Tag Archives: Tuxie

Unhappiness

Posted on by

No cute picture this week.

Sorry, I’m not feeling the toe bean love. Or the sleeping cat, cat in a small space, or, indeed, any other cuteness.

A family of coyotes–mother and four or five pups–has moved into the neighborhood, and is hanging around the area outside our fence.

All the cats have gone into hiding. Hell, even the damn Trash Pandas have made themselves scarce.

We’re doing our best to annoy the coyotes into leaving, making loud noises and throwing pine cones when we see them. And we’ve moved the Backyard Bowl to a somewhat more protected location. The felines sneak out when things are quiet, grab some food, and vanish back into hiding again.

We saw MM late Wednesday night.

Tuxie hasn’t been seen in more than a week. This is not good.

We’re clinging to the hope that someone else saw his charm and charisma, and has given him the indoor home he’s been angling for. It could be. We know he’s been visiting more people than us, and the last time we saw him was a couple of days before the first reports of coyote sightings.

But it’s hard to maintain optimism, especially knowing he’s got a microchip registered to us. Surely if someone had adopted him, they’d have taken him to the vet for a checkup, right?

Or maybe someone spotted the coyote and gave Tuxie some temporary shelter. That could be too.

And there are still other cats around. We’ve caught glimpses of a black cat from across the street and an unknown black and white critter.

But they’re not our buddy Tuxie.

So, no pictures today. Maybe next week.

Tuxie Beans

Posted on by

Tuxie has been very friendly of late, sometimes preferring cuddles to food. And he’s developed a taste for a tummy skritch–a taste he shares with Rufus, by the way.

11-1

Pardon the blurriness. Even when he’s getting the attention he wants, he’s still rather wiggly.

But check out those handsome, two-toned pink and black toe beans.

Odd Couple

Posted on by

Tuxie and MM have, for the most part, arrived at a workable arrangement. There’s always some jockeying for position when the food bowls go down, but after a minute or so, they settle down to the serious business of eating.
04-1

To be quite honest, we’ve arrived at the point where they spend more time shoving each other aside to get petted before they eat.
04-2

It’s a bit awkward, but quite endearingly cute.

Adaptation

Posted on by

As I’ve mentioned, it has been cooling off around here lately. Not to the ridiculous extremes everywhere else in the country, but enough to be noticeable.

Tuxie and MM have been evaluating different approaches to maximizing sunlight acquisition and retention.

19-1

Sharing body heat, in other words. MM has decided that Tuxie makes a darn good hot water bottle.

Though some positions work better than others.

19-2

We’re pretty sure she wound up with a stiff neck after trying to sleep this way.

But it’s nice to see how nature adapts to changing conditions.

Sidewalk Supervisor

Posted on by

We’re well into an ongoing project to clean out the garage because, well, reasons. It’s going well, and we’re finding some amazing stuff. Things we’d totally forgotten we owned or have been saying “where the heck did we put…” about.

To give us room to work, we’ve been moving the car out and leaving the door open. Which means we get some curious looks from the neighbors.

And an occasional supervisor.
22-1

Tuxie seems very interested in the process, no matter how often we point out that the garage is not and will not be his turf.

He’s not impressed with that argument.
22-2

His attitude seems to be “If I can see it, I ownz it.”

We’re bribing him with extra krunchiez to leave–we don’t want him settling down in a box and getting trapped, after all–and so far it’s working.

So far.

A Leg and a Piece of Tail

Posted on by

Continuing our irregular series of posts featuring feline body parts left behind…

Watanuki is still the leader in this category, but Tuxie can do a rather respectable job of it, too. The other day I spotted him just outside the fence. Well, except for his tail and one leg.
08-1

I was fairly sure something had distracted him as he was leaving. It took a couple of minutes, but eventually the distraction got far enough from the fence for me to see it.
08-2

One lonely turkey. Which is fairly unusual, actually. When not going about as a flock, they most often travel in pairs or pairs of pairs*.

* I’d say “quartets,” but the Turkey Trot doesn’t lend itself to arrangements for four.

I’ll admit I still don’t understand the relationships among our various neighbors. I’d have expected wary detente or restrained hunger between feline and foul, but both of them seemed no more than casually alert. I’ve seen MM and Tuxie show more hunger at the sight of deer, which they would have even less chance of bringing down. On the other hand, the deer seem more afraid of the turkeys than they do of humans.

Politics make strange bedfellows, indeed. And when the politics are inter-species, there’s no telling who’s going to wind up in your bed.  Or which body parts the negotiations will cost you.

Movin’ On

Posted on by

Our catio guest–see last week’s post–has departed, more or less on schedule.

I say “more or less” because we decided to give him a couple of extra days in the resort. It wasn’t that big a deal. Tuxie was an easy guest, unlike MM when she had her surgery. Not quite as mellow as GT/Rufus, perhaps, but then, nobody is.

The weather was hot after his operation. A couple of days toward the beginning of the week set or came close to setting high temperature records.

Didn’t faze Tuxie a bit. He spent most of the days sprawled on the cool foam pads.
05-1

He was much more active after dark.
05-2

Hang on, let me give you a closer look.
05-3

I think he was meditating, though I wouldn’t swear to that.

By the way, note the odd position of his left hind leg. That’s not a side effect of the surgery. He’s sat like that for years. It seems to be a neighborhood thing; we’ve seen Rufus and MM sitting with a similarly-extended leg as well.

MM couldn’t wait to leave. Tuxie was in rather less of a hurry. He strolled out of the catio and buried his nose in the bowl of food we had put out for him. When he finished eating, he moseyed his way down the desk stairs, sauntered across the yard, and ambled off on his rounds.

Nor has he been unsettled at dinner time.
05-4

MM is always in a hurry to make sure I fill the bowls. Tuxie figures I’ll get it done eventually, and there will be plenty of time for him to get on his feet–and he’s right.

Another Guest

Posted on by

We have a catio guest!
28-1

Involuntary and hopefully of strictly limited duration, I hasten to add.

Way, way back last July, when Rufus–called “GT” at the time–moved into our garage for what we expected would be a short visit, I said “Once everything settles down and they [Fix Our Ferals] reopen, Tuxie will be paying them a visit.”

“Settles down.” It is to laugh. But it has gotten a little quieter around here, and FOF is reopening, so…

Tuxie’s appointment is Sunday morning. We wanted to make sure he didn’t miss it, so we snagged him Tuesday afternoon and moved him into quarters on the deck.

I suggested he think of the time not as pre- and post-op, but as an extended vacation. He doesn’t seem convinced.

He spends most of his time lounging around and complaining.
28-2
Mind you, that’s basically how he spends every day. And to be fair, I should note that the previous photo shows him mid-yawn, not mid-yowl.

Tuxie is a bit skinnier than we’d like, but two meals a day should help with that.

And we really, really hope that he’s not FIV-positive, because that would really give us a difficult decision to make. Realistically, the Rufus solution is not on the table. Of course, it wasn’t on the table last August either.

But be that as it may, at least Tuxie will get to spend a week or so in a luxurious retreat with catered meals and plenty of attention.

He doesn’t seem too unhappy about that.
28-3

Flap

Posted on by

Whenever Maggie fills the bird feeders (affectionately known as the Cat Entertainment Devices), we get swarms of the feathered noisemakers.

I’m not a bird person, so I only recognize three types:
10-1

Jays

10-2

Doves
10-3

Little Twitter Birds

Life is even simpler for Sachiko.
10-4
She calls them all “ek-ek-ek-ek [tail swish]”. As best I can tell–and why doesn’t Google Translate handle Cat/English?–that means “Lemme outta here, Daddy! I’ll moidelize da bums!”  Approximately.

You might think that MM and Tuxie would spend most of their time in the yard, watching and drooling. You would be half right.
10-5

To be fair, MM does spend time keeping an eye on the avian activity.
10-6

It’s not a very aggressive eye, but it is an eye.
10-7

Note the orange little twitter bird at the silver feeder and the gray one at the red feeder, which is almost directly above MM’s head.

Based on our observations of MM’s interactions with the birds, we’re fairly sure that she, like me, has three names for them. About three-quarters of them are “Meh. Too much work.” Two-thirds of the remainder are “Missed it by that much.” And the remaining eight percent?

“See? I don’t need hoomins to feed me.”