was suggested by anniemal, who got it from a 1930s children's story. She does react to it, but I'm not sure whether she's figured out that it's her name yet. The sound, especially if I pronounce it with French 'R's, is kind of close to the other word she consistently reacts to, which is sort of a "qrrroooo?" sound that isn't easily transliterated into English (and as far as I can tell, is Cat for "Are you coming?").

When I'm lying in bed in the bedroom she's allowed in, she's taken to crossing my body in one direction by walking across me (possibly stopping on my chest for a minute or three to be petted), and crossing the other direction with a high, arching leap that's about four times as high as it needs to be, but is a beautiful, graceful, dance-like move. She's also finally gotten interested in the really fluffy toy mouse that she ignored for the first couple of weeks it was here. She's torn small bits off of it, and she enjoys worrying it for short periods with teeth and claws, but doesn't throw it around or bat it around much.

Falling asleep at ConCertino, I found I missed having Perrine curled up against an outstretched arm.

I think I've figured out something about her behaviour in the kitchen. She doesn't just want food -- or even particularly "the good food" -- when she leads/follows me downstairs, she wants to be fed. So the presence of food in her bowl already isn't an issue; there's some level of ritual involved. Since she looks pretty well cat-shaped now, I think I'm going to start keeping less food in her bowl except when I go away for a weekend. (I was making sure she had all the food she could eat because she was so underweight. Now I want to ask a vet what a healthy weight range for her is, but to my untrained eye, she looks about the right proportions.)

Back on the 15th I mentioned that Perrine was upset about the presence of Anniemal's poodle. By the time they went home, the beginnings of an uneasy truce had formed. Poodle would approach, curious and wanting to be friendly (or looking for something else entirely and not noticing how close he'd gotten to Perrine), and Perrine would wait as long as she dared before reacting. Eventually her reaction changed from hissing with ears all the way back, to hissing with ears sideways, to just glaring while trembling a little but with her ears forward. The poodle did understand and respond to the glare by backing away, and he understood that he couldn't get through a hallway until she moved out of the way to let him pass. I saw them get within nine inches, nose to nose, at one point without her hissing, and occasionally she'd actually look at something other than him while he was nearby. Towards the end of the visit I got the impression that she was more worried about getting stepped on by him than anything he might do intentionally, but she was still visibly less tense when the poodle was gone.

I showed 8x10 photos of Perrine at ConCertino -- these are the same shots that the scans I posted are from, but I'm not so good with the scanning thing yet, and the prints look better. Suitable oohs and aahs ensued.

She hasn't caught any more mice yet, though she's been enjoying chasing bugs. (My house is somewhat permeable to arthropoda, unfortunately. I usually lay down a line of Raid crawly-stuff-killer around where they seem to get in, but I don't think I can do that now that Perrine is living with me.) She doesn't kill the bugs as far as I can tell, just play with them, so eventually I have to step in. She continues to show interest in mouse activity, but the mice are being timid. One day recently, she walked into the kitchen and said, "Fetch me a mouse to play with." (The combination of posture, expression, position-within-room, and voice was surprisingly explicit -- often figuring out what a cat wants is a guessing game, but sometimes they might as well be speaking English.) I explained that she, not I, was to be the fetcher of mice, but I don't know how much of that she understood.

Her attitude/behaviour has changed as she's gotten used to being here. She acts less needy now, not following me from room to room all the time, but she still seems to like to know which room I'm in, and she comes by rather frequently to say hello. (I think the temperature of some of the rooms of my house is a disincentive to stick to me like glue -- I think she's retreating to cooler rooms or the basement much of the time.) She's still an incredibly sweet cat, just no longer quite neurotic-seeming, and if I'm not available but a guest is, she'll bug the guest for attention. And she still pouts at me whens she sees me get dressed, and looks sad when she sees me head to the front door. And is extra-friendly when I come home.

Her one bad habit is swatting at my ankles as I pass by her usual resting place in the hallway between the bedrooms, especially if I'm on my way into the blue room (where she is not allowed to go).

Folks who want to contribute to Perrine's upkeep: I've got food to last for a while, but I could use help with the cost of getting her spayed (about $42) and I'd like to get her tested for feline leukemia before I bring her around other cats ($30, I think), plus she needs a scratching post (can't cost too much, right?). Any excess donations, I'll keep careful track of to make sure I only spend that money on taking care of her (there'll be future vet bills and such, after all, and I don't really know how much of that). I can accept money via PayPal (dglenn@radix.net), or you can mail donations to 1723 W. Lombard St., Baltimore, MD, 21223, USA. If you want to send an actual scratching post instead of money, just ping me to make sure nobody else has gotten ahead of you.

There's a feeling of security and calm from having a loving cat purring against one's wrist.