Silly Little Country

Nice wound, nicht wahr? Cat surgery

No that is not a consequence of my surgeries. Though it is my eye. Cataract surgery is localized to the eye - cat surgery is different. That arises from another whole problem.

We have a cat pushing 20 - as a cat, his habits are nocturnal. As a cat in the wild much of his prey would be running around in the night too, but unfortunately he is my pet, and an indoor cat, so his prey is the cat food I put before him. But he is pushing 20, and almost nothing I offer now has more than a few moment's cachet as a classy meal for him. I have tried all the tricks - shaking garlic on it, or other tasty things, but nothing much works (Garlic still really works for me, except perhaps in ice cream). What I see is an arbitrary cycling of temporary enthusiasm for one food or another, with the greatest short-term success coming from 'cat treats'. So he thinks that whenever he is hungry he needs freshly delivered food, somehow different from all the failed food I have put before him in the remembered past, which can be quite long. The Pet Valu chain loves me.

Last night his nocturnality kicked in around 3 am and he decided he needed to go hunt for cat treats and of course water. Now the way he hunts for cat treats is to ask me for them (since nothing that had been put out earlier for him could be right). And in the process, somewhat incompetently, but possibly with some vague purpose, he stepped on my head, in a pretty crucial spot (an inch to the right and my most recent cataract surgery could well have been compromised). As it was blood flowed in a way that overcame my normal diurnal behaviours at 3am. (In fact my original response was to try to go back to sleep until I felt a warm liquid flowing down my face.)

I am not sure what our protocol will be tonight. I am a lot more nervous about his company on the bed. But he has ways of taking revenge. And he is already negotiating with me now as we watch 'A Touch of Frost'.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:05 PM