The last couple of weeks took an extra helping of crazy, all of it a logical result of several things I set in motion recently. Briefly, after a recent drought, I suddenly had more work than I knew what to do with, between freelance, temp and contract jobs. I'm still in the midst of this, though much of that smoke has now cleared. But it has been amazing to me how greatly changed my life has become so quickly. Other things remain squarely in familiar territory.

As previously mentioned, Mugsy has been in our house for the past 10 days, recovering from his first trip to the vet. This has been pretty surreal, keeping a feral cat in a guest room, administering twice-daily medicine, and teaching him what a litter box is for (a toilet, not a bed). He has done exceptionally well, allowing me to wrap him up in sheets to immobilize him while I clean his ears. Of course there has also been a lot of chasing him around the room, but he never really put up a fight.

We were supposed to release him Tuesday, but the weather was so rotten we decided to hold him one more day, and released him last night. He was so happy to be back in his yard, he didn't even want to eat at first. He scurried around, sniffing every corner of the patio, checking out the surrounding area, barely noticing his cat pals who were trying to get his attention. We feared he would be less likely to get close to use after his incarceration, but instead he seemed to grok the scene, and once he had settled down, came back up to ask for food.

One of the things that separates ferals from tame cats is meowing. Feral cats usually don't meow since it's a trait for kittens. House cats apply the kitten/mother paradigm to humans, which is why they are so whiny all the damn time. But ferals usually just regard us with suspicion and keep their distance. Mugsy, on the other hand, seems to have picked this up, as he started full-on meowing when he wanted food. It was pretty surreal to see this scrappy street cat asking for Temptations in a little kitten voice. So maybe he got a little more tame while he stayed with us.

Meanwhile we had two new cats who got fixed on the ASPCA mobile spay clinic. One is feral and is now back on the street. The other has turned out to be tame and is now sequestered in her own room while she tries to make sense of our house full of cats.

The last aspect of the weirdness of the last few days has been a sad one. While we were devoting so much attention to one feral, another wasn't faring well. I'll save that one for a separate post, as I'l liable to ramble on for a while.