Bugsy's wild hair/hare

Dropped by my folks' place today and got a chance to play with Bugsy, the SuperKitten. He's now well-established as the "baby" of the family; both of my folks dote on him all day long, especially my mom, who babies him pretty good. She holds him and sings at 'im. He doesn't know any better, so he gobbles it all up.

I noticed that the young fellow was carrying a tiny cloth mouse in his mouth. "What's with that dang mouse?", I asked.

Mom told me that the mouse was one of the baubles that was hangin' from the Xmas tree (see action shot above). You know the stuff: all those little Santas, and birds, and snowballs, and guitars, and elves, and whatnot—that people hang on the tree along with bulbs and tinsel and sh*t. Well, as it turns out, out of the fifty or so doodads on my mom's tree, doodad, like, #36 was a mouse.
As you know, one of Bugsy's first toys was a goshdarned mouse. I guess he wanted a new one. So he got it. The boy shows initiative.

The only camera I had was the one on my mom's Mac laptop, which is pretty low-res. Here's a detail of a photo of Bugsy's new cloth mouse. Trust me, it's a mouse all right. It amazes me that the Bugster chose this one thing out of all that junk on that tree. He's smart, he is. One of these days, he'll be doin' my folks' taxes.

Here he is, sneakin' up on the varmint. You know cats. It's all about the obstacles and angles.

Here's my mom, trying to get her boy to give a damn about that duster thingy. Nobody expresses indifference like a cat expresses indifference. It's a feline specialty.

Here's some more "mouse" action. That posy at left is actually just the design of the rug.

Another action shot. That Bugsy moves around like an electron. You think he's over here, but then, a second later, he's way over there. Zip zip zip. Bing!

My mom really isn't up on cats—she and my dad or mostly "dog" people—so I've given her the benefit of my experience, catwise. I told her about how cats can get all revved up and crazy. It's the old "wild hair," I say*. "Once that gets started, they're liable to zip around like lunatics and maybe pull on your pants or bite your ankles. Watch out," I say.
"It's just a cat thing."
Don't get me wrong; Bugsy is about as sweet a cat as I've ever encountered, and that's saying a lot. But he's a boy and he's a kitten. So, well, something's gotta give.

Here's my mom trying to join in the cat fun.
Bugsy and I have become serious play buddies. Nowadays, when I show up, the Bug comes right up to me expecting FUN and MAYHEM (or a bit of butter at the end of a knife). He gets the wild hair every time. My mom doesn't really know what she's getting into here. She's trying to hang that dang mouse on the side of that chair. She figures he'll go nuts about it. Nope. That's all wrong.

Bugsy the indifferent. You gotta toss the dang thing against a wall or crush it in your mouth, stuff like that. Just hanging it up on a chair means nothing. Less than nothing.
Get it right!

My mom always provides lots of balloons for the kids during the holidays. I recall visiting last week and finding all these "dead" balloons everywhere. Evidently, the Bugster had popped 'em all. I was impressed. If I were a little kid—like the Bugster—and I saw some new kind of object suddenly disappear with a bang, I'd think twice about getting near its kind again.
Not the Bugster, it seems.
What a guy!

Mom really loves her little boy. My dad tells me that she'll freak out when Bug sleeps in that deep way that cats do. "He's not dead, is he?" she'll ask, virtually trembling. Many reassurances are issued by dad. "No, the goddam cat is just sleeping!" Then he'll pound his foot on the ground or something and Bugsy'll shoot straight up in the air and tear off in some direction, just like some Warner Bros critter.
My folks are pretty clueless about cats.

Like Kathie, mom doesn't know how to say "no" to a cat. Arguably, it's important for a cat to know that word. When mom (or Kathie) say "no," they're about as stern as Shirley Goddam Temple. Truth is, all of mom's "nos" are virtual "yeses." So I told mom about how to say no and mean it; to be very quick and efficient about it: no lingering or yapping. Works wonders. And you don't have to yell or nothing.
Today, my mom tried out her first stern "no." The Bugster got one of those wild hairs and, when he hopped up on mom's lap, he started biting her (the way kittens do). He got a little carried away, getting those rear legs going. Ouch! That's when my mom tried out her new "no."
Suddenly, she belted out a thundering "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"—a No that could kill a guy.
I suggested that the utterance need not be ear-splitting or gut-wrenching. "Oh," she said.
(I don't think my mom has a "medium" switch. It's strictly off or HELLFIRE with her.)

Bugsy in the kitchen with Mr. Balloon, Mr. Mouse, and his beloved mom.

     *Some say the expression is "wild hare," not "wild hair." Yeah, whatever.

Kitten meth

     Dropped by my folks' place this morning, but they weren't home. I used my key to enter the house and found Bugsy the kitten standing in the middle of the place—evidently happy to see me, or someone.
     He seemed to want something from me. Play time? I headed over to his turbo toy and tried to get him interested in its rolling white ball. I rolled it, and, soon, he came on over to watch. At first, he lay under a nearby end table, safe from my clutches. (He's still a skittish little fella.) So I slid the turbo thingy closer to him, launched that ball around, and, bit by bit, he got excited about it. The darned guy can't help himself. We played. Together.

      A coupla days ago, my sister Annie came by and used a little laser light to shine a dot of red on the rug. Bugsy immediately scrambled for it. Naturally, he went nuts. Cat people know how nuts cats can get with such toys, but my folks are really dog people, and they've never seen such unbridled enthusiasm. They figured Annie was killing their cat, maybe causing him to have a heart attack or something. They told her to cut it out. She relented, more or less, but not before squawking like she does.

      Well, maybe mom and pop are on to something, 'cause that Bugsy had laser beams on the brain for the next hour of so. I tried to get him interested in his turbo toy, but he was all twitchy and nervous in hopes (if that's the word) of spotting that damned red dot. "Gotta have that red dot; gotta have it now," his body language seemed to say. "That's no way to live, Little Man," I said. I told my sis to leave her stupid laser at home next time. It's like she was selling meth and messing up feline youth.

      That fool Bugsy got himself into trouble three or four days ago when my mom found him "screaming"—mom's word—from inside the goddam Christmas tree. The little guy had climbed up into the tree and then managed to get tangled in all those stupid green wires. My mom didn't know what to do: she kinda freaked, I think, and then my dad showed up and tried to yank the kid out of the tree. (My folks sure can be helpless, now that they're older.) But, like I said, my folks aren't cat people, and they didn't know about the "spinning ball of razor blades" phenomenon, so familiar to cat people (a scarred and gnarled bunch). Bugsy, said my dad later, was doing the ol' "slice 'n' dice" when he tried to grab the little fella. Nevertheless, somehow, dad snapped the right twigs and branches and that knucklehead suddenly came flyin' out of that tree.
     Later, my sister and I rolled our eyes when we were told about this episode. "Next time, just get a towel or something and wrap it around your hand and arm. Cat panic is dangerous but it's manageable."
     We know cats.

     The Bugster seems to have bounced back quickly from that sorry episode. Today, anyway, he was his cute and playful self. He was back to playing with that ball in that turbo thingy, too. He and I batted the ball back and forth. Then Bugsy got all "commando": he'd jump on the white ball to stop it from spinning; then he'd run furiously over to the nearby couch, frenetically finding his way under the blanket that covers it. He'd squirm around under there and then poke his head out from funny places. That stuff makes me laugh every time.

     Took these pics. He sure is one cute kid.

Bugsy's freak oblique

     No new pics of young Bugsy, the Miracle Kitten, but I do have a report, of sorts.
     I showed up at my folks place on Friday just in time to volunteer to take my mom and her “baby” to the vet—he needed to be checked out to see how he’s healed after his gender-attenuating surgery of a week ago. (I don't like my dad driving. He's 80 years old. He'd normally be the one to drive—not just mom—cuz taking the cat to the vet is, for my parents, a massively complex event, evidently requiring both a driver and a towel-wielding cat-handler.)
     Naturally, when I arrived, my mom and pop and sister had managed to whip themselves into the usual neurotic/déjà-vu-ular anxiousness. The upshot: Mom had swaddled the poor Bugster deep within some enormous fluffy towel—an entombment that, alone, was surely enough to launch the heartiest of creatures into a Life of Neurosis.
     I gestalted the situation and immediately announced that we “go now.” Off we went, mom with her charge huddled in the backseat of my Chrysler. At the PetSmart/Banfield, whilst awaiting the predictable verdict on the Bugster, I bought one of those circular plastic tube-things that encase a white ball. My mom had no idea what it was; she looked skeptical.
     “It’s good,” I said. “Don’t worry, he’ll love this thing.”

Star Chaser Turbo Scratcher Cat Toy

     Soon, the young man was brought out to us. “He checks out just fine,” said the vet. Everybody doted on him. "Cute!" they cooed.
     We got back on the road, with my mom reassuring her “Osterhase” (Easter bunny) that, now, at long last, all is well, “you poor thing.”
     “Mom, you know,” I suggested, “if you want a normal cat, you should try to act like everything is normal.”
     “Vat?”
     “Maybe just let him loose. Or just stop holding him so tightly in that towel. –You know, act like things are fine, cuz they are, you know.”
     “I don’t vant him to get avay!” said mom.

     Eventually, back at the house, things got more or less back to normal. So I got out that plastic turbo-thingy and laid it on the floor near Bugsy’s favorite chair—i.e., mom’s TV chair—in the living room. Soon, the boy, guided by his tiny pink nose, zeroed in on it. At first, he seemed interested only in the round patch of rough cardboard in the center of the wheel. He sat on that and then started rolling around on it. He liked it.
     Eventually, his tiny white tail bumped the ball—and it moved.
     He stared at it. After a few seconds, he carefully batted it with his paw. It started rolling around in its tube. Bugsy was mesmerized.

     Cats are unlike humans. Their hard-wiring is such that small objects of mouse- or bird-size are deeply attractive to them—especially if they are viewed from around other objects—trees, chair-legs, chunks of plastic, etc. Go figure.
     I call it the "freak oblique." A cat will grab some little thing and then arrange the world such that the object in question is around a corner or behind some solid object, and almost beyond reach. Then he'll just go nuts grabbing at it, playing with it, then maybe disemboweling it.
     Rinse. Repeat.
     The makers of this plastic ball turbo thingy understand cats.
     After a while, Bugsy lay his head on the carpet, then reached around the plastic tube-wall to touch the barely-visible ball, then, upon making contact with it, jumped away and down the hallway and straight up the window blinds.
     Freak oblique! Freak oblique!
     Naturally, the Bugster came right back. He wanted more. I decided to join him in his play. We sat silently next to the tube and hovered over it. I sought to emulate Bugsy's attitude and concentration. He’d bat at the ball. Then I’d bat it back at him. (My actions were minimal. Minimalism is essential.)
     This went on for a while. He liked our play, though he remained wary. (I'm not mom.) Soon, we were two kittens, buddies in Feline Funland, and it was all very tight and close. I felt special.
     Eventually, I demonstrated my ability to flick the ball with such force that it spun quickly around in its tube--so quickly that it nearly became a blur. But Bugsy was up to the challenge of tracking it. His head followed the damned ball: left-right-left-right-left-right. Naturally, his furious head-shaking slowed as the ball’s orbit slowed. It was really something to see.
     I burst out laughing. That caused him to run away. He didn’t come back. Oh my.
     I caught up with him a few minutes later. He was being cradled by mom. “My tiny Heiny,” she purred. His eyes were shut.
     “Looks like a Chinaman,” said dad.
     “Yeah, I guess.” I said.

Young Bugsy this morning

Here's the Bugster, playing with one of his favorite toys, a motorized mouse. Somebody turns it on, launches it, and it moves idiotically about the floor. Then he "kills" it, eventually leaving it on its side. Then he waits for someone to right it. This typically goes on for quite some time.

Bugsy underwent neutering surgery yesterday, but it hasn't slowed him down a bit. This morning, he was again full of piss and vinegar. Here he is tearing into some Christmassy doo-dad near his grass farm.

He's supposed to wear that Elizabethan collar, but mom is reluctant to put it on her little boy. Actually, he's pretty good about wearing it. He's pretty good about everything. He hasn't been licking or biting the site of his surgery. He's a very polite little man.

This is Bugsy's all-time favorite toy, his bunny-rabbit, a finger puppet. Mom call it Bugsy's "baby." Sometimes, he "kills" it, but then he treats it like a teddy bear. Cats are complicated.

He's a very sweet, well-behaved kitten. Doesn't have a mean bone in his body. My dad says that Bugsy is very "reasonable." He is, I guess, for a cat.

Hide-and-seek with the Bugster. He can play all day.

Bugsy in his new home. Everything's good in Bugsy's life. Everything.

THE BUGSY SAGA:

• Thanksgiving prodigies: Bugsy and Reggie
• Bugsy celebrates Veterans Day
• Wednesday Pics: purely unacademic
• Kitten and couple
• Little Bugsy says "hey"
• Rescued kitten

Kitten and couple

The puppy cat

     A very brief Bugsy update: he’s doing wonderfully. Took ‘im to the vet on Thursday, where he got two more shots, plus this and that. He was pretty brave about it, and it helped that the technician, Janelle, was kind and good. Turns out his health prospects are likely better than we first thought, given his heart murmur, and that cheered us.
     Yesterday, my folks moved all the furniture out of a back room in preparation for carpet-cleaning there, and the temporary home of all that stuff in the living room produced a marvelous kitten Disneyland. I popped by today, and I found the Bugster happily exploring the empty drawers and empty chests, the box spring set, and whatnot. Naturally, the boy was hard to find, cuz hiding is half the fun.
     "Where are you, Little Man?" called mom. He soon climbed atop a couch, and mom scooped him up, then cradled him like a baby, whereupon he seemed to go into a brief trance. I espied his fuzzy little forehead and pinkish ears whilst mom made with the baby talk. Then, suddenly, he squirmed out of mom's arms and ran to greet my dad at the door. "Hi, pup!" said dad, as he struggled, like the old man he is, through the door.

Thanksgiving prodigies: Bugsy and Reggie

Making rounds

     Bugsy the miracle kitten continues to enchant all who encounter him. But he remains an uncommonly shy—a skittish—young man. 

     Last night, a kind of party broke out at my folks’ house, a lively and noisy affair comprising the consumption of pizza & beer and the viewing of the film, Rear Window. During this episode, which unfolded on my folks’ dining room table, Bugsy continually made his rounds about the house, periodically weaving through our ten human legs and innumerable wooden furnishings. Occasionally, he stopped to sniff a hand, chase a ball, or grab a bite from his bowl in the back room; but mostly he dutifully made his rounds without interruption, like a beat cop. Only later did he stop to permit my mother to hold him on her lap. He slept, his head in her hand, while we all admired him and his Angel ways, to which he remained utterly oblivious.

* * *

Yet another prodigy

     On Thursday, I showed up for my brother’s family’s Thanksgiving extravaganza, an event generally centered on the relentless energetic adventures of anywhere from five to ten extremely healthy and boisterous children, ranging in age nowadays from five to about eleven. (Last Thursday, there were eight or nine kidlettes.)

     The adults, of which I consider myself one, just try to stay out of their way.

     These kids form a joyous herd, which tramples across the backyard, then into the house, then up the stairs, then down again. Occasionally, the herd stops to do things, such as play games and note prodigies.

     On Thursday, there was a remarkable prodigy—namely, Reggie the pup, a stunning German Shepherd. My sister-in-law’s sister’s family (hubby is a cop) acquired the fellow from the German Shepherd “rescue” people, about a month ago, when Reggie was still very small. (Someone had abandoned the little guy.) But, we’re told, he’s grown like a weed, and now he's twenty-or-so pounds of pure puppy fur and energy. 

     He appears to be the Platonic Form of German Shepherd pup.

     I love kids—especially my brother’s kids—but, in my mind, there are few things in life more compelling than a German Shepherd puppy let loose in the world. I can sit and watch such a creature bounding and falling and wrestling, for hours. (If you wrestle with them, they sometimes emit pig-like grunts. Unbelievably cute!)

     Reggie seemed to the seasoned members of my family—longtime admirers of German Shepherds, several examples of which have come and gone throughout the decades—to be an extraordinary specimen of even that lofty breed. —“A perfect puppy,” announced my mother, as she gazed in awe and wonder.

     Here’s what struck me most about young Reggie. His cop family showed up, Reggie included, and then, without transition, the furry fellow immediately joined the joyous herd of children and then ran and cavorted with them for hours. As the herd mysteriously formed and then ran into the house, so did Reggie. As it weirdly coalesced and descended the stairs, Reggie was there, in the middle of the pack. None of the kids ever seemed to find this odd, and Reggie himself seemed utterly comfortable with the situation. He was like a fish finding himself in water for the first time. He was, in fact, in puppy heaven!

     Picture, if you will, the Kidly herd pouring out of the building, laughing and screaming and filling the yard. As this crew reaches the doorway, there is, of course, a bottleneck, and that causes a sudden contraction of the stream of Kid-Joy, forming a temporarily dense flow of Joyful Screamitude.

     There, right in the middle, was Reggie, the tips of his fuzzy and erect ears bouncing downward with each step, his eyes blazing, his tongue flopping, his mind a bright light.

     If ever there was a smile on the face of a dog, it was on the face of young Reggie! 

Wednesday Pics: purely unacademic

The Tige, talkin' to one of her friends: Joy Boy

People have been asking me about young Bugsy, a domestic shorthair kitten my folks rescued recently up here in the Santa Ana Mountains. Well, he's settled into being my parents' (they're about 80 years old) "new baby." That means they dote on him all day long, which is good, I figure. Keeps 'em out of trouble.

Here's mom with the youngster, who still hasn't grown accustomed to me. (He's giving me the stink eye.) Unless I approach him very carefully, Bugsy runs from me as though I were a grizzly bear. It was hard taking these pictures, what with this goofy kid acting like I'm a chupacabra or freakin' Bigfoot.

Mostly, I couldn't use the flash on my camera, cuz it freaks out the Bugster. 

He sure is a beautiful and fun little guy. Always playing, always cute.

Mom says he's "obviously the most beautiful cat in the world." I just nod in agreement.

Here he is playing with my mom's shoe. Somehow, he just loves my folks' shoes.

Tige

Later, I took Annie's cat TigerAnn out for a walk. Here she is hunting out on a hill. 

She's pretty good at it. Mostly, she catches lizards, mice, and birds. She always brings her victims to me, and I can generally save 'em--but I've gotta do that carefully so as not to offend Tiger. Once, she saw me save a mouse she gave me, and it weirded her out for days. I found her in the shower, staring at the corner. Not good.

 

Compared to Fluffy Boy, Tiger's like, well, a tiger. She's at least twice his size.

Suddenly, she pounced and ran toward the house. Don't know why. A few minutes later, I took her out again.

Drove down to the Trabuco Canyon post office to mail a letter.

The weather was beautiful.

Hope you're all having a good Thanksgiving. 

The Tige in my imagination, maybe walkin' to Grandma's house or stoppin' for a smoke. Some cats are like electrons; you never know what they're gonna do. It's like, Bam! There she goes!--and don't even think about asking why she did that.
"'Constant conjunction' my furry ass," says the Tige."With me, it's just 'shit happens,' all day long."