It’s downpour season here in Portland, or “Badger comes in the window wet and yells at me for turning on the rain”

But first, took Badger for his yearly checkup. He freaked out so bad last year they gave me gabapentin to mix in his food and prep him with. I don’t think it fully kicked in by the time I had to fight him into his carrier and hold him there while I zipped it, he made yowls like I’ve never heard, but at the vet’s itself and for a few hours later he was calmer (around strangers, even) than I’ve ever seen.

The nights are getting chilly enough that Badger’s growing his cold-weather coat in, so he’s shedding like crazy and looked goofily fringy for the two days where only like a randomly distributed eighth of his hair was at the new length

Badger has progressed from requiring my presence in the kitchen to eat (haha not really, if I’m away or asleep he does just fine) to requiring my active attention, he’ll stop every so often and look back and if I’m just dicking around on my phone he’ll leave the bowl and be passive-aggressive at me until I pet him enough to get him to resume

It’s honestly infuriating, but he is getting better at, after he comes in the window, waiting around for me to finish up what I’m doing so I can go into the kitchen

Since I got this table, he occasionally meows for me to come watch him stand on it

watching a bird out the window

oh no he’s just raising his left arm curled in the “nya” pose there, aside from being neutered he’s fully intact

Yeah he’s not young anymore so when he positions himself in cute ways it won’t be new and I miss it

But here:

Needed a new coffee table, and last night was out and saw one discarded on the side of the road and realized that I have a pickup truck now so I can actually claim roadside furniture. And it turns out to match the room perfectly, so there’s that.

So apparently Badger was waiting in my room while I was asleep for me to wake up so I could go out and supervise him discovering it, and he’s been sniffing and climbing up and down it all over, practicing the transfers to it from all the nearby furniture he‘s already used to

his notification of presence/request for attention meows have a lot more complaint tone in them these days; he’s seeking my attention more often without any particular goal in mind; when he sleeps he’s trying to get in my sight, in protected locations, AND totally balled up; twice I noticed him going out the window to the part of the lawn where Leo would meow for him, just meowing there for a while and coming back in pissy

The family that Leo was from moved away this week, and I can tell Badger misses him.  :(

Badger is angrily meowing to me in the heat like he does with the rain, and same thing, I gotta be like “sorry buddy, I can’t turn it off”

some of us have to live around here you know

I’ve seen Badger play-wrestling with Leo in the backyard and it’s kinda like human grappling, they stare each other down until one puts their forearm on the others shoulder and tries to roll them

I saw a new addition to the cat neighborhood, a Persian or more practical version thereof who was meowing outside our window, and might have seen one more

All of which is to say, I think Badger might be rising in the local cat community as a scrapper, which is weird to think about, and he’s been pissier at home, more hissy, including this thing where he’ll weave back and forth in a doorway and swipe and hiss if you go thru and/or turn back

He just jumped up on the chair by where I sit and let me pet him purring for 15sec before turning hissing and bitey again, which honestly he never did before like 3 mos ago, not full-strength but different from when he play-bats, and in response I pinned him down by the shoulderblades while staring in his eyes for 15 sec

If I know him he’ll be distant for a day, really lovey for a day, a little testy for a day, then settle in a bit lower-key

Despite being generally pretty neurotic, Badger is completely indifferent to thunder and fireworks

kontextmaschine:

me: Badger I’m glad you only kill the ugly brown+grey ones but the birds are our friends, I wish you’d hunt more rodents

Badger: ::leaves a field mouse for me to find when I wake up::

me: see there you go

Badger: ::jumps in the window while I’m playing vidya to drop off a whole-ass rat::

me: holy shit

Badger: oh hey here’s a mouse with its spine broken so it’s still trying to pull itself around by its front arms like a desert straggler in a newspaper comic

Badger: it can’t live, but it’s not dead yet and now you have to deal with it

Badger: kthxbai I’m going out the window, maybe don’t pass judgment on what I kill if you can’t back it up

me: Badger I’m glad you only kill the ugly brown+grey ones but the birds are our friends, I wish you’d hunt more rodents

Badger: ::leaves a field mouse for me to find when I wake up::

me: see there you go

Badger: ::jumps in the window while I’m playing vidya to drop off a whole-ass rat::

me: holy shit

cleaned up & rearranged the house as a prelude to having a bunch of friends over for a backyard barbecue

It was great & reminded me of what I liked about Portland & I should do it more often, but now I’m trying to re-earn Badger’s trust

I’ve been sitting on the floor pillow less to use the laptop and more often sitting on a loveseat with it on a chair in front of me

This is totally throwing Badger off because he got used to settling in between my crossed legs and the laptop to get skritched (pretty consistently from like 1:20-1:50 am, actually)

So he’ll just circle around me on the arms or back of the loveseat or stand on the chair behind the laptop and look at me expectantly with one arm raised and curled in the catgirl “nya” pose (it IS real!) which he’s started doing to signal that he’s looking for permission for something

And I’ll pat my lap or either side of me where there’s room but he doesn’t seem to get it, but tonight he finally stepped down from the arm to next to me, and then pretty quickly moved away but I tried to give him plenty of positive reinforcement

He took a while to get used to the floor pillow, too, so hopefully we’ll get there