They shoot kitties, don’t they?

VolMom bought her most favored son-in-law a BB gun for Christmas. She tried to make me promise not to tell my brother about this gift, but she’d already bought the thing. There would have been times growing up that VolMom could have made VolBro the happiest boy in the world if only she’d given him a BB gun. Or maybe he would have put his eye out. But my mom was so anti-gun than I’m pretty sure he never even asked for one.

Anyway, the gun was a gift to me too if I could say “Hey, my brother, mom bought my husband a BB gun for Christmas. Something she still wouldn’t buy you.”

This BB gun is some sort of “safe” version, though – hardly what a boy most desires. For one thing, the safety won’t stay off unless you’re actively pressing on it. For another, it’s battery operated with a constant force of BB expulsion – that means you can’t pump it up higher and higher and higher resulting in a more painful shooting experience. And it uses plastic pellets, not those little metal eye poppers.

But it still hurts to be hit by this BB gun. I know this because that’s what the Vol-in-Law told me when I shot him.

It sounds like a domestic, I know, but it wasn’t. It was a carefully controlled experiment. Kind of like science.

First I put on the ViL’s down jacket and had him shoot me in the back. I couldn’t really feel the impact, though I kinda felt the fabric move. That was a bit disappointing, given what we had in mind. Then the ViL put on the jacket. Similar experience. Then I tried to convince him to let me shoot him in the chest with only a shirt between him and the plastic pellet. He said no. He did let me shoot him in the butt. Over the pocket, he felt it, but it wasn’t painful. Above the pocket he said it stung.

Good.

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We want to use the BB gun to shoot cats. We don’t really want to wound them, but we do want to scare the begeezus out of ’em. There are a couple of neighbourhood toms that come into our house, eat our expensive anti-allergy cat food, terrorise and wound our kitties costing us money on vet bills and piss on our stuff. Not acceptable. We’ve tried locking them out, we’ve tried squirt guns, yelling and arm-waving.

Now it’s time to bring out the small guns.

So far, the Vol-in-Law has managed to wing one of the cats. The result is that the cat does make itself scarce – as in over the garden fence – when he sees us, where before he arrogantly retreated a mere few feet.

That’s a start.

Holding down the fort

I got my first email from a work colleague in a while.

How’s the world of work?

Dunno.

What’s the latest project?

Dunno.

What’s the future of xxxxxx in xxxxxxxxx?

Dunno.

My colleague sent me a link to this. A cat cam site.

It’s really cool. She’s thinking of getting one.

I can’t decide if they really need me or if I’m really not missing much.

Maybe I should get a cat cam.

Gone native

Now we all know that the situation in the Levant has been hot for a long time. No matter what side you come down on, it seems like everybody has a side. Personally, I plumped for Israel ages ago. It’s not something I think much about. I don’t discuss it much, because it’s one of those things that I’m not likely to change my mind about. No, in fact, I won’t change my mind. I guess it’s tribal.

I could go on about the Palestinians this, the Israelis that, but if you have an entrenched position on the matter I’m not likely to change your mind either.

Suffice to say, little that the Palestinians do surprises me much. The photos of the wee kids holding some pretty heft weaponry and just waiting for the day that their martyrdom dream comes true is sickening but doesn’t really work me up.

But this video from Palestinian children’s tv showing a man in a bee suit abusing cats and lions in the Gaza zoo just floors me.

And there you go, I’ve gone British. They’re abusing animals now. I may just have to write a strongly worded letter.

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HT: Harry’s Place

t-8: Free birth!

Technically, I missed a countdown post yesterday, but since I’m up at 5am and it’s not fully light yet, we’ll just count this as yesterday.

Regular readers will know that I’ve been scanning in old photos. Here’s one of my previous cat.

She died about two and a half years ago, when she was roughly six years old. She had mouth cancer. Probably too much Redman. I kept telling her to cut back.

Anyway, we got this cat because we thought she was a boy. We wanted a boy cat. This kitty had the cutest little fluffy kitten testicles – so neither we nor the crazy German cat shelter woman who gave us this cat suspected that she was anything other than male.

We’d neutered our previous cat a bit too young and stunted his growth, so we held off giving this cat the snip until he started displaying signs of sexual maturity. This didn’t happen and it didn’t happen. We were quite poor and the cat was quite healthy, so we never took her to the vet.

Then “he” came on heat at about 18 months. We felt pretty stupid. Kitty was pregnant. We pretended it was planned.

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Just like in human pregnancies, people like to offer advice during cat pregnancies, too. Everyone kept telling me that the cat would sneak off and have her kittens and I wouldn’t know about it until I noticed she was missing. And then that I should leave the kittens alone and that she wouldn’t want me around.

I knew this was the conventional wisdom.

But one night, I was playing Tetris while the Vol-in-Law was off doing his weekend warrior stuff (he was in the Territorial Army at the time) and she kept pestering me. Well, I was pretty annoyed with her pestering because I was doing really, really well at the Tetris. I was on a roll. I was set to break my old record by a mile. All the little pieces were falling into place. I was in the zone.

But the cat wouldn’t stop. And I looked up from the screen to find that there was a kitten head emerging from her rear. I paused the Tetris. I didn’t really know what to do. But as a smoker, I was sure that my next step involved a cigarette. So, I went downstairs to grab a smoke (I didn’t smoke in the house)

She followed me.

Turns out she wanted a birth attendant. So I sat with her and reassured her and helped her break the amniotic sack and encouraged her to lick her first little kitten into breathing. (She was hopeless as a kitty mother.) And then I sat with her for the next one and the Vol-in-Law came home and we both were with her for the third kitten. And she let us watch the whole thing and help her.

And then, it was after midnight, and it seemed to be over. I called VolMom – as it was her birthday – to wish her happy returns of the day and to inform her that she had predicted correctly and the kittens were born on her birthday and then we went to bed. There was another kitten, unbeknownst to me, but he was dead when I found him in the morning.

We kept one of the kittens – here’s Other Cat on her 7th birthday:

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Although my cat did not choose an unassisted delivery, I mention all this because I’ve just been reading about the Free Birth movement in The Guardian. Women who choose to labor and give birth completely alone (see the Unassisted Childbirth website). Some of the people who give birth on their own do so because they’re afraid of being pushed into interventions they don’t want. Some do so because they’re probably just freaky.

To me, giving birth is as personal as having sex,” says Sarah, 24, from Essex. “You don’t want someone else sitting there watching you.” Sarah chose to “freebirth” her first child, now two, at home.

Helloooo, you didn’t pregnant all on your own did you? There probably was somebody else in the room, I reckon.

I’m pretty private and I don’t really like other people touching me. I’ve never enjoyed back rubs from friends, for example. And there may well be times during labor that I want some private time and I need to make sure I ask for it. I also am very clear that I don’t want midwives yelling at me telling me what to do (I’m quite contrarian – so screaming Push! at me might just slow things down). But birthing alone sounds unnecessarily dangerous – and I’m not sure whether to blame slightly addled headed free-birthers or the medical establishment who can’t deal with women who need a bit more space. Apparently some of this is a reaction to the obstetrical insistence on doing things their way…

Although it is never going to be a majority movement, the issue of the over-medicalisation of birth is pushing freebirth on to the mainstream agenda in the US. A slogan war has broken out, with natural birth websites selling T-shirts which read “Pizza boys deliver. Women birth”, while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists gave out bumper stickers at a meeting last year, bearing the opposite message: “Home delivery is for pizza” (From The Guardian)

Well, we’re planning a home birth – and depending on length and how hungry folks are – we may opt for home delivery, too.

8 days til baby Cletus and a large veggie and prosciutto pizza

UPDATE: A friend of mine posts on Alabama caving to the medical lobby and disallowing midwifery- it’s stuff like this that pushes women of a certain disposition into unassisted childbirth.

t-14: missed countdown

Yesterday, I missed the Cletus countdown post. I was in a bad mood yesterday. I was sort of questioning why I even got into this baby thing when all I really wanted was a kitten. (Yes, I know, I appear to have made a fundamental error re. biology) I went off by myself to look at new bbqs. Nothing like expensive outdoor toys to make a girl feel better.

I joke about the kitten thing, but truth be told I’ve never been one of these women who seem to burn for a baby. I was curious, sure, I mean I guess I wanted a baby. I didn’t not want a baby at this stage in my life. But I can’t say I had this overwhelming, all-consuming desire for baby. In my mid-30s, I had to consider that there might not be a baby and I was perfectly OK with that. I had made up my mind that whatever happened, I wouldn’t go down the road of increasingly more complicated assistance in conception. I’m enough competitive that I would get wrapped up in triumphing over my own biology – and that probably wouldn’t be a healthy place to be.

I do feel slightly bad when I hear of women who are so desperate for a baby, women who go to extraordinary lengths (injections and hormones and IVF) to conceive and I’m like “Babies. They’re alright. I couldn’t eat a whole one.” and now I’m two weeks away from having one. I can’t really understand that compelling drive, but when I look on it from the outside it looks quite unpleasant. All that self-doubt and sense of loss and longing and doctor’s appointments – even when things maybe aren’t that bad.

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BTW, the Vol-in-Law had finally caved on allowing me a kitten. But then we found out I was pregnant and so he said “You don’t need a kitten, you’re having a baby.” Now he says it wouldn’t be fair on the kitten, but that we can get Cletus a kitten when he’s old enough to appreciate it.

So cute.

Part of me thinks maybe I should get into the kitten breeding business. Just one queen. Limited litters. I’d not make a ton of money, but there would be cute kittens around – a lot. You can sell regular old kittens in London for between £100 and £200 a kitten. ($200 and $400).

14 days til baby Cletus, who knows how long til I get my kitten

how to hack off two major interest groups

If there’s one thing that the Brits like, it’s animals. Especially cute fluffy animals, but all animals really. They take animal cruelty seriously. In fact, only recently, tough new laws on animal care have come into force. And since the rather heavy handed Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) will be the ones knocking down my door if its revealed that I don’t take good enough care of my cats, this actually strikes a little fear in my heart. It’s not enough just not to beat the critters, you’ve got to provide a good standard of care now if you take on animal ownership.

There’s another charity, too. Not nearly as popular, but still well known – the NSPCC – the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. They can’t take your kids away, fine you or put you in jail (like the RSPCA) but they can rat on you to social services, who can. The NSPCC is famous for adds that tug at the old heart strings – like a sad-eyed, quiet toddler and a voice-over “Mikey is quiet because he’s learned that nobody comes when he cries.” (Hmm – is there a book with tips?) Or ads that try to encourage parents to stop and think about their behaviour before it becomes abuse. Although, one of their campaigns last summer featured a 10 year old boy, repeatedly kicking a ball against a holiday caravan (vacation trailer home – yeah, I know, Brits like the strangest things) and the mum, who is washing up inside while dad reads the paper – and then finally she goes out there and yells at kid. Oh no!!! She yells at him. But she looks lower class and her voice is shrill and quite angry, so it must be verbal abuse. (If you ask me, the little blighter had it coming.)

Anyway, with this photo (an update to this post about baby sweaters) I’m courting disapproval from both lobbies.

Other Cat has learned that nobody comes when she meows.

And yes, I will put that sweater on baby Cletus.

Disputed territory

Fancy has found a new place to hang out.
Hey, who’s coming?
Other cat says “Watcha doin’ in there?”
Fancy says – Get away.

This is an upturned terracotta pot that’s used as a base for another pot.

Bad, bad putty tat

Somebody is a bad, bad putty tat. Somebody thinks it’s a good idea to rustle plastic bags at 3, 4 and 5 in the morning. Somebody crawled up in between us at 6 and meowed in our ears. Somebody scratched the Vol-in-Law. Somebody thought it was a good idea to roll a pencil across our hardwood floors at 7.

We’re tired. We’re grouchy. We don’t do well with interrupted sleep. I’m wondering how well we’re going to manage with the parenthood lark. I’m just hoping that maybe the baby and the cat will fall in love with each other and keep each other occupied all night long – quietly, and perhaps in another room.

Watching for an opportunity to disturb our sleep

Cats of London

Jen wants a cat. But she’s being turned away by the cat shelters as unsuitable. It’s probably easier to get a foster kid in London than it is to get a cat.

Want a kitty in London? Then you better live in some kind of two-parent, stable household, with access to the outdoors and with one or both of you at home, a lot.

Or you better be prepared to fork out a shed load of cash. Like 400 bucks for a regular old cat kind of money*.

Now – me and the Vol-in-Law we’re kind of the ideal cat couple, we have a garden, we have a cat flap, we are experienced kitty owners, and we both work from home often enough that our cats aren’t alone that much. So we were able to adopt from Battersea (cat and dog shelter to the stars). But many others are not able to, many have been turned away. So many, in fact, that I am able to gloat (yes, gloat) over my Battersea cat adoption. But I only do this occasionally. I’m not gloating now. I feel for Jen.

We had a hard enough time trying to get a cat – before we got Fancy. It was only when we turned up at the shelter with our pre-approved application and an empty kitty carrier gripped in our little fists that we were able to take home Fancy. I’ve blogged about our Battersea experience before, here and here:

Battersea Dogs’ and Cats’ Home supplies pets to the stars and turns many lesser mortals away pet-less. So I am quite pleased to have got a cat from Battersea, after three separate visits including a nerve-wracking interview about our cat-owning suitability.

When I told the Vol-in-Law about Jen’s predicament he said “Quite right, too. Flat cats are not happy cats. Rent a house with a garden, or even easier just drive out to the provinces and get a cat there.”

I don’t entirely agree with him. There are plenty of cats particularly those with Feline Leukemia, who would make fantastic apartment cats. But my husband is right about the provinces thing – you can buy cats there on the black market for less than 50 bucks during kitten season.

And Jen, keep up the hope and the cat search:

i just know there’s a cat out there waiting for us, needing someone to love. and i know eventually we’ll find it. it’s just the anxious anticipation and the searching that’s so hard.

Fancy with her exclusive Battersea medallion (before she lost it).
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*I don’t know why I don’t get into the cat breeding business…

Catwalk modelling

Me: Arghh, there’s cat hair all over these baby clothes.
Vol-in-Law: Isn’t that the outfit you dressed the cat in?
Me: Your point?