The Great Outdoors

Cat leashes are great value: for just 9.99 you get a zen lesson and a course in philosophy. Because you don't walk a cat, the cat walks you, and nothing will make you question your life and existence like standing around waiting for a small ball of fur to decide if you're allowed to take two steps forward or not. Then two steps backward a few minutes later.

First off: Batman has an easier time getting the Joker into a straightjacket than I do getting Neutrino into his harness. He fights literally tooth and nail and after another three harnessings, I'll either have bulletproof skin or be typing these blogs with my toes. He twists and spins like an three fighting snakes in a cat suit, and if you see the harness on backwards in the images below please understand: I put it on right to begin with, and didn't have enough hands left to reset it.

Once safely ensnared Neutrino channels the spirit of the sulking four year old and simply refuses to move. This leads to hilarious stop-starting when he gets the chance to fulfil his life's dream of dashing out the door the instant it's open, then remembering he's refusing to move again.

In the great outdoors our unstoppable cat, master of all he surveys and Stranger To Fear, suddenly acts like a lone soldier stranded behind enemy lines with only a tube of toothpaste. He drops to the ground like he just heard four atomic bombs - even when walking he keeps lower than a limbo-dancing earthworm sneaking up on an early bird in a machine gun nest.

Neutrino's strategy of finding the corner of the entire outside world and hiding in it

You can't tell from the photo, but he's posed like someone watching fourteen invading airforces flying over a minefield

He advances along the edges of everything. Imagine James Bond sneaking up on a secret base of Tom Clancy characters and you'll have the idea, slinking from corner to cover with occasional pauses to check for enemy agents.

When we adopted him we were told he was a new kitten, but I'm starting to think that was a cover story for a KGB defector. There are people in witness protection hiding from the mafia less fearful than this cat.

But then: Enemies!

Multiple contacts inbound!

Note how the grey cat has cunningly camoflagued himself while seizing the high ground

There are two domestic cats owned by someone on the ground floor. They're the softest, fluffiest, most placid cats you've ever seen, popular and purring with everyone who walks by, so of course Neutrino somehow triggers their combat mode at first sight from five meters away.

They all started mooching towards the bush, which I couldn't let happen:

I replanted Neutrino in the open green space - which apparently gave him an overwhelming flanking advantage against two older cats twice his size, as they retreated!

We'll get you next time, Neutrino. NEXT TIIIIIIME!

(Excuse the blurriness, but they ran away SO FAST this is the only shot I could get)

Victory!

Cat Charging

When most people leave cats unattended their only worries are water and food. If it's an outdoor cat it'll take off on it's own business (that they're simply happier not knowing), if it's indoor it'll investigate every corner for the four thousandth time in between demonstrating where the word "catnap" comes from. We aren't most people. Every time Neutrino's unattended, this is what's happening:

He's charging up, and woe betide the careless couple who arrives home tired to a fully energized Neutrino (that phrase might sound like hardcore particle physics, but subatomic fermions rarely have so many teeth and claws). The risk of an outright cat-splosion if he's left to power up too long is averted by his unique "discharge mechanism", where he "runs around the room" and "tears the absolute shit out of every single item he can." His victims so far include rolls of tissue paper/confetti (that's before/after), clothing, a full wicker basket, much of X's self-beautification gear, and on one occasion one of the wooden supports of the bed.

Trying to sleep with an unleashed energized Neutrino in the room? If I ever manage it, I'm going to call up that little crippled girl who climbed Everest without oxygen and say "You had it damn easy!" He's a hyperkinetic pinball, except an utterly random metal sphere bouncing around the bedroom would be better - by random chance alone it wouldn't hit us so often. You know how "stomach" and "trampoline" don't sound anything alike? Neutrino took the precaution of not knowing English, allowing him to make this mistake up to three times a minute. It also seems that I'm quite tasty - alas, not in the seventies female teen sense of sexually attractive, but the actual literal "it is pleasant to try to eat."

This results in Neutrino being sent to Ze Box: his travel carry cage. It's comfortable, it's roomy, and most importantly utterly escape-proof (unless I'm so incoherently tired I fail to close it, which has happened). Technically we're still using it for travel since we're making the very important trip to "Not dying of sleep deprivation and bite marks." As a pet owner it's important to make everything an enjoyable experience instead of a chore (otherwise you end up resenting the animal), so venever dissiplene ist rekvired, Ein adotp zee tones uff a Vorld Var movie prizon gard! Ve shall see how you feel after time in Ze Box, ya?

(Note: if Neutrino ever does learn enough English to tell stomach from trampoline, his second question will be "What's a Schweinehund Tommy?")

It's just a good thing we had him neutered. If we hadn't, by now the US Military and Al Queda would be putting aside their differences to end his unstoppable rampage through the northern hemisphere.

Not a fan

I wouldn't wish to imply that Neutrino believes in censorship, but since this blog went up he's started trying to disconnect my internet

and when that failed, he starting blocking my writing altogether

So if this blog stops updating, you know what happened.

Neuter-ino

Neutrino just got back from laser-surgery neutering, and just to thwart any hope we had of calmer cat days he immediately knocked over the bins, a large fan, destroyed part of a basket and bit me. He's in full turbo "dog mode", his special event where he cranks all actions up to 150% and pants like a golden retriever after fetching every stick in a burning forest.

We don't know if this is the last flush of testosterone leaving his system or proof that laser beams and drugs only make him stronger. We're hoping the former, but if it's the later we'll just dose him with some stuff from X*'s lab and sell him to the military.

*X = My wife. You already know her name if you're meant to.

The de-ballification cost three hundred and seventy dollars, meaning that gram-for-gram my cat's testicles are more expensive than truffles (though probably not as tasty).

Cool Cat vs Cooler Metal

The terrible, terrible Rowan Atkinson vehicle Johnny English* had a good tagline:

*Terrible because it's Rowan in Mr Bean mode instead of Blackadder mode.

That's Neutrino. He spends his entire life in a flat filled with things that are either twenty times his size, made of solid metal, or both, and he has no conception of the idea of losing a fight. When we hold him helplessly in the air at arms length, as far as he's concerned he has us right where he wants us. Hell, he's just beating up the air until we come back into range.

This inability to process anything that's not his will leads to some odd behaviour. He tries to jump into the fridge every single time I close it, and rather than the usual scoop-hurl-and-close I thought I'd teach him that perhaps jumping into closing metal doors was a bad idea.

(Those of you with cats are already laughing at my use of the word "teach", but I continue.)

Instead of diving in to save him I gently closed the door until it was holding him firmly in place. He wiggled. He struggled. He yowled. He did all three and, his options exhausted, proceeded to repeat these options in random combinations for a while before going still.

Figuring he'd learned that crushing metallic doors fifty times bigger than him were an incom-cat-ible location I opened it a crack to let him out - and he dove further in! In his mind, being held helpless for two minutes in steel jaws of moderately chilled deathgrip was all part of his cunning plan. His scheme was to outwit an immovable object by allowed it to immove him for as long as it wanted, and at no point does it, can it, occur to him that he's come second place in a competition of two.

That's our cat.

Another Cat Blog

Six months ago we got this guy


and I swore I would never become one of those crazy cat people telling strangers about their pet online. Welcome to the blog, you can see how well that worked out. It's not the first time I've done something stupid because of a cute little thing, but at least now that I'm married it'll probably be the last. Or if I do do it again, it'll be significantly more serious. In my further defense I'm actually a writer so this counts as practice. And in my ultimate "leave no evidence" defense I'm not linking to this blog, and only telling committed cat-lovers who are too far gone to mock me about it.

He's called Neutrino, and here's what he looks like now:



His favorite things are being fed, looking like an insane kung fu master while jumping for flies, and making me look like a suicidal OCD sufferer with thousands of small, parallel sets of scratches on my arms. This blog will be our story.