The locusts are starting to die.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59(This is neither a poem nor a screed on the sad temporal nature of nature.)
I Want People To Have More To Say About Me After I'm Gone Than, "He Was A Nice Guy...He Chased Sticks!"*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
It's a sad thing about the locusts; if you ask Meg and Little Cat, there's no better toy in the world. They're just the right size, they move on their own and are fun to chase, and when you hold one in your mouth, it makes a sound like a clicker, which is very exciting.
Locusts are, however, very much toys and not food. You might play with a moth before you eat it, but you don't eat a locust.
For some reason, they're not allowed in the house. This is perplexing. Meg would stand up and peek in the door, and I would go over to let him in, see (or hear) the locust, and tell him no. "But I have a toy!" his expression would tell me. "A wonderful toy! See? I caught it myself. I Am A Hunter." I would praise him, but I wouldn't let him in. (My idea of praise is telling him, "If we ever have a plague, you'll be the first one I call. Then I'll tell the pharaoh to let the Jews go."
(He got one in once. Between me trying to catch it to get rid of, him trying to play with it, and it trying to get away, it was very exciting.)
Meg is also allowed to stay out later, after dark. One Saturday evening I just decided to see what happened if I didn't call him to come in. What happened was that around nine forty-five he came to the door to be let in. It was getting close to bedtime.
He's finicky about his bedtime, and prefers me to be settled in bed before eleven. If I'm not getting ready for bed by ten thirty or so, he comes and lays on me for a while. But if I'm up much past eleven, he'll go off and settle someplace else, probably thinking I'm too stupid to take a hint.
I've also discovered that Meg doesn't wash his back feet. He washes his toes, but the part of the foot from his heel down to where his toes start is gray now, and not because he's changed color. (Though some of his colors have changed, some of his white has gone a cream color.)
I want to wash his feet to see what color they really are. This could be tricky because I'm not supposed to even touch his back feet. The only time his back feet and I should come in contact is when he's walking or laying on me. Or when he's kicking me. But his feet are very private and shouldn't be touched, even when they're hanging down looking completely adorable, just begging to be tweaked.
One of his favorite things to do is play tag. He'll run past me and hit me on the leg with one of his paws. "You're it! And you can't catch me!" This is true. I can never catch him in a foot race.
Meg has embraced his extended family. He lets Patrick pet him, he plays with Little Cat (and eats her food--Patrick feeds her on the front porch, and when she's finished, Meg rushes over to gobble up what's left, even things he refuses to eat when they're in his own bowl in his house). He goes to my mother's house for whipped cream, and will also lay down and nap with my mother. I don't worry about him being out all day anymore.
During the really bad heat we had a few weeks ago, I kept Meg in the house when I went to work. (This was no trick; he didn't want to be out in it anyway, and would come back in from doing his business right away.) There were about three days in a row where the only time he had outside was when I got home from work, about three or four hours, and it was too hot to run and play.
Meg got cranky and crazed. He doesn't usually run madly around the house, but those days he did. He was also meowing a lot, and I realized he wanted a paper bag to play in. I was opening one up and he was so excited, he was leaping at it, as though trying to leap inside. The first night he spent the whole evening in her bag. The second night I also put out a cardboard box for him, and he spent the evening running back and forth between the two.
Oh, and there was one really exciting thing that happened. His big bag of dry food was nearly empty so I took it to the kitchen. (It had been in Pat's room, with the door closed, ever since Meg's required fast for his surgery.) I set the bag down, but it was too empty to stand up, so it tipped over, and Meg ran inside because, a bag! Nothing's better than a bag to play in!
Except there is one thing that's better; this bag had food in it! A bag! With food in it! What could be better than that? I didn't even try to pour the food into his dish, he was happier eating it in the bag.
Have I mentioned that he gets his drinking water from a bucket in the bathroom? It's a long story involving a drip in the bathtub, a bowl I put under the drip for the cats, a toilet that leaks if I fill the tank, changing the bowl for a bucket, and Meg discovering a bucket full of water! He sits on the side of the tub with his front paws on the edge of the bucket and drinks from as close to the middle of the bucket as he can reach. It's like watching a lion drinking at a watering hole. A tiny tabby lion with a plastic watering hole. It's adorable.
He mostly sleeps with me now, laying with his paws pressed against me. He's an incredibly happy cat, purring most of the time
*Snoopy
I Want People To Have More To Say About Me After I'm Gone Than, "He Was A Nice Guy...He Chased Sticks!"*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
It's a sad thing about the locusts; if you ask Meg and Little Cat, there's no better toy in the world. They're just the right size, they move on their own and are fun to chase, and when you hold one in your mouth, it makes a sound like a clicker, which is very exciting.
Locusts are, however, very much toys and not food. You might play with a moth before you eat it, but you don't eat a locust.
For some reason, they're not allowed in the house. This is perplexing. Meg would stand up and peek in the door, and I would go over to let him in, see (or hear) the locust, and tell him no. "But I have a toy!" his expression would tell me. "A wonderful toy! See? I caught it myself. I Am A Hunter." I would praise him, but I wouldn't let him in. (My idea of praise is telling him, "If we ever have a plague, you'll be the first one I call. Then I'll tell the pharaoh to let the Jews go."
(He got one in once. Between me trying to catch it to get rid of, him trying to play with it, and it trying to get away, it was very exciting.)
Meg is also allowed to stay out later, after dark. One Saturday evening I just decided to see what happened if I didn't call him to come in. What happened was that around nine forty-five he came to the door to be let in. It was getting close to bedtime.
He's finicky about his bedtime, and prefers me to be settled in bed before eleven. If I'm not getting ready for bed by ten thirty or so, he comes and lays on me for a while. But if I'm up much past eleven, he'll go off and settle someplace else, probably thinking I'm too stupid to take a hint.
I've also discovered that Meg doesn't wash his back feet. He washes his toes, but the part of the foot from his heel down to where his toes start is gray now, and not because he's changed color. (Though some of his colors have changed, some of his white has gone a cream color.)
I want to wash his feet to see what color they really are. This could be tricky because I'm not supposed to even touch his back feet. The only time his back feet and I should come in contact is when he's walking or laying on me. Or when he's kicking me. But his feet are very private and shouldn't be touched, even when they're hanging down looking completely adorable, just begging to be tweaked.
One of his favorite things to do is play tag. He'll run past me and hit me on the leg with one of his paws. "You're it! And you can't catch me!" This is true. I can never catch him in a foot race.
Meg has embraced his extended family. He lets Patrick pet him, he plays with Little Cat (and eats her food--Patrick feeds her on the front porch, and when she's finished, Meg rushes over to gobble up what's left, even things he refuses to eat when they're in his own bowl in his house). He goes to my mother's house for whipped cream, and will also lay down and nap with my mother. I don't worry about him being out all day anymore.
During the really bad heat we had a few weeks ago, I kept Meg in the house when I went to work. (This was no trick; he didn't want to be out in it anyway, and would come back in from doing his business right away.) There were about three days in a row where the only time he had outside was when I got home from work, about three or four hours, and it was too hot to run and play.
Meg got cranky and crazed. He doesn't usually run madly around the house, but those days he did. He was also meowing a lot, and I realized he wanted a paper bag to play in. I was opening one up and he was so excited, he was leaping at it, as though trying to leap inside. The first night he spent the whole evening in her bag. The second night I also put out a cardboard box for him, and he spent the evening running back and forth between the two.
Oh, and there was one really exciting thing that happened. His big bag of dry food was nearly empty so I took it to the kitchen. (It had been in Pat's room, with the door closed, ever since Meg's required fast for his surgery.) I set the bag down, but it was too empty to stand up, so it tipped over, and Meg ran inside because, a bag! Nothing's better than a bag to play in!
Except there is one thing that's better; this bag had food in it! A bag! With food in it! What could be better than that? I didn't even try to pour the food into his dish, he was happier eating it in the bag.
Have I mentioned that he gets his drinking water from a bucket in the bathroom? It's a long story involving a drip in the bathtub, a bowl I put under the drip for the cats, a toilet that leaks if I fill the tank, changing the bowl for a bucket, and Meg discovering a bucket full of water! He sits on the side of the tub with his front paws on the edge of the bucket and drinks from as close to the middle of the bucket as he can reach. It's like watching a lion drinking at a watering hole. A tiny tabby lion with a plastic watering hole. It's adorable.
He mostly sleeps with me now, laying with his paws pressed against me. He's an incredibly happy cat, purring most of the time
*Snoopy