Breathing room.

Well, it's been a different few days. It only took a couple of minutes for the oncologist to send J to be admitted at the local hospital for lung function testing. After four full days there, the news came back: her cancer has started to show up in her lungs.

A couple of transfusions and a chemo drip later, we have a new noisemaker in the house: an oxygen concentrator, connected through a nasal cannula . I've consigned the machine to the middle bedroom with the door shut, where only my collection of teddy bears will suffer the annoyance. If this proves inadequate, we may try the upstairs, with a hole through the closet ceiling for the tube.

Already the newest adopted cat has demonstrated a pernicious interest in the 50 foot long tube. To fend off what may be inevitable fang marks, I've taped the tube to the wall until it reaches our bedroom. J should be able to shake off any attacks when she feels the need to venture out. We use a spray bottle of water along with a vigorous "Get off the table!" as our weapons of choice.

If you really think about it, a few decibels of rattling are a small price to pay for the possibility of extending life expectancy.

Live long and respire!

Cats have (ring)masters?

There is actually a Moscow Cat Circus with one Russian ringmaster and 120 cats. He says that the secret of his protégés' performance is that he watches them, gets to know what they do, and builds their acts around that. He also acknowledges that you can't make cats do what they don't want to do.

He has discovered two simple principles, both of which could be the basis of a whole new approach to a better world for all.

Consider. The first point is observation. Quietly watching other beings as they go about doing what they do, without interfering or trying to spread democracy on them. Refraining from intervening to achieve one's own ends. Withholding criticism of their way of life, their beliefs, their preferences and their way of doing things. Admiring them for being who and what they are, and seeking to understand them better without criticism or complaint. Offering encouragement and applause for a job well done.

The second point is acceptance. Realizing that cats have staff, not owners. Understanding that cats dictate the terms on which you shall live with them. Knowing that cats will respond to open hands and arms and laps: that an occasional can of tuna will restore their faith in human kindness and you in particular.

Ah yes, but is the Moscow Cat Theatre exploiting the very nature of cat life for monetary gain? If the cats are as happy and cooperative as they seem to be, who can argue that anything cruel or untoward is happening? It must cost a fair amount of money to maintain 120 cats. They earn their keep, and the entire enterprise probably never has to deal with mice.

Our cat, Kaboodle, has always greeted me at the door after work. Lately, she has added a couple of tricks to her repertoire of attention-getters. In addition to meowing in response to my verbal affirmations, she sits back and raises her right paw. I take this to be her offer to shake hands, but if I'm not very quick, the paw is replaced on the floor.

The circus-worthy moment, however, comes when she stands on her back feet, even for only a few seconds, and extends her front feet into the air. So far as I can see, she does this in response to my bending down slightly, reaching out, and offering to scratch her ears.

One of these days, Kaboodle, you'll be ready for the Big Top. But please, don't run away to join the circus. We'd rather you be a barn cat than a Barnum cat.

The Evil Eye and the Susceptible Ewe

Whenever Dusky, the senior male cat in the household, decides that he wants a particular place or seat, he simply jumps into it. Usually, the place he lands is on J's lap. But whenever the place has an incumbent, he takes a different, much more subtle approach: he gives the occupant the Evil Eye.

Invariably, staring at the opposition with an unbroken gaze is sufficient to force the abandonment of such a prized location. The loser, usually Kaboodle, slinks away, scarcely daring to glance backwards, but clearly mortified and somewhat angry at having to relinquish the venue. The more comfortable the resting place the more resented the victory.

What is most intriguing to me is that more often than not, he will stay in his new-found eyrie just long enough to establish his seniority. Then he will jump down again and wander off in search of new conquests. It is not that he particularly wanted the spot in the first place. It is more likely that he needed to boost his sense of self by maintaining his rights as he sees them.

His method, however, does not transport easily. I have tried it once or twice on the grandchild, but the fact that I have eyes of slightly different colors tends to fascinate rather than intimidate. It does not work on the cats, because they either do not know what I'm trying to do, or they are such excellent practitioners themselves that they are immune to its effects, or they get bored and look away.

According to Wikipedia, the origin of the evil eye is in the envy that one feels when others have good fortune. You may be casting it unintentionally on the person whose good luck you envy. But there is a defense: paint a blue bullseye on yourself or your house, and the Evil Eye will be rendered powerless. But you may feel a bit sheepish when people ask you about your decorative tastes.

Mister Resister

More often than not, when I sit at the dinner table with J, the repast ends with an attempt by our cat, Kaboodle, to sit on my lap. Sometimes I rebuff this action. These are times when the day has been long, I am tired, or otherwise preoccupied by some project that remains unfinished.

Other times, I welcome the visit. Quality time with a cat is not something to be taken for granted. Of the four cats, only Kaboodle finds the time to sit on me, or make the attempt, on any regular basis. Evil, the gray cat and master of perverse behavior, greets me in the morning, but only because I am the first one up, and he thinks there is a possibility that I will feed him some treat that I would not dare to give to the others. Even so, his greetings are confined to touching my calf with his tail, and walking between my legs as I try to navigate the kitchen. If all other methods fail, he plops down across what he knows will be my path, and waits.

Kaboodle knows that I am not to be trifled with in the morning. I have an early start in order to get to my job to check the computers before the staff begin to arrive and use them. There is no place for trivial pursuits, such as opening cans of tuna or spreading treats on the floor.

Evil's behavior is in no way endearing. It is a sign of a desperate attempt to gain mastery. He has conquered others in this house. On more than two occasions I have stepped in a bowl of milk that I didn't see, placed on the floor under the overhang of the kitchen cabinet. Once, a can of some kind of meat by-product flew down the basement stairs as a result of similar unfortunate placement. And, since I am the one who spills these victuals, it falls to me, morally at least, to clean them up, thereby subtracting even more minutes from the total available to complete my autopilot morning rituals.

I learned that the milk was a distraction offered up in order to allow the giver a chance to prepare food in relative peace, which is to say, without having to step over a recumbent cat several times.

Given these circumstances, perhaps I should lighten up a little on Kaboodle. She does wait until dinner is nearly over, or my legs are uncrossed, whichever she notices first. She keeps her distance in the morning but greets me with her tail a furry question mark and summons up a squeaky meow whenever I come home. And she is very soft.

But answer me this: why do cats seek out and suck up to the person in the family who is most allergic? I guess they understand that our immune systems are already weakened, so our resistance is lowest.

Just trying to keep a roof over our heads

So, yeah. Here we see The Old Guy (TOG) sitting in a nearly-completed “florida room” on the back deck of the house. How did that happen, you ask?

Well, since the dawn of time, we’ve had dining tents or gazebos of one form or another. Each year we have to replace them. The tops rip, or the plastic deteriorates, or somebody stumbles while trying to operate the door zipper and shreds the mosquito netting.

Each year, we go out to find a new dining tent. But alas, this year, none was to be found at an affordable price. This awakened the Spirit of Carpentry in TOG, and soon he was haunting the local Lowes home improvement store. The idea was to reuse the last tent, which was 8 by 8 feet, as the cover for an 8 * 8 dining tent frame made of 1 by 2 inch furring strips.

A couple of weeks and much sweat equity later, a sturdy frame of 2*4s emerged, and screen cloth that was six feet wide by 24 feet long was wrapped around it and stapled down. The tent idea was discarded, as was the tent, when it was noted that it wouldn't fit over the frame.

A door was devised that had magnets embedded in the edge to ensure that no cats could leave the compound. At the suggestion of interested family members, rafters were added, and the entire roof area was first screened beneath them, and then the whole assembly was covered with a retractable plastic tarpaulin.

Back in the day, Dad built various features of our cottage, including putting it together out of a "prefab" delivered kit. We thought prefab meant "pretty fabulous".

Perhaps that was where the carpenty bug bit (followed closely by the black fly). At any rate, trying hard to adhere to “measure twice and cut once” and other tribal memories, TOG made a couple of errors that were mainly inconvenient, and so perhaps a better name for the unit would be “the Leaning Tower of Pizza”.

The main discrepancy is that the original dining tent flared at the bottom, out to ten feet square. So we had 100 sq. ft. to accommodate us. But by making the sides vertical (the way Dad did it, using a level), that total floor dimension shrank to 64 square feet. So the maximum occupancy sign will have to read “Four adults or four cats”. But then, if the sides had flared out at the bottom, the screen cloth wouldn’t have fit. So you see how torn The Old Guy was at times in trying to meet all the group’s needs. And how he now understands how an architect feels at a planning meeting.

Of course, the first night found the Grey Cat Who Personifies Evil up on the rafter, presumably by climbing up the screens. But that was before the top was screened in. Now he is content to lie across the path of anyone who dares to use the Catbana.

The best idea of all came about 75% of the way through the project, from J, of course.

“Why not fit it right up against the patio door, so we can leave the inside doors open and the cats can go out anytime they like and sit in the screenhouse with us?”

And that, Dear Reader, explains the batts of fiberglas insulation between the exterior wall of the house and the abutting wall of the Catbana. We may not have black flies in season but we sure have mosquitoes. As the saying goes, “Once bitten, twice shy.”

No hurt felines

Cats seem to have mastered the art of being content anywhere they find themselves. At the moment, J's cat, K, is stretched out atop the set of four fluorescent lights that I put together as an antidote to J's Seasonal Affective Disorder. Light therapy is common now for this particular problem. But for K it's not the light but rather the heat that matters. It's a considerable leap of faith and feet for a cat of uncertain age to jump the 50 inches from the floor directly onto the top edge of this contraption, but her motivation is undeniable.

Owing to my allergies to all things feline, I had to mount a screen door on the bedroom door frame, to act as a kind of airlock for when we try to get into the bedroom without a cat. Occasionally K or D or B or T will manage to time the entry so well that we find one of them inside the room even though we did not see it happen.

The only reliable method I've found to dislodge a wayward cat from a forbidden venue is to capitalize on her fear. It takes considerable effort, but always works. I head for the cleaning closet across the hall and drag out the vacuum cleaner. In the past, I've had to plug it in and actually start it up, but thanks to the Pavlov effect, the illegal immigrant will now generally seek the nearest exit seconds after hearing the closet door open.

The other intriguing phenomenon is what we call "milling". The cats will sit anywhere they feel good about it, but the second J gets up to head for the bathroom or the kitchen, the tails trans-moggy-fy into question marks and out into the slipstream their owners glide, drawn, no doubt, by the possibility of food or treats.

During meal preparation, the level of milling usually doubles. At the point where we actually sit down to eat, K will occupy the nearest vacant chair, while D will sharpen his claws in preparation for the begging act to follow.

The meal proceeds calmly for a time, when suddenly J lets out a surprised yelp. D has made his point(s) on the side of her legs. K, meanwhile, is much more ladylike in her approach. She merely leans toward the plate that interests her most. When she believes you are not watching, two front feet will delicately ascend to the tabletop. At this point, J barks "Hey!" at her, and she withdraws, knowing full well that a pacifying portion of the evening's entree will be forthcoming.

It is a ritual not to be denied. What have I learned from being allowed to live with cats? Life is best devoted to comfort and leisure, for someone will take care of you if you let them.