The cat who reads calendars

    After three days of eagerly running into my house every time I open the door (those three days coinciding with the days the vet's office was closed), this morning Harry the cat wouldn't come in at all for most of the morning. When he finally did, a couple of hours later, it was very, very warily. I suppose my pheromones might have given me away that I had a trick up my sleeve. Or behind the door. I had put the cat carrier there standing on one end with the door open. I did manage to scoop him up and get him as far as on top of it, but he refused to go in and I wasn't going to stuff him. I probably should have gone with my own idea of yesterday of wrapping him in a towel first. But he isn't much of a one for being manhandled in any way.
    Thing is, this is the cat who showed up Monday afternoons, not mornings, from the very beginning. He just has a brilliant insight into when the vet is available, or perhaps that I'm too much of a cheapskate to use the 24-hour vet.
What I really need is a test for feline leukemia that I can perform and bring into the vet. Boy, somebody could be a millionaire if they come up with that.

Mr. Personality

    Harry the cat had a big day. Not as big as tomorrow will be (hopefully when I finally get him to the vet). But big enough.
    I brought my buddy Paul around to meet him. Naturally, Mr. Personality, normally ebullient at all times, vocalizing to beat the band including cute trills and many almost words, went totally silent when confronted with a second human. This is not exactly unprecedented. For the longest time, nobody believed me that Amelia is endlessly, unabashedly vocal, since she barely makes a sound when anybody else is here. It's mostly because I'm the one feeding them, so I'm Mama Cat, and they only vocalize around Mama Cat. But of course, it might also be to make me look as crazy as possible. I do not rule out the latter possibility.
    For the last three days, Harry has been coming in the house when I go out to feed him in the morning, but pretty quickly figures out where the food is and comes right out again. After I got home from dropping Paul off this evening, Harry ran all the way in and met Amelia face to face. They sniffed each other's noses and then he tried to bat at her again, like he did when they first met with a door between them. So I chased him out. Not the most propitious meeting, but it could have been worse. It's interesting to see them face to face, because Harry is so skinny and Amelia so fluffy, but Harry is already taller. I suspect he's going to wind up being an outside cat even if I succeed at getting him to the vet, tomorrow or otherwise. But I hope they can live together peaceably.
    I had a brilliant plan for the vet catnapping, but it hasn't worked out. I took an old towel and sprayed it with Feliway (supposedly a cat-calming hormone) and catnip spray and put it on the chair he likes to lie on, but he has declined to lie on it. I was going then going to put it in the cat carrier in hopes of slowing him a step, but I guess we're on to plan b. That would be to try wrapping him in it and throwing cat and towel into the carrier. Odds of success I would estimate to be about a million to one.

This'll break the Internet

Harry the cat

    'Cause nobody's ever seen a cat picture on the Internet, right? Well this is the best one, so maybe I should say they can close the Internet and go home. I have no idea what Harry was so startled about; I don't think it was the phone camera, not least because it's so slow that by the time the picture were taken, he wouldn't be startled anymore. This isn't actually a very good likeness (especially not of me), but I find it boundlessly delightful. But then, I may be a little infatuated.

One big grumpy family

    Tuesday, it occurred to me that the dialysis facility patients really are one big, if grumpy, family. We had a full waiting room and a significant wait. Although there was a certain amount of bitching and moaning, there was (and is in general) a good deal of esprit de corps. Not for nothing is it called End Stage Renal Disease; maybe that shared burden makes other burdens seem lighter. Or to be more precise, makes it easier to share the burden of getting through the actual getting in to get dialysis part of getting dialysis.
    Thursday was even worse. We got there early and there were virtually no chairs free in the waiting room. By a miracle, Dad's tech came out and called for him just after we came through the door. So I didn't have to ask any ambulance drivers to give up their seat. A smarter facility would always bring the stretcher cases in first, since otherwise there are two EMTs and a stretcher clogging up the waiting room for each case. But of course, I'm happy that Dad got called first. (That isn't preferred treatment because I'm beautiful and charming or even seniority; he takes longer, so the sooner he gets in, the sooner the staff gets to go home. Dollars and cents, in other words.)

The cat naming problem

    Well his official name is easy, Harry for Houdini (for his escape ability) or Potter (for his invisibility). If he turns out not to be a he, I could go with Hermione or Sue Storm (the Invisible Girl). But I do sorta semi halfway wish I could come up with something that reflects how he looks. He has fangs, so I like Smilodon or Smiley. They're fairly goofy fangs, bringing to mind a cartoon child vampire I swear I remember from my childhood, but the Internet does not remember. He is a tabby, so I like the name Tab Hunter, but I'm not sure anyone but me would get it. He has a mackerel pattern that looks like the stripes on the marsupial wolf, but Thylacine is a fairly awkward name. No doubt that's why they went extinct. If he turns out to be a girl, I may go with Thyla, though.
    Amelia gets her name changed about twice a week, or 900 times over 9 years, so no doubt Harry will never get bored from being called the same thing all the time. I'm inclined towards Smidgen for his every day nickname, which will be funnier later. I have a feeling he's going to be huge pretty darned soon. Smidgen will still be less embarrassing around the other cats than Count Floyd, though.
    (All this of course assumes that he doesn't have a chip nor anything communicable and I can actually adopt him. I like my chances in both departments.)

Serendipity beats smart any day

    Just a little more on my brother William's birthday celebration this past Monday. The weather was astonishing. There was a very slight drizzle when I arrived at Margaret's to pick her and Dad up. It had freshened to actual rain within minutes so I used my umbrella to shelter each of them when I escorted them one at a time to the car. It was no worse when we got to Lizard's Thicket. But the weather forecast was on the local news and the radar looked alarming. I checked my phone and we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, and the radar on my phone looked just as alarming.
    The heavens opened. It wasn't buckets of rain; more like the odd ocean. It was really astonishing. I don't know whether Lizard's Thicket has cable or satellite, but whichever it is lost its signal completely. The power even went out for just a second. About this time, I was kicking myself, because I had known it was supposed to rain and hadn't checked whether severe weather was forecast. In general it would be no problem; everything passes eventually. But Margaret's yard floods, and Dad has to slog right through, what with the walker. I had meant to offer to take William out and then we would bring Dad and Margaret takeout and was starting to wish strongly that I had done so just to keep them safe. But it was too late.
    The radar (and the severe storm warning) indicated that things would slacken shortly after 7, and they did. I took Dad and Margaret out to the car, again ferrying them with the umbrella over each, and it was unbelievable that we had just seen that much rain. I got them home and, miracle of miracles, her yard hadn't flooded at all. And there we see again that it's better to be lucky than good, that good timing is very valuable even when it's accidental, and that a good time can be had during a huge storm assuming that you have a roof overhead.
    Meanwhile, the little cat continues to decline to get in the cat carrier to go to the vet, 'though my friend Michelle has given me the contact info for a vet who makes house calls. Alas my next good day is a national holiday (it would be for the regular vet, too, of course) but maybe we can make this work Monday.

Very, very old joke made new

    Yesterday was my brother William's birthday, so last night we went out to the local restaurant we always visit, him, my dad, Margaret and me. My dad told a story. He said that when he was a child, a black man who had been in the Army, possibly during World War I, taught him a poem. Dad said he could never remember the last line. I don't mean never now, in his 90s, but never since the 1920s. He recited what he could remember, and I looked it up and found it on the Internet with the smart phone. It's not particularly safe for work, but my three actual readers are all more or less self-employed (or don't look me up from work). It went like this:
In days of old
When knights were bold
And paper wasn't invented
They wiped their ass
On blades of grass
And went away contented.
    Now he remembered the third line as "and men wore metal pants," so the poem the WWI vet told him was a different one. But he was happy with this one as a solution to the decades' old mystery. Here's one that gets in the metal pants, but leaves out the poop:
"In days of old, when men were bold, and pants were made of tin, no mortal cry escaped a guy who squatted on a pin."
    Maybe I'll try it out on Dad when I pick him up from dialysis.