Cat House

No, not the HBO series, although I watch that, too. Iggy takes a semi-breather from the tables and posts...

For my wife's past birthday, I asked her what she wanted. Not overly romantic, I concede, but with a horse person, you need specifics before buying. Horse thingies are expensive, damnit.

Di was still stinging with the loss of Monty the cat. So she told me her crazy idea - she wanted to build an outdoor area for our other cats, since they were now not allowed to go outside. A crime considering the property we live on.

All she wanted was for me to purchase all of the building material. Which I did.

It's pretty funny - before running this horse farm, my wife was a Purdue grad and industrial engineer at GE. Seems like another lifetime ago, which it actually is.

So I had no doubts that she'd whip up this tribute to Monty in no time. And she did. It measures 16 feet by 16 feet and is 8 feet tall and is attached to the house further to the left - they have a little cat door to come in and out of.

Pet postings, Iggy. Why, the next thing you know you'll be posting poetry.

The blogfather goes on to note that one of their cats, Eddie, has just been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - heart disease, which our frowning cat to the right Curly Lasagna, familiarly known here as "Kittenish" (I know, I know, so itsie-bitsie cutums, ain't it) also suffers from.

The Curl is 13 14 years old, whupped another chipmunk's ass a few days ago, and regularly wrestles down the Bear - who is double his weight - each morning at 4:30 a.m. He was diagnosed with HCM a couple of years ago. We had him on medication for awhile, but Curl is his own cat (actually he was Speedy Tomato's - the cat we lost several years back - cat), and fought being medicated literally tooth-'n-nail. He got to the point where he would hide until Peggy went to work in the morning, knowing that it took two of us to give him his pills. So we talked it over, and decided a happy sick cat was better than an unhappy sick cat; and told his vet we had decided to let Curl live out his life as he will.

About the only way you can tell Kittenish has the bum ticker is that he breathes a little more heavily, he sleeps a little more, and that his jumper sometimes goes on the blink. But as Iggy writes,

HCM may worsen quickly over a period of months; it may progress slowly over several years; its severity may not change for some years and then suddenly worsen -- or it may not. Some cats with HCM may die very suddenly even though they seemed healthy only moments before.

The vet said to enjoy Curl while we still have him. And we do. Every day.

If Di ever wants to go into the cat house construction business, Iggy, I've got a commission for her in New Hampshire. Yesterday afternoon, Kittenish was asleep in his outdoor box, I was reading on the back porch, when Bear, who we keep on a dog harness and staked leash when he's out, suddenly swarmed up the steps and huddled between my legs. I looked up to see a small coyote pup crossing the yard.

I'll be doing my usual peeing around the perimeter for the next few days; which has successfully warned off fishers and foxes. We'll see if I can convince the coyote that his path best leads elsewhere. But in the meantime, I could use an outdoor cat house.