Whittles on the Warpath!

The House of Eight Cats is now down to Six Cats. When we had Eight Cats, three were female, and five were male.

One of the females, “Stripe”, got completely fed up with the food, litter and territorial squabbles with the other cats and was last seen on US-27 on a Greyhound bus, headed south to the Florida Keys. She had always been a wharf cat, and so, she left the suburbs of what was once the eastern Everglades and headed back to the carefree life of being a cat deckhand, where the fish are free and the rats are large.

The image of my last recollection of Stripe is vividly etched into my memory: she was carrying a little stick over her shoulder and, at the end of the stick, was a small cache of her supplies (Meow-Mix, rat-jerky, debit-card, etc), wrapped up in a red handkerchief. The bus pulled up, she sprayed its wheel rim, shot me a bird, and leapt up into the bus, never looking back. We wish her well and stay in touch, off and on, via LitterLinks, the most popular of the cat social networking sites.

A few years later, Luke passed away (see story, “Luke Preystalker…”), so we then ended up with the current cat headcount of (yes, David), six cats.

This meant that we now had 4 males and – Oh-My-God – 2 females under the same roof.

This turned out to be a really tasty recipe for all-out domestic warfare; a recipe, by the way, that we live with, every single day. It’s as if the TV series “Jericho” is played out, over and over and over again, in this household, everyday. But instead of nuclear weapons and automatic rifles being deployed, it’s far, far worse – the unabated and escalating utilization of chemical, biological  and profoundly psychological feline warfare.

This is the story, then, of Whittles and Minnie. Hell hath no fury as that of feuding female felines.

Whittles was found by Justin, our youngest of two sons, back in 2001. It was right after Christmas and Justin and his friend, Mathew, found a small, feral kitten at a church near our old house in North Miami Beach. I’ll never forget opening the front door to a knock, only to see Justin holding this cat and saying, “Hey Dad, look what I found!” Justin loves this cat – he came up with the name of “Tigra” then “Best-es” then “Whittles” then “Wits” and so on…but, it’s clearly friggin’ Whittles. Alice and I though, call her other names. You’ll soon discover why.

Minnie was found a few years ago during what I have now dubbed the “Marielitos Cat Lift” involving the unsanctioned (from my standpoint anyway) importation of four (yes, David, four more) cats into the borders of the Clary household. Minnie, Boo-Boo, Starry and Mean-Pea were all 1 week old feral kittens that Alice carefully nursed (yes, with an eye-dropper) to health. Alice said, at the time, that she would keep the little kittens for only a short period of time, and then find homes for them. I knew that the only home, though, that these cats would find, would be ours.

Minnie was the only female of the Marielitos Cat Lift. Destiny was now cast.

There is a sub-plot though, to the Marielitos Cat Lift incident. It goes like this. My best friend is a certain David Wilson. He and I have been friends since the age of 15. I have been the best man at two of his three weddings. David, on more than one occasion, has kept me alive. To say he looks after my back is an understatement.

David’s 21^st Century wife is Barbara. She is truly the best thing that happened to David (except, maybe the fact that he is 50 and has not lost his hair). Barbara, being a card-carrying member of the “Save The Whale” and 67 other non-profit foundations, is a do-gooder, and we love her immensely.

You see, it was one beautiful day on a small island in Biscayne Bay called Treasure Island, one of several islands making up North Bay Village, which is accessed via the 79^th Street Causeway in Miami. Barbara and David had an apartment facing Biscayne Bay, looking north, towards Haulover inlet. Dolphins, pelicans, and manatees were their neighbors. So is the fictitious “Dexter” of Showtime television. So were a bunch of feral cats. The cats have caused more commotion and unquestionably a higher body count, than Dexter ever has, that’s for sure!

One morning Barbara woke up to the cries of kittens. She looked and looked and looked around to find the cries. Eventually she found them. They were coming from a very narrow gap between two walls, where some momma cat, for whatever sad reason, had abandoned her kittens. These kittens were only a few days old at the time.

The quick thinking Barbara knew one person in her life that was “an expert” in cats. It was none other than my wife, Alice. As Barbara dialed the Clary household, my dear friend David, lunged across their apartment and grabbing the phone away from Barbara, made an impassioned plea. He said, “Barbara, look, Wayne has been my friend for 35 years. If you call Alice and tell her about these cats, she’ll race down here, take them home, raise them, adopt them and keep them forever. Wayne will never, ever, forgive me. I value my friendship with Wayne, so, please DO NOT CALL ALICE about these cats”.

Barbara replied, “That’s ridiculous”, and then proceeded to call Alice, who, along with Jason and Justin, rushed down, ignoring traffic and speeding laws to “save the cats”.

Four years later, David’s prediction continues to be true. Alice saved the cats, she took them home, she nursed them to health, she adopted them and she will keep them forever.

So, this is how “Minnie”, a female, ended up in the house, along with “Whittles”. They do not get along. They absolutely hate each other. Whittles is the aggressor. Minnie is the terrified victim.

The day begins around 5:00 am with Minnie sitting on her hind legs and pawing the glass on the French Doors to be allowed inside the house. She will scratch, pound and otherwise claw at these doors until I open them. As some of you know, if she gets tired, she’ll ask her brothers to take over. The sound is so obnoxious that it diverts air traffic so as to not wake up sleeping passengers at 39,000 feet. Minnie sports a very distressed look on her face when she does this. The most important thing is to get inside the house. As for I, the most important thing is to ignore the noise for as long a possible.

Unfortunately, “Whittles” is fully expecting, in fact, really counting, on that door being finally opened. She strategically parks herself on a chair, the piano, or some other nearly hidden location. Just her head is exposed, focused on the French Doors. She will lie there for hours, playing with her iPhone, and just waiting for the door to open, and for Minnie to run in.

When the door is finally opened, Minnie rushes into the house incredibly fast; I feel a “whoosh” by my legs and barely catch a blurred high-speed, super-sonic glimpse of Minnie running in. She heads straight to the stairs, making a turn so sharp, that her back legs spin out from underneath her and she claws to maintain her vector to the stairs. Meanwhile, Whittles, at this point, has already leapt away from her hiding position and is in “hot pursuit” of poor Minnie. Minnie leaps up the stairs – she’s headed to the bedroom to sleep on the bed – the “sanctuary”.

Unfortunately, since Minnie is a little overweight, and Whittles was already lying in ambush, Whittles overtakes Minnie at the top of the stairs.

The cats begin screeching at each other and run, tumble and crash into the bedroom. If, at this very moment, you were one of those passengers at 39,000 feet, you would have experienced severe “chop” and “clear air turbulence”, because of the cat fight below. Trust me; it’s far, far worse in the bedroom! The fighting, hissing, meowing, howling, running, tumbling, crashing continues! Minnie runs out-of-control, trying to escape the evil clutches of Whittles. She crashes into furniture, into the bed, into the walls, the sliding glass doors, the windows – you name it. Meanwhile, both cats are howling and screeching at each other as if it were Armageddon. I think you know this noise; it sounds something like this:

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>Turn on air-raid siren

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2. <!–[endif]–>Crank up siren’s RPM to “dangerous overload”

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3. <!–[endif]–>Pour cold water and ice in it.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>4. <!–[endif]–>Insert cat tail under rocking chair

<!–[if !supportLists]–>5. <!–[endif]–>Open mouth, clear ears and prepare for shock wave

This goes on every single day. The fight usually ends with Alice throwing paperback books in the general direction of the melee. Sometimes, you’ll see as many as a half dozen paperback books on the floor of the bedroom. In other rooms, you’ll see objects that I toss: baseball bats, bowling balls, bricks and (empty) water guns.

These flying objects usually distract the cats enough to stop the fight. I then march in, and, if lucky, catch Whittles and toss her sorry rear end outside.

One way or the other, though, Whittles makes it back into the house and she prepares her game plan for the next day. Minnie has considered hiring a lawyer.

Alice has recently purchased a new biological weapon to prevent the continued warfare between these cats. It’s a pheromone spray – which she sprays onto Whittles to “calm her down” and make her “feel good about herself”. Truthfully, I never knew that it was Whittles “low self-esteem” that motivated her relentless attacks on Minnie. I’ll let you know how this works out!

Anyhow, these fights occur daily. I should put a little camera on each of their heads and then have streaming video of what these terrible fights look like, so you can see what it looks like from their point of view. You would see all SORTS of things flying in their general direction from Alice and I!

You may think, “Gosh Wayne, maybe you ought to get rid of one (or more) of these fiendish felines!”. You would be thinking correct! However, these bad, bad cats are “family”, and as family we have to love them “unconditionally”. I guess there are worse things to do!

 

Obi Opens Doors

It was only a few months after we moved into our new house, that Jason, our oldest son, began to report on strange occurrences during the wee hours of the morning.

He claimed that someone – or something – was opening his bedroom door – at night.  Like many a teenager, Jason had begun closing his bedroom door at night, and yet, much to his surprise, the bedroom door was open in the morning.  Strangely, this phenomena was not “predictable”; sometimes it happened (or so Jason claimed), or it didn’t.  In other words, the bedroom door sometimes, when closed at night, was still closed in the morning.

Frankly, I dismissed Jason’s bedroom door claims to simply being poor memory on Jason’s part or, perhaps, he was just making up a story because it sounded freaky.  I surmised that maybe he simply believed that he had closed his door, when, in fact, his actions, had not caught up with his intentions.

After a few more weeks, Jason began to blame the mysterious door opening phenomena on the cat.  And not just any cat, but, specifically, Obi-Kat.  Jason liked Obi.  Obi liked Jason.  Obi occasionally slept on Jason’s bed. And now, Obi was being accused of opening doors.

This was, in my mind, preposterous.  After all, why would a cat want to open doors, and, if doors were to be opened, why open Jason’s door, of all possible other doors allegedly worth opening?  The more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that cat’s simply can’t open doors for one key reason: they don’t have hands, an opposable thumb, nor, truth be told, the intellectual wherewithal to associate door mechanics with door openings.

There was only one thing to be done.

We all began to make fun of Jason.

We made fun of his stories about his bedroom door (and no other doors) being opened, routinely, by Obi.  “Oh Sure”, we said, “Obi just happens to have a little black pouch with burglary tools”, or, “Sure, you say it’s Obi, but really, it could be one of the other cats – you just THINK it’s Obi, because you like Obi more than the other cats”.  Jason would vigorously defend his case. We would have huge debates (backed up by detailed illustrations and mathematics) about whether or not a cat could even open a door.

Jason would emphatically claim that he could “hear noises” late at night of his door handle being pulled down and then abruptly released, over and over again.  Well, amazingly, nobody else heard these noises.

There could only be debate, because, there was absolutely no evidence to indicate that Obi was opening doors.  Furthermore, despite withering and intense questioning and cross-examination, Obi would say (or admit) nothing. In faet, even without an attorney present, (or a Cat Local 566 union representative),  Obi would confess to nothing.

Jason’s bedroom door was opened, closed and secured via a handle – not a round knob.  Jason’s door was not unlike the other thirteen doors throughout the house that had the same type of hardware – a brass-looking handle.  Yet, of all the doors with handles throughout the house, mysteriously, only one person made the claim that a cat would open a door – though, Jason admitted, he had not actually ever seen Obi (or any other cat, or ghost or anything for that matter), open his bedroom door. Yet, the bedroom door would be opened.

Months went by.  We dropped the debate and gave up on Jason’s preposterous claim. Yet, every once in a while, when I would walk by Jason’s room in the very early hours of the morning, I could not help but notice that his bedroom door was indeed ajar – and I specifically remembered it being closed when I went to bed.  It was open, and often by only a few inches.  Very strange.  But maybe, Jason sleep walked at night, visited the bathroom, climbed back into bed, and didn’t fully close the door.

Evidence, however, began to turn the tide against Obi and begin to make the case that Jason was, indeed, correct in his assertions.

Jason’s bedroom is on the second floor of this household.  On the first floor there is the “guest” bathroom, which is not far from our front door, the guest bedroom and the formal dining room.  This bathroom has two doors: one towards the rest of the house and another one which opens onto the side-yard. This bathroom, by the way, is my favorite “reading room.” It’s also the official “critter hospital” of the Clary household.  Sick animals (cat, dogs, sugar-gliders, baby-blue herons, etc) are often kept here for recuperation, repair, and physical therapy.

One day, Alice noticed that a baby green parrot was on the ground behind her car.  She noticed that it wasn’t flying and she caught it so that the cats (particularly Luke) didn’t eat it.  After catching the bird, she placed it into our critter hospital – the first floor guest bathroom.

Later, Alice went to check on the bird.  Much to her surprise, she noticed that the door to the bathroom was ajar.  As she entered the bathroom she was even more astounded to find Obi, sitting on the floor, staring at the lttle bird, which had hopped up onto the bathtub rim.  While there was no direct evidence, Alice was beginning to suspect that Obi had – somehow – opened the bathroom door in order to gain access to the bird.  She couldn’t prove it, so Obi was released without having to post bail and on allowed out on his own recognizance.   The bird, meanwhile, continued to convalesce.

In another memorable incident, many months after Jason’s claims about a cat (allegedly) opening doors, I was sitting on “the john,” in the guest bathroom and reading the Sunday newspaper.  For the sake of decorum, I closed the bathroom door that led to the rest of the house (Thank God!).

As I read the Miami Herald that morning, I had to glance to my right as I heard the bathroom door handle suddenly spring up and down.  Cha-chang.  Then, suddenly, the handle went down again and the door opened inwards.  I looked up and wondered who was walking in on me.

I should not have looked up.  There was nobody walking in.  Instead, I had to look down. Walking in, without even bothering to look at me, was Obi.

He walked right past me.  He didn’t glance at me. He just walked right in front of me – with my shorts down around my ankles.   Come to think of it, this cat’s a lot smarter than I ever even could imagine – after all, by looking straight ahead he avoided quite a scary sight!

Obi then casually, and without bothering to ask for my opinion, reached up to the handle of the door that led to the side yard.  He placed both paws on top of the handle and pulled down.  The handle went down, but the spring pulled it right back up – making a “cha-cheng” type of noise.  The door could not possibly be opened, as it was secured with a deadbolt lock right above the handle.  Obi tried again.

And again. And again.

So, I turned the deadbolt so that the bathroom door to the sideyard was no longer locked.

Obi sat still.

Obi studied thought about my maneuver (he admitted this, confidentially to Boo-Boo Tail later), then glanced (finally) at me.

He reached up again, and pulled down on the handle.

The handle went down, and, as it did so, Obi leaned forward, thus placing his weight against the door, and, in so doing: behold – the door opened to the sideyard.

Obi then scampered out.

My mouth fell open!  Until that, is, that I remembered that I was sitting on “the john,” and the bathroom door to the side-yard (and thus the neighbor’s house and the street in front of the house) was wide-open!  I quickly closed the door and formed this thought that remains frozen in my head for all eternity, “Obi Opens Doors”.  It was true.  Obi really, really could, and really did, open doors.  He opened two doors, in fact, right in front of me.  He didn’t even make a big deal about it.

Like I said, this house has over a dozen door handles.  Well, actually we don’t anymore.  This past summer, we were forced to change all of them to “door knobs”.  Door knobs, unlike door handles, cannot be opened by Obi.  He studies these rounded knobs.  He stares at them.  He reaches up and pulls on them, but, unlike the handles, nothing happens.  It is a sad state of affairs for Obi.  But, we had no choice.  Obi, after figuring out that he could open Jason’s bedroom door, then started going around the house and opening ALL OTHER DOORS.  Obi figured out that doors could be opened, and, when opened, doors allowed him to go into a different space.  This was profound.  Obi tried telling the other cats, but, the other cats just sat there or licked themselves (which is what they do when they struggle with concepts beyond their grasp).

If Obi wanted to go outside, all he had to do was “let himself out”.  He did this routinely (as long as we left deadbolts turned opened).  If, however, a door was secured by a deadbolt, Obi would attempt, over and over and over again to pull the handle down and let it spring back up.  Down went handles, up went the handles, over and over and over again. At 2:47 am you could hear door handles being pulled down and then springing up.  You would hear it again at 5:09 am, and at 6:17am- in fact, we were hearing it all the friggin’ time.

Obi had ‘cracked the code’ on doors.  And even if a door didn’t immediately open, Obi would remain “on station” and stare at the handle – take a little break – and then try again. And again, and again, and again.  Incessently, Obi opened (or attempted to open) doors.

This breakthrough for Obi, though was becoming increasingly problematic for the Clary household and our guests.  What began as a mystery and inconvenience for Jason, had turned into an Obi-Kat free-for-all.  For example, Obi would let himself into the garage.  He would hang out there for a day or two and then decide to allow himself into the house.  Remarkably, Obi learned not only to “push” a door open away from him after pulling down the handle, he also learned to “pull” open a door, towards him, after pulling down on the handle.  Thus, if we didn’t deadbolt doors, Obi could not only let himself into a bedroom or a bathroom or a garage, he could also let himself into – or out of – the house, without our assistance.  On many occasion, I would close the patio doors behind me as I walked outside – only to hear the door open behind me and see Obi following me, often playing with his iPod, simultaneously.

Stranger incidents began to occur.  We would have the Grandma’s – or even “Church members” – come by the house for dinner or for Church meetings. Invariably, a guest would need to “visit the facilities” and would be “doing their business” in the first floor’s guest bathroom.  They would be sitting there, quite literally minding their own business, when suddenly the door handle would swing down and they would look up in surprise as the door suddenly opened up on them.  Even more to their surprise, they would have to stop “looking up” as to who opened the door, and, rather, look all the way down to the floor.  They would then see a very determined “Maine Coon” walk through the now opened bathroom door and then just stroll calmly by.  Obi then proceeded to try to open the remaining door to the world outside.  Meanwhile, our house-guest is sitting on the toilet in complete amazement – and a little bit of fear.

This was difficult to explain to guests.  We would advise them to press the little locking mechanism on the door and to ignore the possibility of the door handle swinging down over and over again.  It was Obi, we had to explain.

We also had a little issue with the dog.  Readers familiar with the reputation of “Chewy” know that “Chewy” cannot be trusted around strangers.  Well, he can’t be trusted around the type of strangers that care for their body parts to be remain “whole” when visiting the Clary household.  In other words, Chewy bites.

So, we would “lock up” Chewy whenever guests came to the house.  We would “lock up”  Chewy in the first floor bathroom. But, we had to install a sliding bolt onto the bathroom door, so that Obi would not (deliberately or inadvertently) “let Chewy out to eat the guests”.  I am not making this up.  If that sliding bolt was not closed as to prevent that bathroom door from being opened, then Obi, un-wittingly (or so we would want to believe), would allow Chewy to come out, and, like a very large and very angry T-Rex dinosaur, hunt down and maim and kill guests.

LIke I said, we put up with this for a while until Justin came up with a brilliant “thwart Obi” solution. Justin advised us to replace all the door handles throughout the house with rounded door knobs.

The solution worked, and now, poor Obi, has, once again, has to deal with the (door opening) limitations of his species.  We’ve tried to explain to Obi, sometimes via counseling, that this is “in his best interest”. However, he is very skeptical of our intentions and he just glares at us and begins to spit.

Obi, however, refuses to come to terms with doors that don’t open to his will.  He calmly walks up to the door, with it’s fancy, now-round-door0knob and just stares at it.  Kinda reminds me of the “Yes!” song, that goes something like this, “in and around the lake, mountains come of the sky and they just stand there”.  So, likewise Obi would just stand there and stare at the round door knob.

And then, hope against hope, he reaches up, standing high on his hind legs, his body stretched against the door and his front legs and paws extended all the way up. He then pulls down on the door know with all his weight with his front paws on top of the knob.

And then he tries again.

And again.

And again.

Obi may be the “Silverlakes Butcher” after all…

Obi is a very special cat.

Obi

We think, due to the tufts on his ears, that he may have a fair amount of “Maine Coon” in him.  He also has an uncanny and unusual ability to open doors.  That’s right, he has the skill set (I am not making this up) of opening doors.  But, I’ll save the “Obi Opens Doors” story for another time.

This story is more about something that we never really suspected about Obi – the fact (well, now it’s a fact), that he is a mouser.  Not only is he a mouser, he actually likes to eat them.

So, this is the story of Obi and his first confirmed rodent kill.   This confirmed kill now brings into question all the other rat remains that we have attributed to “Boo-Boo Tail”.  Is it possible that “Boo-Boo Tail” has been wrongly accused (or admired)?

Obi ate most of this rat, what with

large parts of the body missing...

Well, we don’t really know whether ALL the (almost weekly) rat toll can be contributed to Obi or Boo-Boo, but, we now know that Obi is a key contributor to the local Rat Patrol and Eradication Committee.  It was just a few nights ago that Alice very carefully brought every cat into the house: Whittles, Boo-Boo, Minnie, Starry, Sweet (aka Mean) Pea.

However, she could not find Obi.  So, the Clary household went dark with only one cat outside- and it was Obi.

The next morning, I left for work very early and thus did NOT open the back doors and let out the dog.  And since all the cats (but one), were inside, there was none of the normal “scratching” on the glass of the French Doors, that Minnie, Boo-Boo and Mean Pea routinely do when they are outside at night and want in – usually around 5:00am.

Anyhow, when Alice walked outside in the morning, she came across the body parts pictured above.  Nearby, but camera-shy was,  the proud Obi.

And, luckily, Alice noticed the rat remains BEFORE stepping on them!  So, a great day was had by all (well, excluding the rat pictured above).

Cats in True Life!

Over the years Wayne has written stories about some or all of the cats in the Clary household.  Sometimes, the cats do unbelievably stupid things which inspires Wayne to document these incidents.  Other times, Wayne gets inspired by some of the unbelievably intelligent things the cats do, and thus feels compelled to share these stories with you.  And sometimes, Wayne has an urge to try his hand at blending cat facts with cat fiction to create a (presumably) entertaining story.

Since we live in a subdivision called Silverlakes, in Western Miramar, a city within Broward County, Florida that was once part of the Everglades, Wayne will weave in the wildlife and other critters that continue to inhabit the environs.

As for me, I watch the cats and they watch me knit.  They play with yarn.  They hide knitting needles. They (the cats) are great companions – despite the things they break and some truly deplorable urinary practices they routinely perform around the house.