Randy posted this lovely photo of Obie and wrote: “Obie has come a long way — from neighborhood stray two years ago to writing assistant.”
He also told me that Obie got on his desk, talked and talked to him, then marked Randy’s beard by rubbing his ear glands on his beard over and over again.
OBIE: This is my human. Mine.
Obi cat threw a bit of a hairball so I decided it was time to start brushing them again, so much floof brushed out with the furminator 🙀🙀
Obie on the fence, just before the rain started.
We’ve been working for a long, long time on trying to get Ozzy’s weight down. Randy has done an amazing job of controlling the food that Ozzy gets. It isn’t easy because the boy wants to eat every ten minutes. A year ago, Ozzy was 22.8 lbs. I got the scale out the other night and he’s down to 19.7! The vet recommended we aim for 18 lbs and we might just manage it.
While I had the scale out, I weighed Obie. He was terribly unsure about the strange object I kept putting him on, but I finally got a weight: 16.9 lbs. He is one hefty boy. He’s chunky, solid, muscular, and kinda square-shaped. His head and paws are nearly as large as Ozzy’s. We’re going to have to be more careful about feeding him, too, and try to get his weight down.
Then I had the brilliant idea of weighing Tilly. She has clearly put on weight since we took her in. I’m sure she’s over 8 lbs at this point. I picked her up around the belly and walked a short distance toward the scale and she WAS NOT HAVING IT. Blood was shed. Mine, of course. Her weight will remain an unknown as I would have to thoroughly trank her to get her on a scale.
Wildlife report: we had a magnificent 7-point stag down the hill from the house. He was attacking tree saplings, some kind of pine, I think. They’re only three feet or so high and he went from one to another vigorously attacking them with his antlers. Or maybe trying to rub his antlers all over them to mark territory. I know not the mind of a stag.
This morning, while watching birds in the back yard, I saw a large white object off in the distance. It looked like a duck. I got out my binoculars and it was a huge white duck with red around its face. I’m guessing it was another Muscovy duck. The previous two Muscovies we saw around a couple of years ago didn’t survive, but maybe someone decided to try again and got a white one this time. I hope it manages to live longer than its predecessors.
As I watched through the binocs, a fluffy orange tail suddenly popped up in the bottom of my vision. Obie was trying to sneak up on the duck. As soon as he got too close, the duck flew off and Obie sauntered after it, clearly curious. The duck was way bigger than he was, so I wasn’t worried about it.
Kelly has been on the kitty Prozac for nearly four weeks. The first couple of weeks he was such a zombie that it worried me. After that, he seemed to return somewhat to normal, but I noticed he was having trouble in the catbox. It was taking him forever and a lot of effort to poop. I gave him some doses of Lactulose. It seemed to help somewhat, but not enough. It wasn’t constipation, it was some other kind of issue.
Which is why Kelly had a last-minute trip to the vet yesterday. The vet couldn’t find any kind of obvious problem except for one oddity – Kelly’s anal glands were excessively full. So off he went into the back for some lucky tech to empty Kelly’s anal glands. That is not a job I would wish on anyone.
Kelly came back with a cleanly-washed butt scented with “Cherry Blossoms”, per the vet. We had a laugh about that and the name of the other butt-cleaning scent that is offered: Sugar Cookies. Somewhere in some pet products corporation, someone is having a laugh at people with cats.
The vet strongly agreed with my suggestion that we cut Kelly’s dose in half. Kelly had his first reduced dose this morning. He’s already hissing at Tilly again. Sigh...we’ll see how it goes.
A large chunk of yesterday was also spent texting with a neighbor, N., who is the granddaughter of the woman that considers Charlie her cat. Unfortunately, Charlie showed up with an injured leg a couple of days ago and his supposed person was doing nothing about it, so N. stepped up to take action. She texted me because many months ago I used a gofundme to raise money to neuter neighborhood cats. I offered to have N.’s own two cats fixed, but nothing came of it. The money has been sitting in my savings account ever since while I debated what to do with it.
She texted me to ask if I would be willing to use that money to get medical help for Charlie. We’re talking about a single mother with a couple of toddlers and a seriously sick grandmother, who is nonetheless taking responsibility for Charlie. Of course, I said yes. I contacted the vet’s office to make sure they understood that I’ve be covering a specific chunk of the bill.
N. was afraid Charlie had a broken or dislocated leg. He was in a lot of pain. It turned out that he was probably bitten by another cat and it got badly infected. If N. hadn’t gotten Charlie to the vet when she did, he might well have died from it.
I suspect that Charlie once again got into a fight with Obie. Obie showed up a few days ago with some bits of fur pulled out and a small nick on his left ear. He seems to lead with his left ear when he fights. His left ear is battle-ragged.
The vet is keeping Charlie another night because the poor cat is in such bad pain, which makes me suspect the infection remains serious.
I asked Charlie’s person (the grandmother) more than once to try and keep Charlie inside, but she won’t do it. Maybe this will change her mind, though I doubt it. People that won’t take proper care of the cats they claim as theirs shouldn’t be allowed to have them.
Obie regularly spends time inside now, though he still wants to be let outside at a moment’s notice. He continues to explore and make himself at home in more parts of the house. He’s spent time next to me in a cat tree and the same in Randy’s office. He’s antsy and can’t seem to settle for more than a few moments. He doesn’t know what to do with himself unless Randy or I are petting him or paying attention to him.
Last night, with temps close to freezing, we kept him inside for the night. The last time we tried that, he cried on and off all night. This time around he cried briefly at first and was mercifully quiet for the rest of the night, except for a brief complaint early in the morning. We hope it means he’s adjusting to being inside.
The big surprise in our lives has been the transformation of Obie. It was February of 2024 when a hungry orange tabby showed up with a scarred face and ragged ear. When we began feeding him, he behaved like a feral and was untouchable.
Now that we’ve won his trust, he turned out to be a wonderful, affectionate, sweet cat. I’ve never seen a cat that likes to spend so much time with his belly up. He lets us scratch him under the chin, and rub his chest and belly.
When he comes inside wet from rain, he lets us towel him off. Once a week, he patiently allows me to rub him all over with the anti-allergen liquid.
Obie’s fur is beautifully soft now. Last winter he developed some bad dreadlocks that we had to cut off, so we’re being careful to comb him. He likes being combed. He will even lie on one side to be combed, then roll belly-up and let us comb his chest and belly (!!!), and then roll to the other side for more combing.
He’s filled out, of course. We may have made him a bit TOO chunky, so we’re watching how we feed him. He routinely comes inside, eats inside, plays inside, and has come to enjoy the cat furniture, but will only hang out for so long before he asks to go outside again.
To our further delight, he’s something of a lap cat. He often gets onto the sofa to snuggle up next to Randy, then crossing over Randy’s lap to share the snuggling with me, and one memorable night he got into Randy’s lap in the armchair.
He’s friendly and gentle with all of the inside cats, and never strikes back on the rare occasion when a cat whacks him. Obie has actually integrated with the other cats far better than Kelly did, and Obie is happy to hang out with Kelly outside the house. Kelly tolerates Obie better than the indoor cats.
He’s gradually spending more time indoors, but still insists of being outside most of the time, especially at night. When we had a night near freezing last week, we kept him inside overnight to see how it would go. He cried on and off all night, but in the morning he was fine. Not upset with us and willing to come in and out the same as before. We haven’t repeated the experiment because we haven’t gotten down into the freezing temps again, but once we do, we plan to keep him in at night.
When we decided to start letting Kelly go outside and ordered a collar for him, we decided to get a collar for Obie as well. At this stage, we want to be sure he isn’t mistaken for a stray because he does still wander a bit. This necessitated that we finally settle on a definitive name for him. We tossed out Obi-Wan and Oberon, and have simply gone for Obie. We looked up Obie as a name. It’s a Nigerian Igbo name variously defined as “heart”, “a father’s heart”, or “a father’s will”.
He’s certainly won our hearts.
A major, major first with Obi. A minor first when he cried at the door to be let IN. He was right outside the front door and cried for us to come and let him in instead of asking to be let out.
The major first was last night. He’s spending more hours inside, eating, playing, and exploring. The last thing we do at night is settle in for some reading before going to bed. Randy reads in the armchair. Obi came over and Randy coaxed him to come up. Obi jumped up to the arm of the chair. Then Randy coaxed him and Obi GOT INTO HIS LAP. What followed was at least a five-minute love session with Obi discovering the joy of a human lap. He gave chirpy purrs, snuggled into Randy’s armpit, rolled around on his back, and was so happy he didn’t know what to do with himself. Then he jumped down and wanted out.
I didn’t take pictures because I didn’t want to disturb the moment, so instead here’s a picture of Obi and Kelly playing.
We’ve had another first with Obi. He’s talking to us! He’s using his voice and becoming more assertive about it. At the moment, he’s using his voice to tell us when he wants to go back outside. When he does that, we make sure to let him out right away, so that he’ll feel safe about coming back inside.
Tonight, he explored all the way to my office and checked out all the corners of the room. That’s the furthest he’s gone into this end of the house.
The next milestone is for him to use a catbox. That will be an important step for having him inside during the winter.
Christy Marx Rambling Writer
TheGoodbyeGirl 🇬🇧🇮🇪