Tag Archives: cats

Middle of Nowhere Odds and Ends November 23, 2011

Posted on November 23, 2011 by | 7 comments

Old Sol’s got a Hitler mustache:

Spaceweather.com

There’s a heavy fog hanging over the valley this morning and it’s full of deer moving around ghost-like hoping for a shot at some chicken-feed.

Big news among the cats and chickens:  There’s a stray cat hanging around here, might be feral, or mightn’t.  The cats are fairly upset by it, though after watching it a few days I think it might be a pretty good cat.  Haven’t decided what to do about it yet.  I can’t count higher than four when it comes to cats, and I’ve already got four firmly in place.

I’d been having a lot of problems with MS EXCEL overloading the RAM on any machine here because of the file size I’m prone to work with. 

I emailed Ed Hurst [Do What’s Right]a couple of weeks ago and asked whether he knew of a piece of spreadsheet software that would do most of what EXCEL would do without all the bells and whistles clogging up the works.  In a short while he sent me a link to Libra downloads.  The download was a lot larger than I could handle on a dialup, so my friend Rich in NC, downloaded it to a CD for me and mailed it to me.

I’m still learning how to use it, but it appears to be able to do what I need doing as well as doing it without demanding a National Defense Department supply of RAM.

Thanks Ed and Rich.  I’m obliged to both of you.

The Dell Optiplex 745 I bought for $50 in a thrift store to replace this gradually dying machine I go on line with has turned out to be a hermit.  It didn’t come with an internal modem, and it refuses to recognize the external modem I use for this machine.  Works okay otherwise, but I wasn’t needing a machine for offline work.  I’ve already got one of those I do most of the math and whatnot on, so this one’s just a box sitting there twiddling its un-powered thumbs wondering why it doesn’t have a monitor, keyboard, mouse nor nuthun to allow it a closer look at the Universe.

Worked on the Toyota some yesterday without getting it standing on its hind legs howling to be turned loose on the world.  Didn’t get the starter off, but got my hands greasy enough to think I might as well have.  Probably more on that today if the weather cooperates.

Maybe something else later if anything happens and I don’t get lost in the fog.

Old Jules

“You ask me why I drive a ’56 souped-up Ford Deluxe with high-compression heads and overdrive?”

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Posted in 2011, Country Life, Current Issues

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The Bullying Homestead Part 2

Posted on November 13, 2011 by | 15 comments

I want to do a post on human bullying, but yesterday and today I’m leading into it with more important issues, namely the way the creatures I observe every day interact and the shifting bullying behavior among them. 

I’m only going to skid across the surface of it, but I don’t want to digress and find myself up to my neck in human bullying issues without first briefly having laid the groundwork among the kinds of creatures people probably learned bullying from.  In this case, cats and chickens.

This is Tabby, daughter to Shiva, the Cow Cat.  Tabby’s the youngest cat around here, always reckless, always strong-willed and independent, always one to avoid conflict.  She’s always been demanding of attention and affectionate. 

But for the past month she’s suddenly become the bull-goose bully around here, beating the hell out of the older cats including her mother, Shiva.

This is Shiva the Cow Cat.  Mother to Tabby, probably hatched around 2000, wandered into proximity with me around 2002 as a stray.  Jeanne carried her to Kansas with her where she lived a few years and had a litter including Tabby.  Around 2005, she and Tabby drifted back into the mix in my life.

Shiva’s never wanted much attention, only a daily stroke and scratch behind the ears to acknowledge I knew she was around.  But her main joy in life was taking walks with me in the woods, sometimes accompanied by Tabby.  When there were cows on the place Shiva took a lot of pleasure helping me chase them off, sometimes almost getting underfoot of them in the process. 

But she was weakened a couple of years ago from some illness almost killed her and she’s never completely recovered.  Sometimes she’d still like to take woods walks, but Tabby’s put a stop to it, and generally with the walks with cats, by attacking her and driving her back to the cabin.  That ends the strolls for both of them.

This is Niaid, littermate to Hydrox, but without a contract.  The old friend who loaned her to me shortly after she was weaned was murdered a few years ago, so she’s in an awkwardly poor-relations status.  She’s part of a 1997 or 1998 litter, but she’s still the hunter/gatherer of the place.  Even travels through the woods up to Gale’s house as nearly as we can figure, to catch rodents in his chicken pen.  She was never a bully, but she could always take care of herself.  Now Tabby’s beating hell out of her, too.

This is Hydrox, littermate to Niaid, 1997-1998 vintage.  He used to have aspirations for being Top Cat, he and I both figuring he’d take over the boss-man job around here if I die before him.  But he’s sort of lost interest in all that the past year, become satisfied to just lie around and let things happen.  Aside from a daily hissing-swatting-spitting match with Niaid he doesn’t get involved in the social climbing and networking.  He’s the only one Tabby’s not bullying yet. 

As I explained yesterday, the chickens bully all the cats, though Tabby’s become more prone to put it to the test, locking eyes and playing out the last scene to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with them.  But she still backs off when someone has to.

Meanwhile almost all the deer have become a lot more aggressive, challenging both cat and chicken in standoffs they always win.  A cat sleeping out by the garden’s liable to find itself nose-to-nose with a deer, then shoved, then chased back to the cabin.  Or a chicken, deliberately knocked ass-over-appetite by a deer with a sudden urge to scurry off.

This is almost certainly a lot more information than you think you need to know about the animals around here, as well as the social life.  But I think some of it applies to how humans interact in human environments and I might use some of what goes on among these creatures as a platform for discussing human bullying patterns.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Human Behavior, Poultry, Texas

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A Bullying Commie Americauna

Posted on November 12, 2011 by | 4 comments

Bullying’s getting all out of hand here since the weather’s cooled.  I’ve written about this hen before, probably under the heading, News From the Middle of Nowhere.  She’s always been a Communist from earliest chickhood.  But most recently she’s begun spending her nights locked up with the two younger roosters, one a Black Silky, the other a Silky/Australorp cross.  Then, after everyone’s out ranging, I let her out of the young rooster pen to range with the rest of the flock and do her laying in the same nests as the other hens.

The chickens are allowed to bully the cats here because it’s the lesser of two evils – the cats all know and respect the fact chickens aren’t to be bullied, whatever their feline instincts argue otherwise.  So naturally, the chickens are well aware of this and bully the hell out of every cat that gets in the way of whatever catches their eye.

Sooooo.  I re-established the cat houses for the cold weather and the felines explored and tested each for personal priorities and preferences, not taking into account the Commie hen.  The cats know those are THEIR shelters.  The one this Communist is sitting in is the preferred sleeping place of Shiva the Cow Cat.  Not a nesting box for Communist Party meetings between chicken and egg.

Unfortunately, Shiva also knows she’s not allowed to swat the bejesus out of the hen when it becomes a contest over who gets to take over the Shiva-house.  So Shiva snoozes until the Commie arrives, then the chicken comes in and gives her a couple of pecks, Shiva exits out the other side, and Ms. Commie settles down to drop a bluegreen egg.

But that’s only a piece of the bullying going on here.  I was going to tell a bit about an 8-9 year old kittenish cat named Tabby who’s begun testing my patience by bullying the hell out of the older felines. 

But I’ll save that so’s I won’t be tempted to use language strong enough to cause the lady-readers to blush.

This place is looking every day more like a bunch of human beings trying to get along.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Poultry

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The Sounds a Man Wants to Hear During Sex

Posted on November 10, 2011 by | 16 comments

Someone found this blog by search engine yesterday with the question, “What kind of words does a man want to hear during sex?”

I don’t believe I’ve elaborated on the issue on the blog because I don’t have a lot of sex going on around here.  The cats are all neutered, the Great Speckled Bird is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth with the crippled up wing and leg causing the hens to threaten break-ins to the pen where the younger roosters abide.

So all I can figure is the person wasn’t thinking in terms of me, or the chickens or cats.  The person had to be thinking more along the lines of a generic man.  A brave new world post-Y2K feller.

I don’t want anyone going away from this blog with questions unanswered and 21st Century puzzlement inhabiting his/her mind, so I’m going to answer on behalf of the generic man, the 21st Century man:

The sounds a 21st Century man wants to hear during sex are:  “I saw the prettiest dress at WalMart today, honey!  Are you nearly finished?  Is it okay if I eat that apple if you’re going to be at this a while?”  and the sound of an apple being eaten.

Don’t thank me.  This one’s gratis.

Old Jules

 

16 Comments

Posted in Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Halloween in the Middle of Nowhere

Posted on October 31, 2011 by | 2 comments

I heard a helicopter out there somewhere and was slipping into my orange jump suit while I headed out the door.  The helicopter faded, but I encountered a gathering of cats and chickens as I hopped off the porch.

Hydrox:  “Is that how you’re going to dress for Halloween?”

Me:  “I haven’t given any thought to Halloween.  What are you guys going to do?  Is Halloween something you’re thinking about?  You used to hate it when we were in Placitas.”

Hydrox:  “I don’t know.  Coons driving us off the porch every night, you shooting them through the window screen.  Hauling their carcasses out to the meadow on a grain-shovel.  Something BIG carrying them off.  Life’s sort of scary around here.”

Great Speckled Bird:  “That ain’t the half of it.  Coons and skunks trying to dig into the chicken-house every night gives me and the hens a case of the willies.”

Guinea #1:  “You think that’s bad?  What about the possums climbing around up in the trees looking for US?  It’s gotten so we’re flying around blind all night long finding branches in other trees.”

Shiva:  “It’s whatever it is carrying those coon carcasses off that worries me.  If we run out of coons it’s liable to come up here looking for the only thing outside worth eating.  Cats.”

Guinea #2:  “I resent that.”

Me:  “Whoooooah!  What is it you guys want?  I’m doing everything I can think of to keep you safe.”

Long pause.

The Great Speckled Bird:  “How about we have a celebration of Life?  Of surviving this long?  That might be fun.”

Niaid:  “Yeahhh.  That sounds good.  We could pretend we’re coyotes and you could open some of those special treats for us.”

Guinea #1:  “No need for anything special.  You could just open a can of what you give THEM,” gesturing with her beak toward the cats, “We’d love to get some of that.”

Tabby, muttering:  “You guys STEAL enough of that already.  Running us cats off it when he’s not looking!”

Great Speckled Bird:  “Nevermind!  Nevermind.  No point fighting among ourselves.  Let’s keep on track here.  How about you give the cats the special treats, and open some canned cat food for the rest of us?”

Americauna Hen:  “Yeah! Cool.  And we’ll have a big celebration of LIFE before you lock us into the fortress tonight!  Then if a coon or skunk gets in we’ll die happy.”

Guinea #2:  “Or if a possum grabs one of us before we know it’s up there.”

Hydrox:  “Or if whatever-the-hell’s carrying off those coon carcasses comes up here and catches one of us cats.”

The Great Speckled Bird:  “We’ll come knocking before sunset.”

I started pulling off the orange jump suit and opened the door to go inside.  Behind me I heard Niaid, “If he doesn’t do it we’ll dress up as a SWAT team and go after him.”

Tabby:  “What would we get him for?”

Hydrox:  “For being HIM!”

Old Jules

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Music, Solitude, Texas, Wildlife

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Mocking Bird Trap

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 11 comments

A mocking bird’s been terrorizing the cats and chickens for some while now.  It even swoops down on me and takes me by surprise sometimes.  I noticed Niaid lying upside down out there and thought she was dead.  Headed over there just as the mocking bird dived at her. 

When the mocker was pulling out of the dive she came alive and grabbed at it, got a paw full of feathers, but it got away.  Niaid resumed position and I ran for the camera.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2011

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Fiddle-Footed Naggings and Songs of the Highway

Posted on October 22, 2011 by | 19 comments

The human mind is a strange place to find ourselves living if we ever get enough distance from the background noise to notice.  I tend to notice it a lot.

This morning seemed destined to be just another day.  Gale and Kay were doing the Austin Gem and Mineral Show, so I’d figured to walk up to his house to get the truck mid-day so’s to take care of putting their chickens to bed tonight.  Startled me a bit when I looked up and there he sat in Little Red a few feet away, having brought it down to me.  My hearing must be further gone than I’d realized.

Seemed they’d no sooner gone than I got an email from Jeanne saying my old friend from childhood and later lost-gold-mine chasing days was in Fredericksburg trying to get hold of me hoping I could get over there for lunch.  Heck, it must be 15 years or more since I’ve seen Keith, though recently he’s been reading this blog.  Naturally him being 40 miles away and me with a truck sitting there available, I headed over there.

Really nice visit, but in the course of bringing one another up-to-date he asked me a number of questions about my situation here that forced me to take a hard look and organize my thoughts about it all.  That kicked off a series of trails of thinking to organize clearer, more concrete priorities for myself within a realistic examination of my options.

There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re all stacked atop a single one:  having the means of leaving this place in a relatively short time if the need arises.  It’s time I decided on a single course of action and begin leading events in a direction that allows it to congeal in a way that accomodates the needs of the cats. 

But the process of thinking about it in an organized way had a parallel thinking-path over whispering somewhere else in my brain wiggling out a sort of excitement, anticipation about it.  Here’s something that will be pure trauma and agony for the cats I do everything possible to spare such things, and my ticker’s beating a little faster in a pleasurable way just considering it.

That, combined with the certainty the process of getting things together to execute the plan I come with is going to involve some unpleasantness, excruciating work and fingernail chewing as it goes along.

Seems I’ve somehow contrived to be two different places at the same time inside my mind.  One being pushed by probabilities to do what makes sense rather than what I’d prefer, the cats would prefer.  And one reaching somewhere into fond memories of pinon trees, high mountains and an entirely different sort of solitude than I have here.

Keith confided to me today, “Everyone thinks you’re crazy.”  I can’t find any good argument that everyone’s wrong.  It’s nice being crazy and still being as happy as I manage to be all the time, though.

Anyway, to satisfy that fiddle-footed nagging, here are some songs of the highway and the road.

Old Jules

The Cheers – “Black Denim Trousers”

 

Roger Miller “Me And Bobby McGee”

Merle Haggard – White Line Fever

NAT KING COLE ROUTE 66

John Denver – Live in Japan 81 – Take Me Home, Country Roads

Roger Miller – I’ve Been A Long Time Leavin’ (But I’ll Be A Long Time Gone)

Hank Snow – I’ve Been Everywhere

Charley Pride-Is Anybody Goin’ To San antone

Playmates – Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)

 

Robert Mitchum sings The Ballad of Thunder Road

Roy Orbison – Ride Away

C. W. McCall “Wolf Creek Pass”

Hot Rod Lincoln – Charlie Ryan and the Timberline Riders 1960

 

MAC DAVIS Texas in My Rear View Mirror

 

Guy Clark LA Freeway

 

Willie Nelson On the Road Again

 

Easy Rider – Born To Be Wild (HQ)

 

LOST HIGHWAY by Hank Williams

 

Leonard Cohen – I Can’t Forget (live 1988)

 

Beach Boys – (It’s The) Little Old Lady From Pasadena

 

Beach Boys live ’64 Little Deuce Coupe

 

Neil Young – Hitchhiker

 

VANITY FARE HITCHIN A RIDE

 

‘YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU’ BY KENNY ROGERS & THE 1ST EDITION

 

Fats Domino – Walking to New Orleans

 

19 Comments

Posted in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 2011, hitch hiking, Human Behavior, Music, Senior Citizens, Survival

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House Coon and Cat Houses Update

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | 15 comments

Brother Coon and I couldn’t come to an agreement about the availability of indoors as acceptable behavior for a coon with a long life expectancy.  Whatever I did to keep him out, half an hour later he’d be poking around trying to find a way in, eventually leading to success.

Last night I’d had a bellyfull of it.  I brought the live trap in and put it down next to the sack of cat food, then went to bed.  Around 3:00 am I heard the trap slam shut and a lot of ruckus.  Transported trap, coon and angry all outdoors to await arraignment, trial, conviction and final disposition.

Original story here:  Wake-up Call – Coon in the Living Room

Cathouse Success

For once I predicted something and it came to pass.  That ice chest I salvaged out of the grader ditch actually has proved itself the popular cat-hotel I hoped it would.

Cathouse urgencies – 6:30 pm Grader Ditch Hauls

Another exciting day forming up in the Middle of Nowhere

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife

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Tumescence and Tentpole Torque

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 8 comments

3 am I wake
Find you atop me
Kneading
I savor
The soft purr
Of you
The gentle scratch
Of nail on flesh
Tiny pleasure pain
I hold
I hold
I hold
Until I can wait
No more
Lift you
Lovingly aside
And rise

You follow watching
My grimaced
Downward
Push
Muscle pressure
Pain
Release

Your tail
Lashes S and Z
In empty air
Green eyes fixed
I search absently
For  a synonym
For piss hard
And ponder how
Like the useless
Appendix
This serves no function.

No.  No.
It reminds
Remembers
Other uses
Other times.

Old Jules

Copyright 2011 NineLives Press

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Poetry, Uncategorized

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The Naming of Cats

Posted on October 10, 2011 by | 6 comments

First came this at an early age:  The Life and Times of Archie and Mehitabel, Don Marquis .

http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/archylogo.gif

After the literary Mehitabel, the first namesake to enter my life was in 1967.  She was a stray, moved in ahead of a hurricane reputed to be headed for Houston.  My new wife and I took her in because she was hungry, pregnant, and a violent storm might be coming.

She was near to giving birth and decided my sock drawer was the best option, refused to be dissuaded.  So I built her a cat house behind the apartment.  She didn’t stay around long after the kittens died, evidently because of drinking her milk.

Mehitabel #2 was a bob-tailed calico.  Amazing cat, a loyal companion for 17 years.  I once watched her in horror and awe as she mauled a full grown German Shepherd and similarly sized mutt, though they intended it to be the other way around, then found themselves surrounded, blocked repeatedly in their attempts to escape by a feline seemed to prefer two at a time.

I could spend pages telling Mehitabel #2 stories, but I won’t, except to say she was the mother of Hydrox #1, Hydrox #2, Xerox #s 1 and 2, and The Great Rumpus Cat #1.  I always figured she was reincarnated from Mehitabel #1.

Over the years I always kept the cat population contained in a set of names lying in wait for a cat to fit in them, Mehitabel, Hydrox, Xerox and The Great Rumpus Cat being the primary ones.  The method always worked well for me, but cats needed to fit particular qualifications to seize a particular name.  Hydrox and Xerox were always jellicle cats.  Mehitabel had to qualify by meeting other standards, generally following the Don Marquis model.

Mehitabel #3 came in around 1996, me fresh out of cats, her being a pregnant bookstore cat in Socorro, New Mexico.  When Mehitabel #3 emerged from sleep and demanded I pick her up I asked the lady-owner, “She’s close.  When these kittens are weaned could I have one?”

“You can have HER.”

“I don’t want half-a-dozen cats.”

“I know.  As soon as the kittens are weaned you can have her.”

The enthusiasm and insistence of the lady told me I had the right cat.   Mehitabel and I hit it off beautifully.  But I was on the road a lot, and despite the cat door she was able to use to go in and out, I sensed Mehitabel was lonely.

Mel, a good friend, had a pregnant jellical female, Electra, living in his garage, and when the kittens were born I picked out Hydrox #4, or maybe 5.  Freshly weaned, I carried him home to introduce him to Mehitabel #3.  She hated him.

Mehitabel showed no signs of accepting him, so I went back to Mel and borrowed the second-best of the litter, Niaid, on an indefinite loan to keep him company.  I didn’t try to fit her into the name thing because she was just a loaner.

As the pair matured I’d frequently ask Mel, “You needing this cat back?”

“No,” he’d assure me, “I’m fine.”   Then Mel partnered  with me on the Y2K land, though he stayed in town except for a week leading up to January 1, 2000, so the Niaid issue wasn’t a concern.

Slouching into the Millennium – August 1998

Reflections of a Y2K Survivor

But in the background, throughout her life, Mehitabel bullied both of them unmercifully.  When we went to live in a single-room apartment in Grants, New Mexico, toward the end of 2000, she could lay down the law and they couldn’t get away from her.  But eventually Mehitabel #3 went on permanent mouse patrol, relieving the household of a lot of tension.

That’s where the screw-up happened in the life-long cat naming procedures.  A stray pregnant cat emerged from catdom at a motel Jeanne was staying in while visiting me in Grants, which she took back to Kansas with her.  Named her Shiva, largely because of my lousy abilities at prognostication.

I had no idea the was going to eventually fill the Mehitabel #4 slot.

But she did and it’s screwed everything up from a cat naming perspective.  I doubt I’ll live long enough to get it back on track.  One of Shiva’s litter’s living with me, as well.  Sheeze!  Her name????


Tabby.

Old Jules

The Naming of Cats in T S Eliot’s own voice:

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Posted in Adventure, Country Life, Human Behavior, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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