Kappa "Kami-cat" Kamina 23-Oct-2007 - 21-Feb-2021

Kami looking innocent

A cat of remarkable practical intelligence, especially where food was concerned -- "food in a can with the rip-off cap on top of what's left? Easy -- hoik the lid out and start scooping!", and a master of the art of holding things still with one paw, or even just a single toe, while licking them clean.

Kami foraging

The runt of the litter, he was always at the bottom of the heap at least around the food bowls, so that may have contributed to his readiness to forage for might-be-edibles (which long-term may have been his downfall) and to hunt -- I remember having to excuse myself from a phone meeting to take him and his pigeon outside. When he no longer had his sister keeping him down, he came into himself, being the one to inhale his own late evening treat of wet food (initially a ruse to get the cats inside and downstairs at the end of the day) and steal Pip's.

And then one evening he didn't come squealing as was his wont. A stay at the vets, a special diet, and he seemed to be on the mend -- once more squeaking for his evening treat, then in the morning happily climbing unassisted to his usual basking spot; but by Thursday evening he was off his food again. Friday morning, he was huddled miserable in a corner, so off again to the vets, where he declined, underlying cause not determined.

Yamako "Yoko" Yulan 23-Oct-2007 - 3-Nov-2020

Yoko on a fencepost, mid-August 2020

She was the cat who rarely did anything to make me take photographs of her by herself, and then mostly by being the one who went out first in the morning to find somewhere sunny to sleep, so was rarely being at all dignified at the time. She was also the cat who put a halt to staying-on-the-bed privileges, on account of getting up in the small hours and wandering about wailing, and the one who ended demand feeding, by ballooning up, and thus meaning us having to strictly weigh all the cats' food.

Early September, she suddenly lost weight, and the vet diagnosed a lymphoma; so then it was a case of nursing her through the last weeks, where she got totally pampered, offered all sorts of treat-food (with plenty of leavings for the others to hoover up), and getting stay-on-the-bed privilege, as she would now just curl up and sleep through the night. On Monday, she was still happily wandering around, even going out to drink rainwater from plant saucers and then bask in the sun in the greenhouse; Tuesday, she had no appetite, and when she crawled off the bed, fell and just lay there, so it was, alas, time to say goodbye.

In those last weeks, it was hard to remember that this elegant, if scrawny, cat who could just sit hunched up on my forearm had been quite the great chubby lump in her younger days

Flora

Elegant little lady

Gone at the age of just 14 months.

She had been out and roaming for much of the spring, home only for meals and bed-time, so I didn't find occasion for cute cat pictures of her, unlike her tree-climbing brother. Only anecdotes, like the time just a week or so ago when the local nuisance muntjac was wandering down the close, and then headed down one of the driveways -- then a little black scrap that had been watching scampered in apparent pursuit. And memories of her leaping up and sprawling on my lap, just a little featherweight who shed handfuls of fur when I combed her.

Sunday, she didn't turn up for supper, but did join the feeding frenzy for the bribe of wet food to come in for the night. Monday, she was not the only one who didn't get out of their basket when I went out early to work, but was looking a bit peaky. When I came home she had found somewhere to hide where I couldn't see her, so I feared for the worse. Again, she emerged late evening, to use the litter tray, but this time showed little interest in food, and was clearly unsteady on her feet.

So, off to the vets, with a fever and dehydration; and it turned out over the last couple of months, she had started to lose weight. Being such a small and fluffy cat compared with the others, and having a healthy appetite but without begging for more, it hadn't been obvious until just a few days ago. The blood tests showed that her white cell count was low, and after she had been relaxed with pain relief, they found a lump in her abdomen. She responded a bit to to rehydration, but her condition deteriorated over night.

Jemima

Basking in October sunshine

At her annual check-up in October, our old cat Jemima had lost weight over the year; not too surprising for a cat in her teens -- so when she pestered for more food, I was happy to indulge her, and let her scavenge our left-overs as well. Having never been a particularly sociable cat, she would at last come and purr aggressively at me for treats when I was busy in the kitchen -- and at the start of last month, when I was feeling unwell, and had made baked potato with butter and cheese as an emollient meal for a dodgy tummy, she even climbed on the bed and tried to steal my dinner from the plate.

Then on Boxing Day, I found her collapsed by the living room radiator, and wasn't sure if she'd make it through the night. But in the morning she had recovered enough to wobble out to the pond for a drink, and eat a little, so when a stop-over at the vets for rehydration had seemed to restore her equilibrium, and they couldn't find anything obvious like kidney or thyroid, so we were given steroids for her to take, and a bag of kibble for delicate stomachs, which she appreciated greatly.

Ten days of that later, she was perking up, and gaining weight, and the vet was pleased with her progress. Then she started to get absent-minded in the middle of her meals and on Sunday morning, after the normal morning care call for my wife, I went downstairs to get everyone breakfast -- and she was nowhere to be found. At that point I thought she had decided it was her time, and had gone out to find somewhere to curl up in, out of the way.

Then Monday morning, she was there in the living room, standing by the radiator, before going to curl up in her basket. By the end of the evening, she was in an uncomfortable looking twisted pose, trying to groom herself, and not making a good job of it. So this morning I called the vets, and took her in. I'm not sure how much ahead of nature the intervention came, but it would have eased her passage.

A few years ago

She outlasted her brother by a decade, but was never the people cat he was. The only times I ever could touch her were on the vet's examination table, or if, in later years, she was seriously fast asleep, and then would merely tolerate being stroked or brushed. Still, she was a mighty hunter, taking squirrels in her youth and pigeons until just a few years ago.

Miscellany

Too many distractions and too much to do at work to blog much at the moment, let alone explore recondite bits of software, alas.

Strong winds last week -- though not as strong as 25 years earlier -- blew down the second-flush plums, most of which were perfectly ripe and very tasty.

It was also Jemima's annual trip to the vet -- for which she prepared by catching and eating a pigeon. I'd certainly put the fact that she weighed ~100g more than a year ago onto having a tummy full.

And though it ended up with me lucking out on Friday afternoon on the supposed 20% chance of rain (according to the Met Office forecast that morning), I cycled to the office every relevant day last week, as well as out to dinner on Wednesday evening, and managing 260 miles so far this month, putting all my distance goals in reach by the end of the month, not the end of the year.

The prodigal returns

Yoko, our female Tonkinese, managed a disappearing act on Sunday; and was not sitting waiting crossly to be let in either that evening or the next morning. The lack of corpses by the roadside gave hope, but there was no response to leafleting the neighbours.

Then today, she reappeared, fast asleep on an armchair, not even announcing her return with her usual wailing.

Spring has sprung

After a foggy start, yesterday was bright and mild; a perfect day for spring to open. Let us hope that the month does not exit in too leonine a fashion.

All winter, when the cats have complained about being kept on strictly measured rations, as the vet says they could do to shed a few ounces, I've told them to go and catch something if they want more to eat.

So yesterday, they celebrated spring by leaving a pile of entrails on the kitchen floor, as token that one at least had found a reasonably sized rodent to supplement the kibble.

Caught in the Act -- Again!

This evening, after I'd made sure that the cat-flap was set to inbound-only, I heard the door swinging, and thought to myself "but all the cats who know how to use it are in, unless this is a visitor" -- but there was no sound of challenge from the cats who had just a little while before been at their feeding station nearby.

So, I wander into the lobby, just in time to see the hindquarters of a cat exiting through the 'In' door, clearly having hooked it open by the rubber rim and stuck a nose under.

Some cats are too clever for their own good!

Caught in the act!

For a while now, I've had my suspicions as to who was responsible for the level of food in an open tin going down. Now I have the suspect red-handed --

"Call me Arthur"

At least that's not as bad as bringing a pigeon in through the cat-flap, which is what I came home to today -- a flurry of feathers and a bemused looking half-plucked bird standing in the middle of the living room floor, and needing shooing out,

The Moon in Winter

This morning at 07:13, about 35 minutes before sunrise, the sky was pale in the east with the approaching dawn -- and when I went downstairs, the just-past-full moon was casting shadows in the dining room.

The cats all agreed that this was good for their crepuscular activites.

Drama

The rascal

Kamina, the male Tonkinese of our collection, has caused us a little bit of an upset these last few days. He was around the garden Thursday evening while I was weeding and watering the greenhouse, but I lost track of him as it started to go dark. Still, no worries -- he knows how to use the cat-flap...

Yoko was wailing in the morning, and was there all alone. Her brother hadn't come in (and Jemima is never going to let herself be shown how to use the flap).

No sign of pathetic little corpses on a quick scoot round the neighbourhood...

Still nothing this morning, which started to give hope that he hadn't been run over (the bodies usually get found sooner).

At lunchtime, take a little note to put up at the village shop -- to be told that someone has just come in having found a cat.

A quick phone call later -- and it is him; at the other end of the village, about half a mile away, found tangled up in a hedge (which he had had to be cut out of) -- I guess something must have chased him and he'd taken refuge that was too good.

So, a little bit scrawnier from the experience, he's on a rigorous regimen of eating (canned rather than kibble, as a treat) and sleeping (except when being fussed by the guys who came to service the hoists). And once more there's be a cat who will eat our scraps -- the others just ignored some ham rinds I put down for them as a treat.

Miscellany

Latest gas bill - showing we used 10% less gas than the same quarter last year. While that winter wasn't so mild, it was not as cold as this; so the insulation is proving itself already.

Passed the 30303 mile mark just after leaving the car park heading back to the office after gym. [30405 at home Thursday evening.]

While not so keen on it as her brother is, Yoko seems to have mastered the cat flap now.

Crisp and clear

The weekend has been clear, sunny or moonlit by turns, and very cold; the days very agreeable in the level of sunshine. The cats agree, by going out to sit on the picnic table and bask.

The Tonks are showing that they have pedigrees, by coming in to use the litter tray at intervals -- Kami being an accomplished master of the one-way catflap now.

It was funny to watch them when going out to find something to tastier to drink than tapwater licking at the film of meltwater on the ice in the various containers on the patio.

Miscellany

Thursday morning just gone, stumbling downstairs in the dark at twenty to seven, to see the cats sitting at the patio doors, looking out, with the just-past-full moonlight streaming in.

A* in Scala -- would be a fairly mechanical translation of the F# version with probably more explicit type declarations. The F# inference of a numeric type for operator < and + fails, so those operations on generic type B have to be pulled into a Graph[A,B] trait.

A few apples still left on the Bramley, and a lot on the Charles Ross. And this lunchtime, a tortoiseshell butterfly and a fallen leaf lying side by side on the picnic table, looking almost the same at first glance.

Rain

Humidity gathered all weekend. Today it was very sticky indoors, but quite pleasant when cycling (getting some sort of air movement). Went for a long spin, trying not to get caught up in the stream of London-to-Cambridge riders.

Later this afternoon, I spent a while staining the bits a cheap and cheerful pine book-case from Homebase, dripping sweat copiously in the still air in the garden. Putting the bits in the greenhouse so they could bake dry was like stepping into a sauna.

Meanwhile the cats were just lying around half-melted on the patio, watching me in a bemused sort of way.

Fell exhausted onto bed a bit before 18:00, in time to catch a weather forecast for heavy showers. Within minutes, the heavens opened, absolutely hammering down, putting about an inch of water in a tray I'd left on the patio. It eased off to merely heavy rain after about 15 minutes, but kept on going until dark.

Frogs

As was inevitable, the tonks have refused to be indoor cats -- it started some weeks ago when Yoko found her way out through the window that was being used for hanging out the tumble-drier vent pipe; and as the warmer weather has encouraged having windows and patio doors open, we bowed to the inevitable.

They have now discovered frogs, as fun squeaky toys.

One got brought in just, and by the time I had managed to get both cats shut upstairs away from it, the stupid thing had vanished. Well, either it made its getaway, or the cats will find it again...

Later -- it emerged from wherever it had concealed itself, hopping a bit askew, but very lively, and is now back in the pond for the moment.

House & Garden

The kittens are growing noticeably, day by day, and have integrated into the household. Jemima will share her igloo-basket with Yoko, now, rather than flee in terror from this home invasion, and they will all play musical dishes happily at meal times.

Reaching an accomodation

Yoko is also getting a bit podgy -- Kamina had a bit of a runny tummy, and though he soon got over that, he is still smaller than his sister.

Both will use me as a warm place to sleep if I go for a nap, with Yoko even crawling into by dressing gown sleeve while I'm wearing it; while Kamina will just demand that I pick him up and fuss him.

In the garden, the snowdrops are just about finished, but the irises and croci are out, while the forsythia is just starting to burst its buds; and in town today, the early daffs on Parker's Piece were out.

Settling in nicely

Kamina discovers the coat-stand

Yoko is less certain

With friends coming to see the new arrivals over the weekend, Kamina has been fairly shameless, and he has certainly latched on to me (literally at times). Yoko is being less forthcoming, though she has come to sit on my lap if Kami is already there. She is very attached to her brother and will wail at times if she can't see him (perhaps because he's gone to refuel).

Jemima is being scandalised. Kittens have violated the sanctity of her basket, one of them (Yoko) just ignores her, and the other beats her in staring matches (except when distracted by "Ooh! Shiny!). She spent most of the weekend outside in protest. Have to see how well she integrates when shut in together.

What a difference a day makes

This morning I had to scoop the kittens out of their little corner and take them to breakfast. By the evening, they were confidant enough to climb on me while I was sitting the the armchair, and then go to sleep. And stay there even when I had to get up.

Yoko has even explored a bit upstairs, wailing piteously all the time as she did so.

Jemima is just being outraged at this home invasion, and if she plucks up the courage to come in, she moves around the place like it was hostile territory.

Yoko and Kamina in a chair

New Arrivals

Two new Tonkinese kittens, with an unusually low level of incest in their pedigrees. Still in the hiding in corners stage.

Yoko (top) and Kamina