Peevish Pen: SOTK 2024

Tanner’s State of the Kitties Report for 2024

I haven’t done any state of the kitties reports for a while, so I guess I’m about due. All of us cats are getting older. At eleven, I’m pretty much long in the tooth. Actually, I do have a long tooth. It is my upper right fang. See:

Chloe will vouch that I have a long fang:

One of my favorite things is taking a nap with the some of the other cats. Mommy’s bed is our favorite napping place. Our favorite time to nap in winter is the late afternoon when the setting sun comes through the window and warms up the pillows, but some of us nap any time we get a chance. In the picture below, I have the coveted pillow spot and I am waiting for the sun.

In this picture, Rufus has the sunny spot. I think he is getting solar recharged.

I don't nap all the time. Sometimes I work. Jim-Bob and I still go out to do cat-work every day that the weather is good. Sometimes we work together and sometimes we work separate. Here we are on rat patrol in the back yard.

We like to work in other places too, but sometimes we have distractions. Since late spring, Mountain Valley Pipeline construction resumed. It is now mostly—but not quite—finished. Noise and traffic from the MVP—including incessant beeping some days from the multitude of heavy earth-moving equipment—has been within a thousand feet of us for months and puts us well within the blast zone if the 42-inch pipe blows up when it’s turned on. It has disturbed a lot of Jim-Bob’s and my cat-work that we like to do in what used to be the horse pasture.

I sometimes work at night in the garage. Something that disturbed my night cat-work is that Mommy had new garage doors installed last summer. The old ones were falling apart, had holes in the bottom, and the door openers sometimes didn’t work. I miss those old doors because there was a hole in the bottom of one corner where a rat could get in, and sometimes I’d get the rat. I miss being able to do that.

I guess the biggest news this past year is that Cedrick, one of the full-time outdoor kitties, vanished mysteriously in mid-October. Skippy, the old ex-tomcat, who is probably Otis and Charotte's daddy, raised Cedrick as his kitty.

Now, I have never much liked Cedrick, so it didn’t matter much to me that he was gone, but Mommy was upset. I don’t think Skippy was very happy either.

After a few weeks, Mommy figured a coyote had got Cedrick and she said we would never see him again. Then, one afternoon in early December, Daddy came up from the shop and said he saw a black cat down there. Mommy got in the golf-cart and drove to the shop. It was Cedrick! She brought him back to the garage and fed him, and he ate and ate. He was real thin for a while, but he has gained back all his weight now. He never told any of us where he had been or why he left. I guess I’m glad Cedrick is back because Mommy and Skippy like him, but I still do not much like him and probably never will. Cedrick walks around like he owns the place.

Last spring we had a big turtle pass through our yard. It was a snapping turtle that travels from the pond across the road to another pond across another road. Momy and Daddy decided they'd help him pass through a little quicker before he snapped one of us. Daddy shoveled him into a big can and Mommy gave him a ride in the golf-cart to a place a lot closer to where the turtle was headed. Then Daddy dumped him out and the big turtle went on his way.