Cutie and Lydia, Ella Too

That tail is really going to be in trouble if Ella ever catches it. But it's too fast for her.

 

Cutie and Lydia were uninterested in Christmas, and Ella wasn't into it until the wrapping was on the floor.

 

Yeah, they left the tree alone. That's only because it's a fake one because they are all over it when we have real ones.

 

She gets cold quickly, and wants to come in but, ten minutes later, she is convinced that the weather must have gotten warmer and wants to go back outside again. She loves being outdoors, and she loves jumping into big piles of snow. If only she could do that in warmer weather...

 

I've already told the stories of how Cutie has learned to communicate, as well as a general understanding of Bernie Sanders style economics. She brings me stuff that I've paid for, such as cat toys, and uses them to buy treats, play time in her box, or to let me know that she's out of water or food.

Now Ella has learned to communicate. A couple of times she was able to find and reach the Da Bird toy, and would drag it over to me, as a sort of a direct form of communication, letting me know that she wants me to play Da Bird with her. Since she tends to chew it up, I try to keep Da Bird out of sight, since it's hard to place anything out of her reach, so she has started bringing me the feather part of an old Da Bird, which adds a level of abstract thinking to her form of communication.

So now I have the problem of wanting to make sure that she knows that she is communicating her desires very well, but at the same time I can't play Da Bird with her every time she brings the feathers to me because she will do it every five minutes. I guess I'll have to hide the feathers too, and bring them out only when I have time to play.

 

In their old age, Cutie and Lydia have no interest in going outside in bad weather. Cutie never did but Lydia used to practically live outside. She was the one who had me waiting up for her because, being black, there was no way that I could find her outside at night. Or she would lie under my neighbor's boat, knowing that the fence was in the way and I couldn't get her.

Ella is way more obedient. While she plays around with ignoring me sometimes when she really wants to be outside, she will generally come when she is called. On the occasions when she did not, it was clear that she knew she was in the wrong but opted to play now and take the punishment later. The punishment was that she couldn't go out the following day. Sometimes, when my wife or I open the door, she will run out. We call her back because we don't want her thinking that it's okay to escape, and she will stop and come back. Overall, she's far more cooperative than Lydia ever was.

 

I think it's more of a matter of establishing a comfort zone. If you let a cat go outdoors whenever it wants to, it will eventually have a range that includes, not only your yard, but a few of the neighboring yards, as long as there aren't any dogs or larger cats. I don't do that anymore, but I have in the past. If you're wanting to let a cat outdoors once in a while, or for short periods of time, you need to be out there with her at first. Her comfort zone will then be the parts of the yard where she has been with you. For example, I don't want my cats to hang out in front of the house because that's where the road is, so I never take her out the front door or hang out with her in the front of the house. When I see that she has gone to the front of the house, I bring her in. Consequently, for the first several months, every time she was outdoors I could be sure she would be in the back yard. After a while, she extended her range a bit to include the neighbor's yard and the lot on the other side, where there is a closed taxi place and some very long grass and weeds, where she can hunt. The neighbor likes cats, and I had introduced her to him a few times so she feels comfortable there. We have a railroad track behind the house that is no longer in use, and she likes to go there too, but I call her back whenever I see her there because I worry about foxes traveling the abandoned railroad tracks.

You also need to determine whether you live in a place where it might be reasonably safe for a cat to be outdoors, keeping in mind that your cat will probably not be perfectly safe outdoors anywhere, unless you have a high fence that she can't get over. Really, it's a balance between the dangers of being outdoors and the added stimulus that it adds to their lives, and I go back and forth on that one.

When I lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I didn't let my cats go outdoors because traffic was just too busy and there were too many things going on that might panic them. Even if you are not going to let your cat go outdoors though, I think it's important to make sure that they are familiar with the entrances so that if they do manage to find themselves outdoors, like if they rush out while you're carrying in groceries or something, they aren't immediately lost, panic, and not be able to find their way back. So even then, I took each of them outdoors individually, carried them around the outside of the apartment, letting them look into the windows from the outside so that they could orient themselves, then letting them go inside each of the doors by themselves so that they could recognize it from their vantage point. Still, it was funny because one of my cats rushed the door one day and ran. When I went looking for her, she was at an apartment door one section down, because they all looked the same, and she was waiting to be let back in. She had the right idea, but the wrong apartment.

If I am going to let them outdoors though, I will first carry them around the parts of the yard that I want to them to hang out in, then sit down with them in my arms, and do this off and on for a few days before letting them outdoors on their own. Then, I will let them explore a bit. Probably, they will be afraid and go immediately to the door to be let back in. Eventually, they will want to explore their surroundings, and I will take a book and sit outdoors with them for the first several times that they are doing that. In fact, I would take my MacBook out to the picnic table and work out there, while they were in the yard.

Not everyone has the capabilities, but I also have a storage shed in the back that has a cat door in it, and I make sure that my cats know about that in case they should encounter someone's dog or something, so that they could escape to the shed if that was the closest shelter. In the shed, they can easily get up on high shelves away from most predators. When Ella is outdoors, I also leave our porch door open a crack so that she can get back into the porch whenever she wants to. Then I check on her from time to time. If I find that she is in the front of the house, the tracks, or somewhere else that I don't want her to be, I don't get angry with her, but I do bring her in, and I think she figures it out after a while that if she is found in these places her time outdoors may end.

It is very rare that Ella doesn't show herself immediately when I call her. She doesn't always come running in response to my call, but she at least shows herself. Once, she was a couple of blocks away, along the tracks, and she came running full speed when I called her, knowing full well that she wasn't supposed to be that far away.

When it is raining or very cold outside, I still give her the option to go outside because otherwise she will keep begging to go outside. Once in a while she will surprise me by actually going out in the rain or the cold but, more often, she will simply turn around and ask to come back in.

 

Lydia has been with me her whole life, which was 26 years in December. During that time, she has voluntarily come up on my lap only a couple of times. Tonight, I was upstairs on the couch watching the Republican debate. Ella was lying over my legs and a black cat, who I thought was Cutie, Lydia's sister, jumped up on a chair nearby. I had been complimenting Ella, so I told Cutie that I loved her very much too. She came down from the chair and walked over to the couch, at which time I saw that it was Lydia and not Cutie. I invited her to come up, and she did, without hesitation. That is not something that Lydia does.

She was there for about an hour. At one point, Ella was going to slap her so I stopped her from doing that. Ella got mad and left, so Lydia took Ella's place. Ella later came up with the feathers from the old Da Bird, trying to entice me away from Lydia. Of course, I was pretty impressed with Lydia voluntarily being friendly so I stayed where I was. After about an hour, Lydia left but came back about fifteen minutes later and stayed until I finally had to go back downstairs after the debate. That was twice in one night, and I don't know what got into her.

Ella and Cutie, on the other hand, are up by me all the time, including all night while I'm sleeping so, while it's not that I don't appreciate that, it was a little special to have Lydia with me.

 

Ella wants out.