cat – Jeff Milner

Boo is one of the two cats Ange brought with her when we got together. It was quite some time before I learned his real name was actually Little Boy Blue. Ange explained that his name evolved over the years from Little Boy Blue into Blue and eventually stuck on Boo¹. I sometimes called him Boo-bons (affectionately short for bubonic—yes, as in plague—because early on he liked to scratch me).

He came from a ditch

Ange was driving home from work and saw a cat (that wasn’t Boo) crossing the highway and run into the ditch. Something compelled her to follow it. She pulled off the highway and saw, sitting off the large concrete pad of a sign, was a little kitten with huge ears. He was looking pretty rough, so she picked him up and he bite her index finger. He bit her hard, so much so that had to shake him off her hand. When he came off he ran away and she couldn’t catch him again. The next afternoon she was again working at the same place and on the way home it was raining. She decided to go to the sign and see if the kitten was there. This time she put on some fish gloves and a little cardboard box and somehow she was able to catch him. He was probably tired and hungry. He had a big abscess on his back. She put him in the box and took him straight to the vet. The vet put a cone on him and she kept him quarantined in the bathroom of her basement suite.

Lost

Boo fit the mould when it came to the “cats have nine lives” proverb. Only a couple of months later, while he was still a little kitten and hadn’t yet been neutered, Andrea left him with roommates while she went away on a trip. Boo was supposed to stay inside but was snuck out and didn’t return. Her roommate was afraid to let her know that he had lost her kitten, so when she got back she found out the bad news. A couple of weeks later, a kind stranger called after seeing one of the posters she had hung up at a local animal shelter. The man had found Boo at the research centre outside of town climbing inside a dumpster. He picked up Boo and dropped him off at the shelter and even left money with the shelter to go with Boo. Andrea was so happy to have him back she made up a nice thank you basket and gave them a gift card for Georgia’s restaurant. She still likes to enthusiastically tell the story about how happy she was to get him back.

Over the last couple months Boo’s health began declining rapidly, and unfortunately at the beginning of the month it came time to say goodbye. We’ll miss him.

Relevant XKCD Words for Pets[↩]

Lasers

For my 19th birthday [a long time ago] my mom gave me a laser pointer which I enjoyed until the batteries died, and I haven’t thought much more about it since.

One of my favourite stories involving that laser is from when I was living in Salt Lake. We were visiting some other teens in their home and playing with the laser and the cat. For some reason cats seem to just love chasing the little red dot from a laser pointer.

The room was open between the living room and dinning room with about two or three stairs dividing them. A large corner couch sat in the living room and with a flick of the laser we had the cat running back and forth from the couch up into the kitchen and back down the stairs.

This particular cat seemed a little on the chubby side, but boy when it came to slapping his paws on the red dot, he could really move. He was incredibly fast even by speedy cat standards. He used his claws for extra traction and would chase it all over the room instantly appearing wherever the light shone. We were all cracking up.

One of the kids decided to take it to the next level. They wanted to see how far their cat would go. To get things started, the cat was attracted up into the kitchen where we were all standing. Next they briskly shot the light across the floor with the cat firing itself after it like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner. They shone the dot up on the wall in the very corner just above where the corner-couch sat. In one smooth motion the cat jumped up onto the cushion and then off the back of the couch and up as high as he could reach right onto the red dot on the wall. Then as if time stood still he made a couple of mid air-strides and quickly discovered his lack of flying ability. I’m certain at this point he wondered to himself why in the world he was finding himself six feet off the ground with no where to go but straight down. He dropped silently into the triangular shaped hole between the couch and the corner.

We were rolling on the floor laughing our heads off. Oh and he was mad at us. He jumped out from behind the couch, and looked extremely embarrassed and irritated. His fur was dishevelled and his eyes were red. Nothing was injured but his pride, however, no amount of persuasion could convince him to chase the little red dot.

I was reminded of this story when I came across these interesting ~~videos of some newer~~ lasers. The site claims they are all legal in the United States. They seem a touch too powerful for safe public use, so pets of the world, beware. (Luckily balloons and matches appear to be the main targets of the lasers in the videos).