Benjamin and his Tabby Friend

Benjamin is enjoying his outdoor life very much since the weather has begun to turn warm. Oh, I guess that means several months already--January was like spring here...and now it's been raining again! But for sure, in the last several months, Benjamin has begun to enjoy his outdoor life more and more.

He does come home and lay on us at night sometimes, and comes in to eat, or play, but he rarely lays around on couches like in the days of old, in his kittenhood. Mostly when he comes in, he has something to say. Meeew! Yes, I like my food, but I want to be adored for a while too. He follows us and bats our legs, maybe he just likes to see the pantleg material swing. :)

The other day, I went up to the attic to meditate and saw Benjamin atop the carport, taking in the morning sun. First he was sitting tall, looking toward the sun, like a meditation. Then I peeked again and he was rollicking around, rolling from side to side, probably warming his backside on the tar top. When I looked again, he was sitting tall again, but I realized, this time, he was not on the carport. He was on some kind of high up fence next to the carport. As I looked closer, I saw that there was no fence at all, but instead he was sitting in the high up branches of a lilac tree! In case you don't know, lilac trees are quite delicate. They are not that big. He was sitting there, nonchalant, just hanging out, as if he were lounging on a patio. I laughed out loud to myself, couldn't help it.

I closed my eyes again and chuckled inwardly, after all, I was supposed to be meditating, not cat-watching! Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to peek again, and this time, saw Benjamin sitting there, perched, lounging atop the tree, and to his right, a little tabby face was clear. His tabby friend from somewhere in the neighborhood had come to hang out too.

Now that I've noticed his little friend, I see them playing tag under Linda's car (Linda lives across the street) or peek-a-boo in the ditch, in and out of the drainpipe. It's no wonder I've never heard catfights. Benjamin doesn't fight the local cats, he befriends them. PS the photo above is not the lilac tree--that's Benjamin by himself (no tabby friend) in the plum tree in bloom.

Benjamin's Latest Prey

Benjamin's Latest Prey
Yesterday, David, Deva and I were getting ready to leave the house and go to Vashon Island, just for a nice day trip off the "mainland." I was heading back to my desk to print directions to an address, and behind a low box, I saw Benjamin batting & chasing something. Deva saw it too. We watched. David came into the family room a moment later (where my desk is) and we all watched for a few moments as Benjamin hopped, batted and stalked whatever it was that was hiding behind the box. I envisioned what sort of mouse it must be that would stay behind a box (not a bird obviously or it would probably be flying), not a lizard hopefully, they're so crafty and they can die in a corner and you smell them before you know where they are, but geez, a mouse can be tricky to usher out of the house alive and geez there are too many hidey holes for a mouse inside our house, if one should manage to get in. Benjamin continued to bat, hop, scamper and tease it, presumably trying to tease it out of its hiding place so he'd have the chance to give it a full-on chase across the floor.
No such luck. In the next move, he reached in and grabbed it in his teeth, and came out from behind the box, shaking it in his teeth; a black and red pen. Yes, a pen. Benjamin stalks pens. Then he bats and chides them till they roll over and play dead, then just when they move again he puts them out of their misery, picks them up in his teeth and runs off to carry off his treasure into the other room.

If you leave a pen lying around somewhere in our house (in other words on any surface) not in an enclosed cabinet, it might not be where you left it. Benjamin might hunt it down and carry it off somewhere else. Phew! At least they don't smell when they lose their last breath...and they usually don't make it as far as under the stairs.

Benjamin Loves Baklava

Okay, Benjamin loves Baklava.

He's normally gentle with fingers but today he nearly bit my finger after tasting residue of baklava on them. I thought he was going to sit on my lap and let me snuggle him but apparently he wanted to get up and go find the source of the sweet nutty stuff.

I stayed on the couch with Tigger, who had mewed from the chair he was sitting on in the dining room (I think they have radar for each other's purrs) and taken Benjamin's place as he hopped down, in search of something else.

So Tigger is on my lap, purring contentedly and I hear batting and shuffling of cardboard in the next room. I go look, carrying Tigger with me. Benjamin is on the table trying to pry open the box of baklava. Scat! I scurry him off the table. He jumps down to a chair but keeps peering over the edge like a little dog waiting for a table scrap.

My fault. I've been trying to tame him of being skittish in the dining room (and kitchen, the busy areas) so I offer him a crumb once in a while. Even if it's not something he's interested in, so he comes around checking in every now and then while we're eating.

There he was on the chair, big-eyed--I hesitate to say--begging. But that's what it looked like. All in an expression in the eyes. Begging! Benjamin begs! Ha ha!

Well, I took pity on him and took off a small bit, and insisted he get down from the chair before giving it to him. I'm *not* letting him sit at the table! He scarfed it. I gave him a little more. Tigger came sniffing (he was curious what Benjamin was carrying on about, to be sure) but Tigger's tastes tend more toward carnivorous. Tigger just sniffed a bit of it, licked it and kept looking around for the good part. What was Benjamin after, anyway? Did he eat it ALL?

Oh, as I looked around the wreckage of the few things that had fallen off the table, I found an upturned paper plate (from Deva's school meeting last night) from which the cats had eaten the remaining tortilla chips and hummous dip with red peppers. I guess they like chips and dip too. Benjamin likes Amicat (the vegan cat food), by the way. Although they are on the fresh raw diet which has transformed Benjamin's personality. (Thanks to Glen Dupree.) www.homeopathyfortheanimals.com. More on that later. For now, Benjamin is in Tigger's usual spot, atop my computer, almost in the way of the monitor, grooming himself. What a happy cat. :)

I wonder if he's going to turn out seal or chocolate point? He's already very cream colored, moving onto tan on his main body. His extremities are sort of dark chocolate brown. What do you think? :)

Thundering Herds of Cats

That's exactly what we heard (herd?) yesterday morning at breakfast. It was so funny, we were just sitting there at the breakfast table minding our own business. The cats were first playing and frolicking, then thundering in herds (yes, plural, I'll explain in a moment) first one way past the table, then the other way, from one end of the house to the other.

You'd think it would take a large animal to make that much noise. Or several large animals. But just two little cats? Criminy. It reminds me of a story I read as a child, entitled "The Cat that Clumped." It was a story about a cat who longed to be a horse so it could make that clumping sounds horses make with their hooves. I forget how it ends. In any case, these two, Benjamin and Tiggy, don't require any special horseshoes to make that sound! They sound like horses on a racetrack or a herd of buffalo, with their only clumping tools being their little soft feet. Are the buffalo back?

I have to give David credit for this post. He coined "Thundering Herds of Cats" and asked "Are the buffalo coming back?" ;)

Benjamin plays with trains in the middle of the night

Okay, I have to confess, I wrote a song about the cats. Well, or rather, a song started humming itself in my head and I had to start singing it. They made me! It's called "the Tiggy Benjamin Song." or "The Benjamin Tiggy Song." I guess it depends on who walks in first. ;)

For now, here's a video of them playing with Deva's trains in the middle of the night. Some of this footage will be included in the youtube the song eventually winds up on--once I find a fiddler, a banjo player and a jaw-harp player to make it sound like a barn dance! :) (with stomps and hollers too.)



In the meantime, I'll entertain you with a little story. Okay, nevermind, my eyes are closing. I'll have to wait till morning! But...as a prelude, Benjamin got super tame, like, overnight. It's a cool story, coming soon. :)

Vegan cats after all?

Okay, the cats are starting to like the raw duck. Now that the first packet of it is finished and I have to go buy a new one or...(ugh!) go to the natural butcher nearby!

The "expert" opinions run the gamut. Some vegans say it's cruel to kill animals and feed them to cats. Some raw food experts say commercial cat food is dangerous and made of dead cats and dogs, road kill, plastic and other stuff. No doubt this one is true. I've pretty much written off commercial cat food with the possible exception of Royal Canin (the babycat kibbles they love) and maybe a few organic brands.

But here's my question. Is it really necessary for cats to eat only raw meat? And is it really harmful to give them grain? I've recently read on wikipedia that purely raw meat for cats has too much phosphorus and something else. (if you look under "vegan cats" on wiki you'll find it.)

My question comes from this. I can't see that there have been any studies done on cats eating exclusively raw meat, exclusively vegan food, or exclusively commercial food. There are studies of cats eating vegetarian, and cats eating commercial food. They test the blood of the vege cats but not the commercial ones! This is no study! If you don't compare apples to apples there can be no distinction. Otherwise "studies" I've seen are anecdotal from one person changing their cats' diets to raw meat and seeing the difference in them. A lot of other things can change at the same time. They could be putting more love in the food (seriously, this matters!), and overall the "raw food" diet cats could be healthier simply because the SOURCE was pure, regardless of whether it was meat or vegetable.

My personal suspicion is that if there WAS such a triple-blind, unbiased study, the commercial cat food group would fare the worst. It's all full of euthanasia drugs, plastic, hormones, GMOs, mold, ecoli and other crap. So forget about grain being the problem, maybe the real problem is the QUALITY of what goes into it?

So, my quandary here is, regardless of what "experts" on all sides say, (I don't consider scientists paid by pet food companies to be experts, they are simply profit henchmen) WHAT IS THE HEALTHIEST DIET FOR CATS?

In an earlier post I mentioned about seeing Fidget scarf down that piece of beef liver. Otherwise, she was fed the cheapest possible commercial cat food, in dry and canned form, milk, various bits of raw and cooked meat as available (even "splintery" bones), corn on the cob, an occasional bit of cereal or rice, and lots of fresh, pure well water. In her lifetime, hormones were not an issue in the meat (they had not been invented yet), GMOs were not an issue in the grains that were in the cheap cat food (they weren't invented yet either) and I'm guessing they didn't use dead cats and dogs yet in cat food. Maybe no stryrofoam either. And "by products" were probably not as goary--the meat industry had not degenerated so much by then. It has been 15 years.

If anyone wants to post comments, I welcome them. What do you think is the healthiest diet for cats? Why?

I'd like to see the raw-organic-free-range-meat enthusiasts and vegan-cat enthusiasts do a study together, test all the cats' blood for several years, answer the same questions, and be evaluated objectively by a 3rd party. In fact we should add the "commercial cat food" people into the study too, by brand! Every brand will yield some different results. Now wouldn't that be fun?

Benjamin and Tigger's new Cat Tree

When Violet got adopted, the cat post went with her. So, Tigger and Benjamin have been having fun running around the house, scratching their very small post in the livingroom (to prevent rug and furniture scratching) but there was nothing like having a "cat display platform" such as the one that got adopted out with Violet.

Even the timid, formerly-feral Benjamin would be happy to sit there and purr, and let you come and pet him, when he was on his display platform. (I made a typo and put playform, that would be a good name too.) Deva, David and I could all come right up to him and he'd sit there and purr as if he's the tamest cat in the world! The little livingroom post, our bed, the couches, the dining chairs--none of them seem to have the same taming effect on Benjamin as him having his very own little place. I guess it also helps if it's in a sunny spot from which he can comfortably snooze, observe the world, snooze, observe the world. The couches do that to some extent, but maybe it's really true? Cats are not people? ;)

So...I was in search of a new cat tree. I didn't realize how lucky I'd gotten the first time--I got a covered litter box, some food, some nice cat dishes and the cat treeall for $12 with easy porch pickup in Columbia City. It was a great excuse to go eat at Tutta Bella and then get stuff to make the cats smile and purr afterwards. This lovely cat tree came complete with sitting platform on top and sisal post--a must if you don't want to "train" your cat to claw your carpets.

I wondered if I was nuts to drive all the way to Kent yesterday afternoon to get one. What made me decide on this one was that it had not one but THREE sisal posts, and the requisite kitty display platorms. It was going to be huge--more than 3x the size of the other one--with a hidey hole in the bottom, a rounded open platform and 2 round display perches. It seems very much designed with feline in mind.

It *barely* fit in the car, even after moving Deva's car seat to the other side and working it around several moves. However, Judy, Sarah's mom (who we bought it from) figured out the right geometry in the matter and finally hoisted it in the back of our Suby with no rope and no cat-tree-on-a-ski-rack required.

We got it home and I hoisted it into David's office, aka the cat nursery.

Now comes the fun part. Tigger and Benjamin spied me hoisting it in (it's HEAVY!) and came right over sniffing. Getting used things for cats is even better than new, because it's so much more exciting when they get to sniff whoemever came there before. In this case, this "kitty condo" belonged to a big Tuxedo kitty with a cute crooked mustached (named Motoboat because he purred like a motorboat when he was a kitten) and a Jack Russell terrier named Jack that Moto was generous enough to share his space with.

So, they sniffed. And checked it out. And kicked its tires. And sniffed some more. Benjamin's face lit up when he even saw it there, like "really, is that for MEEEE?" and he came scratching straight up the tallest post, and sniffing things along the way until he got to one of the platforms and stood still to sniff, then jump down and make some more rounds again.

If you are a cat person, then the sight of seeing 2 cats (well, 2 kittens really) sniffing, eyes bugging out, all around and through a glamorous new cat tree is hilarious. Enough to make you split your sides laughing, or at least have a good hearty inner titter.

I went outside to talk to the neighbor (who was taking pictures of her beloved big maple tree on the last day of it's life--it is actually being cut down right now as we speak) and then went in the backyard, and through the window, saw that Tigger and Benjamin had completed their circling of it and were happily sitting and playing on it. Within 10 ninutes it was all their own.

May every cat experience the luxury and bounty of a dedicated cat tree!