2003-2020 The Enfield Pets: Part 2

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Mike

The story of the pets who shared the house in Enfield with Sue and me begins here. It recounts the first fifteen years of our lives there with, for most of the period, two cats named Rocky and Woodrow. Rocky died in the summer of 2003 after a very full life.

In late 2003 or early 2004 Sue’s sister Betty told us that a friend of hers had a family of cats that were too much for her to manage. Sue went to meet her one evening and chose on the spot to adopt a long-haired black male that was about the same size as Rocky and Woodrow. The woman called him Fluffy, which, of course, would never do. I dubbed him Giacomo after my favorite opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and Giacomo della Chiesa, better known as Pope Benedict XV.

For a few weeks Giacomo was, to put it mildly, very wary of his new surroundings. We did not keep him cooped up for more than a day or two, and thereafter I personally spent a lot of time looking for him and trying to remove him from various hiding places. I remember that one day he somehow crawled under the dishwasher in the old kitchen. Fortunately, he was just shy, not a bit aggressive or even defensive. As soon as I got a good grip on him he let me pull him out of his hiding spot without much of a struggle.

Giacomo on the chair showing off his thumbs and his anteater tail. Woodrow looks up from the floor.

Finding him when he hid outdoors was even more challenging. He liked to retreat beneath some evergreen bushes on the north side of our house. When I approached him from one side, he slipped over to the other. It took me at least thirty minutes to retrieve him whenever he did this.

Woodrow, who made new friends very easily, took the new kid under his wing. Giacomo followed his lead in nearly everything.

Eventually, Giacomo became comfortable in both our house and our yard. However, he did not seem to comprehend the value of the cat door (described here). It looked like a trap to him.

Finally, one day Sue and I decided to team up to help him understand it. Sue held him on the outside of the cat door and pushed him through. I was in the basement standing on a chair by the cat door. When he appeared on the top shelf of the bookcase, I grabbed him, took him in my arms (which he liked), and walked around the basement enough so that he could figure out where he was. I then returned him to the top shelf by the cat door and pushed him back through it. Sue grabbed him and held him for a minute or two. Then she pushed him back through to the basement again.

All of a sudden I could see the light bulb appear over Giacomo’s head as he emerged into familiar surroundings. The message penetrated through all the fear to his little brain. He finally realized that this little door meant that he could come and go as he pleased. It was no trap; it meant freedom!

Meanwhile, to our surprise, Giacomo continued to grow. After a couple of months he was a good two inches taller than Woodrow and three or more inches longer. He had one broken (or at least shorter) fang that bothered him not even a little. He also had polydactyly on both front paws. Each had an extra toe sticking out on the inside. They looked a lot like thumbs. One other thing was quickly noticeable about Giacomo—he was left-pawed. I called his left front paw “Lefty”. If it came towards you, it generally meant business.

During his first summer in Enfield Giacomo cleaned out the mole colony that had resumed residency when Woodrow retired as master exterminator a few years earlier.

For the most part Giacomo followed Woodrow around the house and the yard. Woodrow habitually came in to the bedroom every morning when my alarm went off at 5 AM. Giacomo began to join us. I was expected to acknowledge both of them, although Woodrow wanted nothing more than a rub or two on his head. Giacomo liked to be rubbed all the way down his spine, but he did not like his belly rubbed.

In the summer the coolest sport for a nap was this sink. Giacomo learned this trick from Woodrow.

From the start Giacomo preferred me over Sue. Whenever I sat down on a chair he jumped onto my lap. If I was seated at my desk (which was really a tabletop astride two file cabinets), he often got bored and went exploring on the table. If I was watching TV, he lay lengthwise on my lap (on a stadium blanket that I always set there) when he was younger and across it when he got older. I don’t know why he changed. Whenever I lay down he walked (he was so long that he hardly needed to jump) up onto the bed and settled himself next to me.

I never teased Giacomo in the way that I tortured Woodrow with that stick and feather. However, I occasionally took advantage of the fact that he allowed me to do almost anything to him. I liked to lift him up over my head and make him pretend to walk on the ceiling.

Woodrow and Giacomo were left “home alone” during our trips to Village Italy in 2005 (described here) and Eastern Europe in 2007 (described here).

Suburban raccoons are too fat for cat doors.

Woodrow was still around for a startling occurrence in May of 2008. The cat door drew the attention of a masked varmint, a raccoon that was too chubby to fit through the opening. Raccoons are known to be very crafty, but this one used brute force to solve the problem. He made short work of my (very) amateurish carpentry by pulling the door out of its wooden frame in the window. Sue and I knew that the rascal had made it all the way into the house when we found the cat bowl empty and water all over the floor. Cats are very meticulous when drinking water; they seldom spill a drop. Raccoons are meticulous in a different way. They wash their food before they eat it; they always spill water, and they never clean up after they are finished eating.

Chick Comparetto let us borrow his Havahart trap, and he showed Sue how to use it. She then put it outside near the cat’s entrance (which we had temporarily closed off) and put some food in it. On the very first night the raccoon got caught in the trap. Sue and Chick then transported the raccoon—still in the cage—in her car across the Connecticut River to Suffield, where they released it in a wooded area.

Sue immortalized the raccoon adventure by recording a video of the release in Suffield. You can watch it here.

I bought a new sturdier cat door and affixed it to the board blocking the window a little more securely.

In the late summer of 2008 Woodrow died. He was eighteen years old, the same age that Rocky was at his death. Woodrow was weak and very ragged looking the last week or so. I stayed home with him on his last day.

Despite my closeness to him, I wasn’t overcome with grief when Woodrow died. The Woodrow that I wanted to remember was the devious rascal and hunter, not the decrepit bag of bones of his last few days. I still retain so many vivid memories of him. He was an immediate friend to everyone whom we let in through a human-sized door, but I think that, at least in his younger years, he would have fought to the death to defend against an intruder trying to get through the cat door.

I buried Woody under the burning bush, his favorite outdoor napping spot. I don’t honestly know whether Giacomo missed him as much as I did. He could not have missed him more.

For about a year Giacomo was our only pet. Then Sue learned that Betty’s friend, who was absolutely thrilled to find out how much we liked Giacomo, told Sue that she could have Giacomo’s litter-mate, whom she had named Frankie. I insisted on elongating his name to Franklin.

Franklin was black, like Giacomo, but he had short hair, and he was not as long and lean as his brother. I thought of them as the anteater and the aardvark. Giacomo was the bigger anteater with his luxurious fur coat. Franklin was the much less attractive aardvark.

Franklin did not share Giacomo’s pleasant disposition and love of human companionship. He never fought with his brother, which we recognized as a big plus. However, Franklin did not especially like either Sue or me. He would only occasionally let us pet him. mostly when he was outside. Once or twice, however, I actually found him up on the bed with Giacomo, but after a couple of strokes he became antsy and departed.

This sturdier version of the cat door was installed with the new addition in 2013.

The aspect of living with us that Franklin hated the most was the monthly application of flea drops. I suspect that he had never been allowed outdoors at his previous residence. He discovered the cat door in the basement without our assistance, and he seemed to appreciate the freedom that it provided. However, he had never learned the fundamental lesson of civics class: with all freedom comes responsibility. In this case, the monthly flea drops were the price civilization exacted for his liberty.

This is the basement side, with a ramp down to the floor.

When the weather was warm Franklin put me through a frustrating and exhausting ritual every month. When I was sure that Franklin was in the house, I shut the door to the basement so that he could not retreat there. I then chased him from room to room trying to corner him. Sometimes he hid under one of the barnboard shelves in the library. When he did, I had to wait for him to move. Eventually I always trapped in the bedroom, where he would take refuge under the bed. I had to remove the mattress and box springs to get at him. I always eventually managed to apply the treatment, but the experience was a gigantic pain in the coondingy¹.

In contrast, I merely waited for Giacomo to jump in my lap. He did not mind getting the drops at all. He trusted me completely.

Giacomo and Franklin stayed home together while Sue, I, and our friends the Corcorans toured Paris and the South of France in 2009 (described here). We also took a Russian River Cruise in 2010 (described here) and an ill-fated tour of South Italy the following year (described here). I learned of no untoward incidents either caused by or inflicted on either cat.

For some reason Franklin insisted on exploring our neighbor’s³ property. The gentleman who lived there called me aside while I was trimming the forsythia bush near his property one day and informed me that he had a problem with our cats. They made his dog bark too much. I told him that I would see what I could do.

I thought of responding, “Oh, you have a dog problem. I thought that you said that you had a cat problem.” After all, in Enfield, although dogs must be fenced in or kept on a leash, there is no law against cats roaming free.

I was pretty certain that Franklin was the instigator. Whenever I saw him near the neighbor’s property, I chased him back to our yard. However, I worked all day, and I slept at night. Franklin had ample opportunities to roam. One day, when I was not home, the dog owner accosted Sue and told her that if he caught one of our cats on his property, he would kill it. I won’t repeat Sue’s precise response, but it was not neighborly.

The situation did not escalate any further. I wrote a letter to the neighbors that explained the situation with our cats and offered to pay if they did any damage. Shortly thereafter the family got rid of its noisy dog, and eventually the man of the house departed as well.

In 2012 Franklin got hit by a car on North Street. I did not dig a grave for him, the only domestic animal that I have ever really disliked.

After Franklin’s death Giacomo was our only pet³ for quite a few years. He went through a period in which he spent a lot of time on Allen Street, a dead-end street that was directly across North Street (the site of Franklin’s untimely demise) from our house. Quite a few outdoor cats lived in the neighborhood and congregated informally. The situation reminded me of the old Top Cat cartoons.

I did not like this new lifestyle, but there was not much that I could do about it without turning Giacomo into an indoor cat. Sue was equally concerned. She came to see me when I was in my easy chair wearing my cardigan sweater and reading a magazine. She said, “Ward, I ‘m worried about Giacomo.”

Although I don’t remember attributing his injury to the evil influence of the other gang members, one day Giacomo came home with a wound that had formed an abscess. The vet who examined him told me that if this happened again, we might need to keep him inside. That was something that we really wanted to avoid. She also told me that he definitely had a heart murmur, but she did not recommend doing anything about it. It made me think, however, that Giacomo would probably not match the longevity records of Rocky and Woodrow.

Eventually Giacomo’s wanderlust subsided. By 2016 he almost never left the property. That was the year that another black cat decided that he wanted to take up resident at the Slanetz house, home of Sue’s siblings, Don and Betty, and their father, Art. Betty and Art were quite fond of the newcomer, a very stocky fellow with an inflexible tail that measured only four or five inches. Betty named him Bob in honor of his tail—bobcats are sometimes seen in the area. The tail reminded me more of a crank or handle.

Unfortunately, Betty’s own cat had a fiercely hostile reaction to Bob’s presence. Betty therefore asked Sue to adopt him, and, needless to say, Sue agreed. Bob moved into our house on December 8, 2016, and for about two or three weeks Bob and Giacomo hissed at each other. They eventually became tolerant and, in time, quite friendly.

Giacomo held down the fort in Enfield by himself on several of our tours and cruises. Bob and Giacomo stayed in the house by themselves while we took the bridge trip/vacation in Hawaii in 2018 (details here).

Bob developed one very peculiar tendency. From the beginning his joints were not very flexible, especially by cats’ standards. Something also seemed to itch him on his spine, and he tried desperately to get at it with his teeth. To do this he rested his weight on one shoulder and used a back leg to spin around furiously. It reminded me of someone breakdancing.

After a while some tufts appeared on Bob’s spine. They looked like matted clumps of fur, but he would not let us touch them at all. They kept getting bigger, and eventually it became clear that they were growths of some kind. Maybe we should have taken him to the vet, but at the time Bob would not let me touch him under any conditions. Sue decided to let him be. Every so often she would say to him, “Oh, Bob, what am I going to do with you?”

Prior to Bob’s arrival Giacomo almost never made a sound unless I rolled over his tail with my office chair. Bob was quite talkative, and he had a pleasant voice. Giacomo began to vocalize, too, but he almost always squawked at a high volume. He sounded just like a blue jay. This was his only bad habit. We just had to put up with it.

Giacomo and Sue sometimes napped together.

Meanwhile, Giacomo was definitely beginning to show his age. Whereas he formerly sprang up to my lap or to his favorite perch on the back of the sofa, by 2019 he didn’t jump at all. He had to climb. He had also lost the ability (or at least the inclination) to retract his claws. When he walked on a bare floor, he always made click-click sounds. His right front paw also definitely bothered him. He never ran, and he walked with a noticeable limp.

This is a rare shot. B0b was seldom allowed in Giacomo’s main napping spot atop the couch. Bob always stuck out his right rear leg when resting.

I spent the week after Thanksgiving in 2019 in San Francisco at the NABC⁴ tournament (described here). Between and after the rounds my thoughts often turned to Giacomo. I really feared that he might die while I was gone. I would not have been too surprised if Bob had died as well.

I was wrong on both counts. Both Bob and Giacomo were still reasonably healthy and active when the Pandemic changed all of our lives in March of 2020.

1. I learned this word while I was in the army. I think that it is derived from a Korean word that sounds similar.

2. Because of the location of our house, we really had only one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. I think that the person with whom I conversed was named Chris Simons. He no longer lives there in 2022, but I think that his wife still does.

3. I am not counting our third rabbit. At some point before, during, or after Franklin’s stay with us at 41 North Street, Sue accepted (without consulting me) another rabbit from a relative or a friend of a relative. She explained that it could live outdoors, and she promised that she would care for it. She neglected it, and it died within a month or two.

4. Prior to the Pandemic three North American Bridge Championships were held every year at rotating sites by the American Contract Bridge League.

2021 April: The Easter Miracle

Posted on June 7, 2021 by Mike

One tough cat. Continue reading →

In April 2021 Sue and I had two black male cats, Giacomo and Bob. Giacomo turned seventeen in November of 2020. Bob was much younger, but we don’t know his actual age. More information about both of them can be found here.

The growths on Bob’s back started as tufts of hair a few years ago.

Bob had always been Sue’s cat. We had him for months before he would even allow me to touch him. During our unexpected time together during the pandemic he grew much more friendly. He even allowed me to pick him up a couple of times.

On Thursday, April 1, 2021, Bob had been lying on the rug in my office for most of the afternoon. This was unusual. Giacomo often slept there, but Bob generally seemed wary of being trapped in the office. He always tried to keep himself between me and the door. Perhaps he associated the office with flea drops, which he did not like. It was indeed the place in which I occasionally had surprised him by applying the monthly flea drops in the summer.

On this occasion he was about ten feet from the door, not far from my feet as I sat at my desk. I was working on one of my blog entries when Bob, whose vocalizations theretofore had been limited to very soft purrs, groans, and meows, let loose with what could best be described as a roar of pain. I could see that Bob was trying to rise to his feet, but his right rear leg would not function. He somehow managed to get up on three feet by leaning against a file cabinet. Every time that he tried to put weight on the sore leg, he screamed in agony. He made it as far as the doorway, where he flopped down on his side.

Bob lay nearly motionless in this position throughout Friday and Saturday.

I called to Sue. She came in to try to give him some comfort. We did not know what to do. By then it was time for supper. We let him lie there all evening. He did not seem to move a muscle.

Of course, we thought about what could have caused such a sudden problem in his leg. Our first thought was that those growths on his back had caused paralysis. I thought that he might have been hit by a car. However, he had no visible wounds. In any case, it was too late to do anything about it.

When I woke up at about four o’clock on Friday morning, my first thought was of poor Bob. I found him in exactly the same spot as he had occupied when I went to bed. He seemed to have no interest in food or water, which was very unusual for him. At one point Giacomo came over to see what the fuss was about. Bob let out a roar, which Giacomo correctly interpreted as a demand for privacy.

Sue arose from bed to take her medicine at 8:30. When she came in to see Bob, he got up on three legs and stumbled into the hallway. He lurched about ten feet to the end of the hall, where he once again lay on his side after giving voice to cries of pain once or twice.

I did not witness this part: Sue brought Bob a small bowl of water. She set it down near his head. He eagerly lapped up some water without getting to his feet. Almost immediately he gave out another plaintive cry and started to pee. He peed all over the floor, something that he had absolutely never done in all of the years that he had lived with us. He struggled his way to his feet again while we cleaned up the mess. He made it the few feet back to the doorway to the office, where he lay down again. He there in that position all day, neither eating nor drinking.

I was absolutely convinced that Bob would be dead when I awoke on Saturday morning. He was neither eating nor drinking. I wondered what we would do with his body. My knees were certainly no longer up to the task of digging graves for pets.

I was wrong, but not by much. Bob was still in the same place and physical position when I awoke on Saturday morning. He did not move his head when I carefully walked past him into the office. I offered him some water, but he was not interested, or he may have just been too weak.

Bob may have moved a little during the day or evening on Saturday, but I don’t think that he ever tried to get up. When I went to bed on Saturday night he was in the same position as he had been on Friday night. I knew that cats were very tough. I just wondered how long he would be able to hold on.

On Easter Sunday morning I was quite surprised to discover that Bob was no longer in the doorway. He had moved back to the position he had assumed on Thursday near my feet. I wondered how in the world he got there. With some trepidation I checked him. He was definitely still alive.

After I fixed my tea and sat down I was gobsmacked to see Bob walk past the file cabinet toward the door. He was moving slowly, and he was noticeably limping, but he was walking and he was not wailing or even whimpering. He gingerly put weight on his right rear paw. I followed him into the kitchen, where the food and water bowls for the cats were. He slurped a drink while I freshened up the Cat Chow.

I went down to the basement to bring the cats’ litter box¹ upstairs. I placed it in the hallway near the door to the garages. I showed Giacomo where I had moved it. I had to hope that Bob could figure it out on his own. I did not want to disturb him any more than necessary.

Within a month Bob felt comfortable exploring the junk piled up in our back yard.

For a couple of days Bob took it easy. By Wednesday he and Giacomo were associating again. Bob was walking more slowly, but he was definitely using his right rear leg. When he arose from lying down—which he still did a great deal—he was a little shaky for a few steps. Sometimes he even dragged his right rear leg. However, he seemed to get a little better every day.

By the middle of May I had seen Bob go up and down the two steps on the deck. I wondered if he could manage the twelve stairs to and from the basement.

On June 4 I went downstairs to empty the water container of the dehumidifier. I found Bob sleeping placidly on a rug in the basement. I immediately deduced that he was capable of managing the stairs and moved the litter box downstairs to its original position. I carried Giacomo downstairs so that he could see that the litter box had been moved again.

Bob is not comfortable with me carrying him yet, but he figured out the location of the litter box on his own. Maybe Giacomo told him.

Was this a true Easter miracle, or did Bob merely use up one of his nine lives? Who knows?

1. I don’t like the idea of maintaining a litter box. The cats have their own door. For more than three decades our cats have cheerfully deposited their excrement outdoors. At some point in 2020 this pair decided to use part of the basement floor as a non-flushing toilet. I had to clean up a big smelly mess. I decided that putting a litter box there for them was the lesser of two evils. Don’t even ask about trying to train a seventeen-year old cat to change his habit.

1988-2003 The Enfield Pets: Part 1

Posted on June 6, 2021 by Mike

Rocky and friends Continue reading →

In 1988 Rocky and Jake, the two cats that had adopted us as caretakers a couple of years earlier, made the move with Sue and me from Rockville to Enfield. After spending their first winter indoors in Rockville, they had been allowed to roam in the neighborhood of the Elks Club. They always came back to one of our doors when they wanted food, shelter, or a massage. They seemed to have learned what was dangerous, although for Rocky earning the knowledge probably knocked him down to eight lives, as explained here.

Neither seemed to have much difficult adjusting to the change of scenery. There was so much more for them to explore, both inside and out. Rocky particularly liked the fact that when he was outside he could leap up to the windowsill near the dining area and gaze through the window at the activity going on inside. After we started opening the window for him when he did so, this became his preferred form of ingress. Rocky was a real leaper. None of our other cats ever attempted this feat.

Rocky and I watched football games. Popcorn was one of the few human foods he did not like.

Rocky loved to be petted. His favorite technique was the full-body massage, but he would accept any kind of petting by just about anyone whom he knew well.

Jake was a much more private cat. He always seemed to pick a corner and sit there silently analyzing the situation. He tolerated a little petting as the price to be paid for a constantly full bowl of Purina Cat Chow.

The night of October 31, 1988, was a sad one. Sue and I went out for supper, as I remember, and when we came back we found Jake’s dead body on the street. I buried him in the yard, but I don’t remember where.

Sue and I did not feel devastated at Jake’s demise. We had lost quite a few pets by that time. We liked Jake, and we missed him, but neither of us had formed a strong attachment to him.

I don’t remember where our next pet, Buck Bunny, a very large grey and white rabbit with long floppy ears, came from. I am quite certain that I had nothing to do with the acquisition, but Sue had no recollection of us even having a rabbit during this era until I showed her his photo. Buck’s home was a large wire cage in the westernmost small bedroom. The barnboard bookshelves were also in that room. It was a sort of library, but it held as many games as books.

We kept Buck in his cage most of the time because, like most rabbits, he had an instinct to gnaw on things. Before we released him from the cage, we placed all electrical cables up out of his reach. That was possible because, unlike Slippers (described here), he was not much of a leaper.

Sue visited her friends Diane and Phil Graziose in St. Johnsbury, VT, pretty regularly. Sometimes I joined her, but just as often she went by herself. On one of those solo trips she brought home a tiny tan and white kitten. It was so small that it fit in the breast pocket of her flannel shirt. the mandatory state uniform of Vermont.

The kitten was one of many feline denizens of the trailer park in which the Grazioses lived. It probably should have been allowed to nurse for another week or so. However, this was probably the best chance that it would ever get to avoid spending a Vermont winter outdoors. The situation worked out well. We gave him milk for a few days, and then he found the bowl of Cat Chow and the water bowl on his own.

Rocky had little use for the pipsqueak, but the kitten immediately made friends with Buck Bunny. They really hit it off. The kitten liked to sit near Buck’s cage, and when Buck came out they played together or just snuggled.

When the kittne was more mature we got it fixed, of course. By then it had become rather obnoxious, and so we were not a bit surprised when we learned that it was a tom. I named him Woodrow¹ after Woodrow F. Call, one of the protagonists of my favorite novel of all time, Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.

After his medical procedure Woodrow decided that I was his buddy. He loved to take naps next to me. Almost any time that I went into the bedroom and got into bed, Woodrow climbed up to join me.

Meanwhile, Rocky had claimed Sue as his BFF. When Sue and I sat in the living room chairs (purchased used from Harland-Tine Advertising, which is described here, and draped with white cloth) Woodrow sat on my lap and Rocky found Sue’s. The two cats were totally different.

Woodrow liked all people. Whenever anyone visited us, Woodrow greeted them immediately. Rocky usually hid.
Rocky loved almost any kind of human food; Woodrow liked only Cat Chow and ice cream.
Woodrow was a hunter; Rocky preferred to snuggle. He exalted in his full-body massages.
Woodrow liked to be carried with his back down and all four legs up. Rocky did not mind being picked up, but he insisted on the chest-to-chest method.
Woodrow liked the top of his head to be rubbed hard, but any other style of petting annoyed him.
Woodrow climbed trees (although he usually waited to be helped down); Rocky never did.
Rocky was mostly silent. In his later years Woodrow gave off all manner of soft sounds as he walked around. I called them his “play-by-play”. Except for that one time in the flea bath he preferred not to speak English.

Woodrow and Rocky eventually became buddies. When I returned home after work, they were almost always together on the lawn next to the driveway waiting for me. The sight of them always cheered up, no matter how rough the day had been. I often sang to myself, “with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard.” Our house was indeed a very fine house.

However, Woodrow did not abandon his first friend, the lagomorph. He still like to lie or sit next to Buck’s cage, and when we let Buck out, the two still socialized.

Actually, they socialized too much. Buck tried to hump the fully grown Woodrow whenever they were together, and Woodrow put up with it. It wasn’t just a phase, either.

Sue and I decided that we needed to get Buck Bunny fixed. I loaded him inside his cage into Sue’s car, and she drove him to the vet. She explained the problem to the doctor. He examined Buck and reported to Sue that “Buck” was actually a female.

Sue asked him why the rabbit was engaging in these activities if he was not even a male. The vet replied that he was only a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist. So, we still let the two buddies hang out together. If the rabbit (who was by then officially renamed Clara, after my mother’s mother, Clara Cernech, who had died in 1980) got too amorous, we just put her back in her cage.

I don’t remember the circumstance of Clara’s death. She was a French Lop, a breed with a lifespan of only five years. She was fully grown when we adopted her.

My favorite moments with Woodrow and Rocky were when I came home for lunch in the summertime. Both cats napped under bushes. Rocky customarily slept in the cluster of forsythia bushes in the northeast corner of our lot. Woodrow favored the burning bush halfway between the house and the driveway to Hazard Memorial School.

The one-piece table in the background was repurposed as a place to pile dead branches when we got the red one.

I liked to eat my lunch while sitting at the picnic table in the yard and reading a book.When I brought my food (no matter what was on the menu) out to the picnic table, Rocky stumbled groggily out from his resting spot. He sat on the ground next to me for a while and looked up hopefully. Then he raised his front paws up to the bench and nudged my elbow with his snout. Eventually he often leapt up on the table. He knew it was not allowed, but he could not help himself.

I always broke down and gave him a tiny piece of meat. No matter how small the morsel was, he purred loudly while he ate it, got down, and retreated back to his bush to finish his nap.

After lunch I usually took a short nap in the yard on a mat or blanket. As soon as I had made myself comfortable, Woodrow emerged from his bush to check out what I was doing. I always slept on my side. After I had assumed the sleeping position, Woodrow walked up so that he was about a foot from my chest. He then flopped over toward me, and we both stacked a few z’s.

In inclement weather they repeated their tag-team act. Rocky begged for food at the table in the dining area, and Woodrow climbed up on the bed to join me for a nap.

The boudoir with the modesty curtain held open by the hamper.

When he was not napping with me, Woodrow moved from place to place in search of the best locations for sleeping. One of his favorite places was on a towel in the small storage area in the bathroom. He arrived there by jumping up on the clothes hamper. He then moved aside the curtain with one of his front paws and sprang into the niche. I called this obscure hidey-hole “Woodrow’s boudoir”. Occasionally when someone used the toilet or the shower, he startled people when he stuck out his head from behind the curtain to look at them with sleepy eyes.

Woodrow preferred Cat Chow to all other forms of food except ice cream. The only time that he paid much attention to Sue was when she sat down with a bowl of ice cream. Then he became more of a beggar than Rocky.

Although Woodrow loved to hunt, he was not possessive about his catches and kills. He often was seen parading around the house with a mouse in his mouth. Sometimes he dropped one at my feet or Sue’s. I had to pick them up quickly. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the poor crittur was still alive. I released many outside; after that they were on their own.

Two were distinctive. One day I was taking my daily postprandial nap in the bed. Unbeknownst to me Woodrow brought into the bedroom his latest prey, a small bird. He silently entered, crawled under the bed with his catch in his mouth, positioned himself directly below my head, and commenced to crunch the bones between his jaws. It was a very disconcerting addition to my dreamscape. Needless to say he left the remains beneath the bed for me to clean up.

A dove only weighs about 4 oz. Woodrow could carry one easily.

On another day I came home for lunch to find that Woodrow had apparently brought home a guest, a full-grown mourning dove. Evidently Woodrow had lost his appetite, but the bird may have thought that he was on still on the menu. He flew about, crashing into one window after another in a panicked attempt to escape. I finally chased him into the library, where I opened the window and closed the door. When I came home after work there was no sign of him. We have never found a cadaver, and so I presume the dove found his way out.

Woodrow was the only pet that we ever had who clearly had multiple personality disorder. His was more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than The Three Faces of Eve.

I called Woodrow’s alter-ego Nutso Kitty. Whenever he entered this state his eyes glazed over, and he stalked and attacked anything that moved. One day Woodrow was placidly napping with me when, unbeknownst to me, he underwent the demonic transformation. I must have moved my hand a little. He pounced on it with all twenty of his switchblades extended. After literally throwing him out of the room, I rushed to the bathroom for first aid. My hand throbbed in pain for a few days. Fortunately it was my left hand, which has never been much good for anything except typing.

In 1992 or 1993 Sue and I made a trip to Dallas to pitch TSI’s AdDept software system to Neiman Marcus (described here). We then drove our rental car to Austin so that Sue could visit her high school friend Marlene Soul. Marlene exhibited a toy she used to keep her cats active. It was a long very limp stick with a feather on the end. With every slightest move of the hand the cat was drawn inexorably to the dancing feather.

As soon as I got home I purchased one so that I could torture Woodrow. He absolutely could not resist it. After he chased it for at least an hour he hid under a chair so that he could not see it. I pulled it out every time that I thought about that bloody left hand.

We had to take Woodrow to the vet twice to patch him up after fights. Both times he had abscesses that the vet had to drain and then sew up. After the first one, I tried to teach Woody to keep his left up, but he got tagged again a few months later. I never got to see how the other cat did in these scrapes, but I doubt that he escaped without some damage.

I don’t really have many good stories about Rocky. He was consistently a very sweet cat for all of the eighteen years that I knew him. He never got into a fight, or at least he never got seriously hurt. When we brought him to the vet for shots he went completely limp when we put him on the examination table. The vet called him “catatonic cat.”

Once, however, Rocky was missing for three days. Sue and were quite concerned. I had walked up and down the nearby streets looking for him several times. I also took the car and expanded the search area. Sue and I searched everywhere in the house. No luck. However, when I checked the garage for the third time Rocky came slowly out from behind some junk. He followed me inside and nonchalantly drank some water. Within a day he showed no sign of any problem.

How, you may ask, could the cat have hidden in the garage? Why not just pull out the car and search thoroughly? Well, there was no car in the garage. It was full of Sue’s junk, packed from floor to ceiling, as is her new garage as I write this. A thorough search of the garage would have entailed taking all of the junk out piece by piece and piling it somewhere on the yard. Then, whether I found him or not, I would have had to reassemble the mess in precisely the way that I found it.

I did call for Rocky each time that I opened the garage door, but he must have been asleep or just obstinate.

Both Rocky and Woodrow stayed outside a great deal during the summer. They both were tormented by fleas every year. I felt great sympathy for them. They were obviously suffering terribly. I tried to help them.

I tried to pick the fleas off. During each session, I slew several dozen by squeezing them between my fingernails. I could hear their shells crack, but a few days later there would be just as many.
I tried flea collars. Rocky, who must certainly have had a set of bolt-cutters secreted away in the bushes, always showed up without it within a few hours. The collar helped a little with Woodrow, but there was no guarantee that the fleas would cross it. He also hated the collar, but Rocky would not lend out his tools.
I tried flea powder. It helped a little for a short time.
Flea baths actually worked, but both cats hated them. After a short struggle Rocky submitted meekly, but he also gave me a look that asked what he had done to make me despise him so much. Woodrow, of course, fought me tooth and nail. I had to don gloves and my army field jacket to pick him up. One time—I swear that this is true—he clearly screamed out the word “NO!!!!” as I dipped him in the medicated water in the tub.

Advantage was even better than Frontline.

Of course, if we did not attack them quickly, the fleas got in the carpet, and, after we got them off of the cats we had to “bomb” the house. That was not a bit pleasant.

Fortunately, the flea problem was solved when our vet supplied us with Frontline², the monthly drops on the back of the neck, at some point in the nineties. I don’t know if there were side effects, but the product sure worked on the fleas. It was great having flea-free cats and a flea-free house.

Not long after Woodrow established residency with us, I bought a cat door and installed it in a window that led to the top of the basement. It was located just below the bathroom window. Just below the window on the basement side was the top of some shelves that were there when we moved in. From the shelves I placed a spare door at a 45° angle to serve as a ramp down to the ping pong table. A box served as a step up to the table or down to the floor.

Rocky seldom used the cat door. He preferred for a human to let him out through one of the doors or in through his favorite window. When he did enter through the cat door, he did not use the ramp. Instead he jumped from the bookshelves to the washing machine and from there to the floor. He exited the house by jumping up on the picnic table and climbing the shelves.

Other cats occasionally tried to use the cat door. Brian Corcoran gave me his Super Soaker, which proved to be very effective at chasing them away. However, the felines were most active at night, and I was not. Occasionally one would get in and help himself to some Purina Cat Chow.

I often heard the distinctive caterwauling of two or more cats that were about to engage in that furious and bloody activity known as a catfight. Once I saw Woodrow in the basement on the bookshelf near the cat door loudly warning a cat not to poke his head through. He definitely meant business. His body was crouched and taut, ready to for action. His right paw was raised with all five claws drawn. He reminded me of Horatius at the bridge.

Ours was indoors, and I only saw him from the rear before he scurried away.

There were a couple of other uninvited guests. One night I heard some very loud munching coming from the hallway. I jumped out of bed, turned on the hall light, and beheld an opossum helping himself to the Cat Chow in a bowl at the other end of the hall. I assume that the opossum was a male since it did not have a dozen babies on its back.He had evidently found his way through the cat door, down to the basement, and up the stairs. My footsteps frightened him enough that he rushed down the stairs, never to be seen again.

The story of the other remarkable intruder can be read here.

Sue and I took quite a few long trips after Rocky and Woodrow moved in, and the cat door was installed. We also invested a few dollars in a gravity-fed Cat Chow dispenser. Whenever we took a trip we left Rocky and Woodrow “home alone”. We provided them with plenty of food and water, and Sue arranged for someone to check on them every few days. This arrangement worked well for our trip to Texas (described here), our cruising tour of Greece and Turkey (described here), our trip to Hawaii in 1997 (described here), our misbegotten adventure in Maine and Canada (described here), and our first tour of Italy in 2003 (described here).

Rocky died later in 2003 at the age of eighteen. I am pretty sure that he used up all nine of his allotted lives. Even though I was much closer to Woodrow for the many years that we had both of them, I cried when Rocky died. He was so tough and such a nice cat. I really missed him.

The story of the Enfield pets continues here.

1. A better choice probably would have been “Augustus”. His personality was much more like the free-spirited Gus McCrae’s than the rigid Woodrow Call’s.

2. I later switched to Advantage II. It was cheaper and worked better.

2021 April 19-24: Geeks on Parade

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Mike

A week to fix a printing problem? Continue reading →

This is the usual setup of my desk. The printer (top) is only a couple of feet from the CPU. The display is balanced on my Italian dictionary. My (always plugged in) phone and wallet are stored on the base of the display.

My HP color LaserJet model M252dw, which had been attached to my Lenovo desktop and functioning without difficulty for at least five years, was still performing admirably on Friday, April 16. I did not use it on Saturday or Sunday because I was playing bridge in the online qualification tournament for the Grand National Teams (GNT).

On Monday, April 19, I decided to print my first ever coupon for cat litter. I redeemed 325 of my Paw Points on freshstep.com for a $3 coupon. The company emailed me a link to a web page on which I could print my coupon. I clicked on the link and then clicked on the “Print” button on the webpage. The screen said “Preparing preview”, but it never got any further. It just sat there spinning. I closed all the tabs on my Foxfire browser.

I clicked on the link in the email again. Foxfire started, and the same screen with the “Print” button appeared. The familiar “Preparing preview” appeared, but noting ever printed. There were no files in the printer queue.

After that, the webpage linked from the email would not allow me to try to print the coupon. I found the contact email address on freshstep.com and sent an email that explained the problem and asked them what to do to obtain my coupon.

On Tuesday the troubleshooter reported a problem with the printer.

I did not need to print anything else until late on Tuesday. At that point I could not even make a spooled file from any program. The system reported no errors. I ran the troubleshooter in Windows. It reported a problem with the LaserJet printer, but it found no specific issues.

I tried various combinations of shutting down the printer and restarting Windows. Nothing worked. When I tried to print a test page, an error appeared on the computer, and nothing printed.

A few years previous to this a virus had somehow infected my computer. A Geek Squad member (I don’t think that they called them Agents yet) found it quickly by taking over my computer and eradicated it. I was impressed enough that I had no hesitation about contacting the Geek Squad in the morning.

To Chat with a Geek Squad Agent one must click on the blue circle at the bottom right of the webpage with the word “Help” in it.

On Wednesday Morning I pointed my browser to the Geek Squad website and started a “Chat” session. In the comments window I described the problem in quite a bit of detail. Evidently the “Agent” who commenced the Chat did not have access to this. I described everything again. I was assured that this could be fixed if I allowed another agent to sign on to the computer remotely. I agreed.

On this window you must click on “Chat now”.

I was then asked if we had a Geek Squad account. I said that we once did, but I did not know if it was still active. The Agent looked it up based on the phone number that I had provided. The Agent found nothing. I asked if I could get a contract for one issue. The answer was “Yes, for $39.99.” I approved the terms by clicking on a link. Another chat window appeared on my display.

Less than a minute later Agent Xavier introduced himself in this chat window. He asked me to unplug the printer cable and plug it into a different USB port.

I thought that this might work. In fact, I was kicking myself for not trying it earlier. Alas, it did not help. Turning the printer off and on did not help either.

Agent Xavier then asked me if we had another printer cable. Like Noah’s family, we have at least two of almost everything somewhere in our house, but I would not even know where to begin looking for a printer cable. If I found one, it would probably be thirty years old and have the wrong interfaces.

Adhering to one of my favorite axioms, “If you can’t find it, you ain’t got it”, I replied that I did not think so.

Undaunted, Agent Xavier explored the nooks and crannies of my computer’s insides for quite a long time. He told me that the problem was probably due to the fact that back in October of 2020 the last update of Windows 10 had not completed successfully. Frankly, this sounded like an admission that his only remaining tool was a hammer and he had just found a nail. I mean, how could that be the source of the problem when I had printed hundreds of pages in the interim?

I did a lot of nothing while this went on.

On the other hand, I am no expert on Windows 10. Maybe Agent Xavier was. So, I did not protest when he decided to try the update again. It took several hours, but when it finally finished, it appeared successful. At least, no error messages appeared. Back in October I was pretty sure that Windows had reported that it had been unable to complete the update.

The very first screen that appeared when the update finally finished was different. There was still a breathtaking photo in the background that had been fuzzed out, and my name appeared, but there was no field for the password. Instead, there was a clickable phrase “Sign in”. When I clicked on it, a window with a password field appeared. I entered it. I then had to go through a series of screens rejecting offers from Microsoft. So far, so good.

I tried without success to print from a number of programs. The error in printing a test page was no longer there, but every attempt at printing produced a spooled file in error status.

Agent Xavier’s little chat box did not reappear when I signed onto the system after the update. Knowing that I would need to go through the entire process of contacting the Geek Squad through the Chat windows again, I opted to wait until the next morning when I would be more rested and alert.

On Thursday morning I contacted the Geek Squad website and started another Chat session. I went through the same tedious process because neither Agent on the previous day had told me what my case number was. This Chat Agent found it told me that the case number was CAS5881919-X8R5M3. I wrote it down. The Chat Agent sent me a link so that he/she could sign on, but it timed out before anyone took advantage of the connection.

So, I had to contact the Geek Squad chat again. This time a different Agent sent me another link and set things up so that Agent D S (Double-0 Soul?)¹ assumed control of my system from his little window. After trying several things he determined that the problem was the cable. He downloaded the wizard app from HP, which took some time to install. He then offered to walk me through setting up the printer for Wi-fi. I agreed.

I set the keyboard was on the top of the printer, and I pivoted the display almost 180 degrees.

I needed to rearrange my computer’s peripherals so that I could see the printer and display at the same time and still be able to able to type on the keyboard. This was not easy. A snake’s nest of cables has formed over the years on the floor between my computer and my printer. Furthermore, I had to stand up through all of this; there was no room for a chair.

I never figured out why the printer was not able to locate our network (ChaChawave) when I did this for Agent D S.

I located the correct menus on the printer’s little screen and pressed the option to retrieve Wi-fi network information. It ran for a few minutes. Agent D S told me to watch it while he did some things. Meanwhile, the printer kept trying to retrieve network information. To this day I do not understand why it could not find any networks.

Evidently Agent D S decided to restart Windows for some reason. I did not pay close attention to what he/she was doing. I know for certain that I did not do it.

When the system came back up, the same first screen appeared as had on Wednesday after the successful update of Windows 10. I clicked on the “Sign in” link below my name. An unexpected window appeared. It said that I needed an “app” and asked if I wanted to search the store. There were two buttons: “Yes” and “No”. Unfortunately, both options returned me to the screen with the “Sign in” button. I was stuck. Restarting did not help. Neither did turning the computer off and then back on.

When my computer restarted, as usual, a Lenovo screen appeared. The lower left corner said “To interrupt normal startup press Enter“. I did so. Many times. I tried holding down the Enter key. I was not able to interrupt the process; the screen with the “Sign in” button appeared again, followed by the same window demanding an app.

Once again I was tired and very frustrated. I decided to employ the tactic that had worked so well for Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus against Hannibal in the Second Punic War. I retreated and delayed.

On Friday morning I contacted the Geek Squad Chat again. I explained what happened. The Char Agent said that if I could not sign on I must bring the computer to Best Buy. Evidently it was impossible to find out what Agent D S had done, or perhaps the Chat Agent was too lazy to find out.

I definitely did not want to bring the CPU in to Best Buy. The local store in Enfield was recently closed, presumably a casualty of the pandemic. The closest remaining ones were ugly drives to Manchester, CT, or Holyoke, MA.

Evidently Geek Squad Agents are really issued badges, but I don’t think that they have a license to kill.

I called the Geek Squad 800 number to get a second opinion. Of course, I had to wait in the queue until the next available Agent could take my call. The Agent who finally answered the phone was sympathetic, but she also insisted that my only option was to cart the machine to Best Buy. I pleaded that I was 72 years old, it was more than a thirty-minute drive, and I did not want to go into a “big box” store in the middle of a pandemic. I protested that there must be someone who understood what my computer’s strange behavior was symptomatic of. More sympathy, but no action.

This look means, “Pick me up. I want to sit on your lap while you play on the computer.”

An appointment was required to interact in person with a human being wearing a Geek Squad shirt. The telephone Agent offered to make one² for me. There was one open slot at 2:20. It was already 1:45. After that nothing was available until Tuesday! I reluctantly took the 2:20 slot and rushed to remove all of the cables from the back of my computer. While I was in the process of doing so, my seventeen-year-old cat Giacomo entered the office and started howling, a very reliable sign that he was about to barf. I grabbed some outdated grocery store inserts and put them in front of him, and (mirabile dictu!) he mostly hit them. I cleaned up the mess and drove to Best Buy with my computer and AC cable.

The GS guys at BB in Manchester wore black shirts like Kelvin’s.

I arrived at the store at about 2:30. The Geek Squad guy there was waiting for me. He spent the ten remaining minutes of my appointment trying to find my open problem on his computer. He finally did, and he also told me that he had found my account. It was under 860-386-0701, the support line for TSI. That phone was disconnected in 2014 when we closed down the office in East Windsor.

The Geek Squad employee then attached his display and keyboard and verified the problem. Then he disappeared into the back to talk to “my tech”.

The diagnosis was that my operating system had been corrupted. They would need to reinstall Windows 10. He said that they could save my files, but I would need to reinstall the programs. I had been through this once before when my hard drive crashed. Getting back to something close to where I had been was a monumental undertaking. I knew very well that this would be a major hassle. In despair I crossed my arms on the counter in front of me and set my forehead on them.

The designated talking Geek disappeared to converse with his “tech” again. I imagined that in the back room the Great and Powerful Oz was issuing edicts punctuated with bursts of fire.

The talker returned and asked me if restore points had been set. I said that I thought that I saw Agent D S do this, but I wasn’t sure. He said that if there was a restore point, they would not need to reinstall Windows.

Hope springs eternal! I left the box there and drove home with my claim check. I missed one turn recommended by the Google Maps lady, but she put me back on course and eventually welcomed me home. As I entered the house I informed Sue that I no longer had a computer, but I did have a piece of paper.

I received a text at 5:38 that said that the computer was being repaired. At 5:39 another text assured me that the repair was complete. The text did not say whether they had to reinstall Windows. I thought it very likely that the answer must be “No” because not even the Great Oz could install Windows 10 that fast.

I could pick up my computer! The text gave a link to make an appointment. Sure enough, the first one available was on Tuesday afternoon.

Sue thought that I should drive out to Best Buy to pick up the machine immediately. I was not sure that they would even allow me into the store without an appointment. She called Best Buy’s 800 number³. The guy on the phone made an appointment for 12:50PM on Saturday.

I left for Best Buy at a little after noon on Saturday. I arrived about 12:45. A different talking Geek retrieved my PC. He said that they did not need to install Windows. Rather, my computer had been booting in “Safe Mode”. The person who worked on it changed it so that it no longer did this, and a password was no longer required. I have no idea how this was accomplished, but the Great Oz would not talk to lesser beings either, unless, of course, they had murdered a witch.

The computer was turned over to me with no AC cable. The talking Geek could not find it, but he graciously gave me a new one. Best Buy charged me neither for the cable nor the “repair”.

I badly wanted to go home and try the PC, but the original problem had not yet been addressed. The printer still did not work. I had brought the printer cable, which was about fifteen feet long, with me to Best Buy. I asked an employee where the printer cables were. He told me, but I could not find them.

I looked everywhere in the vicinity. While I was doing so, my right foot began to hurt rather badly as it often did when I had walked a mile or so. I needed to do my standing step-over stretch. It took ninety seconds, but it relieves the pain. I had to hope that no one saw me.

Eventually a salesman helped me to find a printer cable. They only had 6′ ones, but that was adequate. I bought one and drove home.

The Invoice from the Geek Squad was carefully itemized. $0.00 appears ten times.

The PC worked fine. The printer seemed to work the first time that I tried with the new cable, but after that I could not get it to function. I decided to try to configure a Wi-fi printer on my own. For some reason the printer had no difficulty finding the network this time. I found the password (which the printer called “passphrase”) and carefully keyed it in on the tiny screen on the top of the printer. My seventy-two-year-old hands were not very steady, but I did manage to get it to work.

The first and fifth printers on this list produce output on the LaserJet printer. The duplicate on line 2 produces an error.

From this point on, whenever I printed anything I saw the LaserJet printer three times in the list of available printers. I thought that maybe it was connected both ways. However, if I chose the second one, an error appeared: “Could not start printer. Please check your printer configuration.”

It did not matter if the cable from the printer was plugged in or not. So, I deduced that I had two choices, both of which used Wi-fi to request output.

So, as I write this on May 5, 2021, two questions remain unresolved:

Why did the printer suddenly stopped working when it was connected to the CPU by a cable? I can think of two possible explanations.
1. A freakish solar event penetrated the chip in the printer and caused a bit to flip in the software that handled direct connections. If you do not think that this is possible, listen to this Radiolab podcast. Please don’t tell any Republicans about this.
2. Somehow the connection in the cable interface itself or inside the printer became loose or damaged.
What about the coupon that started this whole circus?

Since a workaround was found and successfully, and there is no easy way to investigate the remaining printing issue, I have lost interest.

Fresh Step has not responded to my last two emails. I will doggedly pursue this and update this entry when it has been resolved. $3 is at stake!

1. “Agent Double-O-Soul” was a modest hit for Edwin Starr in 1965. His best song was definitely “War”.

2. An appointment, not a shirt.

3. The store was not answering the phone because of the pandemic.

The Elusive Franklin

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Mike

Me and my “other” cat. Continue reading →

The lovable one. Notice the paws.

I often tell people that Sue and I have 1½ cats. Two black cats regularly eat the Purina Cat Chow that I put out, so I guess that we own them. Although they both came from the same litter six years ago, they are quite easy to tell apart. One of them, Giacomo, is a good deal larger than his brother and has much longer hair. He is very affectionate, loves people, and cannot get enough petting. Giacomo also has huge double-paws on his front feet and a very shaggy tail that is nothing like his brother’s rat-like appendage. Franklin, on the other hand, is very wary of people. He sometimes lets Sue pet him, but he almost always gives me a wide berth.

The other cat.

The exceptions to this pattern fascinate me. Franklin will sometimes tolerate me petting him if Giacomo is between us. This morning, for example, I was sitting on the glider outside petting Giacomo. Franklin came up to us and rubbed up against his brother. He would occasionally allow me to reach over Giacomo and rub his back. He did not run away until I got up.

The other exception almost defies credulity. The latest example occurred on Friday morning. I took some trash out to the rolling bin and, as usual, saw both cats sitting near the door. When I opened the door, they both scampered away. Nothing unusual there. However, when I went back in to shave I could hear Franklin’s unmistakable whine coming from the other side of the bathroom window. This was definitely unusual; beneath the window is the cat’s door, which leads to the basement.

A minute or two later I heard a much louder whining coming from the hallway. Evidently Franklin had come inside to eat his breakfast. Here is the thing: I knew precisely why he was announcing his presence in such a conspicuous manner. It had been exactly thirty days since Sue had administered his last dose of Frontline flea medicine to him. In fact, I expected and predicted that something like this would happen — and soon. The flea drops are only effective for thirty days.

I finished shaving and then crept into the room in which we feed the cats. I slipped in and trapped — but only by inches — Franklin inside by rapidly closing the door. Then I had to endure the usual ten-minute ritual in which he cried loudly as if I were torturing him as he searched for an exit from the room. Finally, he jumped up on the bed and let me pet him as if nothing had happened. I gave him his dose and let him go.

Some version of this theatrical exercise is repeated every month during flea season. Franklin stays away for twenty-nine days, and then he “accidentally” makes himself available for the treatment on the day that he needs it. He has never missed a treatment when he is due for it, and he is almost never within reach otherwise. I cannot explain it.

All cats are eccentric, but Franklin is just weird.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Giacomo

2003-2020 The Enfield Pets: Part 2

2021 April: The Easter Miracle

1988-2003 The Enfield Pets: Part 1

2021 April 19-24: Geeks on Parade

The Elusive Franklin