SM Johnson ~Fuzzy Friday ~ The Cat

Well, huzzah! Happy November 30! I completed NaNoWriMo with 53,711 words! That's a pretty good chunk of the first draft of Three in the Dungeon, isn't it?

I started a Goodreads discussion under my book Out of the Dungeon tonight - asking readers what they'd like to see in book 3. Not like specifics - more like... do you care about Vanessa's point of view at all? Do you want to hang out with Dare and Zach a bit? So if you've read Above the Dungeon and Out of the Dungeon and have thoughts about which characters you'd like featured in book 3, head over to Goodreads, search Out of the Dungeon, and scroll down. Toward the bottom of the page you should see a discusison link. Feel free to join in!

I finally got to personally meet two of the three zoo ferrets. Yay! They are all females, and all fairly squirmy, which I think is pretty normal. They're like, "Hey! Hi! How are you? Okay, I said Hi, now put me down, let me run, let me explore. What? You just want to hold me? Ack, you're no fun!"

Just as an FYI - there is an indoor room where they get to romp and play in the winter, as well as an outdoor play area for that purpose in the summer. And there are particular docents who are attached to the fuzzy ones and make an effort to give them out-of-cage time. I plan to be one of those docents as soon as I'm considered trained enough to be trustworthy - (insert self-deprecating smile here).

I met Aurora, a DEW (dark-eyed-white), and she is the most personable of the three. I also met Lila, a light sable - friendly enough, but dang, girl - you need your claws clipped. My trainer told me Lila's nails are always exceptionally sharp. Perhaps I will check with the keeper and see if she knows the ferretone-nail-clipping trick. The third petite little girl is a sable a tiny bit darker than Lila - named Hazel, and I guess she is the one that cannot resist a little nibble-nibble-chomp action, so she gets handled the least. I didn't hold her or anything yet, but she's definitely on my list of "must work with" animals.

I had some very "bitey" ferrets in my day, and my track record for eradicating that behavior was pretty darn good. In fact, I took in a silver ferret that the owners were going to kill because he bit them down to the bone every chance he got.. and well... he never bit me hard enough to break the skin.

Anyway. I am working on finding a source for ferret pictures, so I can dazzle you with cuteness on Friday. Not having a business of ferrets since the digital camera age has left me with a shortage of photos. So in the mean time...

Let's talk about The Cat. (It's Friday and he's Fuzzy, so I think I can get away with that. Well, actually, it's MY blog, so of course I can get away with it. I can do whatever I want). But I digress...

The Cat came to live with us after the husband noticed a mouse observing him using the toilet. Apparently, this is one of those situations where all witnesses must die or something, because he sure got hell-bent on killing that mouse. (I know, nice, right?) He set traps. He baited traps. He checked traps. He re-baited the empty ones.

He threatened some nonsense about getting glue traps, but I think I mentioned something about if I found a glue trap in this house, the next time my husband saw one it would be attached to his unmentionables. (Yes, I think glue traps are inordinately cruel)

And then he told IzzyG that if she gave the babysitter no trouble while we were on vacation, she could get a cat when we got home.

Dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn.

I have always been allergic to cats, and now a cat sleeps in my bed. Yay. Rah-rah, ain't life grand?

I don't suppose The Cat is much kinder than a glue trap, but I'm not having the whole nature versus glue factory discussion again, so never mind.

The Cat seemed to love us at the shelter. But when we brought him home, it became apparent that he loved the shelter and really just wanted us to pet him a little, then go home without him.

So he was angry and freaked out, and spent a couple of weeks in the closet. He was not at all grateful for being adopted, even though he was the cat that had been at the shelter for the longest amount of time. He was big, and he was orange, and he had claws. We figured he'd survive the dog.

I am, of course, his favorite person in the world, primarily because I am allergic. Oh, and maybe because I feed him most of the time.

What this means is that I quickly learned that The Cat requires me to sleep with one arm outside the covers, palm up, so he can rest his tired little noggin inside my hand. It is very sweet. And not altogether physically comfortable. But we adjust. Because believe me - the CAT is not going to adjust to anything the CAT does not want to adjust to. Got it? Good.

Anyway. What I most wanted to say about The Cat is that he is like a curmudgeonly old bachelor - if things are not exactly to his specifications, he absolutely cannot relax.

If I try to ignore The Cat at, in favor of getting some sleep, say - He will bitch and whine and poke me with his claws, until he drives me bleep-bleep crazy. ... Or the cat will alternatively hide in the closet and make me anxious that his bladder is blocked again and the fix will cost another $600.

The good news is that The Cat has survived the dog. He's also an excellent mouser, a fact that I can attest to because of the three mouse carcasses I found in the bedroom, the one I found in the garage, and numerous others scattered around the driveway on the few occasions that the shady little bugger has managed to sneak outside.

My whole point here is this: You must adjust to The Cat's ways, because The Cat will not adjust to yours. And that's that. Stop arguing. It's a waste of energy.

Happy Friday, darlings, hope you have a great weekend!

PS - stay tuned... photographer Panda Jones has graciously given me permission to share some photos of her ferrets on Fuzzy Friday - and they are beau-oooo-tiful. So come over on Friday and check them out. You can check out Panda Jones on Facebook here, and if you live in the Seattle area maybe even hire her to take YOUR picture. (subliminal whisper... do it do it do it do it...)