Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Many things did not happen today. I did get my ISP account reactivated, but I didn't make it to Bowie to see the relatives who are visiting from overseas, I did not get any more of my post-Pennsic laundry done, I did not wash dishes, I did not make some insurance-related phone calls, and I didn't get any farther writing up how Pennsic went. I did see a brief but intense lightning storm with mercifully moderate rain (so none of it came through the leaky roof), and get a migraine.

Perrine, on the other hand, had a productive day. She caught a mousie.

But first, some catching up... She seemed to settle in comfortable at anniemal's house -- I spent a few days over there after Pennsic before taking her home (which was another delay in getting to important things I needed to get to, but my body basically said, "Rest now!") -- and I got to watch her in that environment. "Alpha bitch kitty" doesn't seem far from the mark. I didn't see her boss the other cats around much, but it was apparent that they had pretty much settled into doing things in ways that didn't upset her. I did see her both initiate play, and engage in bullying the other cats on a couple of occasions, but the one who got the worst of it was the poodle. Every so often she'd swat him or act like she was about to jump on him just to watch him spook. It was mean. But mostly she just sort of lazed about, chewed the plants she wasn't supposed to chew, complained about being fed on a schedule instead of free-feeding (she even swiped some of the dog's food), wandered over to the humans for a bit of affection now and then, and went crazy over the laser pointer. In short, she acted like a comfortably-adjusted cat except for gratuitously picking on the dog.

I did notice that she spent a lot less time asking humans for affection there, and that she wandered by to say goodnight when I went to sleep, but didn't curl up near me.

She was unhappy but calm on the very long ride home. (It's a darned long drive when I dare not go faster than 40MPH and have to stop every so often to let the tires cool or to add water to the radiator.) Occasionally voiced her displeasure (mostly by sticking her paws through the end of the cat carrier to get my attention, then looking distressed), but the majority of the time she just sat nearly motionless, sometimes allowing me to stroke her through the grate. When I stopped, she was a bit more animated, wanting to see our surroundings.

Anyhow, I got her home, and she spent a while sniffing the house. At first her body language looked like, "Okay, is this where I think it is?" but it very quickly changed to, "Huh, what have the mice been up to while I was gone?"

I did notice that she paid a lot more attention to me when we got back to Baltimore than she had in Virginia -- not following me around from room to room as she had done when she first adopted me, but definitely showing a lot more interest in my whereabouts, and coming to me for strokes and scritches a lot. I got the impression that she misses having the other critters and more humans around, but I'm not entirely certain. She has returned to her practice of noticing when I get up to go to a different part of the house and trying to lead me to either the kitchen or the green bedroom (the bedroom she's allowed in), depending on which direction I'm coming from, and she does come find me pretty often when I move -- she just doesn't stay in whatever room I'm in. So this is halfway between how she was when I first found her and how she was just before leaving for Pennsic. And pretty unlike how she behaved at Anniemal's house. (Then again, in that house she had "her spot" picked out upstairs, from which she could monitor all the humans' movements on that floor -- she could watch the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom, most of the kitchen, and most of the living/dining room, all from one chair -- and another spot downstairs from which she could see everyone in the vicinity of the television and computer. So she didn't have to walk around to keep track of us, other than meandering up or down the stairs when all the humans collected on one floor.)

Anyhow, on to today:

Now cats will occasionally just decide some corner looks interesting, or want to see behind something, but one can tell when they're actually after something. I didn't know whether it was a lost toy, an insect, a mouse, or a hallucination, but I noticed that she was very interested in the crack between the head of the bed and the wall, and the small space between the bookcase next to the bed and the wall. So I pulled the mattresses down a little so she could stand on the box springs, and I moved the bookcase a little out from the corner, and she stayed Extremely Interested in that corner, darting from one end of the bookcase to the other. Her tail quivered, and spent a lot of time sticking straight behind her, and her ears were so far forward you'd think they were trying to crawl off her head. In short, every hair in her coat was flashing, "HUNTING IN PROGRESS". At that point I hadn't heard anything, and I certainly couldn't see anything, so I just trusted that there was some sort of prey nearby and hoped she'd get whatever it was. I was thinking insect, due to the lack of sounds.

Nope, no insect. A wee little mousie, a young 'un. She nabbed it by sticking a paw into a space where her body couldn't fit, and a moment later it was in her mouth.

She hesitated on my bed, trying to decide where to take it to play with, and chose to play with it on my bed. I didn't like that idea -- yeah, she does seem pretty good at catching mice, but she doesn't have the best track record when it comes to keeping the mice she's caught. When she sat on the poor thing, I asked her, "Are you going to eat that? Please tell me you're at least going to kill it." Sure enough, after a few minutes, she got careless and it got away from her, but fortunately in ran towards me; I trapped it in a fold of the blanket, and picked it up by its tail. I wasn't sure of the kitty-ettiquette involved in taking away prey, so I offered it back to her, but she wasn't as interested when it wasn't darting about. After a while she did reach out a paw to take it from me, so I let her have it. But she was still only interested in playing with it, so I took it from her again.

I didn't want to upset her, so I found something I didn't think it could jump out of for her to play with it in. But she really wanted to play with it in the hall. It did escape behind some other furniture (we were downstairs, in the dining room, by then) but with some direction from me (and a little more furniture-moving) she caught it again. Eventually I tired of this and just declared that if she let it go again, I was keeping it.

(When it was moving slowly or standing on its hind legs and sniffing, it was really cute, but I just thought of how much damage its family had probably done to the insides of my box springs since the last time I'd dared look, and that made it look less cute.)

When I did take it away a few minutes later, she was, as expected, confused and upset. "Where's my mouse? I wasn't finished with that! Is it behind this sheet of plywood? Did it go in the basement? Where's my mouse? Find me my mouse..." But dammit, the point of wanting her to catch mice wasn't to move them from room to room; it was to rid the house of mice. (In the future, if I know she's not going to get around to killing her prey and will wind up being upset anyhow, I may as well just be merciful to the mice and steal them from her at my first opportunity, right? That won't discourage her from hunting, will it?)

I did praise her and offer her a kitty-treat. But she was so distracted trying to figure out where it had gone that I'm not sure she knew what I was praising her for.

So anyhow, Perrine had a productive day even if I did not, and she's being affectionate. Not curling up against my arm to sleep, alas, but she does come to get stroked and petted a bit before going to her usual spot in the hall between the two bedrooms when I go to bed.

I love my cat. She's a sweet cat. Well, she's sweet to humans anyhow. Not so much to other pets or vermin.

Huh. No wonder she was so skinny when I found her despite being a hunter, if she hasn't realize the furry, squirmy toys are food!

In other news, it was a kind of exciting day in Baltimore. I heard a helicopter hovering, which is something the police chopper almost never does, so I looked out my window and saw a television news bird stopped in the air about a block away. I went to a telly and flipped to that station, and caught something about a police-involved motor-vehicle accident. It turns out there were two near here, about an hour apart. From the direction of the helicopter, I think it was looking at the second, less severe one. (The other involved having to cut the officer out of the police car. If I heard right when I caught a fragment of the report, that one was caused by the other vehicle running a red light and ramming the cruiser in the intersection. I don't know what caused the second accident.) And when I caught a little of the late night news, I saw that a lightning bolt from the thunderstorm -- which had unusually high amounts of lighting -- had set fire to the Sheppard-Pratt mental hospital up in Towson.

Here's hoping the next few days are a lot less eventful for everyone around here. Except the mice. The mice can have lots of scary excitement at Perrine's paws.

And now it's time for the next dose of my migraine meds, the first dose not having quite done the trick.