While Mazuzu continues his recovery, Jenny shows signs of boredom. Add to that the oh-so attractive scent of freshly laundered socks and she’ll leap into action, ‘sploding the contents of the laundry bag all over the kitchen floor.
She spent so much time rolling in it, biting and clawing, that we actually noticed two colored spots on her gut: a solitary dab of orange and a light blue one where she was, erm…- fixed.
And she fought us for them, too...
Weird, I know, but there you go. Getting the socks all over the place was just the “apéritif”, and she moved on to paper towel shredding on the bed, attacking our toes and my calves, throwing one of her stuffed toys in the air repeatedly (we had to cover our coffee mugs just in case).
The nurse is now bigger than the patient
Hours later, the little Hellion’s crashed on the cat tower recharging her batteries while Tito’s out chasing some flying thing, perhaps imaginary.
"Don't make me get up there!"
… What Nurse Jenny does most of the time: keep Maz the Schnazz warm:
Spring has arrived and the local wildflowers have erupted everywhere. More about that tomorrow. Today, I present a funny LOL starring sphynx kitties and a new video by OK Go. This new video is as colorful as the season. You can visit their YouTube page or their homepage.
All four of our kittoons here have needed a bit of socializing right from the start. It might seem that Maz Whang didn’t, but his universe was turned upside down when we adopted him, as he’d grown up a full year with Sphynx siblings, and a couple other cats and dog.
To be wrenched from his home was traumatic, and the poor beastie gacked and crapped all over himself in the cat carrier on the way to his new digs.
No camera! No camera!
We had to stop, clean him up and comfort him as best we could before driving on.
Sphynxes are social, but on their own terms, which aren’t always easy to decipher. They really are driven by the two related needs of warmth and sustenance, with much playtime in between.
Just like you test the warmth of a baby bottle prior to feeding, you have to ensure your hands are warm enough before petting Maz or he’ll recoil and dart away in shock and horror. I call this “ghosting” because that’s what his reaction makes me think of. We’ve said he’s been very good for Tito (and vice versa), drawing Tito out of his ‘goth’ period following Boober’s passing.
Strangers at first
Finally, Tito was able to chase and play to his heart’s content with the streaker, losing excess weight in the process, and bonding with, well, an alien. Even Miss Jenny finds Mazuzu irresistible: both want to nom on Maz, who’ll leap straight up a couple feet in the air and maybe growl if a tooth racks his spine. Mmmmh. Baby back ribs…
Love happens
Given Tito and Jenny’s “affection” for shoes, I suspect they enjoy Maz’ gym locker smell when it’s time to give him a bath. That’s usually a signal for us to drag him into the tub, but then they love the new cat smell just as much and are all over him again.
Affection? They have it. Tito tricks us into feeding him and leaves the food for Maz, knowing the alien always needs more. Smart Tito…
Maz grooms both Tito and Jenny when he beds down with either in the basket atop the computer desk, later gacking hairballs and meowing his discontent, but what can you do..? Jenny also grooms both, focusing on Maz’ ears in particular, an unexpected boon for us since Maz and Q-tips don’t mix well.
The mutual grooming society in action
One of the biggest changes is something Maz started and Jenny continues: helping Tito find his voice. Because he never was very vocal at all, this watchful little thing which grew into a big cat. He now trills and coos and meows, although always in the higher pitch of a kitten. And it may be early yet to tell, but I think Jenny’s going to be the same. They both will always sound like kittens.
Tito and Jenny
This may sound like a sign of arrested development but I prefer to think of it as a display of happiness, along with Tito’s joy at being picked up and carried from room to room for a few minutes, purring and discovering a new perspective on his world with wide eyes, rubbing his chin on our cheek as we do so. And Jenny’s happiness at going to sleep hugging my hand to her head, like a pillow.
Our two little feral rescues no longer have to survive on mean streets, they only have to romp and warm each other and their “cousin” from outer space.
It’s love
Love is in the air and scarcely displaced by Maz and Jenny’s farts. It’s all good.
It’s not that Maz Whang is selfish, exactly… Or even that Tito is an enabler, but… Let’s again face the fact that Maz, a bit like Bad Santa, is an eating, drinking, sh*tting machine, who zeroes in on food with purpose and violence.
He does burn through calories like a three alarm fire and prefers 80 degrees weather.
Tito would even sit on a kitchen chair, looking at us with eyes half-closed, a signal that he wants canned food, only to leave it to Maz once he showed up: in other words tricking us into feeding Maz even more.
I watch and see all
But that’s just Tito being the Big Brother, the Paraclete. Three in the morning, Maz digs at my wife, standing on her for effect. Claws are always out, by the way: he always has that sense of urgency about him, like Indiana Jones pressing his face in the wall as he is about to get crushed: “we-are-going-to-die!”
The rule is, though: no canned food until six a.m.
Which means that for Rudha-an, the window from 3 to 6 a.m. is a preview of purgatory, pummeled by this mace wrapped in leather while I (mostly) sleep soundly and justly. The way of the world is the way of the cat, perhaps especially one that looks like David Bowie in “the man who fell to Earth”.
Keeps food in the fleshy folds of his visage...
Okay, in truth, Maz is more Richard Widmark than Bowie, but he is a star.
Good thing, then, that Maz’ naked ambitions are checked by the crème brulee that is Miss Jenny. We used to joke that Maz was nuclear powered, watching him streak through the apartment, up and down the furniture and hanging from the cat tower like a monkey. But she matches him step by step and then some. And that’s no small feat.
She is so nommable
So while the Whang does his thang, the blue-eyed she-devil chases after him to steal… Well, kisses, actually.
I wuvs him
That’s right, she nuzzles both boys and grooms them to the point that we thankfully no longer need to use Q-tips on Maz’ flappers.
Maybe she can be enticed in tackling Maz when he starts his food dance at three in the morning…? No.
Nope, she’ll stand right next to him waiting for noms, maybe even egging him on. She dances to her own tune, that one: if noms aren’t forthcoming, she’ll just force Maz into a high-speed chase or chew on his leg while Tito watches from the shadows in the hallway, always waiting.
Looks like a Disney movie...
So… “Jules and Jim“, or might a “Pact of Steel” be in the works? All I know is even I often wake up from being hit by a high-speed feline cannonball, making me yell “F****G FASCIST!!!” like Jeff Lebowski…
The mythological sphinx, while not to be confused with the Sphynx, does combine elements of other species. How many of us have observed, while watching a cat “he/she looks like a bat! An Owl… A panther, monkey, rat, wolf, bird….”
I often think of Tito as a wolf with stripes, but as to Mazuzu Whang…
a: the action of reincarnating : the state of being reincarnated b: rebirth in new bodies or forms of life; especially: a rebirth of a soul in a new human body
Who are we?
Let’s begin with Tito, a smoky-gray domestic short hair without a mean bone in his body. Both he and his brother from another mother, Kitsune, are about a year and a half old as of this writing.
Kitsune, or Kitsy for short, introduced Tito to Parkour, a series of gravity defying leaps and bounds over and against walls, furniture or the unfortunate biped. I should add “naked streaker food thief” to Kitsy’s bio (he’s a Sphynx, so hairless and somewhat lewd). Runs around a lot…
Rudha-an, the other human in the realm, worked as a bookseller for 20 years, has a green thumb, two left feet and a handy love of tools and home repairs (which is cool, because I don’t). She hasn’t met a dust bunny she didn’t like and her favorite writers include Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Richard Morris, Dan Simmons, Richard Feynman and Stephen Baxter.
As for me, I am a Jack-of-some-trades (guess we call ourselves ronin nowadays) lured westward from Europe over 20 years ago, who worked his way to a corner office, eventually getting laid off) with a marked preference for four-legged creatures, whiskey and wide open spaces, who hasn’t met a dust bunny he couldn’t live with. My list of favorite writers include Gore Vidal, Jean-Pierre Andrevon, William Styron and H.P. Lovecraft.
Now, why jellybeansofdoom?
Those cutesy, not particularly sanitary pads cats walk on?
Why, Wolverine’s got nothing on them. As a wee lad, I once witnessed a red tabby put a neighbor in the hospital as the neighbor tried to strangle said kitteh with a snare. Bad move. The cat appeared to have a keen understanding of the human circulatory system and the tools to, shall I say “excavate” his would be assassin’s forearms.
The man bled profusely and “Red” lived to mark his territory for, well who knows how long…
Because cats tend to live and die like outlaws. One day, Fluffy jumps the fence never to be seen again and his or her humans never know what happened. A car? A dog? Some nasty neighbor..?
Unless they dwell in cities and remain indoors for the rest of their life and seem to evolve in front of us. Like the Sphynx breed: no hair nor whiskers, all ears and eyes gauging you. But this is for another post. Jellybeansofdoom, [JBoD], aims to welcome all of us who bear witness to the lives of all these animals whom we share our life with, not solely of the feline persuasion.
These times we live in are rife with challenges and hardships, leading many to find out who and what their true friends are, and as it happens, truest friends wear fur because it actually grows on them. They are kin.
