Cat Distraction

Furry Friends

OK, so I am the Cat Lady of fictional fame. I have seven cats. I'm not sure how I managed to acquire so many except that at least two of them are strays who showed up in my back yard. One, Patchadoodle, was a long hair, not, to mind mind suited to a "life on the street," and the other, Cocopuff is the last of her family tossed out sometime around one of the hurricanes that hit here.

Patrick on top, Patches below on the big cat tree.

 Reggie and DJ are brothers I adopted together. Patrick O'Paddicats replaced Cocopuff's brother when he had to be euthanized due to serious medical issues. Scooter is a gray and white tuxedo cat, essential to my feline color scheme. And last but not least, Church, another rescue is my obligatory solid gray cat.

Today, I am sorry to say, Church had a vet visit to have part of his tail amputated. I'm not quite sure what happened, but several week ago, he sustained some kind of tail injury at the tip of his tail. I do have my suspicions. For some reason, Patrick likes to bully Church. Church never liked him from the beginning and once Patrick gained some size and muscle, he decided he would try his best to make Church's life miserable. Most of the time, there is an uneasy truce between them, but at least once a day, Patrick decides to chase Church.  I think now that on one of those days, Patrick managed to catch Church's tail and bite it.

At any rate, despite several vet visits, antibiotics, and one of those plastic collars, the wound just didn't seem to heal--at least not well enough to ever grow fur again.  So today, I took Church to the vet for surgery.  The injury was only about an inch of the tip of his tail, but apparently, in order to do the job properly with enough muscle and skin to close the wound after the amputation, the vet needed to take more than half my little boy's tail.  Surgery did go well, and now, with considerably less tail than when he left, Church is recovering in the sun room, wearing a new color and a much better outlook on life. I'm sure his injury hurt, and, although amputation is a traumatic solution, he is already a bit perkier.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the house, I seem to have discovered the perfect "object of distraction" for naughty and energetic orange Patrick. (Are orange tabbycats overly frisky?)  I've actually had this toy before and my other cats seemed to tire of it after a day or two. In its new incarnation--it used to be called "Undercover Mouse," This version is called "Cat's Meow" and the only reason I bought it was because it was on a closeout shelf for under $10.

Anyhow, it's already been several weeks since I bought it and Patrick is absolutely enamored of it. He insists I turn it on so the little ball on a sick goes erraticly round and round underneath the circle of fabric. Cocopuff and Patch play with it off and on too but not quite with Patrick's enthusiasm.

However, it's Reggie who seems to want to dominate the game. If he's around when I turn on the "mouse machine," (It's already on its second set of batteries) he puts his paw out to trap the mouse  and then, when all else fails, lies on the yellow cover.  The mouse has some kind of mechanism to reverse direction when it hits an obstacle, but I'm not quite sure a big black cat lying on it was exactly the kind of obstacle the manufacturer had in mind. At any rate, I took a picture of Reggie the Mousekiller doing his job.

You can see Patrick off to the side as well. By now, he'd given up on the game since Reggie'd taken over. 

Oh, and those two little brown and white striped blobs on the rug are Patrick's fetch mice. I throw, he fetches and then I throw again. They are the only toys he will chase and carry back. 

Cats. Who knows what's going on in their minds.