Interrupted the gray/white collared cat I’ve been calling “Cookie” coming out of the basement window Badger uses as a door now, so guess he’s finally made another cat friend
Haha, earlier this week I propped a basement window and set up a ramp cause I want Badger to get used to using it so I don’t have to keep a first-floor one open in winter, and just now I was sitting in the parlor with Badger on a windowsill when that striped chocolate-chip cat walked in from the kitchen. It was a scene!
Was a coyote howling outside within three blocks two weeks ago, which having an outdoor pet I wasn’t thrilled about, but Badger seemed suitably wigged and then he moved on
From seeing new cats around to Badger coming in for food and going right back out to him catching this cold from somewhere I suspect a new cat scene is congealing somewhere nearby
Seen a new black-faced Siamese cat around, think I’m gonna call it Mahtab, because I originally confused it with Persian and that was a Persian girl I knew in LA
That collared vanilla/chocolate chip cat came into the yard while I was out today in a manner that (plus some meowing outside while Badger was in the other day) suggests she & Badger have been hanging out, so that’s nice
It's… something to me to realize that while Badger’s totally neurotic, i.e. as I encounter him he seems extremely hesitant or pained to violate inscrutable rules and boundaries he established himself, since Leo left he has made himself the dominant force in every neighborhood cat relationship I am aware of
He’s cool, now fully tapered off the dry food and taking ½ can wet twice daily, some combination of that and this being his first fully adult cold/wet season, he’s settling in in one place and not coming in and out bugging me all night. I saw him following that chocolate chip cat with the colored collar today, so they seem to have gotten acquainted.
Cat society seems to be reconstituting itself in the backyard – I realized that all-black cat lives with the family that moved in two doors down (where Leo’s previous friend before Badger had lived), that grey one shows up occasionally, I’ve seen a tortoiseshell one and a ≈ 8mos grey tabby kitten w/a pink collar too
new I’d say 10-month-old kitten in the neighborhood, cream with some grey tabby stripes and a pink belled collar, I’m thinking of calling him Cooks (bcuz “Cookies” sounds wrong)
I’d seen him through the window a few times but never with Badger, but then I was out once and they were squatted at each other for 10mins or so and then Badger trotted off and he followed
Badger lately has been posing motionless and quietly mrring before small gaps – between the refrigerator and counter, the sofa and wall, the grid-covered return vents in the floor
And at first I thought he batted something under there or smelled something, so I’d open it up, but increasingly I’m getting the sense he’s run out of novelty so he’s fixating on the few parts of his everyday experience he hasn’t seen in detail
He’s also being more pushy about always being the focus of attention when he’s around, which gets irritating, I’m thinking about getting another cat so they can be each other’s companions, the original plan was to wait at least until he was 6 so they’d have more staggered lifecycles, but that was when for a while Leo was playing the “cat companion” role.
I suppose one option would be to adopt a cat significantly older than Badger, I raised Badger from a kitten to develop a bond between us but my point here is to make the cat emotional economy less centered on me
On the other hand if an older cat came in with an established dynamic that didn’t match to me and recruited Badger to it, that could be a hella bad thing that would outlast the elder’s lifespan, hm
The other day I came home and Badger was outside, and he jumped into the neighbors’ front yard and I saw an all-white blur moving around I was like “hey look, a new cat in the neighborhood!”
“No wait that’s just a huge opossum.”
And Badger stared it down and it did that open-mouth pose and eventually spun and ran away and Badger chased it.
And I was like “Badger, no” cause it was like half again his size, but then I realized they don’t get rabies and their ultimate move is “fall over unconscious” so feh
Since I cleared out the blackberry brambles and got an outdoor cat, year-by-year corvids are learning not to bother with my backyard, which at one level is a shame but at another oh my god they are so loud and annoying
Met the grad school campers’ cat (!), who eerily looked exactly like Badger (down to the slightly-asymmetric blaze on his nose!) only 8 or so years older and with a flatter, meaner face
