This Super Bowl XL This House is a 'Hawks House

On the night of February 2 2014, Ocean the Wiggle Cat decided she'd had enough of watching the Seattle Seahawks blowing out the rancid Denver Broncos to the tune of 43-8, so she hurried into the cat cave to nest and give birth to six Seahawks kittehs.

Five of them moved on to other homes through adoption, and here's hoping they are still alive and still rooting for the team they first saw winning the Super Bowl.

As for Mal the Krazy Kat, who remains here waiting for this coming Sunday matchup between his beloved Seahawks and THE EVIL EMPIRE PATRIOTS?

This house is a 'Hawks House this weekend, kiddos. 12TH CAT UP.

Next week we're back to plotting out Tampa Bay Bucs draft options.

Update: YAS, Mal's team won!

...

Whadda ya mean, they don't make cat merch for Super Bowls???

About My Ocean the Wiggle Cat

I had last posted how my wiggle kitteh was getting thinner and not as active, that Ocean was having trouble jumping onto the furniture like usual. So I took her in to the vet.

...They found a mass near her stomach. They took more ultrasounds and found two lumps, one on her large intestine and on her liver. They also spotted enlarged lymph nodes, which told them she had lymphoma and the aggressive untreatable kind.

(small "no").

She wasn't in any outward pain, but she was clearly uncomfortable, and I didn't want Ocean to struggle for another month or so before the pain got too much. It's hard, really hard for a person to take a pet companion - a fur baby - to the vet one last time.

It wasn't easy back in 2013 when I had to let Tehya the Pretty Kitty go to rest, and it wasn't easy today for Ocean.

Ocean was the kitten who came to me a week after Tehya died, on Halloween night meowing for trick or treat at the apartment stairwell. She was so fearless, happy to run up the stairs to my doorway to greet me going out and okay with coming inside my apartment to check it out. I called her Wiggles for how she'd roll around on her back when I got close. When I took her in for good a few weeks after Halloween and took her to the vet, the nurses there said "Wiggles" wasn't a proper name so I named her Ocean (for a then-recent Gaiman novel). But she was always Wiggles to me.

And then she had her babies on Super Bowl eve as the Broncos got blown out by the Seahawks. I hope the five kittehs I gave up for adoption - River, Simon, Inara, Zoey, Jayne - went to good homes and hopefully staying healthy. I kept Mal, and you all know how much of a handful he's been.

I wonder how confused Mal is going to be tonight, the first night without mama cat. :(

These are among the last photos I've taken of Ocean. I may upload a video or two of her purring later. I never videorecorded Tehya or Page when I should have, because today I can barely remember how they purred or meowed at me. :( 

This is Ocean just before the vet
came in. They let me hold her
to my side as they performed the
injections. It's so heartbreaking
how she stopped moving.

I am so sorry I wasn't able to take better care of you, my kittehs. /cries

A Note About Ocean the Wiggle Cat

Well, Ocean hasn't been doing so well the past couple weeks.

She's been getting thinner, and she hasn't been able to jump onto the sofa where she likes to rest half the time. I took her to the vet, where they noted she's lost 5 pounds since her last weigh-in this December.

Her bloodwork came back okay, but her urine showed a UTI, so I'm giving her antibiotics for that.

She came to me back on Halloween night 2013 and when I brought her in she was this tiny thing. She got big in a hurry - and then had six kittehs - and she'd been this active wiggly cat ever since.

But that's 12 years ago, and she was at least six months, maybe a year old when she showed at the base of the apartment steps. She's already in the 'senior' category for cats, and I'm worried this is not a good turn for her.

May have to take her in for x-rays to make sure it's not cancer - the thing that took Tehya, poor kitteh - or anything just as serious.

Pray for my mama cat, please.

It's Been 10 Years With a Wiggle Cat

On Halloween Night in 2013, a brave little tuxedo kitten began meowing for food and love and I offered both to her.

This is Wiggle Cat. I named her Ocean because the vet nurses
felt Wiggles was too silly for her.

 

This was in 2021 when I ordered a couple of cat posts during
the pandemic. Ocean prefers napping in this one, but the tall one
at the window is great for morning suntans.

And today October 31 2023 is our tenth anniversary together, you wiggler.

Mama Cat Ocean in 2021

To anyone who adopted kittens by the names of Inara, Jayne, Zoey, River, and Simon in Polk County back in 2014, please let them know that mama Ocean the Wiggle Cat is still wiggling and meowing and griping and asking for head rubs.

Happy Mother's Day, Ocean!

International CAT Day 2020

I have been reminded on Twitter that today is International Cat Day.

So with that, I give you ALL THE CATS!

Caturday July 4

How my cats decide who gets to be in the sunroom and who gets to fold the laundry.

Ocean gets the day off and Mal gotta work it.

Happy 4th of July, America!

Getting To the End of a Year 2019 Edition

This is also in some respects the end of a Decade (2010-19) and time to not only review a year but review an era.

I started off 2010 unemployed as a librarian, struggling to find even part-time work, not getting back into the profession until 2013 where I've been thankfully for the last six years.

Writing-wise, I've been keeping up with NaNo here, a few short story submissions there, two self-published books (one an anthology, the other a set of political essays) but still nowhere close to a full-scale novel to call my own.

There's been a lot of personal changes along the way. Sad ones, like the loss of my kittehs Page (died 2011) and Tehya (died 2013)... but good ones, like the arrival of Ocean (literally on my doorstep Halloween night 2013) and Mal (literally as a litter during the Fourth Quarter of the Denver vs. Seattle Super Bowl 2014).

Still coping with depression, with anxiety, with a meager social life, heading into 2020 coping with major surgery that still needs to get scheduled so I can know exactly when to go into full panic mode before the doctors hit me over the head with a hamma to knock me unconscious.

There's more to say before the end of the year - still have to type up a Year End's Book Reviews - and we'll see about me taking care of a writing project soon, very soon.

In the meantime, I've barely done any Christmas shopping for Saturnalia. Shame, Witty... shame...

Happy 2019 Mother's Day Ocean the Wiggle Cat

It's 2019 and I don't have any other pictures of Ocean being a Mom cat because Mal just won't stay in the picture with her long enough...

So I'll just show the latest photos of Ocean the Wiggle Cat so you can see she's doing okay.

Five Year Anniversary with the Wiggle Cat

Five years ago tonight, waiting at an apartment in Bartow for trick-or-treaters that never showed, I instead heard the mewling of a hungry little tuxedo kitten.

So I figured what the heck, it's trick-or-treat, so I go get cat food from the store and come back and put it on a paper plate for the little kitteh to eat... whereupon three other cats jump out of the bushes and eat what's on the plate before she could. Still, I made sure to feed HER since she was the one brave enough to ask me.

And brave she was. And friendly. And wiggly. She'd flop down on the concrete and wiggle back and forth waiting for ear rubs.

I had just lost Tehya to cancer a week before Halloween, and here I was with a kitten just knocking on the door to come in. And she did come into the apartment, cautious but unafraid, and after a few visits I let her in and closed the door, and she had no problem with that.

That was how Ocean the Wiggle Cat came into my life. And then later her kittens.

BUT THAT IS ANOTHER ADVENTURE...

Happy Mother's Day to Ocean the Wiggle Cat

Mal's too busy hiding under the bed to do it, so here's me honoring Ocean for her matriarchal instincts.

To the hoomans who adopted Zoe, Jayne, Inara, River and Simon, I hope they are well and let them know that their mommy is contently stalking the lizards at our windows...

Anniversary with Ocean the Wiggle Cat

Today is the three-year anniversary for me when it comes to my tuxedo kitteh Ocean.

Back in 2013, on Halloween eve without any trick-or-treaters knocking at my apartment door, instead I had gotten a tiny mewling and hungry kitteh, who quickly bonded to me and pretty much wiggled her way into my heart.

My first pet cat Tehya had just passed away a few weeks before, leaving me heartbroken and not entirely sure I could care for another cat. But Wiggles insisted on being my kitteh, so by Thanksgiving time - which is another sad anniversary time because that's when Page's skin cancer got worse back in 2011 and... and... - I took the effort to bring this new tuxedo kitteh to a vet for a checkup and adoption as Ocean.

And of course that all led to baby kittehs, and keeping Mal the Crazy Cat, and dealing with hissing fights between Ocean and Mal the last few weeks, and...

Sigh.

But then Ocean hops up on my chest and purrs away and wriggles back and forth looking for rubs and I find myself content.

Caturday Nap Time

It's been awhile since I've uploaded a pic of my kitteh mama.

She's sleeping away while I work at the computer.

Ocean snores. But for some reason it doesn't pick up on the smartphone's recorder. So no video proof of it... yet.

Happy Mother's Day For Cats

Heya, Ocean the Wiggle Cat! Did your son Mal the Crazy Cat bring you anything this Sunday for Mother's Day?

Ocean with River and Inara

Ocean is still waiting for Mal to bring her a balled-up wad of paper
for her Mother's Day present

Another Caturday in March 2016

Well, I couldn't stay away on this topic, and I also needed to mention my kittehs' current status.

As it were, their claws needed clipping: I can't do it by myself, neither Ocean nor Mal will sit for me long enough, and I can't train them to accept it. They never equate the snacks I try to bribe them with towards good behavior on their part.

Also, Ocean had been getting mottled (?) matted (!) hair along her back for the past year since her vet's visit, and she needed a bath and grooming.

Unfortunately, it was so bad that the cat beautician had to shave.

She's pretty much in the need for a kitteh sweater to wear right now.

She was not happy about this.

WHY, HOOMAN? WHY YOU DO THIS TO WIGGLE CAT?

And it turns out the reason why Ocean was getting matted fur was due to her unable to clean off the oils during a cat's natural tongue-bathing. And she wasn't doing that because it seems she still has tapeworms.

She may have had it from being a feral kitten when I adopted her, she may have picked it up from the fleas that were in the townhouse we moved into, I thought I had treated her for the fleas - hadn't seen them since her treatments - and thought she had taken enough of the pills I tried to serve her that the vet gave me. Apparently, Ocean still has the parasite in her. Mal likely does as well (although his fur is fine).

Poor kittehs.

And Mal's hissing at her because the bath and grooming probably makes Ocean smell different now. This afternoon has been a series of hiss staredowns.

Poor poor kittehs.

Caturday March 2016

It's been awhile since I've done this. Lemme check what photos I have on file:

Mal and Ocean overseeing the laundry folding taking place on my bed.

Will that suffice for the month?

Caturday for the 4th of July!

Who wants pics!

Tehya the Pretty Kitty!

Page the Silly Kitty

Ocean the Wiggle Cat!