Ella & Bubba

The last few of these show the squirrel that Bubba treed, and then a couple of him staring it down, sure that it cheated by jumping to an adjacent tree.

 

Off from being grounded, Ella brought me another snake today. Well, she didn't bring it for me, exactly. She brought it to me, so that I could be properly impressed. However, when I tried to take it, she slapped it out of my hand, repeatedly. Apparently, she doesn't believe that I know what to do with a snake, given that I released the last two she brought me. She wasn't done with this one until it was in a few pieces. What can I say? It's a cat thing, and I failed.

Either we have an unusually large number of snakes this year or she's found a snake pit that she goes back to.

 

Ella seems to like the catmint plant. She doesn't go crazy over it as she does catnip but she does spend a lot of time lying next to one or the other of the two catmint plants that I planted this summer. She doesn't directly sniff at the plant so I'm thinking that she may not even know that the smell she likes is coming from the plant, but that the area around it is a comfortable atmosphere. It's not like she generally enjoys lying in the dirt.

 

Until recently, Bubba would eagerly eat anything I put in front of him. I took advantage of that to use up some of the stuff that Ella wouldn't eat. I only buy healthy foods for the cats, but there are some varieties that Ella didn't like and would refuse to eat them. Bubba would eat anything. However, he has now acquired more refined tastes and walks away from stuff that he doesn't like. They decide whether they are going to like a food or not from the smell, so they will literally walk away from it without even tasting it. Ella got to where she would get up on the counter while I was opening the can so that she could express her displeasure as soon as I opened the can. Now Bubba is walking away from stuff too. So far, he will come back later and eat it after having made his protests but when Ella doesn't like something, she's not eating it.

Anyone who has cats probably knows that feeding a cat what the cat wants to eat is not as simple as figuring out what s/he likes and buying that, because it changes. Buy a case of something because the cat loves it, and the cat will be tired of it after the third can. So I shop around, buying all kinds of new stuff for them, based on the ingredients. Invariably, I will end up with a bunch of stuff they won't eat.

 

Now that it's getting dark around 8:00 pm, I bring Ella in at 7:00. I went out to check on her at about 6:30. She was sitting on top of my Tracker, which is covered with a tarp. When I opened the door, I saw her flatten herself out on the tarp, no doubt thinking I was going to bring her in because it was only a half-hour away. She was hoping I couldn't see her. So I said, "I wonder where the Ella went. I guess I can't bring her in because I have no idea where she is." She can't help but flick the tip of her tail whenever she hears her name, though. It's pretty close to time to being her in for real now, though.

 

Now that the house to the south of us has been vacant a while, Ella has claimed it as part of her domain. I was sitting outside with Ella today when she perked, then jumped off the desk and over the fence, chasing another cat out of the vacant yard next door. Even when Leo lived there, Ella was in his yard a lot because he didn't mind her being there.

 

I'm disappointed. Cats are good at that. As a special treat, I ordered a case of Evanger's canned cat food, which cost about $60 for a case of 24 6-oz cans. Although I always buy premium cat food, this is more than I usually want to pay for cat food. But the ingredient list reads like this: Rabbit, Water Sufficient for Processing, Liver, Guar Gum. That's it. What's not to like?

However, Bubba walked away from it without even trying it although he was enthusiastic about a can being opened, as he always is. It looked like Ella was going to eat hers, but she left most of it.

So now I am left with 22 cans of very good cat food that cats won't eat.

Maybe I can get Bubba to eat it with gravy. I bought some good-ingredient gravy that I use to get Bubba to eat some of the other cat food that he has suddenly developed a disdain for. Ella is not fooled by gravy, however.