Home Alone Again

My friend Pussy Galore II had to go home today, and I don't know when I'll see her again, but I have great memories of the five weeks that she spent with me, and here are some photos of our last moments together:

My New BFF PGII

Pussy Galore II has been living in my house for four whole weeks now and we really get along well, and we like to chase each other up and down the stairs during the daytime, and at night I sleep on the bed with Daddy while PG II sleeps in my kitty tree, until we switch places in the early morning. And around midday we like to lounge in the sunshine, or peek out the window together. Daddy says that PG II has only a few more days before her daddy Brian comes back to Melbourne, but I like PG II a lot, and here are some pictures of the time we spend together:

It's been eight months since my brother Gerald died, and that's a long time to be without a cat friend, and PG II says she's never had a cat friend, but only a puppy friend, so I don't want her to leave!

Pussy Galore Again!

Just when I thought I had my house back to myself, a couple weeks ago (July 1) Daddy brought Pussy Galore here AGAIN, and this time he said she was going to stay FOR A WHOLE MONTH! It took a long time before Pussy Galore could stand to be in the same room with me, and she would hiss whenever she walked past the basket I sleep in (and here's a picture of me in my basket):

But then Pussy Galore started sitting in my favorite places, and she started to sleep in the bedroom at night, and she jumped up into my kitty tree and got her stank all over it, and before long she would let me sit in the same room with her, as long as I didn't talk to her. Here's a picture of us ignoring each other yesterday:

And she eventually told me that her full name was Pussy Galore the Second, or "PG II," and she wasn't Andrew's cat after all, but belonged to Daddy's friends Louise and Brian, who had to be out of the country for a while, and that's why we were looking after her, and suddenly it all made sense! Her sister is Asta, that terrier puppy that I see sometimes, and that's why I hissed at Pussy Galore when I first met her—she smelled like dog! But once PG II figured out that I was a friend of her sister Asta, we got along OK. And PG II explained that she was less than two years old, and she'd never met a boy cat before, or one that was as old as me (I'm thirteen!), and she was named after her mommy's first cat (Pussy Galore the First) who was named after a character in some James Bond film. So PG II and I have started to get along better, but we're not as chummy as Gerald and I used to. But PG II likes to pretend to ignore me while I eat, like this:

And if you think cats are good at ignoring people, you have no idea how good we cats are at ignoring each other!

The day I met Pussy Galore

It's been four months since I last blogged because I've been so busy and all sorts of things have changed. In April 2008 my Daddy moved house, and my new place is a townhouse with two floors and a staircase that I love running up and down, like this:

And there's a banister I like looking through, like this:

And I 've been the only cat in this whole house, and I miss my brother Gerald so much, since I've never had a new house all to myself, so until now I 've really been wanting some cat company.

Then last night at about 9:30 pm, Daddy came home with his friend Andrew (he’s babysat me a couple times) and Andrew was carrying a cage with a girl-cat in it! And I figured she must be Andrew’s cat, and I could hear her growling inside her cage as soon as she saw me, and her growl said, “My name is Pussy Galore, and I’ve never met a big black cat before, so get away from me!” And she looks like this:


So I poofed up my tail to three times its size because I was so excited, but Daddy put me upstairs in the bedroom and I wasn’t allowed to see Pussy Galore for a long time so that she could wander around my house first (and notice I said "MY" house!). Daddy told me later that she came out of her cage very, very slowly and sniffed the floor around her cage, then she sniffed a potted plant, and then she sniffed the drapes by my bay window, and then she crouched down by the window and hid behind the curtains. Daddy put out food and water and a litter box for her and let her sit right where she was behind the curtains which is where she felt safe. And here's a picture of her once she got out from under the curtains:


And I was waiting for Daddy in the bedroom, and was very curious about this strange girl-cat in my house, but I didn’t make any fuss about letting me out. Daddy got up after a couple hours and still wouldn’t let me out of the bedroom; but he told me that Pussy Galore had left the curtains and had started to sniff out the rest of the room and gradually the entire ground floor, and she was very methodical, as if her nose was a vacuum cleaner going over every inch of the carpet, and if she ever caught Daddy’s eye, she’d run away. Daddy went back to bed for another couple hours, then finally I couldn’t stand it any more so I tried waking him up by pawing his shoulder, and when that didn't work I bit his ear, and when he swatted at me I sat my butt on his face, and that worked! So Daddy opened the door, and this time Pussy Galore was in the hallway right outside our bedroom, just sitting and waiting for us to come out! But Daddy picked me up and put me in the bathroom and shut me in there, and all the time Pussy Galore was growling because she had seen me! But Daddy turned on the tub so I could have a drink of water, which I did, but what I really wanted was to suss out that new girl-cat! But sure enough, Daddy came back to the bathroom and scooped me up and put me in the bedroom with him and shut the door, but I could smell Pussy Galore’s stank on Daddy’s legs, so she had already started rubbing him and laying claim on him.

Finally in the morning, Uncle Kevin got up and let me out of the bedroom, and I ran straight to the bathroom where I smelled Pussy Galore’s pee on the bath mat, and I found Pussy Galore sitting in the cupboard on top of some clean sheets, and Kevin got the surprise of his life when Pussy Galore started hissing at me from inside the cupboard—so of course I started hissing back. Daddy zoomed in and dragged me back into the bedroom, and Pussy Galore apparently ran downstairs and hid underneath the living room sofa.

It was finally about 10:00 a.m. this morning when Daddy fetched Pussy Galore from under the sofa and took her upstairs, and I heard him say, “It’s time to put these cats together for better or worse, and I don’t want Pussy Galore to feel like she’s in a corner, so she needs the chance to stand her ground when Oscar comes out.” So Daddy opened the door, and I poked my head out very slowly, and Pussy Galore took one look at me and growled and darted down the stairs, and of course I zoomed afterwards, and by the time I got down there, Pussy Galore was back underneath the sofa growling, so I stuck my head underneath to look at her and poofed out my tail, like this:

Now, if you’re not a cat psychologist, I’ll tell you that we cats prefer not to fight with each other if we can help it, and if we’re afraid and sussing up a stranger, most of what we do is posturing, so there was some growling and hissing, but Pussy Galore and I kept our distance from each other, so there was no biting or scratching or fur flying, and after about five minutes of sussing her out, I decided to let her be and proceeded to sniff every inch of the house where she’d been, starting with her food dish—and naturally, I decided to eat her food—plus the spot where she had hid behind the curtains. I was moving as slowly and trance-like as she had done, and she had a very peculiar smell, and after about half an hour I had gone into the other rooms of my house, but then Daddy decided to take Pussy Galore back to her home and let me feel like I had the place back to myself, so he let me suss out Pussy Galore one last time while she was in her cage, where she would feel safe, and where I could see that she was leaving, and it ended up something of a hissing match, but at least we said farewell.

Possums Outside My Window

Last night there were possums outside my window! At first I thought it might be angels, since we kitties can often see angels at night (but I can't tell you which ones, 'cause that's one of my kitty secrets), but it turns out it wasn't angels this time, but possums! And this isn't the first time they've spooked me at night. I think there's a baby and a mommy, and they like to run around the bushes outside my window at about 3:00 a.m. and I put myself in the window and hit the glass with my tail because they get me so excited!


I remember how the squirrels in Michigan always got me excited, but they were nothing compared to Aussie possums!

Gerald's Ashes

Daddy came back home last night after being in Hawaii for a couple weeks visiting Popo and Uncle Joel and while Daddy was there he took some of Gerald's ashes and spread them around some special places on Oahu which is one of the most beautiful places in the world that Gerald never got a chance to visit. Come to think of it, I've never been there either, but Daddy showed me the pictures.

The first place Daddy put Gerald's ashes was over the side of the Nuuanu Pali, a big cliff on the southeast corner of the island of Oahu, and it looks like this:

It was very windy up there and Gerald's ashes went whoosh into the wind. The Daddy drove up the east coast of the island to the north shore and stopped at a beach near Haleiwa and put some of Gerald's ashes in the water on the rocks near the shore, and it looked like this:


Then on the next day Daddy went to the top of Punchbowl where there's a military cemetery in the crater of an extinct volcano and he put some of Gerald's ashes in the gardens there that look out over Honolulu:

And hearing about it made me very nostalgic for Gerald and it's only been about two months since he passed away...so I'm going to spend the rest of my day sitting in Daddy's lap or Uncle Kevin's lap and thinking about my brother who I miss so much.

Merry Christmas!

Hello all, this is how I spent my Christmas holiday:




Doesn't that look fun? Good, 'cause it was! I have so many fond memories of Christmases in America at Popo and Gung-Gung's house, because there was always a Christmas tree and lots of present to roll around in, and lots of ribbon to play with, so here's a picture of how I liked to peek up under the tree when Popo lived in Toledo, Ohio:

And here's Gerald playing with Popo and some ribbon when she lived in Harbor Springs, Michigan:
I find myself missing my brother Gerald an awful lot at holiday times like these, because he and I would have special romps around the tree, and we'd bat at the ornaments together, and we always got presents like new toys. But holidays are times to be happy, not sad, so I'm going to enjoy remembering Gerald when he was at his happiest, and for me that will be the best Christmas present ever.


OSCAR

Green vomit

It’s been four weeks now since my brother Gerald died, and why am I still counting the days? I guess it’s because I still think about him all the time and expect him to come bouncing around the corner to try and steal my kitty space, and I miss the fact that he doesn’t, which is why I’m sitting in the dirty laundry today, which used to be one of Gerald’s best kitty spaces.

My tummy didn’t feel well these past few days and I lost my appetite and decided to show my displeasure by vomiting up some watery green stuff (as one does), so guess what? I got to go back to the vet AGAIN and the kitty doctor checked my digestive system and said I had no blockage, and she took my temperature (and you can guess where she put the thermometer!), and she checked my eyes and my ears and my heart, and then she gave me a shot (not fun!) because she said that I might have a touch of gastro from the other medications I had to take this past week, and the shot would relieve any stomach spasms, and she said I had lost a little bit of weight but was otherwise fine. All together, I HATED IT! But when I got home, after a while I got fed some special easily digestible food (called i/d) which I LOVED so I tucked right into it. I’m fine now, and we kitty cats get these kind of tummy upsets every now and then; and I remember a couple years ago I had a tummy upset just like this, and Gerald told me that we kitty cats are the experts at barfing, and I should practice my aim, so when I was sick at that time, I waited till Daddy came home, then I went into the bathroom with the tile floor that’s difficult to clean, and I vomited a huge spray of greenish-brown bile all over the floor, just so Daddy would notice (and he did!). And he took me to the vet that time too, and gave me the special i/d diet back then too, and I got better real fast.

It’s only four more days until Christmas, and tomorrow is the summer solstice here in Australia, which means it’s the longest day and the shortest night of the year, with 14 hours and 47 minutes of daylight here in Melbourne, and I’m not sure whether to be happy or disappointed, since Gerald often told me that kitty cats are night creatures, which is why we sleep during the day and creep about the house at night to peer out the windows and keep the evil spirits away and say hello to any angels that drop by, and it was Gerald who taught me how to look for angels at night, and although I’ve seen more bugs, I have seen a few angels, but I’ll never say which ones, since that’s one of my kitty secrets. So Gerald never liked the summer solstices because it meant the least amount of night time for him to creep around in. But I like the summer solstice because I like looking out into my garden at all the pretty flowers, and I like having more daylight hours to sleep in!

Daddy finally put up a Christmas tree with all his favorite ornaments (many of them from Sesame Street), but my favorite ornament is the sled that says “I Love My Cats,” so here’s some pictures:


I don’t know what Daddy plans to get me for Christmas, but I hope it’s a toy or kitty treats or yummy kibble, or even catnip, and it better not be another trip to that vet!

OSCAR

Glow-in-the-dark Cats?

It’s been just over three weeks now since my brother Gerald died and I feel a little odd about counting the days because it doesn’t really change the fact that he’s not around, and three weeks seems like such a short time and yet it feels like a long time, and being a kitty cat, I enjoy having all the attention to myself and I like being able to be in al my own kitty spaces without having to share them, but I do get lonely sometimes, and I suppose that’s normal.

Uncle Kevin found this news article on-line about some scientists in Korea who are cloning kitties who glow in the dark, and I think to myself, “Leave it to humans to invent cats that they can find in the dark! Don’t they know that cats don’t want to be seen in the dark?”

Visit URL http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071212/ts_afp/healthscienceskoreacloning

It reminds me of the time when we were living in Ann Arbor on Lawrence street, and there was a power failure, and Daddy’s neighbor knocked on the door to borrow a flashlight, and of course when he opened the door, I went out, but nobody saw me, at they didn’t notice I was gone for a whole half hour, and then Daddy and Aunty Beth panicked and grabbed a pair of flashlights and looked for me all around the neighborhood, and Daddy kept saying, “How do you find a black cat in a power failure?”, and they searched for me for over an hour, but of course I was hiding the whole time and I never told anybody where I hid myself, and when I was ready I came back to the front door of our apartment and just waited until Aunty Beth came back and stumbled upon me, and she said, “Oscar! Where have you been?”, and I just grinned, and when I got inside Gerald was very jealous that I got to have such an adventure, because he was always even more adventurous than me (like the many times he snuck into our upstairs neighbors’ apartment in the house on Catherine Street, or the time he hid in Joel’s room in Harbor Springs for over three hours and no one could find him). But if you clone cats so that they glow in the dark, that ruins all the fun! Daddy remembers when he took Gerald to get radiation treatment for his thyroid problem all those years ago, and we joked that Gerald might glow in the dark afterwards, but that was just a joke; but these cloned kitties really do glow in ultraviolet light, and that’s crazy!

And speaking of crazy, I’ve been going a little crazy after Daddy started giving me that yummy kidney diet food, and those antibiotic pills twice a day, because I started getting diarrhea and a very wet poo, so I had to go back to the doctor AGAIN to be poked and prodded, and I was so scared they were going to stick a needle in my bladder again, but they didn’t, but they did give Daddy another yucchy medicine to give me, and this one is for my diarrhea, and I just hate it, but at least I stopped scratching my ear and the infection has started to go away. But Daddy doesn’t give me my favorite kitty treats any more because the pet store can’t get them imported until after the start of the new year, which is making me crazy! Isn’t there an Australian company that can make decent cat treats?

Daddy says that Christmas is less than two weeks away, and I remember lots of Christmases that we used to spend in Toledo, Ohio, or Harbor Springs, Michigan, and Gerald and I used to love sitting under the Christmas tree and playing with any ornaments we could reach and watching the tree lights twinkle on and off, and we would sit in the windowsills and look out at the snow and the ice; but here in Australia it’s so different, since it’s hot and dry at Christmas time, and Daddy hasn’t even put up a tree this year since there’s not enough room for one, but at least Uncle Kevin put up some Christmas decorations and some lights, and here’s a picture of them:



I don’t know what Daddy’s going to get me for Christmas, but you can probably guess what I want—KIBBLE! Or kitty treats, if the pet shop can find them. Or a new feather toy that I can play with. And knowing my luck, I’ll just get a new collar that I won’t even like. Here’s a picture of me and Gerald from a few months ago, and you can see what my old collar looks like:


I'm not saying that I wouldn't mind a new collar, but you know me, I WANT KITTY KIBBLE!

OSCAR

My Yucchy Visit to the Vet

Here I am, sitting in the window of our flat, and Uncle Kevin says this picture makes me look like a monkey, but I keep telling him that I’m a kitty, not a monkey! But he thinks I’m adorable, which makes me happy.

It’s been exactly two weeks now since my big brother Gerald passed away, so today Daddy took me to the kitty doctor to check on my general state of health, and I freaked out when he took out the carrier cage because I remember the last time Gerald left the house in his carrier cage and he never came back, so I did NOT want to go into my carrier cage, so Daddy practically had to push me into it, and so I meowed and meowed and meowed and meowed in the hopes that someone would let me out, but then Daddy carried me to the vet and once I was there I did NOT want to be let out. And while I was waiting at the vet, Kofi, the resident kitty cat, came over to sniff me and tell me that everything would be OK, but I wasn’t interested in listening; and a blonde Labrador retriever came out of the examination room, and even though he was very well behaved, I thought to myself, “oh no, not another dog!” and I did NOT want to be let out of my cage. Then finally we went into the examination room, and the kitty doctor pulled me out of my cage, and Daddy helped hold me while the doctor shaved the base of my tail AGAIN to take my blood pressure, and here I had spent all those weeks growing my fur back to hide my “shame,” and now he went and shaved it again! And my blood pressure was quite elevated when he measured it, and wouldn’t yours be if you went through everything I was going through? And then the doctor lifted me to listen to my heartbeat, and I wiggled and tried to say “Let me down!” but I was too nervous to meow. And then he turned the lights off and shined a thing in my eyes to see if the backs of my eyes indicated anything about high blood pressure, and luckily my eyes didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t over yet, since next he looked at my teeth (or what’s left of them, and I started thinking, no, don’t take any more out!), and then he noticed my ears where I’ve been scratching myself a lot lately, like this:

and the kitty doctor saw that I’ve scratched my left ear so much that I got a secondary infection, and he also noticed wax in my ears, so he put a yucchy liquid in my ears, and I HATE having liquid in my ears, so I shook my head and knocked the bottle of liquid off the table, and then I shook my head again when I knew that he was standing right over me, so I aimed that awful liquid right into his eye (serves the doctor right for doing all this stuff to me)! And then he took a needle and gave me a shot of an anti-inflammatory, so I wouldn’t feel like scratching myself more, and I wanted to say, “Are we DONE yet?”, but he wasn’t, because he stuck another needle in my bladder to take a urine sample, and then FINALLY he let me go and I ran into my carrier cage. But the doctor said that my urine was more “diluted” than it was a couple months ago, which might indicate a kidney problem, so he told Daddy to put me on a kidney food diet, and also to give me antibiotics for the next ten days for the infection around my ears. And he said he’d send my urine to the lab for another test, but I wasn’t listening at this point, I just wanted Daddy to take me home! So at long last Daddy took me home and gave me some of the new kidney diet kibble, and I love it! It tastes so great that I scarfed it down, like this:

and I even used my paw to grab the kibble and move it closer to me in my dish! And the antibiotic pills were tasty too, so even though having yucchy stuff in my ears was just awful, at least I got some tasty kibble out of it!

Uncle Kevin sat with me all afternoon while Daddy was at work, and then later they both went to the Emergency Vet Clinic at the airport for one last time, to pick up Gerald’s ashes, since Daddy had hired the Australian Pet Cremation & Burial Service people to cremate Gerald, and they delivered his ashes in a little wooden urn to the clinic where the nurses still had Gerald’s cage and blanket. And Daddy and Uncle Kevin were a little weepy when they brought the ashes home, but then they found a nice place on the shelf for the urn, after they let me approve of it:

Then this evening my doggy friend Asta dropped by with her Mommy Louise, and I’ve seen Asta lots of times, so I just sat down on the floor and stretched out and let Louise tickle my belly, then I walked over to my kibble dish and ignored Asta. Gerald was the one who used to run around with Asta whenever she would visit; but for me, when it comes to dogs, I show my affection for them by ignoring them.

Then I decided to take my evening nap, and where better than some nice clean sweaters?

Uncle Kevin had washed and packed up all his sweaters so that he could store them in the closet during the hot summer, but I said “No, not until I bless them!” and so that’s what I’m doing, since no sweater will store well unless it has come black kitty fur mixed in. That’s another lesson I learned from Gerald, since almost every article of clothing that Daddy owns has some Gerald fur on it!

I miss having Gerald around to share the simple kitty things, like sitting in laundry together, or looking out the window together, or competing for the Kevin Pillow; and as the days turn into weeks and will soon turn into months, I have lots and lots of fun memories to make me feel like Gerald is still close to me. But every time Uncle Kevin or Daddy walks by my kitty tree, I coo at him to remind him that I’m still here to give kitty love, and Gerald would be very happy to know that we’re going on as a happy family.

OSCAR