When Athena first arrived in the house as a foster kitten, I overheard another foster say that the bottle-fed kitten she ended up keeping turned out to be the most bitey cat she'd ever had. I don't know how that wicked fairy managed to place a curse on my kitten, but I'm pretty sure she did. Athena is a handful. She's downright mean at times, but I'm definitely partially culpable. I think it's funny when she bites, and I egg her on just a bit (as long as she never draws blood). There is a distinct streak of wildness there. Since she was old enough to run up and down the stairs on her own, she has been chasing my calico cat. She's not the first to do it. The calico has been tormented by several cats, two of whom moved out when my younger daughter left the nest. She (the cat) seems to bring it on herself, though. She sees someone else enter a room, and she starts growling and swearing so foully that it crosses all language barriers, even inter-species ones, and is recognizable as inflammatory filth. Athena (and sometimes the others) takes this as a challenge. I've posted pictures of the crazy eyes she gets when she is determined to kill-kill the calico. This long war has taken a toll on all of us, but it's more than just persecution. The two geriatrics caught the upper respiratory infection that Athena brought in, and it was touch and go for both of them over the winter. They both have survived, but the calico seems to have come out of it far worse for wear than I expected. She's not only showing signs of diabetes (which is thankfully very treatable and can be reversible in cats), but I can't say for certain that a lifetime of justified paranoia hasn't caused her to snap. She's emotionally unstable, and taking out her displeasure daily on the wood floors in my dining room. I tried buying a fancy cabinet-enclosed cat box for downstairs, so she didn't have to go upstairs to the scene of the crime, where one or more of the other cats trapped her in the covered boxes, literally scaring the crap out of her. Today, I reached the limits of how much emergency floor cleaning I am willing to do. I rearranged a few things, and turned my master bathroom into the Independent Nation of Cricketstan. She has everything she needs for survival, plus the isolation that she has been demanding for years. It has been nearly twelve hours, and I think she's happier than I have seen her since my daughter's cats moved out three years ago. Who knew that tossing her in prison was what she wanted all along? I went up to visit her again a few minutes ago, and promised her that I'd shut my bedroom door tonight, so that she could sleep safely next to me and the white cat who owns my bed. I'm hoping that this is not a permanent arrangement. Much as an ultra-low carb diet (like I can now verify she gets) can kick-start a cat's pancreas to resume producing insulin, I'm hoping a week or two of isolation in her safe zone will retrain her to use the cat box, and maybe heal her nervous stomach completely. For now, she likes her briar patch.
Oddly, she hasn't whispered through the door to the others, to tell them she's where she wants to be. They all think Cricket is in trouble, and they each might be next. I have never seen such concern from these guys, and all of them, Athena included, have been extra sweet, fearing they too could be "disappeared" in the purges. I don't consider prison a real deterrent to crime. I never have. But I think this banishment is terrifying to the cats. How do I convince them that she's really happy in a place where they can't pick on her for being the weak old one?
As predicted, it rained hard all day. So far, enough has come down to fill the fountain on the deck that was completely empty. I had enough of a lull between lines of storms to gather herbs for dinner, but other than that, I spent the whole day inside dealing with the change in living arrangements, and the final construction on the shipping crate for the painting I'm sending back to the artist for his big feature show. (Don't forget, Oklahoma state capitol building, June and July. If you can get there, go.) The crate is finished, except for a couple more screws to make sure it holds tightly. I'll be taking it to ship tomorrow, once the rain has cleared out.
I don't know whether any of the rain storms recently had thunder and lightning, but tonight is the first noisy line of storms I remember noticing this season. I had forgotten what a chicken my big boy cat is. He has spent the last hour hiding under a chair, from the moment of the first rumble of thunder. He's still there now, as another wave of rain pushes through. Poor guy. So easily scared.
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