Ella & Bubba

Ella and Bubba are going to be happy for a while. We were in Bangor today, which is not a trip we make often anymore, and she was getting her nails done. Not wanting to hang around waiting for her to get her nails done, I drove to Petco and bought one or two cans of pretty much every type of canned cat food they had whose ingredients I agreed with, which is most of them these days because they don't carry a whole lot of junk cat food anymore like they used to.

The outside cats will probably be rewarded too because whatever Bubba and Ella decide they aren't going to eat will be going out there. I also buy some of the less expensive premium food for them since, even though they are feral or stray cats, I don't feel good feeding them junk. But at the same time, I can't afford to spend $2-3 a can to feed a bunch of outside cats, and probably some raccoons and skunks, as well.

 

Ella is so mean, sometimes. Ever since I quit letting her outside during the day, I have been carrying her outside before going to bed, and some other times during the day or night, if she asks. Of course, when we come back inside, Bubba is sure to be waiting for his turn. He rarely asks for anything but expects to get whatever Ella gets.

I came back in with Ella, set her down, and was picking up Bubba when she slapped him a half dozen times in rapid succession before I could pick him up far enough to be out of her reach. For his part, Bubba doesn't seem to mind. Attention is attention, and it's all good.

 

A discussion in another thread got me thinking, again, about Bubba. If he lives to be twenty-five or more, as my last few cats have, I would be ninety-five years old, and I don't know if I am going to make it to ninety-five. My wife is five years younger than I am, but that would still put her at ninety. I hope I'll be able to find a good home for him because he's a great cat. Fortunately, he's more sociable than Cutie and Lydia were, so he could probably adapt to a new home.

 

Drugs Lead to Crime, and Cats Are Thieves

Ella hangs out in our library, which she has magnetic key access to, in order to escape from Bubba. I have been keeping a large bag of catnip in a drawer in a roll-away toolbox in the library. Today, I decided that I would put some catnip down on our cat scratchers, and when I opened the drawer, I found catnip all over the place. The plastic bag was torn to shreds, although the drawer was closed.

Given that Bubba does not have access to the library, I can only assume that Ella smelled the catnip, figured out which drawer it was in, and learned how to slide the drawer open, probably repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, then closed the drawer when she was done. I wasn't even aware that she was leading a life of crime.

 

Bubba, on the other hand, is the destroyer. Cat trees and sisal scratchers that have survived two decades of cats have not survived one year of Bubba. All of my other cats have pretty much ignored sisal scratchers so I was pleased to see that Bubba appreciated what they were intended for. However, once he scratches a piece of the sisal loose, he devotes the rest of his time to tearing at it with his teeth until it is gone. He has torn the carpeting from the cat trees and holds cat toys down with his paws while the rips at them with his teeth.

 

Maybe that's the difference between a male and a female. Males are destructive while females are devious and conniving.

 

He is very patient with her, although it is true that he instigates a lot of it, too.

 

No, I don't think so. Ella spends too much time in there for a mouse to survive. The drawers slide pretty easily, so figure it was her.

 

Yesterday, I found that Bubba had hardly touched the last can of food that I had given him the day before. I set it outside for the feral cats, who apparently didn't come around until after it had frozen. This morning, I brought it back in to wash the bowl, dumping the frozen two-day-old cat food in the compost box. Now, Bubba is digging it out of the compost box and eating it.

 

How is he with furniture? My last cat ripped the cover off of my stereo speakers, tore the paper out of the cones, then pulled the insulation out from inside the cabinets.