I can't believe how hard a time we're having in finding a home for Spike, the white Angora cat we took in a little while ago. We keep getting weirdos who string us along for weeks and then disappear right at the moment they're supposed to come meet him in person. I keep thinking it's one person who keeps using different email addresses, but unless they're spoofing IP addresses all over the city, it's separate individuals. Super lame. I think people think they will respond to an adoption ad and then, minutes later, go to an undisclosed location to pick up their briefcase full of kitty. Come on, people, we've got to at least attempt to establish some background before handing out cats. Oh well, try, try again.

I wouldn't mind so much but you see, we're all full up with cats. I know I've said it before but summer hasn't even begun and we've got cats everywhere. Two of the back yard cats who were presumed to be feral have turned out to be more tame and friendly than the indoors cats! So we gotta find them homes as well.

And then there's Haley, a young cat we trapped a little while ago. We'd never seen her before the night she turned up in the trap. She also turned out to be very friendly, but was skin and bones and sporting a hugely infected abscess which manifested itself as a big hole on her shoulder. She recovered from her injuries at Empty Cages Collective, and once she was well enough, we brought her back home to finish her convalescence. She still needs to be vaccinated and spayed so she's kept separate from the other cats. It looks like we'll have to wait until the end of the month to get her spayed; we could get fixed sooner but it would require getting her ear tipped. And I don't wanna do that anymore if at all possible, not for tame, adoptable cats.

Meanwhile I have been having a helluva time getting this guy to come out and give me an estimate on replacing our back door, but he finally made it over yesterday (2 hours late). We're also probably putting a fence in, and THAT guy has been giving me the runaround for weeks. This is not even mentioning the first fence guy who came over, duly measured the yard and discussed options, only to never ever call me back with an estimate. What's up with that?

In an effort to bridge all my problems, I am in the process of teaching the cats to build a fence and replace a door. Results have been mixed so far, they have a lot of energy but I'm having trouble finding tools small enough for them to hold.

I'll be back when I have something interesting to report!

Labels: Adoption, Cat Fixin', Cats, Empty Cages Collective, House, The Yard

I'm trying to get organized and live up to the secret pact I made with myself that go me through the winter. During the cold months, when there was work to do on the house, I comforted myself with the thought: "I'll do it when it warms up."

Then this weekend comes along with 90-degree temperatures. Great. Unable to put it off any longer I went into the back yard with the intent to half-ass some yard cleanup then retreat to the TV again. Over Christmas we refinished some floors in the house, which produced a whole lot of scrap wood. Instead of dealing with it at the time (see above), I just piled all the wood in the yard. The Plywood, 2x4s, Masonite and old wood paneling have shuttled around the yard over the months, coming to rest against the neighbor's chain link fence. It somewhat resembles the barricade in Les Miserables.

I figured I could put the smaller debris in contractor bags and lash together the longest wood boards together in preparation for sawing them into bundles small enough for the trash guy to pick up. This still would leave some huge plywood sheets that would need to be cut repeatedly but there was no way I was doing that for now. I busied myself with the easiest of the tasks, bagging up small garbage, breaking down some of the thinner panels and whatnot. Meanwhile, my neighbor a couple yards over was puttering out back as well.

He struck up a conversation with me, noting that he had just dug up a bunch of dirt from his yard while working on his latest project, which appears to be a sort of gazebo structure (he described it as a 'cabin' and admitted that he's sort of winging the plans, making it up as he goes along; I like him already). Anyhow, he had a bunch of dirt, and he knows we have all these cats running around (his son learned to say "gato" before "Papi," I was somewhat chagrined to learn). The cats love to 'play' in the dirt, as he put it, so it could help keep the cats in my yard if they had more dirt to 'play' in. So I said sure, gimme the dirt.

Herein lies one of the awkward issues of yard-having in Brooklyn: we can't enter each others' yards. My next-door neighbor and I have no fence between us, but nearly every other yard is fenced off. So dirt that needed to travel some 20 feet would need to be carted through the neighbor's house, out the door, down the sidewalk, and through my living room just to get over here. He suggested an alternative: he would fill up sandbags with dirt and hand them over the fence to me.

For the next couple of hours, he shoveled dirt into reinforced bags, dragged them over to a ladder next to the fence, climbed up and gingerly dropped the bag into my waiting hands. I don't have a lot of space to dump extra dirt, but we do have a sizable plot in the back of the yard and a sort of narrow median down the center. We filled up every inch of available dirt-space, and there's still some dirt leftover. Part of his motivation was that now he won't have to pay to have the dirt hauled away. I don't know how much that costs, but he seemed grateful. It must be expensive, cuz I was exhausted and my muscles are all sore from the hauling and dumping; he did all that PLUS the shoveling. He even gave me a new gazebo tent that would have gone unused by him since he was building the permanent cabin thingy. Wow.

I admit I don't interact with my neighbors as much as I should. I talk to the next-door neighbors, since our houses are identical, so we feel like we are sort of related or something. But we're on head-nodding level at best with most of the other neighbors. So it was nice to have an excuse to speak to him, especially since his family is just about the only other family on our end of the block to use their back yards much. I'm hoping we keep talking, I'm racking my brain to find something I can give to him in return, but I'm pretty rusty in the ways of Neighbor Gifting. If I can't find something I would otherwise throw out he might find useful, should I bake him some cookies or something?

Labels: Neighbors, The Yard

Mugsy is not gonna win any Cat Fancy awards, but he's one of our favorite feral cats. He's gotten a lot sweeter since we callously trapped and castrated him, which makes me think we should start doing this to people who bug us as well. It's tough love! Anyway, he usually hangs out in our yard with his boyfriend George. He has his own chair under the gazebo tent, a disheveled patio chair with a hair-matted cushion on it. He comes by every day. Or I should say, he did come by every day.

Last Tuesday he abruptly stopping showing up. George still came by to eat, but he seemed like half a cat without Mugsy. Of course, he's a feral cat and by definition they don't have a home and are therefore sort of entitled to wander wherever they want. But it seemed increasingly strange that this one wasn't showing up. Frankly, where would he go besides our yard?

So I climbed through the fence in the back yard and started looking for him. It was a dumb idea, like a feral cat is gonna just sit there and wait for me to walk up, o hai. But I thought maybe I could get some idea of what had happened to him. A feral's life is hard, often brutal and usually short. I half-expected to find his dead body in the bushes, guarded by George.

Behind our house there is a run-down rectory and a recently-resurrected church (bad economy = holy rollin' weekends). The rectory house appears to be unused and we often joke that the cats live inside it. Beyond the church, the rest of the block is houses in a variety of styles; right next door is a 6-family frame house. I crept behind the church, simultaneously trying not to attract attention and acting like I was supposed to be there.

I went past the church to the 6-family house. It's in a pretty sorry state, the best thing about it is the relatively new plywood panels boarding up all the windows (still I'm not entirely sure that people aren't living there). Just as I rounded the corner, I saw what appeared to be George's distinctive tail disappearing under the corner of the house. I knelt down and could see a hole just below the aluminum siding, just big enough for a cat to fit through. All joking aside, these feral cats have their own damn house!

I didn't have a flashlight so I couldn't see much more. But I figured if George was in there, then Mugsy was probably also there, if at all. There wasn't anything I could do but hope he would show up again. Just over a week later, Mugsy did return, his eyes crusted mostly shut from an upper respiratory infection, but otherwise unharmed. I can't figure out how he survived all that time, but there's probably water in the house, and who knows, maybe he was catching mice.

God help the local cats if the economy recovers enough that somebody fixes up this neighborhood, where will all the cats live? Don't answer that.

Labels: Cats, Feral, Neighbors, The Yard

I can't wait for this week to be over! so much annoying stuff going on with my job; I think some of my coworkers spend all day, every day attending meetings. They do nothing else, just go from meeting to meeting, all the time. This is my theory, anyway. They don't mind meetings that stretch on for hours, they never need to take a breath, they just keep on talking. And god help you if they get near a video projector. Anyway, that answered a lot of questions to me as to why it takes so long to do stuff around here: everybody is in meetings all the time. Or conference calls. It's unbelievable.

Meanwhile, the TNR train keeps on truckin'. Our 7 ferals are back on the street, and seems to be no worse for the wear. Some, like Grumpus, even seem friendlier than they were pre-surgery. Last night, Grumpus was eating by the window, I reached out and petted him. He didn't even flinch! Makes me think he may not be a real feral, which is sort of sad. But he's got food and he's got shelter (storage tub!), so he's doing all right.

Traps are being set again, to catch whoever we can in advance of Saturday's TNR action. BARC is again hosting the Snip Truck, and can take a lot of cats, so we're gonna try to catch the few remaining stragglers fixed. This will be run much like the Mobile Spay Unit Days, if you have a non-feral cat, you can get it clipped for $25. The cats have to be there by 9am Saturday, no food after midnight Friday. They truck will be there, so let's fill it up. I suspect 15-odd cats we've altered so far may not in fact be all the unfixed stray cats in Brooklyn.

Ironically, I find all this cat-trapping, carting around, and urine-cleaning to be less stressful than my day job, even though I get to sit in front of computer, hardly moving all day. Except when I'm running from one meeting to the next.

email me jimmy at jimmylegs.com if you need more info about fixing your ferals or house pets. I think they do dogs, too.

Labels: BARC, Cat Fixin', Cats, Feral, Mobile Spay Clinic, Strays, The Yard

the last 3 posts have been non-cat-related, I figure I'm due for some catblogging! We are down to a total of 7 cats within the household, down from a grand total of 12. And 4 of them are residents anyway, so we really only have 3 more cats to adopt out!

Chester went home last night, he was a total angel pretty much the whole time. He's moving in with another Russian Blue, maybe it'll be like the Ugly Duckling in reverse, he'll be all like "What's this? There are other cats as beautiful as am I? Heavens to betsy!"

As for the remaining kittens, we have leads for both Tumbleweed and Baby Bones (the latter of whom is currently getting neutered). Baby Bones has been here so long he finally hit puberty and has been running around humping all the other cats, which they disturbingly don't seem to mind (even the boys). If this all goes through, it will leave Monkey, who is probably just fine with that.

Monkey is the only female of this batch, and has never really gotten over her skittishness. She lets us pet her and doesn't even freak out when we pick her up, but she hasn't yet 'asked' to be petted; she can take us or leave us. things are complicated by the fact that we have her mom (Flossie) in as well. She can sort of depend on her for all her mothering needs, reducing us to food-bringers and string-shakers.

But if Baby Bones can find a home, there's hope for us all! He's still got issues too, but he's finally come to the conclusion that people might be okay. He's running a full month behind his brothers on that tip, but who's keeping track? I am, that's who.

Of course, all this cat stuff ignores the other side of the fence, the outdoor cats (which, if you add all indoor and outdoors cats currently under our tutelage it's more like ... 12). Since I put out my upgraded cat shelters, they have been occupied not by the cats I built them for, but two cats new to the patio. One is Grumpus, who looks mean but actually seems very nice. The other box contains a young gray and white cat of indeterminate sex. I have another cat condo on the way, I'm hoping regular visitor Baxter will take advantage, or (God Forbid!) Freddie, the Outdoor Cat We Kidnapped From Clinton Hill.

I don't know where she spend her nights but she comes for food every day and is way more affectionate now than she was as an indoor cat. I had hoped she would use the cat-house but apparently she's too good for that. We still theorize she breaks into the abandoned church rectory behind our house, which I must admit beats the hell out of a storage tub lined with Styrofoam.

Labels: Cats, Feral, kittens, Strays, The Yard

I forgot to take pictures of the kittens again, but I'll try to take some tonight. It's pretty fascinating to watch the progress. They are now a month old and are behaving more and more like cats and less like larvae.

Elsewhere in the cataverse, I thought another rundown of the main locals is in order. Many of the cats who hung around a while ago have not been seen in a while, while new cats have appeared to take their places.

Marbles. This is the cat that I thought was male at first, but she proved me wrong by getting pregnant. She hasn't given birth yet, we have tried to get her inside but she doesn't like to stay long after she eats. Then again, she will lie for hours next to our garbage cans, which apparently she prefers to our comfy chairs.

Gladys. This little female started showing up about the time we realized Marbles was pregnant, I had hoped to ensnare her and have her fixed. Then I realized she already gave birth and was currently nursing a litter. No telling how old they are or where they are being raised.

Jojo. This young male showed up the other day, barged into the house, flopped down on the floor and hasn't left. He will not take no for an answer and I'm a sucker for a gray tabby. Since we seem to have no choice in the matter it looks like we're keeping him. I wanna take him into the shop to make sure he's not harboring some horrible disease. He still spends nights outside until we can confirm his health and his ability to play nice with others.

Siamese Cat. This guy is a prizewinner. I don't think he's purebred because he's sort of muscular and stocky for a Siamese. But he's one good-lookin' cat. If anybody wants a Siamese, I'm working on taming him and will try to get him fixed. How does such a cat become a stray? Even if he's a mix, these cats don't usually come cheap. We came up with a host of theories, usually involving an elderly dowager who owned the cat, then died, leaving him homeless. That's probably not what happened, but at least it allows me to look at him and not necessarily think somebody tossed him on the street on purpose.

Chauncey. You may remember this guy, we haven't seen him for a long time. He was part of the whole crew of cats who used to come by and try to steal our cats' food. His sudden reappearance gives me hope that some of the other cats we haven't seen lately are still out there and okay. We're nearly positive he had an owner now, since he's been MIA for months and then shows up looking totally healthy. Unfortunately, the intervening months have shifted his personality from goofball older kitten to randy young adult. He got into the house and got into a fight with Lucy which I feel only happened because she's the only unaltered female around. It's too bad, he was a fun cat. This makes me want to take him in and have him fixed, even though he's not a stray. Imagine his owner's surprise when he comes home sans balls! Anyway it's an interesting ethical question.

And finally, the New Cat. Actually, there are at least two of them, as a pair showed up the other night. I think they're washing their paws in the water dish I leave out. They are enormous, by the way. What bizarre animals.


Also sighted lately include George, the tuxedo cat (newly-thin after giving birth, we assume), the flea collar cat, the second Russian Blue (who showed up the same day as Chauncey, they may both be owned by the same person).

Sadly, no one has seen Mugsy in a long time.

Previously:
In the diet of denial

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Feral, kittens, Pets, Strays, The Yard

As promised, less kittens and more big fat white cats in the back yard! We hit up Home Depot yesterday for the first of what will probably be several trips there to populate the yard with plants. they had a surprisingly good selection, both for the garden and the window boxes I bought months ago but have yet to fill and mount. And yes, the window boxes are the lame plastic kind, but that's all they had at the XXtra discount store. In fact, HD was running low on decent planters too, I saw only one window box worth anything, and it was too small. To remedy this, we tried to get plants that would spill over the edge of the box to minimize our gauchity.

For the boxes we got annuals (including some 'double impatiens' which I just think are swell), but everything for the yard is perennial, so that we may enjoy the greenery for years to come. Or until we win the lottery. We're sort of reaching at straws, picking out stuff we like with little plan as to where stuff will get planted. But I guess it can go anywhere for now, it's not like we're gonna run out of room with the few plants we have so far.

At some point I'll have to remove most of the mint plants that sprouted up everywhere. I hate to tear up a perfectly serviceable plant that is doing a helluva job covering the side of the yard, but then, it's not like it won't just come right back.

I still want to get some big planters and plant some tall skinny trees so that I may move them around the patio at will, but HD had only superlame planters left. What's up with the state of outdoor furnishings? It's like people want their yards to look like the Enchanted Fairy Forest of Faux-Bronze Pots with Little Fleur-de-Lis all over the place. To the customers' credit, it seemed all the plainly designed planters and whatnot had all been sold, leaving the fugly stuff behind. But somebody must be buying this crap. I'll take my plastic boxes over the ostentatious stuff any day!

I've got the rest of the week off! If only I could enjoy it, but the specter of the workload when I return will ruin my ability to savor my freedom. Unless, perhaps, I get really drunk.

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Flowers, House, Plants, The Yard

Things seem to be going along okay with Lucy the Pregnant cat so far. I can't tell how far along she is but you can feel the kittens moving around inside, so maybe they're getting antsy to get out?


We're trying to decide how involved we want to get with the local cat population, but we found out that there is a mobile spay unit that will actually come out and fix a population of neighborhood cats (provided you have at least 10), which would nicely curtail feline reproduction on our block. But to get to this point we'd have to get the cats to warm up to us more to have a chance of getting them into the Spay-O-Matic. But of course, doing this means feeding all of these cats (instead of just some of them), pretty much for the rest of their lives unless they can be adopted out (which in the case of cats like Mugsy, is pretty unlikely). But maybe it's not that big a deal; indeed, some might argue I've been heading towards this kind of thing for years, why fight it?

All of this stuff is certainly easier to deal with now that it's summer. Winter is the real test, so at least I have some time to decide. Though I sure would like to get these animals fixed ASAP, to avoid the bittersweet heartbreak of More Kittens. Which reminds me, if anybody wants a kitten, head over to north Bushwick and check out Jen's brood. She's got a couple of gray tabbies left to dole out. If however you prefer a calico, just give us a couple weeks and Lucy will produce something to your specifications. If you can't use any new cats, please spread the word to your less web-savvy pals!

Oh, and last night a raccoon showed up in the yard. Think we should adopt it too? And for the record, Mr Bones was suddenly not so tough when this bad boy strolled by.

Labels: Bushwick, Cats, The Yard

The back yard has been cleared of offending trees and related debris, but is now lying fallow as I waffle over what I should be planting. My parents suggested I grow "potato vine" over all the chain link fencing, it's what they use in northern California and it seems to grow quickly and cover stuff well. But first of all, I am not at all sure if it's commonly known as 'potato vine' or if that's their cutesy colloquialism for it. I looked it up but there seem to be several plants that sort of sound like it. And secondly, I have no idea if something that grows well in California would stand a chance in the schizophrenic weather patterns of New York. Also I hear they are poisonous, a detriment in a household with cats that chew on stuff they find out back.

I' m also planning window boxes for the front parlor floor, but again I'm at a loss as to what flowers to plant. I'd like to do something more impressive than impatiens this time around, but the more I look into things, the more I understand why I always just used them in the past. They require almost no thought, they continually flower all summer long, and they're not half-bad looking. Maybe that's all I want out of a flowering annual. Anyway, I'll be hitting up all the local nurseries to get some m ore ideas, but if anyone knows of a vine that will cover a fence-type thing in no time, lemme know.

Also in back yard news, the cat parade has more or less stabilized to a set of players that I am attempting to document. So far I count some 8 cats who have been patronizing our home of late, and this isn't even counting Lucy the Pregnant Kitten. I will eventually have photos of all of them, plus short psychological work-ups:


Russian Blue: This is the good-lookin' feller who comes by every so often to strut his stuff. He never wants food, and is apparently not interested in any of our female cats. He is, however, smitten with Hubcap, which is just plain weird.


Mugsy: The scroungy orange tiger who likes to sleep on the ratty blanket in the church yard. He may not win any beauty contests but he seems to have a sweet disposition. Also known as "Fugsly."


Marbles: This is the cat I called Decatur's Boyfriend previously, but she too has turned out to be female. She hasn't been in the back yard but she has been hanging outside the front window. She doesn't appear to be pregnant ... yet.


Russian Blue II: Mysterious cat only seen once in the past week, it may not be a blue, further reports pending. UPDATE: He came back last night and was singing for a while.

Georges: A longhair gray with some white accents (he may be a Nebelung, but he might also just be a longhaired gray cat), he likes to caterwaul to the ladies in the middle of the night. He also approached Mr Bones the other day, singing his heart out, so there may be a problem with his eyesight. You can kind of see him in the below photo.


Tuxedo: Newly noted, this black and white cat was assumed to be male (since most of the others are), but we just realized it's a girl, which partially explains her timidity. Note Georges sitting on the fence behind her.

Flea-Collar Tiger I: The first one we spotted is male and pretty assertive. He looks like a cross between Hubcap and Decatur and made for many frustrating moments when Decatur was lost.


Flea-Collar Tiger II: This one may be female and has more of a leopard-spot coat. I don't know who is putting these flea collars on the neighborhood's street cats but I think it makes people think they are being cared for, which is only true in the sense that there are many garbage bags for them to root through.

And of course, the kitten who we've been calling "Lucy," (pictured at left) she's coming along well, but she just cannot grasp the concept of a litterbox, insisting on going back to the vacant lot at night. Maybe I should fill a litterbox with dirt, gravel and discarded tires. We're not sure how old she is but she must still be pretty young, she doesn't look full-grown yet. Who wants a slightly used kitten?? She will be delivered somewhat thinner than she appears here.



UPDATE: Here's a shot of the back yard yesterday, where at least seven (7) cats are in evidence.


You can't really see Georges or the Russian Blue cat (who is actually outside the fence), but I assure you, they (and possibly others) are indeed out there.

Labels: Cats, Flowers, Pets, Plants, The Yard

Ugh, the last few days have been miserable, and not just because of the rain. Sometime on Friday night, Decatur slipped out an open front window. We didn't realize it until the next afternoon. We started searching around the area, trying to apply some form of feline logic to the situation. It seemed to me she would have dashed across the street into the vacant lot/parking lot as it is easy to get into and hide. But the more we looked around, the more we realized how many places there are for a small animal to hide. Not the least of these is the church yard behind our house.

At this point we didn't know what window she went through, so we looked out in the back as well. The church has been out of commission for years and the lot (which contains both church, rectory house and driveway) is totally grown over and full of trash. So it's basically a stray cat's amusement park. I searched through it several times, rousting many other cats, but not the one I was looking for.

The circumstances surrounding Decatur's disappearance may shed some light on all this: see, on Friday night we let some cats into the house. One was that Russian Blue cat I spoke of earlier, the other was the Kool-Aid Kitten, who has an even better 'in' to our home: she's pregnant.

Last time Decatur was around a cat with kittens, she bolted and I didn't see much of her for over a month. I didn't know if this was the same situation or if she was really lost; she had never been out front before, and this weekend had been fraught with stuff to scare both cats and humans. Friday night there was some huge to-do down at the far end of the block; we heard what may have been shotgun blasts and soon the street was full of people, cops, ambulance, fire trucks. Not sure what the story was there but it was a bit unsettling. Saturday night as we were entertaining friends with discussions of how Bushwick is really much nicer than its reputation suggests, some dipshit started shooting a gun right outside our house. I'm still not sure what that one was about, I checked outside afterwards but saw no one in evidence, shooter or shootee (the next day the cops came and placed tiny orange cones next to each bullet casing; the bullets had shot out the rear window of an SUV).

So I thought Decatur might have been so spooked by the commotion that she had gotten herself really lost. Anyway, we kept up the searching and the fretting, I made flyers and posted to lost-pet web sites. But things wrapped up pretty much 20 minutes after I put up the flyers.

I noticed the parking lot gate was open, a guy from Luis Refrigeration was changing the tire of his company van, so I went in and asked if it would be okay to look around for the cat. I went to the back of the lot, which was covered with that bamboo-like stuff I so detested from my old back yard, shook a jar of cat treats and called her name. Like it was nothing, Decatur emerged from the underbrush. Just like that.

She was no worse for the wear, despite having been outdoors for all the huge storms of late. the tire-changing guy said that he had seen her sleeping in the cab of one of the trucks that park there. I brought her back inside and she seemed nonplussed to be home. In short, my sympathy levels dropped at light speed. Damn these cats!

Anyway, she's back home and she's being sweet again, so all is well. We have the house on lockdown so nobody's coming in or out for once. We're not sure what to do about the pregnant cat, I'm hoping to relocate her to the backyard, but she seems to be fine with living in the lot across the street. That may be the most ironic aspect of Decatur's sojourn: if she left because she didn't want to share space with the pregnant cat, why then did she move herself to that lot, where the very same cat spends most of her time? This is the logic you get from an animal with a brain the size of a walnut.

I'll have more stuff on the stray population, we have some real characters around here!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Good Stuff, Pets, The Yard

Freddy the Formerly Stray Cat scared us the other night when she climbed over the back fence and into the church yard behind it. She wouldn't come back, bedding down in an old milk crate and staring at me critically when I tried to convince her to come back inside. I feared we'd have to start all over with her, slowly luring her back to the house, but the next day she ran into the kitchen like nothing had changed. But it had ...

On a previous night, she got into a growling match with a big male cat that had traipsed into the yard. Now it seems she and this cat were pals; they slept next to each other in the church yard and hung out together on the patio. Not only that, but her ambassadorship seems to be attracting others. The other night we were sitting in the living room when I noticed a cat sitting on the kitchen counter. This is not unusual, but it wasn't one of our cats. It was a Russian Blue, looking pretty much show-quality, if a little on the thin side. He had come through the open window that sits above the counter. And Freddy's original friend kept lookout on the window sill. It then occurred to me that I had left that window open the night before in case Freddy decided to return, so they'd probably already done a dry run for this infiltration.

I don't know if these cats are strays (gently used) or feral (Born Free), but they bolted when we inched over towards them. The Blue cat really was a lot better-looking than pretty much any of our cats, it makes me wonder if I can trade some of them in. But we haven't seen it since. Meanwhile, the parade of neighborhood cats continues unabated.

Out on the street there are tons of street cats that appear to go from stoop to stoop looking for handouts. We keep getting visited by a calico kitten who momentarily garnered my sympathies because I thought she was covered in her own blood. I carried her out to the back yard and stuffed her full of cat food. Then I noticed the 'blood' splashed on her side much more closely resembled Kool-aid. I guess that's 'street smarts.'

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Funny to Me, Pets, The Yard

Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.

[via Curbed.com]

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, House, Maps, Renovation, The Yard, Weather

I was feeling gross yesterday but I was planning on going to work anyway until Jeannie talked me out of it. As lazy as I can be, I still have trouble making that decision to call in sick, mostly because I'm still not used to the notion of having sick days (of which I actually have a lot left to use).

Anyway, this worked out well since yesterday was The Day They Came to Remove the Tree. There was an old tree that had been devoured by termites and had fallen in the back yard, probably several years before we came to own the place. This would be a very easy thing for anybody with a chain saw to remove. However, there was a catch: a 40-foot clothesline tower.

For those of you who don't know, or who haven't been over to Abby's backyard, in the olden days, people dried their laundry on clotheslines. To facilitate this for upper-floor tenants, a ladder-like device was erected at the far end of the yard with pulleys attached for each floor. I'm not sure how people originally attached the lines (I guess some poor kid had to shimmy up the ladder with a rope in his teeth) and voila, you had a place to hang out your wet socks.

Since the advent of the commercial and/or residential laundry facilities, clothesline tower fell into disuse. Ours in particular suffered from obsolescence, the previous owners let it rust so bad its base supports rusted through. So at some point somebody moved it to the side, threading it through the phone lines and letting the top rest again the branches of the tree in the adjacent yard.

So not only was there a tree to remove, but it was partially leaning on this giant, rusty, steel tower thing which was precariously balanced between a couple of thin branches and the phone lines for half the neighborhood (all the more reason to go to cellular phones). I had no idea who to call to take care of this, but when the tree guy came over he said, "Eh, we do this all the time." It took them about 2 hours to do the bulk of the work.

The tree was gone before I even noticed. They also pruned back several other trees that were threatening other cables, as well as a bunch of vines. Work was momentarily stopped when they asked me to look up pictures of poison ivy and oak to make sure the vines weren't poisonous. I inwardly chuckled, I mean really, poison ivy here? Please. So I printed out some pictures of it to compare and they continued clearing it away.

The clothesline tower also came down without much trouble, they just slid it out from between the cables (I think they did break a couple of small branched in the tree). once they had it down they cut it into a couple of pieces and threw it on the truck, like it was nothing. It was especially helpful that our home abuts a church yard, so they were able to back their truck right up to the back fence of our yard.

They took most of the big stuff, leaving the green wood to dry out for a couple of days. They come back tomorrow to take the rest of it, plus all the leftover wood from my studio project. I'm trying to pick out some of the 2x4s or whatever I might want to keep. But it's a joy to ditch most of that stuff, as it has been taking up so much space in the cellar.

Before the tree guys showed up, I let the cats run around the yard. Despite the fact that there is no fence between our yard and the neighbors, there are tall fences around the perimeter of the two, so I haven't worried much about the cats escaping. Well, at some point I realized that Freddy was nowhere to be found. Indeed, long after the tree people had decamped, I peered over a fence and spied her sitting under an old Schwinn in the church's yard. I plied her with cat food to no avail. I feared she would return to her stray-cat, bird-killin' ways.

It was at this time I realized there in fact was a thatch of poison ivy growing out of the corner fence. Jesus Christ! I don't know how to get rid of it, should I just spray it with weed killer? I kind of want to get rid of it before the guys come back for the rest of the debris, cuz they said they don't wanna get near it, lest treeman Tony ruin his momentous birthday plans for the weekend.

At about 9:15, Freddy strolled back inside. She's still not any nicer to us, but she knows where she lives at least. Here's an album documenting some of the day's activities.

Addendum: Here's a pretty cool page about an archaeological dig in a Brooklyn back yard that has pretty much the only reference I could find about clothesline towers (their was half the size of ours and apparently not sitting between phone cables).

Labels: House, Neighbors, Pets, Renovation, The Yard

One of the more consistent requests I get through this site is information about the fence post spikes I used to erect a fence in my back yard. Well, it was the back yard at the last place I lived, in Clinton Hill. People write me every so often to ask where I procured the metal base posts to secure the wood posts that support the fence itself. Despite the momentousness of the project, I totally can't remember where I got them. I bought them online from a hardware store from the west coast, I think (I wanna say Washington). They were literally the only place I could find them online so I went ahead and got them. But that company seems to no longer have an online presence, if they have a presence at all anymore. So I always feel bad when I have to respond that I have no further info about it when people email.

But that has all changed, for the time being anyhow. A web researcher emailed me, not to ask where to get the spikes, but rather what my long-term opinion is of them. You see, this guy has located them, both online and at his local hardware store, and just wanted to know if they were worth it. He sent me the link, so I can now proudly post it here for anybody wanting to put up their own fence but not wanting to futz with pouring concrete. Near as I can figure these fence post spikes work pretty well. i don't know that I would trust them if you constantly have people scaling your walls, but to hold up your usual cedar plank fence it seems to work fine. Now all I have to do is put a link to this post on the original fence post post.

You may have noticed, since I moved to blogger for this blog, there is a serious disparity between old and new blog. The Archives page is hopelessly out of date (for recent archives, only the link on the right side of the home page will get you anywhere), and of course, the comments on the old posts still don't work. I just never have time to fix that stuff, and since it's been like this for many months now and the earth seems to continue to spin, I'm in no rush to fix it. I've got curtains to hang!

Labels: House, Renovation, The Yard