CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS
THE CAT WITH THE CALICO TAIL
Repeatedly I’m asked why the wooden cat sitting on my windowsill is painted so silly, having a gray and orange striped tail attached to its all-white body. A few years ago my artistic niece Debbie painted the craft item for me, using our cat as a model.
Shenan (short for Shenandoah) joined our family in August, 1985. Her creation-day tale explains the incongruousness of her body and tail.
You see, Shenan began on the kitten-makin’ (more…)
WHAT RIGHTS DO CATS HAVE, I ASK
The black flash scooted by so fast that I thought it was a mirage. Several days later, it happened again. By the time it happened a third time I realized it was a cat trying to escape my vision as it ran through the laundry room and out the cat door.
Our visitor continued entering our home over a period of time, and gradually it stayed put long enough for me to identify it as a large, female, black, cat with bronze and orange striping. It was only over a gradual period of time that the stranger allowed us to (more…)
THE SNITTY CAT LIKES PUMPKIN PIE?
Imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning and discovered about a third of a dish of cooked pumpkin pie filling missing—like something had lapped it up! I guess I was naïve—I never knew CATS liked pumpkin pie! But Honey must have yearned to have a Thanksgiving meal.
The next morning, another third of the pumpkin was gone.
I determined to discover if the culprit snitching the pie filling was our snitty cat, Honey—although there was no other answer unless my hubby was playing tricks on me, which I doubted.
That night, I cleared the counter, fetched the cat off the closet shelf where she thought she was hiding, and set her on the counter in front of the dish of partially eaten pumpkin. Sure enough, she began (more…)
T. S. Eliot had it right—The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter…and my former neighbor might have agreed. That a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES…well, my neighbor was too practical for that, for once not seeing naming from the cat’s point of view, as Eliot did.
Elinor didn’t relate to humans very well, but she believed each cat must not only have a name, it must also have a home. So she gathered six homeless cats, and gave them the name that the family use daily, Such as Goober. (more…)
Should your cat be kept indoors or outdoors?
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CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS
SHOULD YOUR CAT BE KEPT INDOORS OR OUTDOORS?
A Humane Society I researched estimated that feral cats have a life expectancy of five years, while indoor, cared for, cats live as long as seventeen years.
How long does a cared-for house cat with outside privileges live?
In August, our about-sixteen year old cat Honey died (to read her story, click on: Honey’s Coming Home! Our cat must recuperate & Honey went home—She’s romping in animal heaven). She lived her life happily as an outdoor cat, as did many or our cats which lived long lives, fifteen years and more.
Virtually all cat shelters have a non-flexible clause in their cat adoption papers that requires (more…)