Atomic Nerds

Kang and Kodos, rather than there being a clear alpha and a clear beta, have the sort of complex relationship with one another that’s fairly common to dogs (and humans, for that matter) of opposite sex. They tend to be much more concerned with intrasex pecking orders. Consequently, she defers to him some of the time (like guarding, in which she still looks almost totally up to him), bullies him mercilessly at other times, and at still other times he’s reminding her who’s really bigger by dragging her around by the neck for awhile while she yowls and complains.

Particularly, she is pushy about possessions. She will claim treats, toys, chews, beds, and favored nap spots from him just because she can. Kodos simply doesn’t care as much, so 95% of the time he lets her have them.

We brought a new dog bed home today, as we had two beds for three frequently used nap spots. Kang sniffed it extensively and decided she didn’t like it; when Kodos decided it was just fine, she threw a crybaby fit until she could take it back from him. (She only cared about the bed for about another minute.)

Many hours later, she walked into the room to find, imperiously spread out on the new bed she’d pissed and moaned so hard about Kodos taking before, the cat.

She took one long look, politely took the toy she’d left there, and went and lay down across the room to chew on it.

First, a little bit of background biological trivia. There will not be a quiz later, but I promise it is relevant to the story.

Cats, unlike dogs, need to learn how to properly kill prey from another cat, which will almost certainly be their mother. While you can see puppies descended from generations of show-ring ancestors practicing their killing bite-and-shake on a soft toy just as a matter of natural play, cats need to learn this behavior specifically- the stalk, chase, and pounce are built-in instinct, but the mechanics of the actual kill are not. Cats are one of the few predators that makes any special effort to kill large prey before it settles down to a meal rather than merely hoping to impede or immobilize it; most of us are familiar with near-surgical bite to the back of the neck to sever the spinal cord, but fewer have watched and understood footage of a lion or leopard firmly clamped on a large ungulate’s throat; the cat is not trying to “go for the jugular”, which is actually quite difficult to do properly, but to cut off its trachea and suffocate it. Useful tactics for a short-winded but powerful ambush predator but less so for a high-stamina chase-and-slasher, these techniques are apparently sufficiently advanced that they require enough education of young that the more rudimentary final-kill skills have faded from the library of instinctual behavior. Suffice to say, a domestic cat born to non-hunting indoor parents will not know how to kill prey. Our Siamese, Zydeco, is one such cat- fantastic enthusiasm and stalk-and-pounce instincts, but no practical knowledge.

So it came to be last night that at some point well past a decent hour, Zydeco started up with his I-have-a-problem howl. Stingray and I were full of immediate dread- Zydeco’s range of potential problems is limited, and most often his problem turns out to be that he feels sick and is about to create a spectacular new carpet pattern. However, this time, he sounded oddly… muffled. We were still trying to figure out what in the seven hells was going on when it became apparent what his problem was: he had bolted into our bedroom carrying a mouse, which he didn’t know what to do with. Being a sociable and fairly clever cat, he’d brought his problem to us. Being very excited and very inexperienced, he promptly dropped and lost control of the mouse, which was now firmly OUR problem. A confused session of upending and shaking everything in the bedroom eventually failed to turn up a mouse, and we were thus forced to give up and go back to bed for some very uneasy rest. (The dogs, who were of the opinion that it was WAY past their bedtimes and certainly too late for this nonsense, refused to stir themselves for any of it.)

Fast forward to early this afternoon, and Stingray noticed that Zydeco seemed oddly interested in the fireplace. He loves the fireplace with all his heart and soul, but he’s not usually excited about it unless he sees someone loading wood in. Stingray correctly drew the conclusion that the mouse had found refuge somewhere inside the fireplace, and summoned me to get an appropriate capture device. After handing him a cardboard box (far too large) and a jug normally used for iced tea (opening far too narrow), Stingray settled on having me empty the ash bucket so he could use that. Eventually he applied his Leatherman to the task of disassembling the appropriate part of the fireplace insert, and the mouse made an immediate break for it. Zydeco, who had been ready for just this moment for the last ten minutes and possibly his entire life, immediately caught it and attempted to race off with it. Stingray, figuring he was clearly just going to drop it unharmed again, lunged for the cat and mouse and succeeded in dumping the rest of the ashes over the cat’s head while the mouse escaped behind the entertainment center. Zydeco’s mews of excitement turned into furious yowls of outrage. We, and the newly interested Kang, regrouped in front of the TV, bringing the pack up to four actively involved members with three species represented.

Eventually, we succeeded in harrying the mouse out from behind the TV and shelving, where it made a bold strike for the dining room with Kang in hot pursuit and the rest of us in slightly cooler pursuit. She probably would have caught it then and there if the entryway in between hadn’t been tile- she nearly spun out making the turn, and had to get her hind legs back under control. As it was, she succeeded in pinning it by the bookshelves in the dining room… and, because it was small enough to completely disappear beneath her big snowshoe paw, she became confused about where it had gone and managed to let it go in the process of figuring that out. The mouse found itself a new refuge under another set of shelves in the office, which fortunately for us has enough space underneath it to look under- and, with the help of tools, reach under. Kang and Zydeco covered each end while Stingray covered the middle. Some sorting-out followed while we determined where the mouse was and Zydeco established that no, Kang was NOT to muscle in on his position. (She apologized with lowered ears and a noselick, which he seemed to accept.) I prevented Kang from solving the problem by upending the bookshelf while we pondered how to proceed.

After a period that consisted mostly of cursing and furred members of the family circling like sharks, and also involved the amputation of the mouse’s tail at one point when Stingray was a fraction of a second too slow with the bucket, it was concluded that the dedicated household predators had failed and human tool use was necessary. After a fruitless search for Stingray’s air pistol, which we apparently have the box for but not the device itself, a certain amount of overkill was applied in the form of his air rifle. (It was less overkill than using the crossbow would have been, mind you.) While Kang and Zydeco enthusiastically covered for Stingray’s absence while he fetched the pellets, they were less enthusiastic about his return to the proceedings – alpha pack mate or not. Eventually he was able to get the muzzle threaded between wildly dancing paws of various sizes and line up a shot. Confirming a hit, he raked the mostly-dead mouse out from under the shelf with a fireplace poker, and stood triumphant, rifle and poker in hand while I put a plastic bucket over it to keep the animals off.

“HAH! BROKE INTO THE WRONG GOD DAMN REC ROOM DIDN’T YA?!*”

“Is it dead?”

“It was breathing.”

“What do we do with it?”

“Plastic bag?”

“It sounds like it’s gotten up again. We’ll need to figure out more than that.”

“What if we AAAAHHH NOOOOO ZYDECO NOT THE BUCKET GAH DAMMIT”

Zydeco, not to be denied his prize by mere humans at this late stage in the game, had used his paw to flip the bucket back over, grab the mouse, and bolt. Naturally, he dropped it again, where it attempted a very aborted scurry until Kang swooped in to intercept the dropped pass. At that point the question of the mouse’s final dispatch became moot; Kang definitely is not confused about how to kill prey. Since she surrendered it reasonably willingly, she was given several of the most prized sorts of dog cookies all at once while the plastic-bag plan was put into action. Zydeco was given a bit of cheese to mollify him while cleanup wrapped up.

If you’re wondering where Kodos was in all this, he was waiting by the back door for someone to notice him and let him out so he could go lie down in the cool breeze- he was almost completely distinterested in the whole affair, once he figured out what we were doing. While Akitas are supposed to be a hunting-and-guarding breed, our two have apparently split the tasks between them.

Matt and Steve have achieved cooperative three-species hunting parties in the form of raptors and dogs. While we may now technically claim the same honor, I somehow doubt that dog-and-Siamese hunting is going to catch on.

*Stingray has been waiting for ages to get a chance to use this line. Geek points for you if you recognize the source.

When last we checked on the exploits of Zydeco, he had just finished a brief stint impersonating Ceiling Cat. Zydeco apparently liked this taste of supreme power, and tried to one-up himself by becoming not just Ceiling Cat, but the obviously higher level Roof Cat.

A few years back, while we were still living in a duplex, summers were an interesting exercise. Given the layout of the building, there was only one place that was viable to house all the computers. Having a significant amount of processing power in one small bedroom is already a good recipe for a very hot room, and in the winter it offset the god-awful insulation a bit to help keep things more comfortable. In the summer though, the afternoon sun, combined with the computers, made the room nearly unbearable. To combat this, we picked up a window-mounted AC unit.

Unfortunately, the window in the room was a sideways-opening window, rather than the vertical opening required for proper mounting of the AC. Since the heat was bad enough to occasionally reboot the computers, something had to be done, so we pressed on and mounted it anyway. We covered the gap above the unit with a truly ghetto-tastic combination of cardboard, plywood, and duct tape. I wasn’t happy with it, but it did the job and made the room livable.

Around this same time, we picked up a spare sofa. Formerly my grandmother’s, and a rather sturdy (if slightly ugly) offering from Ethan Allen, we were loath to turn it away, even though we didn’t really have space for it. After some creative efforts, we managed to get it up the stairs and into the computer room, directly under the AC, reasoning it would be a good place to sit and read during the peak of the heat.

Zydeco had other plans.

One evening, the three of us merrily sequestered in the computer room (this being before we got Kodos), LabRat and I were playing Unreal or some other “Hah! Gotcha!” game with each other. A pause in the game rolled around, and for some strange reason there was a sound artifact during a loading screen. Sort of an angry “YAAAA!” noise. Thinking little of it, we continued blasting each other to kingdom come. A few minutes later during another pause, we heard the sound again. This time it was slightly farther away, yet more angry and more insistent. Since LabRat was closer to the window, she became curious and looked around.

Then she noticed that the makeshift window-blocker had come askew. Near where Zydeco had been napping on the sofa. Who was no longer on the sofa.

At this point, things got interesting. Pulling the blocking material the rest of the way down, we confirmed that Zydeco had indeed decided for a little suburban exploration, and was stalking around on the roof of our back porch. Because Zydeco considers himself the most supreme destructive force known to exist, simply leaving him there to come in through the back door after his wanderings was out of the question. Any run-in with a coyote or bear would result in Zydeco making a very credible effort to destroy his agressor, but likely ultimately losing the battle. Plans were made to retreive him.

Did I mention that it wasn’t a work night, and the deathmatches had been progressing along the lines of “Oooh, they’ll be picking up the pieces of you from that one for a while! Take a drink!”? Fortunately, I was winning.

Anyway, a sane person would’ve simply gone around the back and used a ladder to remedy the problem. The drawback there is that our ladder was on loan to someone a good ways away. We scratched our heads and worked up Plan B.

After a brief discussion, while one of us kept a head out the window to watch our idiot explorer, we came up with three options. One, I could climb the firewood pile, stacked next to a storage shed, and from there scale the shed roof and clamber to the porch roof. Two, we could try to climb out to the porch roof the same way Zydeco did, over the AC. Three, we could go out the bedroom window, which overlooked the same porch and did not have an AC unit hanging in the way. Amazingly, we took the third tack. Throughout the process, Zydeco, being Siamese, felt obliged to comment.
“Well, we could – ”
“YAAAAAAA!”
” – climb up the firewood -”
“ROOOOOOOOORRWWW!”

It was a difficult conversation.

A few minutes later, after wrestling with a screen retention system obviously designed by Rube Goldberg himself, I managed to gain a clear access to the roof. Zydeco, trying to either kill me and make it look like an accident, or be helpful – the jury’s still out on which – had come over to the bedroom window, where he deposited himself directly where I was trying to land. I managed to avoid squishing him only through some feat of gymnastics which I don’t think was strictly physically possible. My legs informed me that tomorrow There Would Be Words about my efforts. The cat, who assumed I was on to his scheme to kill me, scarpered.

At first, he ran down the far side of the porch, past our adjoining neighbor’s bedroom. Luckily for me, she had apparently not gone to bed yet. At least, no police showed up to ask why someone was running around on the porch roof. Just as I was drawing near, Zydeco must’ve assumed my intent was not to return him safely to his indoor lifestyle, but instead to exact my own revenge for his previous attempt on my life, and doubled back, going between my legs. My grab found me slightly off balance, though fortunately only my posterior was wounded, rather than risking potential damage to the concrete below from my head had I fallen.

Having decided I was a credible threat to life and limb, Zydeco turned up his efforts to escape, and leaped the small gap to the shed roof, which was made of corrugated sheet metal, and set at a fairly decent slope. It was also covered with dead twigs from a sickly elm tree hanging over it, the sort of twig that’s just big enough around to act like a long, slender ball bearing if you step on it. I prepared to cross the gap between porch and shed.

Finally, a spare neuron in my head looked in and realized it was living in the skull of an idiot. Alerting its fellow neurons to their imminent peril, it organized a plan of action which involved me stopping and saying to myself something along the lines of “Y’know, I rather like having my neck in the current configuration, rather than twisted and mangled.”

With Zydeco staring haughtily at me from the shed roof, I withdrew from the gap, sat down, and told LabRat to go downstairs and catch him if he tried to descend via the aforementioned wood pile. While she descended the stairs, I began quietly and calmly outlining exactly what I thought of this stunt, as well as Zydeco’s questionable ancestry, and even offered a few suggestions as to his viability as a winter hat. Apparently, this stream of quiet profanity was soothing, as at this point he flicked his tail once, got up, sauntered over, and promptly sat in my lap.

LabRat wasn’t terribly thrilled about making the trip down the stairs only to have to march back up to help get the cat and me back in, but was happy enough that the cat was safe.

The sofa went back the next day.

Before we moved in to our current spacious abode and black hole of time, energy, and money, we were renters.

As I have explained in the past, the nature of Los Alamos’s structure- entirely centered around the national laboratory, having no other reason for existence and damned little room to expand beyond that reason- creates some strange local market effects. Just as the employment pool is highly polarized into “fast food worker” and “nuclear physicist” ends, so is the housing market. At one end, you have apartment complexes like “the Caves” and similar hovels, suitable for grad students and other vermin. At the other, you have houses you pay seven figures for because Enrico Fermi once lived there. What there is available in between tends to be clustered pretty close to the poles. One step above the Caves are the dilapidated duplexes the government built en masse when they realized that they were going to have to set up slightly more permanent nerd-cages when the Lab simply gained momentum in the postwar era rather than closing down when the Project ended. Like almost every other young couple with our income, we lived in iterations of these until we could afford to buy a house not held together with spackle and duct tape. The duplexes cover the vast majority of the residential areas of the city and are fundamentally identical.

As you might expect from fifties-era government housing, built quickly and indifferently, “home improvement” would not be an accurate description of our efforts. Staying ahead of the rate of deterioration was. The first one we rented was only barely insulated, featured a temperamental furnace, and had a rodent problem- mostly because the walls were beginning to separate from the floors at many points. The second one was quite a bit better maintained, although we still had to put a copper rod in the backyard to ground the electrical outlets in the computer room. It also, as we discovered, had some chronic plumbing problems in the bathroom that tended to express themselves by draining into the kitchen. Conveniently, there were access panels to this plumbing at floor level on the second floor and in the ceiling of the kitchen.

One afternoon after Stingray had finished exercising his profanity range while fixing the leak for the second or third time- which required opening up both panels- it occurred to us to wonder where the cat was. Things seemed suspiciously quiet and calm; normally he’d be busy sniffing us and yattering about the unforgivable disturbance to the daily routine. Naturally, the inevitable answer to this question loomed over us more or less at once.

“You don’t think he’s-”
“Of course he is.”

We trooped upstairs to call hopefully for the cat, and poked our heads into the second-floor panel.

“Zydeco!”
Faintly and from the bowels of the crawlspace… “….Yow.”
“Fuck.”

As he was not clinging to the pipes, it was quickly determined that he was not reachable from the second floor. We trooped back down to the kitchen and opened the ceiling panel.

“ZYDECO!”
“YOOOOOOOW!”

Stingray mounted the stepladder, disappeared partway into the ceiling, and opened negotiations. I think the “Here kitty, sweet kitty, come on kitty” lasted all of thirty seconds before “STUPID CAT!”, “JUST HOLD STILL!”, and “GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING COCKROCKET MISERABLE LITTLE SACK OF SUCK!” started in. Stingray retreated and proposed leaving the cat in the ceiling until he was good and ready to leave the ceiling.

Normally, tender feminine sensibilities are something I don’t experience unless I’m on something mind-altering. I’m not a worrywart or a hand-wringer, and my supplies of sympathy are kept in a lockbox. If it had been Baby Jessica in that ceiling, I probably would have shrugged and said that she’d get bored chewing on the studs eventually and want to come down, and she could let us know then.

“We can’t leave him there! There are black widows in there! He can move around now; what if he steps or wedges himself in the wrong place and gets trapped?! We have to get him out while he can still move!”

“*sigh*”

Stingray re-mounted the stepladder and prepared to Take Charge of the situation: he stuffed his upper body as far into the ceiling as he could get it and tried to grab the cat. From the view from the ground, things suddenly became very animated as dust sifted down and the ladder began to vibrate and tip dangerously.

“C’MERE!”

“rrrrrrrAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”

“SONOFABITCH!”

“RREEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”

“OW, GODDAMMIT!”

As the soundtrack escalated into what sounded like a pitched battle between a drill instructor and a cobra in a blender, I tried to figure out whether I wanted to cry, laugh, call Animal Control, or call the police. Eventually, Stingray descended the ladder, covered in blood, dust, and insulation, and declared that the plan was now definitely leaving the cat there until either Zydeco was ready to leave, or he could get a shop-vac to apply to the problem, whichever came first. He stomped upstairs, and I engaged in some mid-level fretting and tried to figure out how, exactly, you wring your hands. Eventually it occurred to me that if the cat did not, actually, want down, there was no way in hell he would ever be close enough to the borders of the panel to be within clawing range. Obviously, my poor baby was just waiting to be saved, he just didn’t want to be grabbed. I climbed the stepladder.

“Hi, sweetie.”

*mournful howl*

Yep. Just out of reach, but constantly prowling around the opening. He’d had enough ceiling, but being seized and dragged down by some hominid oaf was obviously out of the question. Feeling silly but willing to try anything, I dismounted and grabbed the nearest appropriately-sized cardboard box. We always have a ton of cardboard around, since we buy nearly anything more esoteric than groceries by mail order, and the cat loves to nest in them. I climbed the stepladder and held the box up to the opening. To my everlasting shock, this was apparently just what he wanted: he squeaked gratefully and settled himself into the box, letting me carry him down in style. I carried my prize upstairs to show to Stingray.

For reasons I cannot fathom, he didn’t seem remotely pleased by my problem-solving skills, although he did threaten to let the cat sleep with the coyotes that night. And after all that blood shed on his behalf, too.

He did eventually forgive Zydeco, which was how he wound up on the roof trying to figure out how one lunges safely on shingles, but that’s a separate incident.

I spent the evening beta-testing Stingray’s latest iteration of his chili recipe. Testing was so successful I put away roughly double my usual chili intake, plus enough beer to adequately wash it all down. Which is why, instead of amusing you with original context, I’m going to pass along the latest thing to make me laugh:

I have NOTHING to say. Be it the weather, the Lazy Sunday mood, or the horrifying prospect that I’ve made a horrible mistake and expended my entire life allotment of Being Moderately Interesting with this reckless blogging experiment, I haven’t been able to muster up much beyond a one-sided shoulder shrug and the sentiment “I’d rather be drinking beer and watching Ninja Warrior” on much of any subject.

Over in the comments of Tam’s latest update on her move-traumatized kitties, there seems to be some discussion on why tricolored cats are always female. So hey, a question I can answer- let’s turn it into blogfodder.

Tricolored cats are always the same three colors- black, orange, and white. Any cat can be black and white or orange and white, or any other base coat color and white; the white spotting (or, to use fancy coat-color language, “piebald”) gene is a dominant with varying expression depending on how many copies of the gene the kitty is toting. Two piebald doses gets you a cat that is mostly white, one gets you a cat that maybe just has white paws or a “tuxedo”. The gene acts like a bleach for the color that would normally be there, and also causes the “odd-eyed” effect- bleaching out the eye color on one side from whatever the normal shade would be to blue but less completely on the other. Since melanin (a color pigment) is essential to the proper development of the nerves in your ear, this gene can also cause the deafness common to blue-eyed white cats. Complete whiteness is also caused by another dominant gene; it is possible to have a cat that, genetically speaking, is a white-spotted white cat.

There are really only two coat colors available to cats: black (melanin-pigmented), and red (phaeomelanin-pigmented). Every other coat color is caused by some modification to Basic Black or Basic Red; genes for ticking, tabbying, spotting, bleaching, colorpointing, shading, or dilution. The allele that determines whether a kitty starts with a ground state of “black” or “red” is sex-linked, or X-linked if you want to use language that’s a bit clearer- it’s on the X chromosome of the chromosome set that determines sex in mammals. This is why normally, tricolored- or bicolored with black and red- cats are always female: males only get one copy of the allele, since the other chromosome in the pair is going to be a Y with no copies of that allele at all. When male calicos and tortoiseshells do appear, they’re mutants- genetically XXY sterile individuals. (In humans, this is called Klinefelter’s Syndrome.)

So, why the patchy pattern? Black and Red are both simple dominants- there isn’t going to be any median shade between them; either one is fully expressed or the other is. The reason a cat with two X chromosomes and a different coat color on each winds up with both is that, depending on the patch of fur you’re looking at, either one chromosome or the other is inactivated and there’s only one color TO express, so far as that area’s cells are concerned. For all mammals, early in the life of every female embryo, in every cell present at the time one X is inactivated, and every cell that goes on to multiply from that original cell will have the same pattern of activation. Which X is flipped off is completely random, which is why tortoiseshell and calico cats have such unique patterns. Every female mammal alive is a genetic mosaic with one chromosome active in some of the cells of her body and the other in other places- it’s just that with cats, the pattern can be strikingly visible.

As for the other question in that thread- are torties and calicos crazier in greater proportions than other cats- I couldn’t comment. I know that when I worked for a vet, we had plenty of color stereotypes- the torties and calicos are crazy, the black ones are more aggressive, the orange ones are sweeter- and I can’t really say that, in my view, they were justified. We had sweet black cats and nasty orange ones, and sweet calicos. I do have my own predjudice, though- I think the females do tend to be higher-strung than the males- and that could be the origin of the stereotype.

(LabRat says I need a drink warning here.)

A year or two ago we took in a bunch of foster kittens while one of the local shelters was a bit swamped. These horrid little fuzzballs were infected with… something. Whatever it was, it turned them into uncontrollable pooping machines. Not normal kitten pooping machine levels, but real, dedicated effort to spattering anything they could reach, and a few things that left us scratching our heads. Naturally, Zydeco managed to catch whatever it was they had. After a trip or two to the vet, things mostly cleared up, but his gut never quite got back to its former stability. Every so often something would set him off and he’d spend a few days exploding from both ends. Each time, right at the point where it’d been going on long enough to make us reach for the phone to get him back to the vet, he’d clear up and go back to being his normal megalomaniacal self. Well, he just went through another burst, and this time we decided to find out what the hell we can do about this regardless of the fact that he again cleared up on his own.

So this afternoon we got to the vet. We did the normal sign in, sit around for long enough to check her books and find “Four legs and meows… damn, I know that one…”, and finally the doc comes in. We brief her on Zydeco’s situation, consult his history and charts etc, and conclude that since he’s getting up there in years anyway, it would be a good idea to check some of his organ functions. This would require a blood draw. While this vet has worked on Zydeco before, it was apparently long enough ago that she successfully repressed the memory.

“All righty, I’ll just pop him in the back and we’ll have him out shortly,” she optimistically informed us.
“Good luck.” I replied.

LabRat and I went back to our books. Some time later, noises of demonic posession began to reach our ears.

“Sounds like they finally got to Zydeco,” I noted, and continued reading.
“YARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR@#(*&#$#!@(*&%)!@&#%HHHHHHAAAAAAAA!!”
“Mmm,” LabRat replied.
“Get the kitty muzzle! GET THE MUZZLE!” cried the vet in the rear.
“HHIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSRTAARAAAAAAAYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAYOURMOTHERSUCKSCOCKSINHELL!”
“Should we tell them he knows how to take those off?” asked LabRat.
“SHIT!”
“I think they just found out.”
“Quick! Try the cat bag!” suggested a tech.
“I don’t think he knows that one yet, does he?”
“IA! IA! CTHULHU FTHAGN! RARRRWOOOOWOOWOWOWRRAAROAR”
“Oh my god!”
At this point, we began to hear some rather non-trivial crashes. Heavy-equipment sized crashes.
“GET HIM OFF ME!”
“What the hell is he doing back there?” LabRat wondered.
“A LA TUHUELPA LEGRIA MACARENA QUE TUHUELCE PARALLA LEGRIA COSA BUNEA! {crash, thump, clatter, crash}”
“…I think he’s winning.”

There was one more resounding crash, followed by, and I swear I am not making this up, the exact stereotypical platter-spinning-to-a-stop noise you always hear after some stupendous crash in a sitcom or cartoon. A few minutes later, after a few comments like “Oh man, we gotta get that washed off…” and “How did… what the… ” came drifting up to our ears, the vet walked back in the room, looking rather dishevelled.

“Well, he’s a bit of a fiesty fella.”
LabRat and I would like to take this opportunity to accept any awards for tact and grace under pressure for not bursting in to open laughter at this statement.
“Right now he’s caged and doing a pretty good imitation of a rabid bobcat.” Again, we refrained from laughing.

As near as we can put together from the techs and vet, once Zydeco cottoned on to what was happening, he dropped into his default mode of Engine of Destruction. After some preliminary biting and scratching, he kicked off the kitty muzzle and attached himself to the vet’s thigh. Once separated, he continued his rampage until he bounced back onto the observation table, where he found himself surrounded. From there, he launched a reported five feet off slick stainless steel surface to attach himself to one of the tech’s forearms, where he proceded to inflict the worst wound the tech had ever received from an animal. According to the vet, his forearm was fairly heavily drenched in blood. At this point, they switched to a defensive tactic, and simply tried to get him back into a cage. Any cage. Once this mission of self preservation was accomplished, they came to see if he would be any gentler with us. We obliged, and found the room rather asunder on arrival, with one seriously traumatized looking Chow on the grooming table and Zydeco in the cage with the same type of pole Animal Control uses still attached to his neck. With some finagaling and further cat-profanity, the help of a “cat-nabber” which was essentially a giant pair of canning tongs with mesh netting to turn the cat into a kitty-burrito, and powerful drugs, we successfully got just about everything we needed.

So, all in total for the day, Zydeco: 1 vet, three techs, the vet’s mom, and one Chow Chow. Vet: Technically one blood draw, and one urine sample, but I’m not sure it counts if we had to do most of the work.

Sunny’s Campaign may have hit a slight bump while her campaign manager attempts to feel like something other than fermented ass, but Zydeco’s unstoppable surge to the office of VP continues unabated. Today we’re going to look at Zydeco’s relationships with bullies. You know, the type that say things like “meat is murder!” or “This cartoon is so offensive we must kill people” or “Fill out this form, pay us $200, get permission from your local chief of law enforcement…”. You know, the usually impotent little turds in the punch bowl that nobody likes. Well, Zydeco hates empty threats too. If you bring a threat to Zydeco or Zydeco’s allies, you’d better have your fightin’ boots on ’cause you’re gonna need ‘em.

Some time ago, we were forced into one of our ever joyous trips to Phoenix. All logistics worked out, it was to be that Zydeco (along with Kodos who doesn’t factor into this story) was going to stay with my parents for the duration. My parents have a cat of their own, a persnickety and generally snotty part-Siamese by the name of Ceilidh. This was the first time Zydeco was boarding at their house, so we introduced them gently and did all the normal “be civil you brats” routines. Everything seemed fine. Zydeco was making generous efforts to try to play with Ceilidh, and generally being a gentleman about things despite his natural state of chaotic evil alignment. Ceilidh, being snotty and persnickety, would have none of it and did the usual hiss-and-run routine. This did not concern Zydeco, who made himself at home on my dad’s lap (after teaching my mother that she was not of the Certain People allowed to pick him up). The rest of the visit went uneventfully.

We returned some days later, the scratch on Mom’s cheek healing nicely, and proceded to round up all the pets and pet related support gear. I had left a bag near the front door, in front of Ceilidh’s favorite chair. Zydeco, being delighted at our return, was doing his damndest to trip everyone in his efforts to rub against our legs and so forth. Ceilidh, presumably just wanting to ensure that he was leaving, slinked in and took up a post on her chair. Now it should be noted that while Ceilidh is generally an annoying little creature prone to hissing and growling at everything from stray air molecules to invading armies, she holds a special place of hatred for me specifically. Nobody is quite sure why, but to this day she hisses, growls, and runs as soon as she sees me.

I was about done gathering pet supplies, and went to fiddle with the bag I’d left near her chair. Zydeco was still on my heels about six feet back, coming to investigate and make sure I wasn’t planning on going anywhere without him again. As I approached Ceilidh, she did her usual routine and fired off a quick hiss at me. Zydeco ceased purring instantly and emitted a low growl, and dropped into pounce stance. I muttered something to the effect of “Oh shut up, Ceilidh,” and proceded to mess with my bag. Apparently the foot of her chair was too close for her liking, because she begain to swat at the air to warn me off.

This was unacceptable.

Zydeco covered the few feet fast enough that it could probably be considered teleportation. Claws were fully deployed, biting commenced, and were the growls and yowls translated into human, it would probably make the most inspired profanity I’ve ever shouted seem tame and suitable for church. Everybody (except apparently Ceilidh) had heard Zydeco’s warning growl, so we were all already aware that a problem could occur, and were quickly in motion to separate the two. The tangle of fur made two orbits around the room in about three seconds before anybody was able to block the orbital path. My Dad, the unlucky interceptor, managed to get an arm into the fracas and pull them appart. Zydeco attached himself to the damned nusiance preventing him from concluding his explanation to Ceilidh about how that had been a Dumb Move, and left some nice puncture wounds and gouges before his IFF kicked in and he realized who he was attacking. Hostilities ceased instantly, and he mustered quite a convincing “Who, me?” expression. Ceilidh used the opportunity to engage her own teleporters and vanished to some favored hiding spot until we left. Zydeco went into his crate, Dad’s wounds were dressed, and we departed with pets so my folks could coax Ceilidh out to check her wounds. She wound up with a few stitches to her hindquarters and had more than a little fur missing, Dad wound up with a tetanus shot. LabRat and I did our best to stifle the laughter until we were safely out of earshot, then promptly petted and praised the bejesus out of our new Attack Cat. Zydeco now lives in Dad’s garage (which by itself is bigger than the place we lived in before we bought our house, so he’s not exactly roughing it) when we go on travel.

Remember: If you threaten Zydeco, or Zydeco’s interests, you will receive the worst ass-whupping of your life.

Zydeco is not exclusively about violent death, unchecked hate, and the gleeful mockery of the inferior. Zydeco has a sweet side, a tender cuddliness to him, which often puts me in mind of a baby polar bear. For starters, he’s a romantic: he selected my spouse for me.

After he grew out of kittenhood, Zydeco began to form Opinions about people. No longer was it sufficient for people to simply awe and fear him in order to gain his affection and approval; no, they had to be worthy of his notice. He still liked ME- I was his provider of food, toys, room in bed, and punching bag, so that was all right- but he figured that most of the rest of the human race had just about lost whatever meager charm it possessed. I left him with my mother while I went off to do the college thing, and while he was willing to sit on her*, he wasn’t otherwise much interested in giving her the time of day. He refrained from drawing blood, because he isn’t quite stupid enough to bite the Hand That Giveth The Kibble, but that was about all he was willing to offer. He ignored guests beyond the time it took him to sniff them and yell at them if they confused interest with friendliness, and he drew quite a bit of blood from the evil little shit that was often over while I was gone. (He was slow on the uptake of “if the cat doesn’t want to be touched, the cat will scratch you, and he WILL go for the face”.)

So, by the time Stingray had been the Male In My Life long enough to justify visiting me at home, I was long and well accustomed to the idea that Zydeco hated and despised every over-ambitious monkey on the planet except me. In a perverse way, I kind of liked it- there’s a bit of backwards pleasure in being genuinely liked by an animal that wants to kill every other living thing with fire. This syndrome probably also explains a lot about why I found Stingray attractive in the first place. So when I brought him home to meet my family for the first time, I was simply glad that the cat wasn’t actively hovering over us and challenging the competitor for my affections. (My family loved Stingray. The feeling was not entirely mutual.)

Then, much later, I was off getting us a couple of cold drinks, and then walked back only to find my boyfriend holding my cat. Not sitting frozen while the cat angrily pinned the lap-monkey in place. Not trying to pry the cat off his face. Not leaning over to try to pet the cat while the cat stayed disdainfully out of reach. Holding the cat in his arms. I nearly dropped the drinks.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“I’m… petting… this cat?”

“You can’t do that!”

“…Why not?”

“Well he… because he… he scratches everyone but me!”

“No he doesn’t. He likes it. See? He’s purring.”

“…Here’s your drink. Nice kitty…”

And that was that. Zydeco gave him his full seal of approval from then on, always greeted him warmly, followed him around and talked to him, played with him, argued with him, and slept on his lap. Actually, since moving in together, he’s really been more Stingray’s cat than mine- they seem to understand each other. They certainly have an understanding- when Zydeco needs to go to the vet, we always have Stingray hold him, because he’s the last person Zydeco is willing to draw blood from. (Which is not the same as “at all”. He just won’t hurt Stingray nearly as much as some chump tech.)

Ladies, when your homicidal cat finds a boyfriend of yours he likes… hang on to him. The endorsement is solid gold; it’s worked out for me so far.

*If you should happen to find yourself in our home, do not assume that because the cat is willing to sit on your lap, the cat has accepted you. It just means he thinks your body temperature is pleasingly high and you can probably be trusted not to try hugging him or something. It doesn’t mean he LIKES you, and you’ll know about it if you try to pet him.

As we all know by now, Sunny Lucas is running for president. This is an extremely good thing, as Sunny’s positions are better than the rest of the field combined, and she is less likely to make a mess in the oval office than Hillary. Unfortunately, as of yet she has not picked a running mate, and is running into some rather strong opposition from feline special interest groups. In order to solve both of these problems in one fell swoop, Zydeco is stepping up. Neither Sunny nor her campaign manager Rachel have been consulted on this, but that’s just how Zydeco rolls. He doesn’t have time for pointless meetings and negotiations. When Zydeco wants something, he damn well takes it. Can Zydeco hang with a big mean Rhodesian Ridgeback? Let’s ask the big mean Akita!

Since the issues are what really matter, let’s get down to brass tacks. For the most part, Zydeco and Sunny agree on the issues, but there are a few points of notable differences we should cover.

CIVIL RIGHTS
Zydeco hates you, personally. Zydeco will not only find it hilarious when a hippy gets tasered, he’ll probably be wielding the stun gun himself. Zydeco is not only in favor of treating people who are members of organizations which wish to blow us up harshly, he is also listed as an official torture instrument with the CIA. Zydeco will get information out of those sissies at Gitmo. Zydeco loves all civil liberties so much he will even look into restoring some ancient ones- like duelling. Zydeco is looking particularly forward to the use of this venerable institution with respect to the press corps. Zydeco not only believes that special prosecution of “hate crimes” is a violation of civil liberties, he believes that if you didn’t really hate the person you were committing a crime against, it clearly wasn’t worth it and you should be punished more harshly for your apathy.

ENERGY AND OIL
While Zydeco agrees with Sunny that we need to separate from foreign sources of oil/pork protected by yappy little shitzhus, he feels we should also increase our reliance on other sources of power, specifically nuclear energy. Zydeco lives in Los Alamos, what did you expect him to back for energy production? Cleaner than fossil fuel by orders of magnitude, more efficient, and that blue glow is just so damn pretty! Zydeco also believes this is another area in which civil liberties have been shamefully curtailed: provided their plans are approved and the structure passes inspection before activation, every citizen should be able to run their own backyard breeder reactor. While Zydeco acknowledges that wind farms take up a good deal of space and can be a bit of an eyesore, Zydeco also supports any form of renewable, clean energy that causes bits of minced bird to periodically rain from the sky.

GUNS
More please. Zydeco supports disbanding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Zydeco feels that while the saying is cliche at this point, that such an organization sounds like it should be a convenience store is accurate. There will no longer be a $200 tax stamp attached to the transfer of fully automatic weapons or suppressors, or any limitations to ownership of same based on when it was made. If you can afford to feed the thing, you’re welcome to it. Likewise, all FFLs will be invalidated – buying and selling guns will be no different than buying or selling any other tool. If you commit a crime with any sort of firearm after these changes take place, then you just earned yourself triple whatever the normal sentence is, and you’d better hope you don’t get the death penalty because Zydeco will ressurect you and kill you twice more. Zydeco loves guns, and hates when people are dumbasses with or about them. Remember the four rules, and Zydeco thinks you’re good to go.

DRUGS
Zydeco feels that it is the right of every human being to be as completely and utterly stupid as they can imagine, so that Zydeco can laugh at them. However, Zydeco acknowledges that there are some substances whose potential for damage is greater than others. Zydeco does not support pursuing the substances, however, as much as he supports harsh punishment of stupidity that harms others, particularly violent stupidity, in conjunction with proceeding to target people who are violently stupid on a repeat basis. Zydeco also believes that any substance whose primary effects are apathy, appetite, and affection should not only not be illegal, but that it should be distributed on a mandatory basis to Democrats and other people Zydeco wants to stop bothering him. As a related part of his policy views, Zydeco would like to federally outlaw regional bans and punitive taxes on substances and habits that harm no one but the user and do not affect state of mind, such as tobacco and trans-fats.

Aside from these minor points of difference, Sunny and Zydeco are remarkably in synch on the issues. One final parting note worth considering, is that since one of the crucial roles of the vice president is to intimidate cast the deciding vote in the Senate, Zydeco wishes to remind everybody that he is, in fact, a siamese cat and thus can yell more angrily and more loudly than any pantywaist currently or forseeably in the Senate. Zydeco also wishes to use Teddy Kenedy’s leg as a scratching post, but this is more of a personal issue and not particularly important to the Sunny/Zydeco platform overall. Thank you for your support, and remember to vote early and vote often!

The key to dog training, and having a good companion for a pet rather than just a furry accessory, is learning how to communicate with another species. It’s news to a lot of dogs that humans are intelligent animals that can be communicated with, because way too many people have no idea how to do it or are even aware that it can be done. Complicating that is the fact that people who are aware that training is the process of communicating the person’s rules to the dog AREN’T aware that the dog can and does communicate with them as well- and being sensitive to that is the essential key to a good working bond between the human and the dog. The dogs are very capable of learning that a human might not mean something with a gesture that a dog would- hugging is a good example. In “dog”, an embrace is a very rude and pushy gesture, but most pet dogs come to learn that from a human, it’s an expression of affection. Kang and Kodos both love to be hugged by their people, and by children- they understand what we mean by it, and they know it’d be different if we were dogs rather than humans.

One of the interesting things about having multiple pets is that after that sank in for me, I started to notice that my animals weren’t just capable of learning bits of my language, but each others’ as well.

Zydeco has always been the alpha animal in the house, after the people- he’s just that kind of cat. When we brought Kodos home as a puppy, Zydeco waged a campaign of psychological warfare on the poor baby. Kodos learned to respect him and his authoritah from day one, that a lashing tail was an angry gesture and not a happy one, and that cats fight with their feet rather than their mouths. A hard stare means the same thing in cat and dog, so it wasn’t exactly a slow process. As Kodos got older and less annoying and Zydeco relaxed into his role as the Littlest Alpha Male, they slowly became friends. Kodos wanted to play, so he brought Zydeco toys; however, a cat doesn’t have much use for a rubber ball or a squeaky toy, so the cat remained unimpressed.

Eventually, though, Kodos learned: a cat on its back is a cat that wants to play, not a submissive cat, and a cat in a low crouch is a cat that’s about to pounce on the dog’s face, not a cat inviting the dog to play. Also, cats on their back swat. He found a way to play- he’d bring Zydeco his smallest, softest toy, and dangle the toy over the cat while the cat happily batted and tried to capture it. Not a very interesting game for Kodos, though, so he only does this when he’s feeling particularly indulgent.

When Kang came along, Zydeco’s puppy policy had changed. After making friends with Kodos, he was no longer insecure enough to feel the need to terrorize her. He did, however, have to set boundaries- with our help, because she was just too damn intense about him and his claws-in disciplinary swats were just revving her up. This was where Zydeco had to learn a little more dogspeak: she didn’t understand a swat on the nose for the back-the-fuck-off gesture it was. She thought he was playing with her, so she’d swat him back- and she had a mean overhand with those snowshoe paws. So, he learned: when he wants her out of his face, he snaps at her, he doesn’t bother with a swat. He doesn’t just snap, either- if she’s just crossed a line, he bites her on the top of the muzzle- which is where dominant dogs deliver disciplinary nips to underlings. Zydeco had no way of knowing that, but when she had her face shoved up in his, he did notice how fast she backed off when he snapped at her and coincidentally nailed her there. He still uses his paws- to bring her face (or pull himself) close enough for the muzzle bite.

Now that Kang’s a little older and has finally developed some self-control, they play together too. When Zydeco’s on the couch or in one of his Box Thrones, she’ll lie down- she has to be lying down for him to assent to the game- a safe distance away from him, and they’ll simply air-snap at each other until they get tired of it. They never even get close to making contact, and they’re both relaxed, so I assume they both understand this is a game and that the snapping means something different in that context. If Zydeco wants to roll around on the floor and play, he’ll lie on his back with his paws in the air and playfully swat at her with both his front and back feet when she comes in range. She’s learned to be gentler with her paws now, so if she can get in a shot before he scores several (rare), she’ll tap him on the head with her own very restrained swats. This usually is accompanied by a soundtrack of self-pitying moans and whines from her; she’s more stimulated by this game than by the snapping game, and she wants to tackle the cat and play with him as she would another dog so badly, so instead of doing it (no more games and angry cat and she knows it), she merely voices her frustration to whoever will listen while still abiding by the rules.

She is more demonstrative with her affections than her “big brother”, so she gives the kitty slurpy kisses; the cat understands what she means by it as annoying and gross as it is for him, so he tolerates it with patient forbearance.

The other day, after playing in the snow all morning, the dogs engaged in a warm session of mutual grooming. Sometimes I wonder if having been raised by a cat made them go a little funny…

In the course of boring you all with tales of my unendingly cute, smart, and generally absorbing dogs, I realized I had neglected the cat. This was wrong of me, as while the dogs are any number of superlative things, unlike the cat they haven’t been with me for ten years. Ten years of rage.

For… reasons… I’ve always had a Siamese cat. Birth to now- my mother had them when I was born, so I’ve always had one. Those of you who are familiar with Siamese may be questioning my sanity about now, probably with justification. They shout, scream, yowl, bicker, and generally talk back- and they have voices like angry babies, or ambulance sirens. They are stubborn. They are demanding. They are prone to developing what are called “quirks” by the people that love them and “bizarre neuroses” or “psychopathic behavior” by the people that don’t. They’re domineering and Napoleonic- the cat is unquestionably above the dogs in this pack, even though the dogs regard themselves as superior to every other dog on earth. They think they’re above dogs, CERTAINLY above all other cats (especially of the same sex), and above humans just goes without saying. They’re very people-bonded and affectionate… but that just means they want their bitch to do their bidding more often than most cats. After ten years, we STILL have an argument most evenings about what’s going to be in my lap, a book or a cat. I generally give in after an hour or so. (Stingray has given up entirely.) They like to set up little challenges for themselves, regarding things like high bookcases full of knick-knacks the way climbers do Everest- they have to get up there because it’s there. They’ll swing from your chandelier for the hell of it if they can figure out how.

My senior year in high school, I lost my Siamese of the time to poisoning. If I’d been thinking sensibly, I would have held off on any more personal pets until after college so I could keep my cat safely indoors (my mother refused to make the effort, which is why the current one has an impressive scar collection), but I’d never been without one of my own pocket dictators before, so like an idiot I went after the first litter of Siamese kittens I saw advertised in the classifieds. I surveyed the collection of fighting, screeching, pouncing little fuzzballs, and picked the biggest kitten with the least crossed eyes. He spent the entire ride home devising ways to draw blood from within his carrier, then once we got home, made a single high-speed lap around my bedroom, curled into a ball and fell asleep on me, purring so hard he vibrated like a paint mixer. Our relationship was more or less defined on the spot: abusive but wildly affectionate. I named him Zydeco, not as much because I like zydeco music as because I liked the way it rolled off the tongue and think pet names should be fun to say.

Zydeco continued to express his charming personality. He decided that if I would not pick him up and give him affection on demand, he would simply climb up to where he wanted to be; this was bad enough when I was wearing jeans (all of which soon developed galaxies of snagged threads and small claw-holes), but much worse when I was wearing shorts or, say, just emerging from the shower. I still have faint scars on my legs from this phase. He found my bloodcurdling shrieks JUST deterrent enough to stop climbing me barelegged, but felt I was just being pansy about it if I was wearing pants- that only stopped when he got heavy enough that it was too big a challenge to scale a thrashing, cursing human. He went through a similar phase of regarding the cord on a telephone irresistible prey; my boyfriend at the time became entirely accustomed to having a normal conversation interrupted by sudden wails of pain. Other cat owners knew instantly that I had a new kitten from the forest of scratches on my hands and elbows; normal people started asking me if I had adopted a bobcat. Because he would not only steal food off my plate, but off my fork in mid-transport to my mouth, I became as furtive about eating as a bulimic.

Normal kittens may pester adult cats, but they recognize their seniority; Zydeco had no such sentiments and instantly established himself as their lord and master, owner of all the best sleeping spots, first access to food, and me. He had to be neutered at the tender age of three months because he began chasing the other cats (all females) and attempting… well, rape is a harsh word, but in this case also the correct one. The neuter didn’t even stop him altogether; if he noticed he’d lost his testicles, he didn’t let it depress him overmuch, and he certainly lost not a speck of confidence. He simply shifted the bulk of his energies to putting the fear of Zydeco into every other male cat in the neighborhood, every chance he could get to escape. While he has many scars, including a chunk out one ear and a piratical slash over one eye, none of them are further to his rear than his shoulders- never give up, never surrender. I think he accomplished this by breaking normal protocols; normal cat fights are preceded by many minutes of puffing, growling, and eerie yowling; Zydeco would simply descend on an invading male like a living food processor, with no fanfare or posturing. His blitzkrieg tactics worked extremely well as feline psy-ops, and his fresh wounds became rare as other cats that had had an encounter stopped being willing to get within rushing distance of him. We had a sweet but not terribly bright German Shepherd dog at the time; one day shortly after Zydeco’s neuter, we came home and found blood streaked all over the house, on the carpet, on the walls, and in the dog’s water dish. Panicking- oh my god the dog went nuts and killed the kitten!- we turned the house upside down searching for Zydeco. I found him under my bed, covered in tacky blood… but he was purring at me as usual and seemed in no distress at all. I couldn’t find a single mark on him, just more blood- which was, it turned out, not his at all. As best as we can tell, the dog was too curious about Zydeco’s stitches- so Zydeco slashed the poor dog’s gums open, hence the bloody water dish. (The dog never did grow much of a brain, and by the time he died had an intricate pattern of cat-scratch scars all over his muzzle.)

Zydeco regarded the house as a giant Parkour course, and systematically climbed to the peak of every single level surface in the house, including several we thought totally inaccessible to anything that wasn’t bipedal or winged- which is how several of my mother’s knick-knacks met their demise: he thought pushing them off a shelf and watching them fall and perhaps break was the most entertainment he could make for himself that didn’t involve bloodshed. Christmas tree? Our photos of the tree from 1997 all have a kitten tail sticking out of the very top of the tree, next to the angel. During summer, his favorite pastime became “spider-cat”- he’d wait for houseflies to bumble up to the French doors, then rush the door, leap, latch onto the wood with his claws over the fly, and eat the fly while dangling off the door. If he saw another fly, he’d simply monkey over to where it was without bothering to drop off the door.

There are a lot more stories about Zydeco- these are just the ones from before his first birthday.  He did mellow some after the kittenhood from hell, but he never lost his edge.  The reason he managed to LIVE to his first birthday at all rather than becoming a lining for a pair of gloves as I kept threatening was that he was as sweet and charming as he was psychotic; he’d greet me at the door as happily as the dogs, chattering a mile a minute.  He’d follow me around more faithfully than they did,  “talk” to me, play with me, ride on my shoulder, and purr and squeak at me like an intermittently violent Tribble.  Also, he picked my future husband for me, which remains the accomplishment that will keep him in laps and kibble forever.