There's a new sheriff in town, and he's a bad ass killing machine. Meet Bagheera, King of the Cats. Here he is working out with a faux rodent to get ready for the real thing. How'd you like to be on the business end of these fangs??
Here he is, surveying the terrain for signs of trouble.
Okay, off duty he likes a snuggle.
Here's Zane Grey… we seem to have made arrangements that are working. She hides in the basement most of the time, uses her cat box perfectly down there, and gets petted during my frequent laundry runs. We did finally install an upstairs cat box, which she has familiarized herself with, and with may in fact solve the problem in which she gets herself "trapped" up there and is unable to run the Lena/noisy children gauntlet to get to her cat box downstairs. Also her pea/pee brain can't fathom the use of the cat door I installed for her, but oh well. I think she's as fluffy inside her skull as outside.
Still crazy after all these years…
Ironically the very day I brought the cat home, Sunday, was the day a strange new rodent bolted from under the dresser in the sunroom (beside which ZG is sitting in that photo) and scurried under the couch nearby. This alarmed me and I screamed, and my baby was at risk– sitting on the floor– of getting attacked by a rabid rat or whatever in the HELL it was. We were in the process of leaving the house at that moment so I just scrambled to safety. En route I consulted with my mother on the phone and she reassured me that in all likelihood it was a chipmunk. When I got home, with new cat in tow, I set a trap for the whatever it was. (I have a wide spectrum of rodent-trapping devices, fortunately!) Before too long, the chipmunk (indeed it was) began running like a mad freak all over the entire house and finally ran into the tv room. I set the trap there and within moments he was in it. He dropped his tail to distract me. None the less I took him outside to the woods and let him go. Where was Lena during all this?
"What Chipmunks?"
All weekend, too, Elias was sick and Ben and Isaac were out of town. Elias had a persistent fever of 102. When treated with Motrin, he was very normal-seeming, such that on Saturday, when they were having a Valentine's Day special at the local Humane Society, I went and searched through 175 cats for the perfect one. Indeed, my criteria were hard to meet. I needed a young (6-12 month) neutered boy cat. I needed him to be frisky enough to be a good hunter, and yet gentle and friendly enough to be no threat to the children. I needed him to come from a stable home– lord knows I need no more mentally-ill cats! And lastly I needed him to be beautiful, touchable and loveable. After a long dalliance with a much more striking lynx point siamese, I decided that this was the right cat for us. I put him on hold, thought it over some more, and got him on Sunday. The lady who had fostered him from tiny kittenhood cried when I took him. But of course she needed him to find a home– that was the point. He'd been sitting in a cage there for two months, waiting for us to come along. She said, "People just walk by black cats like they don't even see them… and he's such a special cat!" This tugged on my heart strings a bit, and made me feel shallow for liking the Lynx point with the white eyeliner and electric blue eyes. But now that I've had him home for a few days, I know I made the right choice. He's wonderful!! The kids are thrilled, and even Ben is happy with him.
About his name. He came with the name Rocker. Apparently not in the rock-on metal sense, but his medical records indicate he was injured by a rocking chair in his early kittenhood. For me, though, I just couldn't live with a cat named Rocker. I at first dubbed him Valentino, since he's a Latin lover and I got him on Valentine's Day. But when I told Isaac this he replied, "But he should have a boy's name, since he's a boy." Then I went with Poe. He's black as a raven and romantic, but with a sinister edge. Elias began calling him Po-po, which sounded pretty adorable. But this meant nothing to Isaac, who hasn't read much Poe yet. Isaac wanted to name him Bagheera, after the black panther in the Jungle Book. After years of struggle naming Mr. Cat, I was willing to close the deal. Last night, when Isaac and Ben got back from New York, Isaac and I shook on it. Bagheera it is. Then Isaac said that we should has as his FULL name, "Bagheera, King of the Cats." I think it's quite fitting.
Meanwhile, we're still getting him settled into the house (he started out in the upstairs bathroom at first for a couple days, now he's in a crate in the living room, getting to know Lena and Zane Grey and the kids). And suddenly we have herds of chipmunks running all over the place!! One jumped out at me yesterday morning just as I was embroiled in a prescription mess, trying to get Elias his medicine. (Elias has a double ear infection and a rattly chest, but seems to be recovering well.) Lena, snoozer in chief, woke up long enough to chase the chipmunk over hill and dale, but as far as I know it's still in here somewhere.
I can only be grateful that soon, maybe even by the end of the week, we'll have new law enforcement on the case.
UPDATE: this post was interrupted by screams, as the chipmunk just rounded the corner trying to come in here. I put the trap out in his path. Bagheera saw him and started throwing himself against the bars of his crate. Even Zane Grey seems on the alert. Breaking news!! More as it develops.