Month: April 2012

Plants, Pests, and Pets

The weather was nice over the weekend so I did a bit of work in my yard. Mainly I was pulling up plants that were growing in the gravel, but I did do some work on cleaning up the edges of one of the flower beds in an attempt to keep plants from escaping.

The plant that I spent the most time on was the lilac bush. I only know what it was because my neighbor was out taking care of her plants (as opposed to trying to weed them into submission like I am) while I was outside and she commented that this is the first year the lilac has bloomed:

Lilacs apparently only bloom on old growth and my bush isn’t all that old, so it’s been spreading out rather than blooming until now. Unfortunately the fact that it’s blooming now doesn’t mean it’s stopped spreading out. I pulled up a bunch of sprouts, including pulling up the root they sprouted from as close to the bush as I could, but even though I found several roots that hadn’t sprouted yet but were still growing outwards I’m sure I didn’t get them all. I need to catch my neighbor at some point and ask if she’d like me to remove the 4+ sprouts she’s got growing on her side of the fence. It looks like the fence is lined with paving stones buried vertically to block the lilac, but that’s apparently not enough.

Since it’s been nice outside (and warm enough inside that the cool breeze is appreciated) I’ve been opening the windows. Tonight I had a couple moths get in (there’s a tear in the window screen in the loft), and suddenly my desk became the most exciting place in the house as both my cats were running around frantically trying to jump from behind my monitors to catch the first one against the wall. I didn’t see if either cat actually hit it, but it landed on the windowsill within a minute and Talore caught and ate it. I might still have moth legs in the back of my desk from that.

When I saw the second moth fly in I turned off my desk lamp and turned on the lamp I use for reading on the other side of the room (because I really don’t need a cat to knock over a monitor or push anything off my desk). Unfortunately it kept landing on the ceiling above the lamp:

I ended up joining in the fun and helping by shooing it off the ceiling, and eventually Dash batted it out of the air. He was surprisingly gentle with it (just smeared dust off it’s wings on top of my book case, didn’t crush it). I guess he intended to play with it for a bit. Unfortunately he knocked it off the side of the book case and it fluttered through the loft railing. I didn’t see if it got away for good, but both cats ran downstairs and stayed there for a while. With how they lunged for it as it flew towards the railing I thought one of the cats was going to go through. Dash actually landed on top of Talore when he jumped off the bookcase, but neither cat paid any attention that that.

Dash has an appointment with the vet this week (yearly vaccines). I’ve had the cat carrier out for a while to make sure the cats were used to it, but until this weekend it was behind one side of my desk. This weekend I moved it to vacuum, but instead of just pushing it to one side I moved it across the room. Dash then spent a good portion of the rest of the weekend sleeping in it since he can see me at my computer desk from it where it is now:

Apparently as far as Dash is concerned it’s just a convenient box with the added bonus that I can’t really get him out of it except by holding it vertically with the door down and waiting till he steps out. Hopefully he’ll be that easy to get out at the vet, and I sure hope he’s as willing to go back into the crate after the vet visit since there’s no way he’s going to sit still and let me trim his claws beforehand.

Dual Cat Bath

I was petting Dash earlier in the week (a somewhat rare occurrence by his choice), and I discovered that he had a few large knots in his undercoat. They’re not obvious looking at him, but they’re big lumps when petting that part of his side. I tried a few times to work at them and brush them out, but even though Dash would start purring when I started he’d always get up within a few seconds and leave.

I didn’t really know what to do about it since he wouldn’t let me mess with it for long enough, but I’ve been meaning to give the cats a bath (so they don’t smell faintly of litter dust and hopefully to help my allergies by removing dander) and I thought that maybe that or the shampoo would help with the knot.

I had to start with Talore because I’m pretty sure that if I started giving Dash a bath Talore would be nowhere to be found when I finished with him. She wasn’t particularly thrilled about being put in the tub, and was somewhat less happy when the water started and I wouldn’t let her get away. I mostly got her shampooed (didn’t mess with her head), and when I had her rinsed and opened the sliding door to the tub she jumped out and tried to wait at the door to be freed. I tried to towel her off, but I don’t think it did much good. At least she wasn’t dripping when I let her out.

When I let Talore out I opened both doors to the bathroom. Talore fled out one, but Dash wandered in through the other to find out what had been happening. I’d planned to let the cats dry Talore off, but since he was there I shut the doors and threw Dash in the tub. Dash handled getting a shower about as well as Talore, except he’s got a long outer coat and after the first attempt at spraying him down I discovered that he was barely damp when I tried to shampoo him. I did manage to get him soaked because his claws had no traction on the tub, and by the time I’d finished spraying him down with warm water he had stopped trying to escape. I don’t know if he decided it wasn’t so bad or if he just figured it couldn’t get any worse. Dash was more willing to be toweled off, but I don’t think it did much for his undercoat.

Here are both cats drying Talore off. Dash didn’t seem too bothered by being damp but Talore worked at cleaning herself till she was pretty well dried off.

It turned out that the bath and shampoo did absolutely nothing for the knots in Dash’s fur, but he let me work out the smaller knot while I had him in the tub.

Since it’s been nice outside I sometimes open the windows. Both cats love sitting there where they can smell and hear the outdoors (and I’ve got a line of noseprints on one of my windows that indicate they spend time there with the window closed too). Ever since Dash tried to lunge at a bird that flew by I’ve made sure both cats have their collars on when the windows are open (there are window screens, but a determined cat would barely be slowed down).

Sunday was actually warm enough that I left the loft window open after dark (usually I shut it when the temperature inside starts dropping, but that didn’t happen till late), and this what happened when I relented and opened the blinds a bit:

I discovered shortly after that picture was taken that Talore had removed her collar. I never did figure out where she left it, but Monday afternoon I caught Dash carrying it around like a toy (probably just because it jingled a bit).