How I acquired Sanchez the cat

From 2011 to early 2014, I was living during the week in an apartment in Beaverton, OR, working a contract. Sanchez--known then to one and all simply as "El Gato Negro"--was a large black cat who lived in the apartment complex. His owners had been there for a number of years but for some reason one of the flatmates didn't like cats, so they left him outside. They fed him, but he lived outside.

El Gato Negro made the rounds of the apartments and maybe as many as half a dozen apartments left out food for him. I understand that when he felt he wasn't getting enough, he'd hunt (successfully) ducklings and goslings in the creek behind the apartment. When I met him, he was friendly and let me pet him and pick him up. He was actually a little scrawny at that point and his fur was a little dull, but he was very active and in good health.

Around 2013, the apartment manager told me that his owners had skipped and had left him behind. She knew I'd been looking for a cat to keep me company, so would I like to take care of him? That sounded like a great idea, so the next time El Gato Negro came by, I picked him up and carried him up to my apartment. He took to living indoors just fine and the first night he was there, I went to bed and he joined me about 10 minutes later and snuggled into me, something he's tended to do every night since then.

In about a month of regular feeding, he got to a proper weight where he didn't look scrawny anymore and his fur was glossy. In his case, "proper weight" means 17, 18 pounds, which is the size of a small bobcat. He's about that big, too.

He picked up the name Sanchez when The Babe and I were at Worldcon and heard John Scalzi read a very funny short story he'd written entitled "The Other Large Thing," in which the name "Sanchez" figured prominently. (It's a fast read; if you've not read/heard it before, please take a couple minutes and do so now.)

Sanchez, as far as I can tell, is 13, possibly 14 years old. He's all black save for a little line of white on his chest. And he still tends to snuggle into me at night.

How I acquired Sanchez the cat

"Mean Little Kitty"

Cuteness with an early rap beat.



Post #994.

Addendum: The Mean Kitty video channel is here. There are videos of Sparta and Loki, both of whom have birthdays celebrated on May 20th.

"Mean Little Kitty"

"I spy, with my little feline eye,...."

Playing "I spy" with a cat.

"I spy, with my little feline eye,...."

Think your cats aren't pampered enough?

Think your cats aren't pampered enough? Are you guilty because you haven't done something for the little friskits lately? If so, check out Buzzfeed's review of the 20 best cat towers.

Think your cats aren't pampered enough?

Meowmania

This is just strange.

Meowmania

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.

This is a valuable article for any cat owner.

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.

Dear dogs and cats....

Dear Dogs and Cats:

• When I say "Move!" it means to go someplace else, not just to switch positions with each other so there are still two of you in the way.
• The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food.
• The other dishes are mine and contain my food.
• Please note: placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.
• The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack.
• Beating me to the bottom is not the object.
• Tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.
• I cannot buy anything bigger than a king-sized bed.
• I am very sorry about this.
• Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort.
• Dogs and cats actually curl up in a ball when they sleep.
• It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible.
• I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.
• For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bathroom.
• If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob, or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open.
• I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years; canine or feline attendance is not mandatory.
• The proper order is kiss me, then go smell the other dog or cat's butt! I cannot stress this enough.

To pacify you, my dear pets, I have posted the following message on our front door:

RULES FOR NON-PET OWNERS WHO VISIT AND LIKE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT OUR PETS

1. They live here. You don't.
2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. (That's why they call it 'fur'niture.)
3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
4. To you, it's an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who is short, hairy, walks on all fours, and doesn't speak clearly.

Dear dogs and cats....

Simon's Cat

Simon's Cat is a series of short animations made by someone who knows cats very well. The latest, Fly Cat, is very good.

Simon's Cat

Cat Drinking Songs

Okay, you know I love cats. Well, I just got sent this link of Irish Drinking Songs for your cat. I like that idea.

Cat Drinking Songs

A great version of the Bible

I stumbled, almost literally, over a version of the Bible that you should look at.

It's the LOLCat Bible. (Srsly, d00dz!) To give you an idea, here's Genesis 1:

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

11 An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish good, so, letz there be weedz.13 An so teh threeth day jazzhands.

14 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has lightz in the skiez for splittin day An no day.15 It happen, lights everwear, like christmass, srsly.16 An Ceiling Cat doeth two grate lightz, teh most big for day, teh other for no day.17 An Ceiling Cat screw tehm on skiez, with big nails An stuff, to lite teh Urfs.18 An tehy rulez day An night. Ceiling Cat sawed. Iz good.19 An so teh furth day w00t.

20 An Ceiling Cat sayed, waterz bring me phishes, An burds, so kittehs can eat dem. But Ceiling Cat no eated dem.21 An Ceiling Cat maed big fishies An see monstrs, which wuz like big cows, except they no mood, An other stuffs dat mooves, An Ceiling Cat sawed iz good.22 An Ceiling Cat sed O hai, make bebehs kthx. An dont worry i wont watch u secksy, i not that kynd uf kitteh.23 An so teh...fith day. Ceiling Cat taek a wile 2 cawnt.

24 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has MOAR living stuff, mooes, An creepie tings, An otehr aminals. It happen so tehre.25 An Ceiling Cat doed moar living stuff, mooes, An creepies, An otehr animuls, An did not eated tehm.

26 An Ceiling Cat sayed, letz us do peeps like uz, becuz we ish teh qte, An let min p0wnz0r becuz tehy has can openers.

27 So Ceiling Cat createded teh peeps taht waz like him, can has can openers he maed tehm, min An womin wuz maeded, but he did not eated tehm.

28 An Ceiling Cat sed them O hai maek bebehs kthx, An p0wn teh waterz, no waterz An teh firmmint, An evry stufs.

29 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Beholdt, the Urfs, I has it, An I has not eated it.30 For evry createded stufs tehre are the fuudz, to the burdies, teh creepiez, An teh mooes, so tehre. It happen. Iz good.

31 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Beholdt, teh good enouf for releaze as version 0.8a. kthxbai.

A great version of the Bible

One very silly cat

De Murr sent me the following clip:



And back to work for me. Y'all have a lovely morning--I am!

One very silly cat

A cat haiku for Friday

I was looking up Ernest Borgnine on IMDB.com to see how old he is (92!) and saw a lovely haiku by a user named Crazykaese.

Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes,
Fear vacuum cleaner

A cat haiku for Friday

Bernie the cat :(

Bernie the cat died today. I'm very, very sad.

About a week ago, we noticed that he was beginning to act a little puley. He wasn't moving as much and he seemed off his feed. Nothing too bad, really, but he clearly wasn't a happy boy.

As the days wore on, though, he wasn't getting better. He was losing weight and looking really peaked. His membranes were up slightly, so I figured it was a bad case of parasites, even though we'd dosed him with a vermifuge recently. Time to take him in to the vet. The Babe volunteered to take him in Thursday morning (they didn't have anything Wed afternoon) because she didn't have cases until the afternoon.

It wasn't parasites. The vet said that he was an extremely sick cat, far sicker than we'd realized. He was very jaundiced: the insides of his ears were bright yellow. They weren't sure what was causing it, but all the possibilities were really bad. They ran a bunch of tests and came up with a probable answer: FIP, feline infectious peritonitis, a disease that tends to attack kittens of precisely his age. Worse, this was the "wet" kind, which generates a lot of fluids.

The disease is a really nasty virus that attacks whatever the hell it feels like. It's different from cat to cat, so in one cat it might attack the heart, in another the lungs, and so on. In Bernie's case, it got to his kidneys and they were badly swollen, over twice their normal size (which is about the size of a marble) and surrounded by fluid. They had gotten so large that they were pressing into his intestines and causing enough discomfort that he didn't feel like eating or drinking.

FIP is hard to diagnose: you can say with certainty when it's not a factor, but the corona virus that's the root of the problem can appear without mutating into FIP (which is part of the evil). Even worse, there's no effective vaccine: the one that's on the market is of dubious effectiveness and it has to be given to kittens around 4 weeks. But the worst part is that there's no cure for it. There's minor symptomatic relief, but a cat with wet FIP has at best 2 months to live.

The vet rehydrated Bernie so he'd feel better, but she held out very little hope for him. She said if his appetite returned, he might last as much as 2 more weeks, but if it didn't--and this was far more likely--then it wouldn't be much longer at all. She made it very clear that I should bring him home to say goodbye.

We kept a close eye on Bernie that evening. He was fairly droopy, but the rehydration made him livelier than he'd been for a while. But by Friday afternoon, he was fading fast. He spent all his time curled up in one place or another. I noticed that his abdomen was getting distended from fluid build-up, which must've been very uncomfortable. In fact, several times I saw him curled up with one paw under him to lift up his tummy slightly so it didn't press on anything.

I figured if he made it through Friday night, it was Time, and I was going to bring him in to the vet to have him put down Saturday. He was still alive, but clearly in much worse shape, on Saturday morning, so made an appt. for the afternoon.

Bernie was so sick when I got ready to pack him up for the ride that he didn't even run away when I set the cat carrier next to him. He just looked at it and made this pitiful mewing sound. I scooped him up as gently as I could so I didn't press his abdomen and put him in the carrier and drove him to the vet.

I was about to ask about paying the bill in advance because I didn't want to stick around afterwards, but the person behind the desk knew what I was there for and said that they could mail me the bill and I could pay it when I felt ready to do so. That was incredibly thoughtful of them and very gracious as well: it's normally a pay-as-you-go deal.

One of the vet techs got me in the room and helped me get Bernie out the carrier. He was pretty pathetic at this point. I asked about his abdomen and she palpated and then said "Oh, yeah, feel this." I put my fingers where hers were and she said "Those are his kidneys." From something the size of marbles, his kidneys had swollen to the size of small hen's eggs. Bernie must've been miserable. It was good to feel that, because I knew I was doing the right thing.

She left me there and I talked to Bernie and cried for a while. He managed to move around some and snuggle. He even walked up on my shoulders and sat down for a while and would occasionally purr. His breath was really bad, which I attributed (correctly) to toxicity.

The vet came in and we got set up. Bernie still had a catheter port in his arm from his IVs on Thursday, so they didn't have to poke him for the shots. I was pleased. The vet first gave him a tranquilizer, which just relaxed him. (He looked far more relaxed than I'd seen him in the last few days, in fact.) Then she asked if I was ready for her to proceed. I said yes. She then gave Bernie an anesthetic that completely knocked him out so that he wouldn't be conscious for any of the rest of it. Bernie was draped over my forearm and he sorta drooped to one side. She waited a moment, but when it was clear that he was unconscious, she gave him the overdose of barbiturates. She checked his heart with the stethoscope and said "He's gone."

I cried through most of this. The vet (who was also very sniffly) asked if I wanted time alone with him. No, I'd done all that I needed to before she came in and he was gone now. I had found a couple of the paper balls that I'd through to Bernie and he'd play fetch with yesterday under the couch in my office, and I asked her to make sure that these went with him when he was cremated. (I had decided not to bury him at the house.)

I know I did the right thing for him, because my little guy was in a lot of pain, but damnit, I really hate it when my cats get sick and die. :(

Bernie the cat :(

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My desk is a mess, but it's decorative

Bernie cattywhompus on desk

My desk is currently a colossal mess. There are all kinds of unpleasant stacks of paper from projects, from taxes, from mail that's stacked up while I finish the ms.... just everything! But Bernie makes it look pretty good and, if not cleaner, then certainly a little cuter.

My desk is a mess, but it's decorative

Bernie and BC

I used to have a 21" monitor here in my office a few years ago. My old cat BC used to sleep on top of the monitor: it was warm, it was big, and it was comfortable. He'd stretch out on top of the monitor and sleep for hours. Paws would dangle over the edge every so often and once in a while I'd have to move a leg so I could see part of the screen.

BC

Yang would do the same thing. His tummy was always a lot bigger than BC's and he'd tend to lap over the edges in some less-than-dignified ways. Once in a while, I'd have two cats curled up on the monitor at a time.

Yang and BC

When I went to a flat-screen monitor about a year ago, Yang came into the office once, looked at the flat-screen monitor, and tried to leap on top of it. This had about the result you might expect. He was grumpy with me for a while for having made him look foolish.

Bernie the Fuzzball has never known a CRT monitor. He's spending his time curled up next to the keyboard or halfway on top of it. I'm hoping to get him used to the idea of being charmingly round and somnolent nearby on the desk and not blocking the keyboard or mouse as he seems to prefer. However, he has found a place: stretched out on me, purring, and generally contributing to the writing process.

Bernie_stretched_out

Bernie and BC

Catroy was here!

Bernie the sink-cat

Bernie has discovered how be a sink-cat. I spotted him in the sink this morning, where he obligingly let me take a few photos.
I'm banging away at a lot of things at the moment, and it occurred to me that everything's on the glide path to finish up about the time I start my vacation in a couple weeks. (Yes, I know, I just got back from a vacation in Palo Alto. I'm about to take a much longer one through the end of the year to take care of a bunch of use-it-or-lose-it vacation.) I'm going to catch up on my sleep, for one thing, and I think I'm going to do some computer restructuring and finish cataloging the baseball cards.

Stop bugging me; I'm trying to sleep!

While we were in Palo Alto, I went to Fry's for their Black Friday sale. I picked up a lot of very nice toys, including a DL DVD burner to replace the DVD burner that I've been using for the last couple years. I also got a 1TB hard drive and an external case. I'm looking forward to restructuring at least one workhorse secondary computer that desperately needs a system reload to get rid of the old, mangled Windows 2003 Server. I've also got a stray collection of smaller hard drives in it. Well, we call 'em smaller hard drives these days, but it's still about .75TB of capacity as it is. But I could sure structure it a lot better.

Are you about to turn on the water?

While I'm at all of this, I'm likely to consider updating my #1 computer, CLARISE. A reload of WinXP would be lovely on CLARISE, too, but I'm not sure how much I'm interested in doing all of that: a system reload is a lot of work, no matter what. OTOH, I may end up with an extra 1TB of disk space on an eSATA connection, which means data comes fast fast fast. Temp-tinnnng!!!

Catroy was here!

Bernie, being helpful

Fuzzy chest growth

It's difficult to work when you've got a fuzzy growth on your chest. I managed to actually get a couple of pages corrected before I finally had to pause, pet Bernie up a bunch to make him happy, and then remove him gently.

The digital camera was within arm's reach on the desk or I'd not have been able to take this shot. He's now wandering around the office so I can get back to work.

Bernie, being helpful

The Pep Boys: Mannie, Moe, and Jack

Bernie, Sebastian, and Yang are posing on the rolled-up Persian rug. I was doing lots of revamping to the network (behind me as I'm taking this photo) and I had moved a huge pile of debris off to one side, hence the rug rolled out of the way and the boxes of debris and so on).

The rug didn't stay rolled up for long, btw. I discovered that all three of these cats were sharpening their claws on the nap, which wasn't doing it a bit of good. There were little bits of rug yarns all over the place. I unrolled the rug asap thereafter.

The Pep Boys: Mannie, Moe, and Jack

Bernie and the Babe

Bernie has taken to sleeping on the couch in my office when he's not being helpful. The Babe stopped in the office and was petting him while we talked.

Bernie does make such a good conversation piece....

Bernie and the Babe