The Cat Who Thought He was a Cow

You know him as WaMu (click here) or the serious resident hydrologist (click here). But what I have hidden from you all these years, my dear reader (if there are any of you still out there!) is that he also thinks of himself as a cow. Or may be goat. Or sheep considering his size, but, that's just splitting hairs.

How do I know, you ask? Well, what other reason would there be for a cat with access to the best cat food in the universe, go seek out backyard grass? I mean, the dude would sit in the backyard, sunning himself, chewing on stray leaves of grass till, you know, the cows came home!

Sadly his stomach never did get the memo on Mr. WaMu's species reassignment plans for himself and so, every so often, his innards would rebel in the grossest possible way, by evicting the inappropriate non-food back the way it went in. (Clean up on Aisle 2, human!)

Things got really ugly recently when inappropriate elimination of inappropriate food happened for the second time in as many months, but was followed by Mr. WaMu going on a hunger strike. Was he pulling a Gandhi when his attempt at vegetarianism was not being recognized by his own body?

The vet ordered a full blood work to see if there was something a lot more sinister going on, involving things completely removed from the digestive tract. "If the blood work turns out normal, we will have to do an x-ray" she said. We waited while the blood work turned out normal and he was taken back in again for an x-ray. Another 40 minutes later the vet called us in and said, "well, the blood work turned out normal. But there is nothing in the x-rays either". Then, looking at us with barely concealed compassion (we had after all just lost both our dogs) she said, "there are only a few things that can be causing problems like this and not showing up on the blood work and all involve the GI tract. It could be pancreatitis, or an irritable bowel syndrome or", and here she hesitated, "intestinal cancer. Only an ultrasound will let us know for sure. It can catch subtle thickening of the intestinal walls". She offered us a choice of what we could do beyond that. Of course we opted for the ultrasound.

The emergency ultrasound meant that we had to leave Mr. WaMu in the hospital to wait his turn. Finally the call came, "his intestines are pretty badly inflamed. The best case would be a foreign object. Or he could have accidentally poisoned himself chewing on some plants he was not supposed to eat. Or he could have intestinal cancer". Great. The C-word again. And I am not even talking about the bovine one here. "He is already being rolled into surgery, we can't keep him waiting any longer. We will call you once we have finished up."

Did Mr. WaMu turn to suicide? Did he deliberately poison himself? Or was he poisoned by... Oh! Wait. Sorry. We are not doing the "Unsolved Mysteries" here.  Let's cut the theatrics and get back to the story, shall we?

We decided to go with the C-word. No, not that one. The bovine one. Our theory was that he had swallowed an all-too-long blade of grass that had twisted up in his intestine. We made stories up, one more ridiculous than the other, whiling away time, waiting for the phone call. "I am sure he ate that stupid poisonous plant." said one person. "I am going to throw all those plants into the freezing cold" said the other, glad to have something to vent his fury on. We talked about how he used to use both paws to pull the grass out of his mouth like a magician pulling out the endless knotted handkerchief-rope. We laughed. We fumed. We made plans to mass destruct anything green in the house.

The phone rang and the doctor said, "The surgery went well. He is waking up now. We pulled out a piece of styrofoam."

"Styrofoam?!!" I yelled.

Well, you see my dear reader, I have held back one more piece of information from you about Mr. WaMu. He is also the most environmentally friendly paper shredder.

Is WaMu the Cow-Cat, trying to become a donkey? We will have to ask him when he gets back! Until then, there are some plans underfoot to destroy all traces of paper and packaging material in the house.

Waiting for the Ultrasound: Chairs are Invisibility Cloaks!

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Guest Post: Dr. WaMu, Resident Hydrologist.

Hello there! It's me, Dr. WaMu. It's been a long while since anyone wrote about me and my exploits.  Lots of water has flown under the bridge, and in that time, I have acquired a PhD in Hydrology and now work as Senior Resident Hydrologist at my home.

I am all grown up now and very serious

Let me first inform you, I am no more the "little kid" that my Mom wrote about way back when. (See [1] for more information). So don't go expecting any cutesy/humorous stories about me in this post. I am too grown up for such trivia. I take my profession very seriously. It's my life's ambition to get a Nature paper out on the structure and properties of water. That veritable fascinating compound, that life giving force, the thing that shimmers in the light and slips and slithers all about you enticingly.

OK, so I get a little lyrical about my life's passion, but you would too, if you have spent all your life studying it like I have. If you think everything that needs to be discovered about water has already been discovered, I must regretfully inform you that you must needs get back to your research. One of these days my discoveries will lead to a Nobel prize in Physics, just you wait.

Dr. WaMu displays his water divining methods at his laboratory

My human guardian is very encouraging of my interests. (I still need a human guardian because I have no opposable thumbs, not because I am young). The other day, she even bought me a special translucent square beaker and filled it all with water. In fact, it was a special device that allowed water to fall from one part to another and purified it in the process. I think she called it "filter". I was fascinated by it. I mean it's great to have water, but to have running water that is pure, that's just a hydrologist's dream!

I got to experimenting with the thing as soon as she brought it home. I patted the thing experimentally. Lo and behold, the water played inside with me. So I patted it some more with the other paw and it correspondingly sloshed on the other side. So far, so good. It was behaving as the laws of Physics would dictate.

But I had to study it more. I wanted to see how far up the wall of the "filter" I could make my water climb before gravity took over. So, I whacked it hard. The water made some serious waves. I got all excited, so WHAM! I went on the other side. All on a sudden I had the most beautiful Milikan's oil drop-like experiment in front of me (See [2] for the Milikan's oil-drop experiment. Except I didn't have any fancy electrodes and I am not all that interested in oil. So make adjustments to your imaginations accordingly). The whole equipment slid off the lab desk (which for some reason the human companion refers to as "kitchen island") and made a lovely arc through the air. I watched very carefully as the water made neat little drops in the air as it dislodged itself from the main body of the so called filter. I wish I had a high speed camera to record it for posterity. No matter. I have a photographic memory. That will do for now, until I get enough funding to acquire an actual camera like that. And may be another chunk of money to get myself some opposable thumbs (you can't always depend on the humans to do your bidding, see?).

Oh and in case you are wondering, that piece of equipment was deemed unusable after I was done with my experiment. I think it was all worth it in the name of Science. However, I have a sneaky suspicion that my human caretaker does not quite view it that way. She made quite the pouty face when she absorbed all the water up into a dirty rag before I could take my final readings. Sacrilege!

After that incident though she never really bought me another one of those beakers. Instead she got something that fixes straight to the tap. It's not such a good equipment, in my opinion, since you really can't observe the water in its "element" as it were. I have tried telling her that, but she insists that the filter was not meant for me at all in the first place. Phbbt! Yeah, right!

She is always buying me stuff, but for some reason she does not want to let on that she cares about my work. For instance, sometime in Spring, she got me this other lovely glass thing (I love all transparent/translucent things, but most of all I love water) and then filled it with water. Why would she do that, if it was not for me? Then she put some interesting things in it that she got from the garden. So, I now use this new equipment for my surface tension experiments. I tear off some of the interesting things from the garden and then drop it into the water to observe its behavior. Fascinating stuff. I could work all day with equipment like this. I am very dedicated to my Science like that.

Glass beaker with interesting things from the garden

Anyhow, that's it for now. I have to rush off and work on my paper. It's a publish or perish world out here!

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The Kitty Serenade

I have, over several posts, introduced the rest of the circus that is my family (here, here, here and here). What I never had a chance to elaborate on, was how one of the cats, who has been called several things including Saamiyaar (saint) and Poli Samiyaar (fake saint, I know that's a topic for a whole other post) has been trying his luck at getting the dogs to fall in love with him from the day they arrived.

The poor thing turned out to be a bit unlucky in love because while Diva decided outright that she will never cuddle up with no cat, Dufus was incurably nervous of Saamiyaar. Most of Samiyaar's attempts at winning Dufus's affections resulted in a comic and oft repeated Cat-chase-Dog routine around the house, which went something like this. Dufus would lie snoozing on his bed watching whatever dreams he tends to watch and WHAM! the little critter would go head-butt him right smack on the head. This invariably caused the utterly confused Dufus to jump up and run for his life, with the cat in hot pursuit, meowing all the way.

This would go on until the slightly slow-on-the-uptake Samiyaar would realize that all this meowing was probably depriving him of the all important advantage of stealth. As is his wont upon the sudden influx of thoughts into his head, Saamiyaar would plop down on his voluminous behind and ruminate on his options.

Meanwhile, the equally slow-on-the-uptake Dufus, would conclude that he had shaken off his persistent feline predator and settle down to nap. Just as if by some cosmic telepathy, Samiyaar's brain would reset at precisely the same moment and his quest for Dufus will begin anew. As if his memory was completely washed clean, the cat would start his chase again, meowing all the way to where his unerring sense of smell would take him.

This cat-chase-dog cycle would start all over again, taking the pair all over the house like some love struck couple serenading in a good old, late 60's, Bollywood movie. And just like in those song sequences, only the heroine (in this case Dufus) would not be able to guess the direction from which the hero can spring up next!  This song and dance sequence would continue until Samiyaar just gave up in sheer exhaustion or completely forgot that he was in pursuit of his soulmate and landed up cuddling with one of the lowly humans! (Hmm.. like the vamps in those movies?!!)

Again, just like in those movies, everyone but the lead couple knew that these two made-for-each-others would eventually get together.

Tonight it happend. The heroine relented. Like the 60's heroine throwing off her head scarf or duppattah and running up to the waiting hero's arms, our Dufus threw all caution to the winds and plonked right on top of a dozing Saamiyaar! I was too slow with the trigger to capture the priceless expression on Saamiyaar's face. But here's what he did as soon as he realized who he had just managed to conquer!

Coming soon to a theatre near you, in full Eastman Color: Kitty gets Doggie!

And the happy couple snoozed off into sunset, holding hands! Awwwww!

If this isn't an awww moment, I don't know what is!

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Cat Fry, Anyone?

A pot is as good place to snooze as any other!

What did you just say?

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All Life is a Stage!

In the drama of life, the actors fall into two separate, yet equally important groups: the critters that call the shots and the humans that document them. These are their stories. DanDan! (with apologies to Dick Wolf and his Law & Order syndicate)

The cast of my particular play consists of two humans, two canines and 2.5 felines (http://agnija-b.blogspot.com/2007/04/pack.html). They go by various names:

Human 1: I, Me, Myself, Mois, TaillessTwoLegged

Human 2: DH (which can be anything from Dear Husband to Dei Husband!), TaillessTwoLegged

Cat 1: Walrus Moustache (WaMu), Dr. WaMu, Resident Hydrologist, Puppy-Cat.

Cat 2: Newbie, the Buddha, Samiyaar, Poli Samiyaar, Gundu.

Dog 1: Diva, Lady of the Lamp, Lady of the House.

Dog 2: Dufus, Bozon, Clownoid, Bulldozer, Tornado. 

Cat 2.5: Dances with the Dogs but Freaks out at the Humans (DDFH).

Apart from these names, other names have been made up and will be made up on a continuing basis. Once we reach a 1000, we are planning on releasing a Sahasranamam thumb drive for each one of them, which can be yours for only $2.99 + Shipping and Handling OR $1.99 + no Shipping and Handling for electronic downloads.

If you missed the link the first time around: Here are their stories again.

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How I Became a.. Part II

(Contd. from How I Became a Family Woman Part I)

WM... I think I would rather use the acronym WaMu from now on.. So, WaMu's shyness lasted about 24 hours. The next day, I spied a rather overly large orange head and a tiny body peek out from one of the furniture in the family room -- which was decidedly NOT where we had left him the previous night. So, we dutifully ignored him and tried to act as nonchalant as possible about kitty cuddles' forays into the world of man (and woman) and proceeded to tip-toe about the house, doing the things we had to do. Soon enough DH turned the TV on, as is his wont (I mean what did you expect, he is a guy after all!! ;)) and the sudden noise from the TV sent WaMu flying vertically about 2 feet. Once back on terra firma he made his eyes rounder and wider than his whole body (or so it seemed to us) and stared at us, dead in his tracks.

Look I have round eyes!

Then he realized that the noise was not coming from our direction and quickly turned around and stared at the TV. He sniffed mightily into the air in front of him, still dead in his tracks. I suppose he did not detect anything through his nose and so he stared at the TV for a while. If he were Midas, the TV would have turned gold! Well, he wasn't... so nothing happened to the TV. After that one incident, he pretty much combed, nay, vacuumed every inch of the house with two, full grown, fascinated human adults in tow!! Once he had satisfied himself that no other nasty surprises were in store for him, he promptly started to play.

Everything, but everything was a toy to him -- something to be pounced at, attacked, chased, nibbled at or batted around! The list was endless and included dangling bits of stream, pieces of dust balls under some futon, in some corner of some room (you could hear him sneeze!), skirts, curtains, casually tossed clothes, swaying palloo's of sarees! Everything.

I stalk my prey

Then I pounce on it

Then I kill it!

One of his favourite tricks was to climb on to DH's chair and get in between DH's back and the chair. Once there he would not sit still, he would constantly re-adjust himself until he found himself in the most uncomfortable position - on his back, with all four paws sticking up in the air, body twisted between DH and the chair back!

Hmm.. I need to adjust a little!

Then he would pause to assess the situation and strategize and then, all on a sudden, as if he had hit upon the most brilliant military manoeuvre, he would begin kicking and scarping and twisting frenzy-- all in an attempt to get himself out of this position. He always managed to free himself -- always to the accompaniment of an almighty scream and jump on the part of DH. He would entertain himself in this manner most of the day until he settled down for a nap on DH's shoulder at about 7:00pm.

This is how you should sleep after a good day's work!

This very welcome nap would last all of three hours. At 10:00pm, he would wake promptly and stretch himself carefully. And then, he would burst into activity. We could hear him galloping in the house way into the night.

He had to be on the other side of every closed door and figured how to do just that, if the door was not locked!!! He loved to hide behind furniture and wait for us to get into the room and attack our feet when we did get in! He responded to his name and would come when called. Even when he was deep in sleep. Of course, it would take him longer then and when he noticed that we did not notice his arrival, he would walk up in front of us with a sleepy "why did you call me and now that I am here why are you ignoring me? You really need to work on that nose and ears of yours!" expression on his face. Since he was responding to his name, he decided that it was time to give us our own unique name -- which sounded a lot like "help! a cat in distress" when we first heard it. He would call us with this "nickname" and when we went to see what he was up to, one mass of orange fur with some prickly little thorns would land on our feet from nowhere! We realized that WaMu needed to learn a lesson and the only thing that could teach him a lesson, would be something with a lot of fur and some prickly little thorns as well.

So off we went to the shelter again in exactly one month after WaMu's arrival. This time we walked rather swiftly around and was looking at some cats when I felt a tug at the pen I was holding in my hand to fill in the application form. I turned around to see what was snagging my pen when I saw a white tipped orange paw poking out of the cage door directly behind my head which was doing all the tugging! A more careful look into the cage showed another cat that was sitting miserably in the corner by herself and the orange and white one had one foot on her back, one foot in her water dish (which he had toppled over, when he had walked over from his side of the cage to grab the pen!) and both front paws clutching my pen. There was nothing to think at that point -- this was going to be kitty cuddles number two. He had no name and was just labeled as a stray. He and his sister were sharing a cage, I was too nervous to ask DH if it would be ok to adopt her as well. You see, it took a lot of convincing on my part to get him to agree to another animal in the house!

We filled out the papers for the new arrival and brought him home. As responsible pet owners we decided to follow all the instructions from the shelter. So, we put the new one in a room far away from the little room where WaMu's restroom was. Every morning we confined WaMu for a couple of hours in his "restroom" and tip-toed across the house to the "other room" to feed and bond with the new one. Every evening, when we got back from work we would again go through the same motions, except that now we would steal a couple of toys from WaMu and leave it the new one's room and vice versa. As per the instructions from the shelter, this was supposed to last for a week. It lasted for three days. On the third day, when we were bringing breakfast to newbie, the door behind me opened every so slightly and a very curious, very tiny orange thing squeezed through it. The expression on WaMu was "hello.. can I please join in this thing you do every morning?". After a moment of stunned silence, there was an eruption of argument between us as to who did not shut which door tight and what a catastrophe this all was going to be. When the elements of the so called top of the evolution chain paused for breath, we saw that a different kind of argument was going on right at our feet. There was a tortured sounding, long drawn cry from newbie who was extremely shocked and surprised to see another kitten in the room and he was doing all he could to threaten WaMu with his fluffed up fur and hissing and spitting.

We were open-jawed in our astonished, for, in all my dealings with cats, I had never witnessed this behaviour. We had never heard a cry that was simultaneously so mournful and angry. All three of us turned to look at the response this elicited from WaMu. The response was even more interesting than the first. WaMu merely rolled himself into a tiny ball, averted his eyes from the scared cat and mewed in the most pleasant voice I had ever heard him use. This was immediately greeted with much spitting and hissing from newbie. When newbie calmed down again, WaMu would again extend his olive branch. This went on until newbie stopped the spitting, but was still doing a lot of other vocalization. Encouraged by the new development, WaMu would edge a little closer to newbie and mew again. This time he got whacked on the head on top of being sweared at! This he took so calmly that the human parents could not but swell up their chest in pride and think "Oh my little boy has become a man!!" This back and forthing went on for a good many hours, with each iteration promising a quick convergence. Finally all the noise subsided a sort of uneasy truce was established. Uneasy for newbie, but seemingly perfectly fine for WaMu. Sometime that night we were woken up by a lot of noise, sounding a lot like a couple of horses on the loose. I stared for a moment into the night trying to understand what that was. Then it dawned on me and I fell back asleep with a smile.

How I became a Family Woman -- Part I

I had just finished an intense week or two (cannot remember exactly-- it was long ago) of brain-frying proposal writing and had just pushed the "release to SRO" button on NSF's on-line proposal submission system at the last possible moment, when the adrenaline crash started. Along with the draining of the adrenaline from the system, my mind wandered to more "mundane" things like food, water and other basic necessities of life. As I gorged on some store bought fare, I took to thinking about the life I lived. "What", I questioned myself, "is the matter with you?" (when questioning myself in private, I always talk to myself like I were someone else!). "What is this life you are leading? Why is your brain feeling like it could do with a thorough dousing in ice cold water?" And then, just as suddenly, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks. "Animals! That's it! Animals." Ever since I moved out of India I had not heard the pitter patter of tiny feline paws and was starved for selfless affection (yeah, yeah, I know about the survival of the fittest and all that good stuff!) from feline furries. As was my custom ever since my sister moved to the US, I called her up immediately to discuss the epiphany. She, of course, readily saw the logic in my argument, that the only way to alleviate all my work woes was to bring home a tiny bundle of joy. In the next 30 minutes we had worked each other up into a frenzy, to the point that I had to go and adopt a kitty-cuddles immediately. I looked in the Web and within a few minutes discovered the presence of the SPCA near home.

All was going according to plan, when it came to an unexpected, jolting halt. Adoption was not open at this time of the day! I would have to wait a whole day before I could put my plan to action.

I finally brought myself to steady state and waited until my husband got home to give him the great news, "honey, we are going to have a family!"Well, Honey came, Honey heard, but surprisingly, Honey was not conquered!
Hmm..
Not going according to plan.
So, the next few hours was spent convincing a VERY reluctant Honey that I am willing, able and ready to take care of said kitty-cuddles. After all, I explained patiently to the rather animal-uninitiated-Honey, that I have had numerous, just numerous, cats in my life. In fact, I had cats deliver clutches of kittens in my bookcase on a very regular basis. (In fact, for some reason, they seemed to prefer my history textbook!). Finally, I dragged Honey, kicking and screaming, to the local SPCA and looked for kitties. Every kitty I saw there seemed in extreme need of a home. I swallowed the impulse to do a "girl-who-asked-for-more" act and concentrated on locating just one. We moved through the area twice and nearly missed the-one-who-would-become mine.
I was about to pass by a crate that had 3 or four kittens when I noticed a little girl next to me pointing at something in the center of the cage. I bent down and saw a most forlorn, quiet, thoughtful looking orange and white kitty. Now, in my experiences with kittens, I had realized that the orange ones tended to be more active and interesting. So, I filled out an application for that kitten and turned it in to one of the people assisting with the adoptions. A few minutes later she came back saying the little girl was interested in the cat and so could I pick another one? I was just making up my mind about one of the other cats, when the lady came back and said that the little girl was unable to adopt at this time, since the family was living in a place where they did not allow pets!

So, Mr. Walrus Moustache (not original name!) came home with me, still recovering from some upper respiratory infection. Honey and I decided to let him out of his little cardboard box in one of the smallest rooms in the house and dutifully showed him where his own "rest-room" was. He took one look at it and then went under the lowest piece of furniture. And there he would stay for a whole day! Honey spent the first 3 hours after the Great Home Coming with his face plastered to the floor near the piece of furniture coochi-cooing to Mr. Walrus Moustache to come out from under the furniture! Yes, Honey. Not me! Yes, 3 hours --may be with some breaks. I have never seen Honey so focused on anything before! Aah, the joys of fatherhood!!