Got the Jimmy Legs

June 15, 2007 – 9:04 am

And that's something i don't wanna catch

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?

Cat Meeting

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.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Bushwick, Cats, The Yard | Comments Off

June 12, 2007 – 10:56 am

In the diet of denial

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.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Cats, Flowers, Pets, Plants, The Yard | Comments Off

June 6, 2007 – 9:09 am

Now it can be told

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!

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Bad Stuff, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Good Stuff, Pets, The Yard | Comments Off

May 31, 2007 – 1:19 pm

We are not daily beggars

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.'