Top Cat

NOOKIE: June 1 1997 - January 5, 2009

2009-01-06T21:49:00.020+08:00

My cat, Nookie passed away peacefully at 4pm on January 5, 2009.

He was taken seriously ill on New Year's Day, while I was at work. His caregiver Auntie S, said he had gone off his food and wasn't drinking, and worse, he was struggling to breathe.

Alarm bells went off in me. Respiratory distress should never be taken lightly. I asked Auntie S to send him immediately to A&E. It was a public holiday, so some poor vet at the Animal Recovery Centre in Balestier Road had to be summoned back to work.

That evening, 500 ml of fluid was drawn out from his lungs - quite a lot for a creature the size of a cat. He was to spend the next four days in the ICU, and be put through a battery of tests and ultrasound scans to find out what was wrong with him.

Quite a lot, it turned out. The vet said she was reasonably sure his problems started with an enlarged heart, around which fluid had also collected. His liver was also enlarged, and there was a stone in one of his kidneys. On top of it all, he was anaemic.

The prognosis was poor, said the vet, and that Nookie had, at the very most, a month or two left to live. Treatment would be palliative, that is, aimed only at relieving his discomfort. It would involve drawing fluids regularly from his flooded lungs to help him breathe more easily; it may also - with my consent - include the very risky procedure to drain the fluids from around his heart.

The vet suspected Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP), which remains incurable to this day. It can't even be diagnosed conclusively. Incurable, it hits either kittens or old cats with compromised immune systems. (Nookie qualifies as an old cat.) It presents vague symptoms that could pass off for a mere cold. Cats with it accumulate fluids around the heart or lungs or stomach, have dull coats and are generally lethargic.

If it wasn't FIP, it could be a diaphragmatic hernia, in which a part of the stomach or bowel intrudes into or punctures the diaphragm, hence the breathing difficulties. Such hernias result from falls, but since he is so old and largely not very active, a fall wouldn't have been the likely cause. However, such hernias can also happen in cats born with a weakness in their diaphragm, the ill effects of which don't show up till they are old.

FIP or hernia or whatever, it all doesn't matter now.

Practically every one of Nookie's major organs was not working and not likely to start up again. All I was concerned about when he was in hospital was that he not be in fear, in pain or feeling discomfort.

On hindsight, I'm glad that I made the call to send him for emergency care on Jan 1 (entailing extra holiday charges). Auntie S had said she would wait till the next day to see a vet during regular hours. At least, after the fluid was out, he could breathe better.

On Jan 3, it hit me really hard that I would have to make The Call that most pet owners dread - to decide whether their good friend lives on for further treatment or is "let go". The choice was between keeping Nookie in ICU for the last month (or two) of his life, facing fluid extractions every so often, and releasing him from this suffering.

I chose the second, wrenching though it was. It hit me that this would be it, Nookie would be no more. It also hit me that it was going to fall to me and nobody else to decide when he died. He himself had no say.

But it was painful watching him gasp for breath again, just two days after the lung tap. He wasn't eating or drinking, and had to be fed intravenously.(He did, however, sit up to greet me when I visited him every day from Jan 2 till the end.)

This is one cat who has never relished being in strange places or being seen by vets even for his annual checkup and shots, never mind being in a strange place AND sick to boot.

He was a creature of habit all right. I remember his being upset some years ago when I switched from working the night shift to regular hours. He moped around, slept a lot more than usual, but came around to my new routine after a while.

The renovations made to our home presented another example of his inability to accept change. Three months after the works were completed, he was still shredding our (new) furniture.

I have come across people who love their pets and would accept living in raggedy or even less-than-clean homes. But I have always been house-proud, and it dismayed me that my friend wasn't as enthusiastic about our new-and-improved home.

To top this off, it wasn't just between him and me. There was also my non-cat-person husband, who had by then, tolerated having Nookie around for NINE years. For a non-cat person, I can imagine, it would not have been pleasant having his fine fur flying all over, scratched furniture, those annoying brown marks he left in corners to mark his territory. Litter pan smells were also something else...

So, looking back now, I would say, next to choosing to put Nookie to sleep, choosing to board him out with Auntie S would rank right up there among the hard decisions I've had to take with this long-time friend of mine.

Before I boarded him out, there was a brief experiment with Soft Paws. These were rubber toe caps I ordered online, which had to be glued onto his front claws to minimise the damage to the furniture. (Declawing him was never an option. It is a cruel, disfiguring, painful and psychologically damaging operation.) Soft Paws didn't quite work. He kept pulling them off, or they fell off. At least, the wild colours Soft Paws came in provided some amusement for us humans, if not Nookie himself. (In this picture, you can just make out the green Christmas season ones on his front paws.)

I look back now on his years with us and remember the many times, on my days off, he would come sit by me on the sofa, unfailingly aligning his trunk with my leg, or lying in such a way that one part of his body had to be against me. He knew getting on the sofa was a matter of permission, and would sometimes sit primly at my feet, looking solemnly at me until I said "Nookie, up!".

He also knew the rules about not going into the bedrooms or jumping on the kitchen counter, though this didn't stop him from breaking them. It was just a "cat thing" to investigate the sights, sounds and smells from beyond the house. I would just shout "Nookie, NO!" and guilt would come over his mug as he leaped off the bedroom or kitchen window sill.

He had a couple of "escapes". With our balcony just one floor off the ground, he would spend a good part of his day with his feet on the balcony grilles, looking at the sparrows twittering in the garden. He would let out a series of excited clicks as his lips quivered, thrilled at the sight of live food.

I never figured he would take the leap. Then one day he did. I didn't see him jump, but it must be how he got out, because our front door is always shut. He was missing for a day and a night.

I thought I had lost him for good, until he signalled his return - via the front door, mind you - with a loud meow. I opened the door and he strolled in, slightly grubby from a night's worth of adventures, but behaving like nothing ever happened.

There was the "toe incident" of 2006, while he was already living with Auntie S. His right rear paw got caught between the slats of a double-decker bed and when he yanked to get it free, he left his small toe hanging by a shred of skin. That entailed a trip to the vet and emergency surgery, of course. It healed beautifully, and his gait was never affected.

He loved the scent of toothpaste, hated oranges. I couldn't persuade him to drink milk or lap up eggs for a beautiful coat, but he was happy enough to eat his Science Diet kibble - smelly to me - six days of the week.

Saturday mornings were his favourite, because that was "wet food" day. You know how detached cats normally are, but Nookie was a hopeless, dog-like fawning mass of tensed muscle come Saturday mornings. He would curl around my legs, trail me, look terribly appealing and meow urgently until he heard the divine sound of a can of tuna - mondo smelly to me - being opened.

He had those green eyes which would stare back at me sometimes and make me wonder what was going on in his head. Or maybe he was telling me he knew what was going on in mine.

Other times, he would creep me out staring at something in mid-air that only he, apparently, could see. You know what they say about cats being spiritual, or capable of seeing other-worldly beings...

He was a big guy. Used to his size, I used to wonder how come Singapore's strays were so scrawny. Of course, he was fat at some points - or, as a visiting plumber once said diplomatically, "muscular" - but after I put him on a lower-fat, "senior cats" version of Science Diet at age six, his waistline came back.

His face could have been described as prettily feminine. Many visitors thought he was a she. The vet's assistant, whose obvious love for animals enabled her to see past his scrawny frame a few days before his death, said he didn't look 11 at all. Some senior toms have that grizzled, "bearded" look or just looked plain old, but not Nookie.

I spent the last hour of his life sitting quietly with him, petting him and asking the good Lord to come take his spirit to a better place. He was hooked up to an IV, and sitting on a pan lined with surgical sheets. Despite his condition, he was still quite restless, trying to climb out of the pan. Each attempt exhausted him, so he would lay his head on my lap to rest for a while, his nostrils flaring rhythmically from his exertions.

Anyone coming into the clinic would have seen me with him and just taken me for a pet owner visiting her pet. Who would have thought that he was waiting for surgery on some canine to be done so his own life could be ended?

The vet came around, put a liquid painkiller into his IV with a syringe, followed by a second syringe of bright green fluid. "Goodbye, buddy," she said, chucking him under his chin. Then she put a syringe-ful of saline into his IV to "flush it in".

Nookie went into a crouch, even as I supported his head. He gave two little coughs and went still, and the light went out of his eyes.

Goodbye, Nookie. It was a good run. Thank you for having been there. You will be missed.

I'm getting handsome, says Auntie S

2008-11-14T21:23:00.003+08:00

She sent an SMS to my human today to say that I seem to be "out of diarrhoea mode" and looking better now.
She reckons that I've been unhappy or stressed about something, which brought on symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome.
I hope she's right.
My human is coming to see me again soon and I want to show her I'm on the mend.

Minxie

2008-10-14T13:29:00.003+08:00

This is the tabby belonging to my human's sister. She is Minx, or Minxie, as she is more often called. I think her former owners were moving to Hongkong and couldn't take her along, which is why she came to live with my human's sister. She is a little older and more mature than the other cat in the household, Tasha, who's a silver British shorthair tabby (or some sort of breed).
Minx is beautiful in her own way!

Probiotics and prebiotics

2008-09-26T22:51:00.002+08:00

I'm still having the squirts. It's been too long to lose so much fluids every day. Auntie S has put me on a regimen of probiotics and prebiotics because she thinks I may have some irritating bug in my digestive system.

But she told my human that she'll be taking me to the vet for a blood test to check on my blood sugar level also, in case it is diabetes.

I Googled probiotics and, near as I can tell, it's a sort of food supplement (not really a medicine) that puts good bugs in my digestive system to overcome what is making my system go "off".

PRObiotics instead of ANTIbiotics, get it?

Watch this space.

All is (still) not well

2008-09-05T22:24:00.003+08:00

My human came to visit me again and she and Auntie S were discussing my health, or rather, lack of health.

Auntie S reported to her that I seemed to be eating well, a little too well, actually, but wasn't putting on weight. She said that I have been having a spot of diarrhoea this week, but it was probably a cold coming on, nothing to do with the robust appetite plus no weight gain.

She is thinking DIABETES, not too rare a thing among an aging moggie like me.

I felt my human flinch as she ran a hand on my back. No doubt she was feeling my vertebrae all stick out through my fur. She was shocked, I know.

She whipped out her camera and took pictures of me and I could just read her thoughts: "I better just focus on his face, no long shots of his body because that would really give away his unkempt look."

Auntie S had wiped me down just before my human showed up, but it didn't hide the fact that I have become a cat that can't be bothered to groom.

She told my human she would send me for blood tests again to confirm or rule out diabetes.

Egad. Isn't that the illness where one has to have shots all the time? Maybe it's time for me to check out. This is a miserable existence.

I know my human stares at the pictures of me on the wall in her cubicle at work. I was a handsome boy some time in the past. All pure white (mainly), despite being bathed only once a year.

A clean bill of health

2008-06-24T16:54:00.002+08:00

I went for my second blood test after a couple of weeks on vitamins and all sorts of boosters and the doc has said my blood count is back to normal.

Of course, it's left my human stumped. She has been considering that I might be down with anything from feline leukemia to diabetes.

Auntie S is a lot more grounded. She put it down to the stress of the move from Punggol to Lim Chu Kang, and - old cat that I am, not too comfortable about Big Changes - I may have gone off my food and brought my level of resistence and general health down with my mood.

She has since moved me back to Lim Chu Kang. For those two weeks when I was on those vitamins (read "Illness Watch"), she had moved me back to Punggol for a bit.

Now I'm back at my new home in Lim Chu Kang. Days stretch ahead. I turn 11 this month.

Low blood cell count...

2008-05-22T12:36:00.001+08:00

That's what I have, the vet says.

It's pretty non-specific, and could point to an infection, inflammation, or an immune system disease. He says my kidney and liver functions are OK, though.

He has put me on a two-week regimen of Vitamin B and Vibravet, and has asked for me to go back to him after that, for another CBC (complete blood count) to see if anything is changed.

Modelling for my human

2008-05-15T21:20:00.005+08:00

As you can well tell, I've decided to start updating my blog again. The other thing is, my human came by to visit, and she had this new camera, which she wasted no time using, and insisting that I put these up.

Looks like she had some fun with photo editing software too.

It's been a while since I last made a posting, and quite a bit has happened. The biggest thing is that I've moved from Auntie S' Punggol house to Lim Chu Kang Lane 1, or rather, she moved me and my roomies here about two weeks ago. Talk of ulufied boondocks.

We are now in a new boarding kennel. My roomies and I are taking up four cubicles which are penned together as one area. It's more like a shed that we are housed under. Fans are overhead, but they aren't turned on and it's bloody hot these days.

Auntie S' other cats - those who don't have owners and who she's trying to re-home - are here also, but they are penned in different enclosures.

This is much further away from where my human lives, and if she visited me so rarely back when we were in Punggol, I daren't think about how often she'd visit now. I heard her tell Auntie S that it took her 45 minutes of driving along Singapore countryside to get here. Geez, when you remember that the island is that small, driving 45 minutes must be really, really far.

I distressed my human when she saw me. I heard her ask Auntie S how come Nookie has lost all interest in grooming himself, and that even when she used to bathe me only once a year (New Year's Eve), I was always lily white. And I have lost weight too, she noted.

Her face furrowed with worry, she whipped out a pack of tissues and started cleaning my eyes, ears and face. She asked for a brush and brushed me down. I felt a lot better and cleaner after that.

She had a discussion with Auntie S in my presence, and I heard them list the possible causes: Old age, shock and trauma from the move from Punggol, or (*gasp*!) ILLNESS.

Auntie S said a vet was coming by the kennel the next day and my human promptly asked her to get him to examine me, give me my shots and do whatever tests are necessary.

Knowing her, she's gonna go home and promptly Google everything about cats losing weight to cats not grooming themselves.

What can I say? I hate changes, that much is clear. And I really can't be bothered to clean myself much these days. My appetite for food and water are still OK, and my toilet is fine also.

How much is there to look forward to when one is quashed with some very mightily different "caternalities" in a confined space and given not much human conversation or playtime?

The days stretch interminably before me. Every day is the same. Human not likely to come by. If she knew this, she'll feel guilty all over again for dumping me here.

Things I have learned

2007-09-21T22:36:00.000+08:00

I've been silent for a while. Life goes on where I am. And I've had loads of time to think, in my old age, what I've learned along the way. Some are from people who have passed my way, some from the school of hard knocks. This list isn't exhaustive. (Yes, I'm plenty wise.)

* If you want things done your way, do it yourself.

* All good things must come to an end. (So if you have been gettting a good run, wait for the other shoe to drop.)

* Too many things to do, too little time. So prioritise. Be brutal. You can't be everything to everyone.

* If anything is going to have your name on it, it must be worth doing, and worth doing well. Otherwise, don't bother.

* Do something for someone. It gives a good feeling.

* Family is important. Don't argue.

* So are friends. And I'm not talking about those people make on Facebook or similar sites.

* Exercise is good for you.

* Getting off your butt is a whole different matter.

* People are generally good. Its their predisposition to sloth, greed, ... etc [Insert remaining five deadly sins here] that turns them bad.

* There's so much bad that when someone does something good, you realise how long it's been. Everyone then talks about faith in mankind restored. It's sad.

* Listen to everyone, even the humble. They too have stories that will tell you something.

* The Internet has bred people who expect info for free and who hide behind nicknames like mega cowards when they have views to express.

* Installation art is pretentious, self-indulgent crap.

* Just do it. (Nike really knows life.)

* It's a megatonne world. Don't have a milligram mind.

Laundry, the bane of you humans

2007-03-17T16:57:00.000+08:00

I watch with bemused pity at how a large part of humans' lives are tied down by laundry. Heard of the two certainties in life being death and taxes, right? My human adds a third item to that list: Make it laundry.

She just said this morning: How she wished clothes could walk by themselves into the washing machine, wash themselves, get themselves out of the machine and hang themselves out, and take themselves in when dry, and fold themselves. Then she also wants them to get ironed by themselves and walk back into the wardrobe, duly put on hangers.

Wait, why demand all clothes do that? Why hasn't someone come up with a viable way to have disposable clothes?? The only disposable clothing items one sees nowadays are paper panties or briefs, which are awful to wear. (You crinkle under your skirt.)

The only justification to wear them, one might say, would be while one is on holiday in some awful place where (a) baths and laundry are not possible or practical or (b) one doesn't want to have to bother washing undies after the holiday or both.

Wow, if one were to extend this idea of disposable clothing further ... humans would have a whole lot more free time! Couture clothing as we know it will perish! (No one is gonna pay $2,000 for a label and then throw it away.)

I have a fur coat I wear all year round. Unlike some humans, we furred ones do not pin our sense of self worth on our coats or how we look, or write column inches weighing the benefits of a crisp white shirt against a top in the oh-so-now metallic finish.

The majesty of cats

2007-02-17T16:04:00.000+08:00

My human took this pic of one of my roomies when she came to visit me this week.

Irony writ large

2007-01-25T23:41:00.000+08:00

It's been a strange week. A second institution of public character fell from grace, when the Commissioner of Charities revealed that half the funds raised went into paying the big, fat paycheck of its CEO, even as The Straits Times ran a huge feature on underpaid social workers, who, like the charities, serve those on whom Lady Luck/Lady Grace/Lady Comfort haven't smiled.

This year, it's Youth Challenge. Not too long ago (and the trial is still on-going), it was the National Kidney Foundation.

What's it with people who are supposed to be custodians of charities? Fine, not all are bad apples. But two cases in as many years? I wouldn't blame humans for having their faith in charities and their fund raising efforts shaken to the core.

They will think twice about donating now, because they can't be sure where their hard-earned - but willingly shared - earnings will end up. And people like my human, who used to help raise funds for NKF (by milking her fellow journalists!) will wonder why they bothered volunteering to help. My human quit collecting donations when the rumours about T. T. Durai started surfacing. Her colleagues were telling her that they didn't trust the man, making it simply too hard for her to continue.

On the other end of the scale, we've got society's bleeding hearts - the social workers who toil on in their backbreaking and emotionally draining careers for pitiful salaries.

Ask them why they do it - when they must have at least once looked askance at their former classmates or friends of the same age who are earning twice, three times as much - and they will say 'It's my calling'.

Sure, that sounds noble, very noble. But for the kind of helpful, comforting and healing work they do... they should be paid more, far more. And to think that many have degrees or special qualifications in social work too. They should be right up there with other professionals.

But think again, where are these social workers based? Answer: Usually in charities, or community organisations, who can ill afford to pay fat salaries.

... which is why it is infuriating when you have CEOs of charities who see fit to dip into the kitty to line their own pockets. It's been found that, in addition to his monthly paycheck, Vincent Lam of Youth Challenge has been getting gratuities every five years - gratuities calculated based on between 7 and 10 per cent of his total salary over the preceding five years!

Lord Almighty!! The outrage over this factoid is not going to be any less than the storm which greeted Mr Durai when news of his first-class plane travel and fat pay checks came to light.

Bleeding heart social workers, underpaid ... vs Slick charity CEOs who find ways to pay themselves. Oh yeah, to them, charity PAYS, and it starts - not at home - but right in the charity's coffers.

May they look into their hearts and be burned up by guilt all their lives.

Calling Singapore doctors...

2007-01-19T22:05:00.000+08:00

How much of your curriculum time in med school is given to teaching the softer side of the science of patient care, hmmm?

OK, let's back track a bit: Do you think that being sensitive to a patient's fears and insecurities can be taught at all? Or is it a function of how much of a human being you are?

I ask because I've seldom seen my human so angry. She had just come from her annual physical, upset with the way the doctor treated her. He was cold, impersonal, cursory and offered little by way of assurance, considering that it had been 10 years or more since her last physical. (The hypochondriac that she is, she was imagining she had all kinds of illnesses, waiting to be uncovered.)

Dr N was also plain insensitive and also criticised the judgement of my human's other doctors along the way, which is a shamefully unprofessional thing to do. He gets a F for bedside manner, in short.

Maybe he had personal problems. Or his favourite prata man didn't make his prata just the way he liked it that morning. Or maybe he was plain frustrated at being a GP, stuck in an endless cycle of examining executives day in, day out, when he really, really wanted to be a top-flight, big-bucks brain surgeon. But all these don't qualify as excuses to abuse patients.

I don't need to go into details here about Dr N and what went on during the consultation, but suffice to say, the chappie needs to re-read the code of ethics for doctors found on the Singapore Medical Council's website. (If you ask my human, she thinks he ought to have his bonus docked and to be given a warning letter, if not also fired.)

This calls to mind a letter that was written to The Straits Times Forum page not long ago, in which the writer told of the night his father died in A&E after being admitted with chest pains.

After the requisite life-saving measures had failed and time of death had been called, the doctor went out to the waiting room and announced baldly to the deceased's son: "Your father has flat-lined."

Flat-lined? FLAT-LINED?? Sure, if a doctor told me that, I'd know what he meant, but couldn't he have put it in a more humane way? It seemed to be lost on the doctor that although he had just lost a "patient", or just had a "case" die on him, someone out there had lost a Loved One. Surely the same news could be delivered in a more compassionate way?

The NUS med school must have a secret pod of alien eggs, hatching out these "physicians".

Anyway, my human was told that Dr N would be "counselled". She had asked the boss of the health-screening clinic whether Dr N would be ticked off, but the boss - a doctor himself - said he would get HR to "counsel" him, "because we are doctors first, not administrators".

Oh no, doctors don't deal with ticking off one of their own. Let the HR people do it.

To appease my human, this boss bought her a CAKE, and thanked her for her "feedback". He even admitted to my human that he believed her story because other patients have complained about Dr N before!

Well, does he intend to go all over Singapore delivering cake and doing crisis Patient Relations to cover for the doctor who consistently falls short of the requirements necessary to be one, and falls short even of the requirements to be a human being?

Get rid of the scumbag, I say.

A voice for Singapore's disabled

2006-12-22T21:43:00.000+08:00

Since I'm officially one toe short on one leg, I think I qualify as spokesman...

It made the news this year that the buses are going to become disabled/wheelchair friendly. They will have steps that will lower to road level so that wheelchair-bound commuters can get their wheels on board.

Well, big freakin' deal. Isn't it about time?? My human was in the US 20 years ago and saw such buses back there then. The disabled - be they on crutches, calipers, wheelchairs, whatever - were out and about. She even wondered idly whether the US had a higher incidence of disabilities.

There is no reason for any one country to have more disabled people than another, one would suppose - unless you are talking about Vietnam, where the current generation is still being born with twisted limbs, courtesy of the after effects of Agent Orange sprayed liberally to kill the country's forest to deny the Vietcong of hiding places... but that is another story.

Singapore has its fair share of people with disabilities, all right, but it's now clear that they have been cooped up at home all these past decades. Did they have a choice, when navigating the big outdoors meant coming up against curbs, flights of stairs and public transport that didn't welcome them?

The MRT system is 20 years old - but the stations were only recently retrofitted with lifts to take the disabled onto the platforms. Why wasn't it built to accommodate these people in the first place? They are members of our society too.

So much for being a first-world nation. Singapore only has the trappings of being one.

Toe update!

2006-12-09T19:22:00.000+08:00

I'm healing well. The fur is coming back on what looks like my "sockless" leg. I heard Auntie S telling my human last week that I'm "eating well" too, so things are peachy.

Or it could mean I'm getting even fatter - and setting myself up for more fat jokes. I still haven't gotten over the trauma of taking a little longer to come out of the anaesthetic after my toe amputation because the dope was stuck in my fat layers, saith the vet.

*Hrmph!*

It's the year-end and my human has just returned from her holiday. Maybe that's why she's been incommunicado. *&^%. Guess if I were still living under her roof, I'd have just returned from "holiday" as well - at the Pet Hotel. Yuck.

Littering: The schools' job to fix the problem??

2006-11-20T22:04:00.000+08:00

The Straits Times today reported that young humans here don't think it is a big deal that they are litterbugs. They give the excuse that the trash bins are too far away, and airily say that someone will come along and clean up after them anyway.

This fairly bothers me. What kind of upbringing have they had if they think that it's all right for them and everyone else to litter? Do they even stop to think what this place would be like if they all did as they pleased?

To top it off, the newspaper quoted some official as having said that a change to people's way of thinking was called for, and that the schools should find some way to do this.

Why, pray tell, is this the job of the schools? Where are this nation's parents if they aren't smacking their kids into picking up after themselves?

I seriously do think Singapore is bringing up a generation of spoilt brats who think there will always be someone who will clean up their messes. I guess they take their cue from their (lousy) parents who, just because they pay poor people who come here from foreign lands to be their maids, their precious darlings don't EVER have to learn to pick up after themselves.

Which radio station do you want?

2006-11-13T19:39:00.000+08:00

This is what my human keeps laughing about. She says I can receive radio signals with this. I find it SO not funny.

I'm an amputee!!

2006-11-13T18:52:00.000+08:00

Three days ago, I lost the last digit of my right rear leg to a vet's scalpel. I'm now a three-toed cat there.

It all began last Thursday. I got my paw wedged in between the slats on the top bunk of that double-decker bed where I normally hang out (to escape the fug from the litter trays at ground level).

I admit it: The usually cool me panicked, and yanked... and yanked. My efforts brought me blinding pain as the flesh on my last digit tore. But at least I was free.

I limped up to Aunties S and B, who look after me and my roomies. I meowed plaintively till they noticed the blood.

That moment, I started to regret sounding the alarm, for I was packed off to the vet.

I hate vets, their foul-smelling offices and what they do to moggies. I hate car rides. I yowled and spat all the way to Allpets & Aqualife Clinic in Jalan Kayu, more from fear and indignation than the pain itself.

The vet said my digit had to go. It was too badly torn to be stitched up.

Then a needle was stuck in me. A strange cloud descended over my senses in minutes. I felt peaceful and all at once, the pain and sounds and smells receded. I was put in a cage, from where I heard Auntie S calling my human. From my haze, I figured out she was telling my human what had happened, and asking for her permission to go ahead with the amputation.

Some blood tests were done - necessary because I'm an "old" cat, what the f***! - and I was left in the cage overnight. By then, I had calmed down somewhat.

I don't remember much of what happened during the operation at noon on Friday. All I know is that when I came around, my paw throbbed dully with some pain, and I had a satellite dish around my head.

Auntie S came to take me home, whereupon the vet told her that it had taken longer than expected for me to come out of being doped "because the anaesthetic tends to stick around a bit in his fat layers". Wha...at! Who's calling me F.A.T???

Anyway, I'm back at Auntie S' home. She's put me in a cage so I will be somewhat isolated from my roomies. I also have a tray covered with newspapers instead of litter to minimise chances of infection.

She has to flush my wound with saline twice a day and give me antibiotics for the next week or so. I hate taking pills, but the woman has A Way Of Persuading Me To Take Them Pills. I won't elaborate on that here. [Suffice to say, my human couldn't do it, but Auntie S... ah, the inimitable Auntie S!!]

My human came to see me today! I was so glad to see her. She whipped out her camera to take pictures of my paw, gulping a little at how it looked. (See picture.) It's not bandaged now, and the area was shaved for the op, so my bald dark red flesh, sporting some sutures was plain for her to see.

I can't see the thing myself, thanks to the satellite dish. I know she will go tell her friends that I can receive BBC radio and Class 95, just to give herself some comic relief - yeah, at my f****** expense.

Where do I go from here? Well, pretty much nowhere in the coming week, since my cage is all of one metre by a metre and a half. Frick! Auntie S told my human my fur will grow back in a month, and that she doesn't think my gait will be affected.

We'll see. So, are you sufficiently filled with pity now for this moggie? How about a little donation, huh, huh?

The inner artist in me

2006-11-02T14:50:00.000+08:00

I feel very powerful today. It's like I can do anything I want to, and do it well. Strangely though, the things I want to do are all "artistic".

I wanna go out there and buy a piano, but do more than take lessons. I could do that, of course, but you know what? I feel I can compose music... folk rock, maybe. I listen to Springsteen, Sting, Sheryl Crow... and if they can put their thoughts into music, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?

And then there's art. I want to paint, sculpt, whatever. I see the works of artists hanging on the walls of humans' homes and see pictures of art galleries. I believe I have that sensitivity, that boldness to experiment with colour. Why not?

And those interior decor magazines my human leaves lying around her place. She probably thinks I snooze all day. But I look into them. My, I think I could be an interior decorator too. I have *sniff* good taste.

Oh yeah, I think I design a whole new range of souvenirs for tourists to Singapore to bring home too. Have you seen the crap that passes off for mementos of one's visit to this island?? Dead scorpions stuck in bits of plastic - godawful paperweights better off used as murder weapons. And those horrible imitation gold orchids pretending to be Risis ones. And those stupid unfunny "Singapore is a fine city" T-shirts.

I. Feel. Powerfully. Creative. Today.

One slight problem: I don't have opposable thumbs. BAHHHAHHHAHHHAHHAH!!

Down with music thieves

2006-10-16T15:48:00.000+08:00

It's great that the police are cracking down on people who use peer-to-peer software to "share" music online.

Those who download illegal music contend that the practice builds community, they say.

Sure, it does. But it is also theft, pure and simple.

Netizens are now griping that the "good old days" of getting free music is gone. They talk of it like it's their right to get free music. They have never spared a thought to the musician or his team of tech people who'd had to put the album together, and need to earn a living. [OK, fine, some of these artistes are rich already, but that doesn't mean they are running charities either.]

If older humans thought nothing of going to a record store to buy CDs before - or LPs, or music cassettes or cartridges for the even older generation of humans - then why the hell should people expect music to come free to them now?

You want the music, you pay for it. Why is this so hard to accept? How are artistes expected to make a living if everyone wants to rip their music at no cost? Whether it be music or news, the Internet has spawned a whole generation of people who think it a God-given right to get something for nothing.

Sure, CDs don't come cheap. At about $25 (or more for those double albums), it might be beyond the budget of younger humans. but there are ways around it. Older humans - the music fans - used to save up their pocket money to buy LPs. Or pool money among friends to get one.

Of course, it'd be ideal if the price of CDs were to come down, say by 20%? Junk the environment-unfriendly plastic containers, go with plain cardboard sleeves. Be environmentally friendlier and save on the fee graphic artists charge to come up with fancy liner notes in full colour and printed on high-quality paper.

The other thing is for Apple to make its iTunes credit cards available in Singapore. Or for all online music stores to operate in a similar way. Apple has cited the prevalence of credit card fraud here (and in this region generally) for not wanting to sell the iTunes cards here.

If they could get around that somehow, it would be a boon for the budget-challenged ones - they would be able to buy the "one or two songs that I like" at 99 cts a pop, instead of paying for the whole album.

Behold, King Nookie!

2006-10-06T12:42:00.000+08:00

Behold, the great King Nookie,
Lord of all he surveys!
He sits where the air is less funky
- The bed's top bunk, away from litter trays!

Muahahahah!

I had a visitor today!

2006-09-30T22:13:00.000+08:00

My human came to visit me this afternoon. Of course I was glad to see her. It's been a while.

She called my name repeatedly and asked me to go to her. I hung back for a bit. You know ol' me. I'm not one for sidling up to her, nudging her and sitting on her lap. "Come, come, Nookie!" she called. I sat a foot away and enjoyed it when she tickled me under my chin.

My roomies responded to her calls instead, and surrounded her, kneading her lap with their paws. Sheesh, how grovelly,how... how... KNEADY. Harharharh

She finally got exasperated and pulled me to her. She was determined not to leave until she got a pic of me with her. (See pic with Reluctant Ol' Me. Harharharharh.)

Huh, my roomies are the types of cats who come when called. Me, I say: Leave a message and I'll get back to you.

Cat-haters, revisited

2006-09-15T17:03:00.000+08:00

David Hooi Yin Weng, the serial cat killer of Bedok, has been given a year's jail - the maximum sentence - for killing the kitties in the area, and this follows a three-month jail term he served earlier this year, also for killing cats.

What was clear was that:

He was found to be of below average intelligence;

He had an apparent 'fondness' for cats, as evidenced by his petting them and taking them into his home (at least initially);

He could not tolerate it when the cats did 'cat things', such as scratching him when past the point at which they no longer wanted to be petted, or peeing in prohibited areas in his home;

He has not been able to form meaningful relationships with other people.

The judge has asked that, on his release from prison a year from now, the animal welfare groups include him in their activities so he can learn the ways of animals (and cats in particular). All this is in the hope that he won't repeat his heinous crime.

How equipped are animal groups to deal with such a person, who's obviously socially inept, inadequately socialised to conduct normal human relationships? If he can exhibit such violence towards animals, what are the chances that volunteers from animal welfare groups aren't at risk when dealing with him themselves?

Keeping him in prison indefinitely is not an option.

Don't we all see similarities between him and the other cat killer - the one I wrote about in my Aug 24 posting, '101 uses for a dead cat-hater'?

A wine-bot? What's next?

2006-09-05T01:41:00.000+08:00

You might have noticed how not a single week passes without some cute-sy Japanese innovation making the news.

This week, it's the "wine-bot". "The what?", I hear you ask. Well, the "wine-bot", a creation of NEC Systems Technology and Mie University (yes, in Japan) is a robot-sommelier (see picture). It can "taste" and identify types of wine, and also discern and analyse foods.

Oh, woo hoo.

My rant today is about research priorities. If the Mie University scientists can come up with something like this, did they think of putting the technology to more productive use??

I remember seeing a Discovery channel documentary once about how some dogs can actually sniff out cancers even before they are diagnosed. There was a first-person account of a woman whose labrador started going batty around her leg. Shortly after that, when she went to the doctor, a tumour was found in that leg. Scientists then ascertained that some tumours do give off smells that dogs can detect.

My point is, if scientists can make a robot that can taste wine, it's a hop, skip and jump to making a robot that can sniff out early cancers, is it not?

Why do Jap scientists insist on coming up with not-terribly-useful inventions? The last dumb one was thumbdrives designed to look like sushi. And previous to that, there was a "robocarp" - a fully mechanical (metal) fish with fully-articulated fins.

Who is funding these scientists???

Quick, anyone, name me a Japanese scientist who's won a Nobel prize for an earthshaking discovery that makes life for humanity better. Can't think of any, ri...ight?

Japan: No other country comes close as Kitsch Central.

Die, cat-haters, die!

2006-08-25T01:47:00.000+08:00

Oh, how very John Woo!!

For more cool or funny cat pics, you might want to check out this blog, Cats Me If You Can, which I came across on Blogspot!

101 uses for a dead cat-hater

2006-08-24T21:33:00.000+08:00

You might have come across that book, 101 Uses For A Dead Cat, in which line drawings of cat stiffs are being used 'creatively'. [If I remember right, the tail of a cat in rigor mortis can be used to prise open stubborn lids of cans.]

How. Damned. Unfunny.

Taking a leaf from the newspapers for the second day in a row - The Straits Times seems full of cat stories these days - I can think of one very good reason now for a 'companion' book to be written: 101 Uses For A Dead Cat-Hater.

There's a report saying that a Malaysian man named Wong Geng Thong 'befriended' a stray cat at a coffee shop in Haig Road, then fed it some cat food he had in his van. How nice of him, you think?

Well, as moggies go, pet us overly much and we soon get feddup, right? Well, my moggie friend did just that. He [or she] scratched Wong, who got angry, picked the cat up and drove off to a deserted carpark off Old Airport Road. It was there that my friend paid for the scratch with his/her life.

What Wong did was unaccountably evil: He tied a wire noose around the moggie's neck and hung it till he/she passed out. Then he massaged the animal's chest till it revived before dangling it by the wire again. Of course, after x number of times, the cat could be revived no more.

[I wonder if the cat felt at all what was to follow.] Wong removed the noose, held the cat by its neck and bashed its body against the wall of the carpark.

A security camera, installed by residents in the area following a number of cat bodies found, was all this while whirring quietly, catching yet another piece of evidence to nail the man.

Now that the court hearing is over, everyone will be dismayed to find out that all Wong will get is two months in jail. The SPCA, 'with due respect to the court', is appealing against the leniency of the sentence, saying it sends out a wrong message - that the law tolerates animal abuse.

I wonder if Wong is in serious need of psychiatric treatment rather than a jail term, but that's another story. And certainly, even if I were human and in the power to recommend that, I don't think I would. Why should we show respect for his life or his rights when he has shown none for another's life and rights?

What I think should be done to him would be very well captured in a book titled 101 Uses For A Dead Cat-Hater. After all, I'm a decent artist, and I'm imaginative.

I should call my publisher tomorrow.

A new "I hate cats" campaign is coming

2006-08-23T21:47:00.000+08:00

The newspapers have reported a case of a stray cat wandering into someone's flat and, upon being spotted, was chased out of the house by the owner.

The fleeing cat - must be with all claws flailing - managed to plant a deep gash on the face of a little girl, the owner's granddaughter, while making its escape.

The girl, aged only three, had to have a plastic surgeon fix up the deep cut with 15 stitches that run from her upper lip to her nose. The "first aid" cost her folks $3K, and she may bear a scar for life. [That's her wound in the pic.]

Cost aside, I can just see it coming - letters, coffeeshop talk about how cats really deserve to be reviled, hated. The dog camp is gonna tell the cat camp: "See, cats are evil!"

The newspaper report ends with the child's mom calling for a stop to the neighbourhood's practice of feeding stray cats. I'm personally with her on this. I posted an earlier blog against the blind feeding of stray moggies without the attendant responsibility of sterilising them first.

If people bother to sterilise the strays first, they can feed them all they want and rest assured the strays won't multiply and perpetuate the problem. [Look up my May 14, 2006 post in the archives headlined "Be still, a eunuch speaketh...".]

And feeding stray cats along an HDB corridor is just wrong. This will bring all the neighbourhood's cats around, and some wil inadvertently enter neighbours' homes. Not everybody likes cats, that much I know.

This being said, that stray cat was just doing what came naturally to it when it was scared out of its wits by an angry granny, stomping on the floor to shoo it out. How was my friend to know it had gone where it wasn't supposed to?

The little girl: Well, I feel sorry for her pain. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, namely, in the path of a fleeing claw-wielding furball.

Golf is evil

2006-08-16T15:45:00.000+08:00

* Golf eats up large tracts of land which could otherwise be turned into parks for the enjoyment of far more people. [I'm a capitalist cat at heart, but I'm socialist when it comes to recreation.]

* Golf requires proper tending of the greens, which invariably involves using fertiliser, which leaches and poisons the ground water.

* Golf is boring - to watch and to play. Thwackkk! walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Thwackkk!, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And they call this a sport??? I'd lump it with computer games and darts - requiring some strategy, but little or no physical prowess. "Sport" my ass.

* Golf comes packaged with snob appeal - the cost of a set of clubs, club membership, green fees and ridiculously ugly clothes (loud checks, nondescript pastel polo tees and shoes with those tongues with the zig-zag edges, I rest my case) ... all this probably makes status-conscious Singaporeans want to play it more, and be seen playing the game.

Golf. is. evil.

A new cat in the family

2006-08-07T00:58:00.000+08:00

Meet Tasha, who is the new cat in my human's sister's home. Tasha is a British shorthair silver tabby, a rare colour among British shorthairs. Lovely one, huh?

She's only seven months old, and about ready to be sterilised.

In the third picture, she's with Sarah, my human's niece. Tasha is showing herself to be a sweet girl, hardly sheds and loves to play.

My human's sister has adopted another cat - Minx, who is having problems adapting to her new home and refuses to come out of hiding (except to eat or use the litter box) ... hence the lack of pictures of Minx(ie). Any ideas on how to make her less terrified of her new home, anyone out there?

Give the gal some time, and I'll get some pix of her up here.

10 things humans (grossly) over-rate

2006-08-02T22:36:00.000+08:00

... in my opinion, not in any particular order and good for the moment anyway:

VJs on MTV
Show me someone who gets wildly popular for no other reason than because he or she is a gawky young 'un who blathers on - without any particular linguistic or sartorial elegance - on TV, and I'll show you a poseur who has little reason to pose.

Anything "all natural"
Why do humans fall all over themselves to buy that shampoo that offers "all natural herbs" or for anything with "no artificial ingredients as if, by dint of being "natural", these products are "better"? Hey, people, that bunch of man-made chemotherapy chemicals probably saved your aunt from dying of cancer. And remember, Socrates drank hemlock - that's "all natural", isn't it?? - and DIED.

Exercise
My human [who, like all women, is not thin enough for herself] works up a sweat three times a week during her workouts, gets extremely hungry and eats more. Result: Weight gain. During World Cup month, she ditches exercise, feels less hungry and eats less. Result: Weight loss of 3kg. Go figure.

Facials
The "improvement" I see on human skin isn't worth the expense, period. Shops want you to cough up $1,000 for a package of 10 facials - OK, so they toss in one more "free" one. They rub gunk on you, use heat, use electricity, whatever, claiming it brings the "deep-seated dirt" to the surface of the skin - whereupon you get a breakout of zits. Keep the dirt down there, I say.

Designer anything
Have you seen how HIDEOUS some designer togs and bags are?? 'Nuff said. The person with better taste will ask for no more than a well-made product in a good colour and fit. No labels necessary.

The Pussycat Dolls
Skimpy costumes. Smouldering looks that are over the top. Packaged to death but with little real singing or song-writing talent. They do cover versions of 20-year-old songs, for heaven's sake. See their website.

Performance "art"
Sigh, "so much depends on this bunch of 26 dried leaves stuck to 7 milk bottles - three blue and four red - suspended in mid-air". The performance artist - artfully draped between milk bottle #5 and #7 - says sagely: "This all signifies the utter desolation of human hope in a world bereft of love." Yeah, right. Harharharharhar!

Changi Airport
Haven't you read, ad nauseum, of the number of awards this airport has won? Then again, haven't you also noticed that, every time you fly, you are given a departure gate that is 10km down the corridor covered in Gawd Ugly Carpet - and it happens to be a trip on which you have a heavy carry-on bag [and it is the peak hour so everyone is on the travellator and every push cart is used up]? Maybe, something about the design is not that good, hor?

Convergent gadgets
Those tech crazies are so darn proud of their handphone that can make and receive calls, send and receive SMS and MMS, do video calls, play MP3 music, take pictures and video clips, play chess, and even predict your ovulation period. I think we are this close to cellphones that can feed the dog and tell your fortune too, dammit. Unfortunately, a camera built to be a camera takes better pictures than a cellphone camera. So I'd keep all my toys separate, thank you.

OK, so there are only 9 things I can think of at the moment for this list. I lied.

Staying at the Pet Hotel

2006-07-18T00:57:00.000+08:00

I hated it, to say the least.

I never knew when it was going to happen. She would
bring my purple pet carrier out of the cupboard and when she
opened its spring-loaded trap door (emphasis on the word
TRAP), I always fell for it.

I'd step right in. Call me Stoopid. Or maybe the idea of tight, enclosed spaces always intrigues me.

She'd put me and carrier in the car and for the first 10
minutes of the journey, I'd try to guess whether it was the vet
or the Pet Hotel.

If the journey lasted more than 15 minutes, then it was the
PH - a worse fate, because I never knew how long I was going to
be there while she and her hubby took a holiday somewhere.

She has never tried getting a pet sitter to come in to feed
me because she didn't have any contacts and was wary of giving
strangers the keys to their home.

She would register me at the front desk and have a knowing
exchange with front-desk-guy Roy, an exchange I have heard
several times:

Roy: "Ah Nookie, the fierce one, welcome back."

She: "Yeah, so you remember my cat, huh?"

Roy: "Yeah, how could I forget him - I got scratched the
last time."

She: "Oh, sorry about that. He gets so grumpy with
strangers."

Roy: "It's really OK. He always calms down after a few
days!"

She would then fill out a form about my dietary preferences and other health details.

I'm taken, cage and all, and weighed.

She picks an empty "room" in the cattery, usually the first
one on the left as you enter. It has a partial view of the
outside and isn't as dark as those sited further in.

The "room" is a 2m high cage, about one and half m wide. It
is split level, and provided with litter tray, cat toy,
scratching post and feeding bowls.

The worst thing about the place is The Smell - of other cats
and goodness knows what. It just doesn't smell like Home. The next worst thing is scoping out the cat next door if that cage is taken.

By this time, I'm a spitting, yowling, salivating mess and
totally chuffed at the change in environment. She wouldn't
humour me or try to pacify me because she knew she'd only be
scratched.

Perhaps it's because her holiday - and our parting - is
short that she is short on sentiment. She would just make some
nice noises to the keeper in the cattery, asking him to excuse
His Royal Grumpiness, and then she'd be gone.

My simple comforts over the next couple of days would be my
pet carrier and my basket, which she would always bring along.
Once or twice, she put one of her tee-shirts in the basket -
one that she had worn, which smelled of her and was really
comforting.

Days are long at the PH. We cats aren't walked or let out
like the noisy dogs in the kennels.

We see the regular guys come in to feed us or clean our
litter trays. Sometimes we 'inmates' talk to each other across the cages. Some are short-term, like myself; others are boarders there for months on end.

In my several times there, I once picked up more than just other cats' views of the world - I picked up their bugs as well! That happened once, when she sent me to the Pet Hotel before I had my shots that year. I caught a cold from one of the moggies there. *&%$

Moral of the story: Keep your shots current.

The best part is going home. My heart would take a leap when
I see her come through the door to the cattery a few days later
to bring me back home.

What's the meaning of "Sorry"?

2006-07-15T00:02:00.000+08:00

So, the World Cup is over, and I see humans everywhere trying best to reclaim their normal routines after a whole month of staying up to catch 3am games and having the next morning completely wrecked.

But I notice debate is still raging over that head-butting incident involving French darling Zidane and Italian (relative) unknown Materazzi.

It has become a "he said-he said" impasse. Materazzi denies insulting Zizou's mother and sister. Zizou said he did. One of them is lying. Whatever it was that was truly said, only the two of them know now.

What really intrigues me is what Zizou said when he met reporters this week - that he is sorry he did the head butt thing, but that he "does not regret" doing it considering what was said of his mom and sister.

That to me, is not a true apology. When one says sorry for something, one expresses regret, right?

I got STOMP'ed!

2006-07-13T18:04:00.000+08:00

My human submitted a pic of me to Stomp, The Straits Times' new interactive portal which invites readers to send in news pictures, news tip offs and pictures of themselves, their homes, their parties, their babies... and their pets.

I appear as Pic #64 in the readers' photo gallery section called "Home Zoo". [Hrmph. What does she take me for - some animal??]

At the moment, a thumbnail of me appears on this webpage. [Scroll to the bottom for a head-and-shoulder shot of me against a frightfully blue wall.]

Escape... to where?

2006-07-07T21:55:00.000+08:00

Imagine you are sitting on a beach directly facing the sea. You'll probably see a huge swathe of blue sky with some clouds, and below that, the blue-green sea, and closer to you, the stretch of sand (or rock).

OK, picture this as a painting … water colour, oils, crayon, whatever grabs your fancy.

Now then, imagine then a round HOLE taking up a third of the space in the middle of the painting - not a real hole, but one that is painted - which gives you a window into what lies beyond.

And... you can see, in a limited way, that it is another stretch of sky-sea-beach.

The final element in the painting is a man, walking away from Beach Scene 1, headed through the hole into Beach Scene 2.

I chanced upon one such painting years ago - I dunno who the artist is - and haven't been able to find a print of it since. If anyone reading this blog can find the painting online, let me know!

The message behind the work? Well, it's trying to say that changing one's physical location doesn't always work, for the place you are going to might give you more of the same.

Sometimes, what works is for the change to happen internally - in your head - not in your physical environment.

Wise, huh?

I have heard of humans wanting to change jobs, and some want to change jobs because, as they say, "the office politics is killing me".

Then they go look for another job, get through the round(s) of interviews fine and land the job... only to find that office politics is also there, only worse.

The thing is, you never know what it is like to work in a new place until you are actually working there, eh? The interview panel may be friendly, the salary package great, and heck, the office furniture is even in your favourite colour.

But the people, the people - they can make or break your work life if you let them.

So all you out there who are thinking of changing jobs to escape something like "office politics" might do well to consider staying and changing the landscape in your head instead.

Your God's better than mine?

2006-07-06T00:35:00.000+08:00

Is this what my Father in heaven sees when he looks down at me?

It's Wednesday night (Thursday morn by the time I post this), and Bible night for some of my roomies. They gather after dinner, sit in a circle, link paws and bow their heads in silent prayer.

Then someone would read a passage from the Good Book and they would discuss the lessons to be drawn from it. Then the session proceeds to the part I just don't get: They "share", that is, spill their guts out about their most private problems to each other, all in the name of being "brother" and "sister".

I can't abide by that. Isn't there such a thing as privacy with them?

You should see them emerge from their meetings. They all wear that beatific smile on their faces, and they'd be humming their hymns all day long till their euphoria dies or until they are next recharged at their next meeting, whereupon they will sing the hymns in my face with renewed vigour.

They tried to suck me into their "cell group", but I declined politely. If they keep bugging me, I shan't be able to maintain my civility. For now, they look at me like I'm some kind of disease.

Candy tried to talk to me the other day, and the encounter was anything but sweet. I had always thought her to be quite an attractive dame, but I wouldn't speak to her now unless really necessary. Without preamble, she had come up to me and asked me whether I knew who I was, where I was going, and whether I accepted the Lord as my saviour.

Kinda heavy, existentialist questions for 9:30am, if you ask me. At that time, I hadn't even taken my daily morning crap.

Then what she said next took the cake: That I was condemned to burn in hell fire eternally if I didn't accept the Lord - her Lord, as my saviour. Only her Lord could show me the path to heaven and eternal life, she said. There was no other way; the other systems of belief got it all wrong.

I told her nicely that if I had any questions about religion, I'd go to her, thank you very much. I'm here just trying to be a good bloke day by day as my mom - bless her soul - taught me how. I know I'm polite by nature, and considerate too... so if Candy is right, then I'm going to burn in hell fire despite my being a generally good cat?

I'm spiritual rather than out-and-out religious. Yes, I do believe in a Supreme Being, but He's nowhere as prescriptive as her exclusionist, judgemental, cruel God. I talk to my own God - one-on-one - about my fears and my hopes. I also ask Him to look out for those dear to me, and tell him when I'm sorry if I said or did something wrong.

It works for me and I'm not about to have someone else come along to tell me what to believe.

I'm alive

2006-06-27T12:58:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since the Top Cat spoke. Just to let you know I've recovered from my 'flu. Life goes on. I'm alive.

It's been a long time since I watched these lights alone
I look around my life tonight and you are gone
I might have done something to keep you if I'd known
How unhappy you had become

While I was dreaming of you
With my heart in your hands
And I was following though
With my beautiful plans

Yeah, now I'm rolling down this canyon drive
With your laughter in my head
I'm gonna have to block it out somehow to survive
'cause those dreams are dead
And I'm alive ...

That song is for my human. And thank you, Jackson Browne.

If I died, would she feel guilty?

2006-06-09T17:51:00.000+08:00

What if I don't overcome this flu I have now and died?

I think my human will be wracked with guilt. It will be a long while before she would be able to let go of the 'what if' questions - What if she had not boarded me in a cat community where, understandably, germs are passed around more freely? What if she found some other solution [read "compromise"] to my tearing up the new furnishings in her home?

I hardly fell ill when I was with her. The couple of times I caught a chill, she picked up on it rightaway and took me to the vet. Other than that, there've been a couple of urinary tract infections, which the vet also fixed.

The weather has been kooky lately, which is maybe how I got sick. It's either hot as hell - which sends me and my roomies leaving our room through the hole in the wall to go for cooler air in the garden beyond - or pouring heavily, which sends the temperatures dipping, especially if it's a night-time rainstorm.

Or someone in the room passed me the germs, which is rather more likely what happened.

Anyway, I was thinking about the nature of guilt just now. If I died, and my human needed to get over her decision to 'dump me', it would entail her forgiving herself.

We are always told to forgive others because it's good for the soul. It's like an anti-depressant. Don't seek an eye for an eye, or stew about seeking an eye for an eye, because all that stored up aggro is bad for the constitution.

And that's just the physical side of it. Ever kept company with someone so full of venom against someone else he perceives to have done him an injustice? It isn't very a positive or life-affirming business, really.

But how often do humans think about forgiving themselves for what they have done? The option is to stay guilt-ridden. Forgiving oneself takes work, though. It takes adopting a different reality. It takes disentangling the self from the perception that another person or thing had 'control' over the action that was taken.

I believe my human would take full ownership of the decision she made. She had come up against keeping me vs giving me up. She chose to give me up.

It was far more than being a vote to keep her new furniture in good condition, though a big fringe benefit for her is that she freed herself from cleaning up after me. [List: Scattered litter, fur all over the place, occasional puddles of vomit, litter-box smell and poo/pee and my dark brown 'dhoby marks' on strategic walls/furniture.]

I understand that, for her, It was also a vote for harmony at home, since her hubby has never been that crazy about cats, or, more particularly, about me!

He thinks I am an evil, ungrateful and unfathomable ball of fur, though he has acknowledged I do have my 'softer' side. He has seen me come when called and once said that maybe I had a zipper on my belly, which, when undone, would produce a dog that had been wearing a moggie costume all this while.

Of course it hurts that she chose her marriage and home over me. But a choice had to be made. I absolve her from blame for it. So if I go, I go. It's enough that I had eight good years under her roof. [Really? Am I so magnanimous? Or am I just being a manipulative S.O.B. using reverse psychology?]

Guilt... regret... My human has always been one to take decisions based on information then available at each crossroads at that time, and never look back. Life is not about continually keeping a cost-benefits scorecard for every choice one makes. She is sure of her decision, my human is. Her mom asked her last week whether she would ever bring me home again, and I believe her answer was an unequivocal 'No'.

The poet Robert Browning's words capture her thinking:

'I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
I regret a little, I would change still less.'

Anyway, Auntie S started me on this medicine called Vibravet today and fully expects me to make a turnaround. She told my human today that I'm still eating well, which is a positive sign.

A-chooo! I've got the flu

2006-06-08T23:15:00.000+08:00

My human came to visit me today, but I was feeling really out of sorts. [Ohhhh, my headdd! See picture!]

What lousy timing she has. Auntie S isolated me from my roomies in her (air-conditioned) TV room so my human could meet me uninterrupted, but I sneezed a couple of times and felt a little dopey. The watery eyes I've had in the past two days have improved with the eye cream that Auntie S applied, but my nose [I'm sure I sound like I'm saying "By dose..."] is a little runny.

My human was happy to see me, and me, her, too. I rubbed my face against her leg as she sat on the floor, calling my name. But I just wanted to sit down.

She even brought me a balled-up plastic bag to play with, but my energy level was lower than usual. I swatted it a few times and that was that. To think that I can go at it for an hour straight when I'm my usual self!

Actually, my attention was focused on the door to the room. I was acutely aware that Godbless [one of Auntie S' two mongrels, with all her dog smell] was sitting just outside it and that was infinitely more interesting than the ball or even my human.

My human is quite worried about my flu. I think she has read that flu can be dangerous for us moggies. Read more about cat flu here.

I hope to get better soon, otherwise - *aaarrrgggghhh!* - Auntie S will have to bring me to the vet. [See previous post.] Then again, she has a lot of experience dealing with sick moggies, and might have some prescription medicine in her stash, so that might not be necessary...

On vets and taking medicines

2006-06-06T21:46:00.000+08:00

One word on this topic: UGGHH!

Going to the vet is bad news. It all begins with the car ride there. I hate going out in the car. It entails being put into my pet carrier and not understanding why trees and buildings which don't normally move on their own start moving.

And then I end up in this strange place with all its disgusting smells and The Vet who would most certainly cause me pain or panic - often both.

Although I was an indoor cat while living with my human and therefore not likely to catch unusual illnesses, she brought me for my shots every year, around July, if I remember right. Her reason: I needed the resistence against the bugs lurking at the Pet Hotel, where she would board me once or twice a year when she and her husband took off on holiday. [Life at the Pet Hotel: That's for another post!]

When panic overcame me at the vet's, I never shrank back and went on the defensive. Sweet ol' me became aggressive instead. At the vet's clinic, I would hiss and spit and raise my hackles - yes, even at my human, when all logic told me it was just her, trying to calm me down. I'm a regular Jekyll and Hyde, I am.

The vet eventually gave up examining me. I dunno why Dr N didn't have one of those fang-proof gloves she could wear when lifting me out of my carrier. She just remarked to my human that "your cat looks kinda healthy" [while yours truly yowled and hissed away] without carrying or palpating me.

So I've not been "felt up" by a vet for a while now. Goodness knows what growths I could be nursing that would have been picked up in such a manual examination.

For the past few visits, I just sat tight in my carrier while the vet administered the jab to the back of my neck through the little trap door at the top of the carrier.

I don't even want to think of that one time she did carry me out, after telling my human that "it would be best" for her to leave the room for a bit. Just picture this: Her clinic, slightly larger than a bathroom in a HDB flat, with sliding doors on both sides closed off, and me vs. her in a face-off.

It was just me hissing and her going "nice cat, nice Nookie..." in that small space for an interminable length of time before she overpowered me - knocking over some steel kidney bowls in the process - and got me on that examining table, gave me my shot and stuffed me back in my carrier before I could rattle her even more. Harharharharh

Taking medicines: I'm like your average cat - a tough customer when it comes to taking medicines. I'm sure my human hates it as much as I do.

She can't decide which is worse - administering liquid medicine with a syringe and then having to wipe up the mess all over the floor, or forcing me to swallow a pill which slowly disintegrates from repeated handling and my saliva. Either way, she has to steel herself for some scratches down her forearms. Harhararharh

Credit to her, she's tried other tricks. She once pulverised the tablet, mixed it up with honey and smeared it all over my paws - which I was then compelled to lick to get them clean. The downside here was that she couldn't be sure I was taking in the full dosage.

Her other trick (which didn't work): Mixing pulverised tablet or liquid medicine in my favourite wet food. One sniff told me it was "off". What did she take me for - STOOOPID?

The few times she succeeded, it was plain awful. I'd start drooling big time, I'd gag and retch and let out a plaintive yowl to win some sympathy...

There was an old email joke circulating about the difference between feeding medicine to dogs and cats. For us cats, it's a complicated, multi-step process which begins with "Remove tablet from foil pack." Then it goes on to "Open cat's mouth by squeezing gently on jaw", to "Put pill on back of tongue, hold jaw shut and stroke throat to stimulate the swallow reflex".

The next step: "Retrieve pill from corner of kitchen floor. Hold down cat with old towel and re-insert pill at back of mouth..." and so on and so forth, the later steps even including "Summon husband to help with holding down the *&%# cat".

For dogs - those silly, fawning things - feeding them a pill is a one step process: "Wrap pill in bacon and make him beg for it." HAHRHARHARARHARHAHWOWWHWHARHAR!!

Mass indignity on Singapore Idol

2006-05-29T17:22:00.000+08:00

I just sat through this week's [May 28's] Singapore Idol, where the 60 humans picked out from the mass auditions by four judges on May 21 became 28 - 14 guys and 14 gals. Voting by members of the public begins from the first Sunday in June.

I cringed to see the wheedling and pleading and tears from those who didn't make the cut - a 'performance' right in front of the judges and on national TV. What's with them?? Some actually thought they could sing - thin vocal quality, shaky (and even off-key) notes and poor vocal control notwithstanding.

Have they no self-awareness? Do they have friends and relatives around who are too polite or too biased or too tone-deaf to tell them they can't sing and that they should really find some other vocation in life?

It's not just self-awareness they don't have - they don't have dignity either. Four judges tell you that you aren't good enough or you aren't ready. Just say "Thank you" and make a quiet exit, for heaven's sake.

Instead, they turn on the tap and blubber away. Or they turn on their Excuse-Making Machine. Here are some that I remember hearing in the past two weeks, when those machines were in full churn:

'Maybe I chose the wrong song. Maybe it would be better if I sang another?'

'Maybe it's because of my sore throat.'

'Maybe I was too nervous.'

... all excuses under the sun except 'Maybe I Just Cannot Sing To Save My Life.'

Good grief, do they know how pathetic they look when they plead and beg, with or without tears? Or do they know the TV cameras are rolling and are just playing to the cameras, hamming it all up because it makes 'good' TV?

[Here, the assumption is that reality TV is good TV, but that's another can of worms altogether. Don't even get me started on it.]

And saying that the judges don't know better - like that sad sack Michael Buble-wannabe did - is such poor form. If you don't think the judges know better, keep it to yourself. The four of them have, for right or wrong reasons, been picked as judges. To blame them when you didn't make the cut is to behave like the proverbial lousy workman who blames his tools when his product is fucked up.

Not to say I'm a fan of the judges, heck I'm not even a big fan of the 'Idol' series. But hey, I recognise that the quartet bring some credentials to the table - as record-maker/talent scout, song writer, singer and long-time radio programme producer. They are there, like it or not. Accept their decisions with some grace. As with all contests, "the judges' decision is final".

Many of these young humans who are taking part have really one-track minds. They have failed to see that 'Idol' is just one way to get a foot in the door to a singing career. If they really have the talent, they would have been talent-spotted some how, don't you think - OK, maybe not in 2006, but somehow, somewhere, some time?

I remember the 'Talentime' series of years ago. Contestants came up, sang their song, and if they weren't good enough, they were knocked out. That was that. The best survived till the finals.

Is there something different about these dream-chasers today? OK, so they have dreams of seeing their names up in lights, but many of them behave like they have no Plan B when they are told they aren't good enough. One suspects all they think about is that a singing career is a quick ticket to fame and riches. [Oh, they could be so wrong. Do they know a singing career can be stopped dead in its tracks by fickle fans, poor career advice, personal scandal and goodness knows what else?]

What does it mean to want something - stardom, fame, money - so badly that one cracks into a million pieces, cries on national TV and loses all shred of personal dignity to go in chase of this pot of gold, even when clearly undeserved?

Have they no mental strength [testicular fortitude - that is, balls!] to take another route, or to find another purpose to life?

These young humans should just take a leaf from us moggies. At least we go through life with a quiet grace, no matter the hand that is dealt us - a shitty one like a life on the streets, or the high life, where one dines on gourmet catfood off a crystal plate and is included in the family will.

They say I'm smart!

2006-05-19T22:40:00.000+08:00

I heard Auntie S telling my human over the phone the other day about how I've taken to parking myself on the top bunk of that double-decker bed in the room, 2m off the floor and away from the bad smell of overnight cat funk coming from the room's litter pans.

There are three of them, lined up in a row, and after a night when any combination of my roomies might have paid them visits and 'made deposits', 'funk' doesn't begin to describe it.

Auntie S, laughing indulgently as she always does when talking about any of her charges, then told my human how I'd be the first one to fly down from that bunk bed immediately after the litter pans are cleaned out to make my dump.

'He's so smart, you know,' Auntie S said, adding: 'He wants to be the first to use the litter!'

I could just hear my human cooing in delight, and I could see the clouds of her pride over her 'Smart Boy' coming out of Auntie S' cellphone. Purple swirls, if you want to know the colour of pride.

I was emitting purple fumes myself at this praise. Heh!

The art of just being

2006-05-16T01:51:00.000+08:00

Humans just don't get it. They rush around the whole day, filling up every waking moment with activity.

Take my human and her family, for instance. They work pretty long hours. The few hours that they are home, they go work out [hey, what's the bloody point in getting all sweaty?], read or clear the mail [mainly bills!], clean the house or do laundry.

[Yes, Virginia, life gives you three certainties when you are a human: death, taxes ... and dirty laundry. We moggies only need to contend with one of the three. Ergo, it is better to be a moggie.]

On weekends, they spend time with the kids or their friends. Or they are preparing to have friends over - shopping, cooking and cleaning the house and then cleaning it [again!] when the party is over. That's fun??

Even younger humans are scheduled to death, aren't they? If they aren't in school, they are going for tuition or doing homework or going back to school for some "co-curricular activities", or going for enrichment classes in music [violin or piano, take your pick], art [even if they have a snowflake's chance in hell of becoming artists] or the languages. Kids nowadays are so easily bored. They get restless and complain when they have nothing to do, and this carries over into adulthood.

Humans should just learn the art of Being. I spend a lot of time doing that. Sometimes I just sleep, of course. But I am also content to lie down, propped up on my elbows with my front paws tucked under me. Then I just Be.

Sometimes I sit up straight with my front paws together and stare at a point ... oh... maybe 2.84m in front of me. This almost always freaks my human out. She thinks I'm seeing "things" [read "spirits"] in the house which she cannot see. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. [Anyway, freaking her out is half the fun.]

But mainly, when I sit there just being, I become really aware of my surroundings - every smell, every sound and the thump-thump of my own heart. Sometimes, I think about things, Great Thoughts about what I've seen going on around me - or whether I should sleep in my basket or annoy her by jumping on the red sofa.

But truly, when one just sits and does nothing in particular, one can cultivate one's inner life. It's a more silent world there, with none of the daily distractions, noise. With people rushing around doing this or that - mostly tied to the mundane logistics of daily life - they hardly have time to recognise this inner world, do they? It's a world of the unspoken, the intangible.

I've heard my human complain time and again that the weekend "went by too fast because we were having fun". What crap. The weekend stole away while she was busy trying to do the 25 things she set out to do. She should have dropped half or three-quarters of those things on that "to-do" list and then sit back and notice the difference.

I don't have a Masters in the Art of Being for nuthin'.

Be still, a eunuch speaketh...

2006-05-14T18:41:00.000+08:00

OK, so I was neutered. I was "done". I'll never have The Urge to "take a lady" or sire kittens. Neither will my friend pictured at left. He was a stray rescued off the streets and was neutered, and is now awaiting adoption at Auntie S' home. So both he and I have been shut out of male cats' essential experience of sex and parenthood, but I think a greater good is served.

Excuse me, but here's where I'll do a little commercial for responsible cat care:

Neutering is the right thing to do by your cat. Here's why:

It curbs its wandering instinct - somewhat: OK, so I've made some escapes to freedom, but I really, really took my human's home as my own. It had my own smells, and even after a daring escapade or two, it was where I'd come home to. And because it was my territory, I hardly felt the need to mark it by spraying [ie, peeing] all over her furniture. Neutering therefore makes it entirely possible to raise [and love!] a 100% indoor cat.

A housebound cat is safe from harm: When a cat stays indoors all the time, it is less likely to get hurt or killed by cars or pick up pests and diseases from other animals or the neighbourhood. Indoor cats have been proven to live far longer than their street cousins.

A neutered pet will not go around spreading unwanted progeny: OK, this is the obvious one. Go take a look at the latest picture book produced by the Cat Welfare Society (CWS) about life on the streets for strays. [The title is "The Real Singapore Cat". Click here to get to the webpage where you can buy it and help the good folk at CWS!]

Many well-meaning people have been seen feeding whole families of stray cats. While it is a kind thing to do, it just exacerbates the problem of stray cats in the neighbourhood. When food supply is not in question, full-blooded [that is, intact males unlike yours truly] will just do it (thank you, Nike). They beget kittens, who, in less than a year, will beget their own as well.

And when a neigbourhood group of cats grows in number, they just set themselves up for trouble. They are noisy come mating time. Do you see the I-Hate-Cat-O-Meter turning orange? They may trespass in areas where they are not liked. The Hate-O-Meter glows red here. They send pet dogs into a frenzy - and maybe a few pet dogs have gotten lost/kidnapped/run over this way while they chase a wayward cat down the street. Now the Hate-O-Meter goes off the scale...

Way too many young ones are being brought into this world by cats which can still do it. Many of these cats don't make it to adulthood. For those that do, life is not pretty. Food is not a sure thing. They get run over by cars. They get all manner of unspeakable acts done to them by cat-haters. [See various reports in The Straits Times over the years about cats who have had hot water poured on them, or have been thrown off high-rises, or have had rubber bands tied around their tails or ears, causing fatal, maggot-filled infections. That's how you get a pus-sy pussy - grim pun fully intended.]

And then when Sars hit, stray cats got blamed - wrongly, I believe - for spreading the bug. Hundreds of Singapore stray cats got rounded up for culling. Many of the cats in Auntie S' house awaiting adoption were rescued from death by culling. That was genocide!!

The Cantonese have a stock phrase that insults us cats. They call us lat tat mau, literally, "dirty cats", as if filth, pestilence and odours are a natural part of our anatomy when they really aren't. [If you have ever kept indoor cats, you'll know we are clean and odour-free, unlike dogs which start to smell a mere four days after a bath.

So I say to all of you out there who are feeding stray cats: DON'T. You have two options. One is to round them up, get them into cages and have them sterilised. You may then re-introduce them into the neighbourhood where you found them. They can live out their natural lives there without swelling the stray cat population. Your other option is to adopt them as your own and keep them indoors - and get them sterilised too, for the reasons outlined in this post.

If you continue feeding them without getting them "done", you'll just be adding to the stray cat population. I'll say again it is not a pretty life, and no one can fault the simple logic of the folks at the Cat Welfare Society: The fewer cats born, the fewer cats suffer and die.

This is my message today. Top Cat checking out.

The day I learned about the birds and bees...

2006-05-05T20:58:00.000+08:00

Remember my previous post, when I pretended I understood when Sam, the neighbourhood's alpha male, talked about "taking ladies" who then gave him his broods of kittens?

Well, I was to find out the connection between "ladies" and "kittens" some months after meeting Sam - through a live "show" that took place just below my balcony.

It was pre-dawn when I was alerted to noise just below the balcony, so I went to check. My hackles went up when I saw one of the cats that had been hanging around the condo grounds for some weeks now, a grey male who seemed to have come from elsewhere.

He looked too clean and groomed to be a stray. The dead giveaway of his status was the blue-and-green tartan collar around his neck.

With him was a mottled black-and-tan female, whom I had also seen around the block. She was a stray for sure, a little mangy-looking. Or maybe it was her colouring that made her look that way.

Well, they did it right there below my balcony while I watched, intrigued.

I talked to the grey male later after Ms Ugly had slunk off. Let's call him Bob [after a certain "sexual athlete" my human knows].

Bob: "What's it with you - you like watching?"

Me: "Er..."

Bob: "What - you never taken a lady before?"

Me: "Er, no. What was that about?"

Bob [teasingly, in sing-song fashion]: "Oh man, we got a virgin here, we got a virgin here!"

I flushed a deep crimson [though humans would never have able to tell this from looking at my pure white fur], whereupon Bob became kinder and told me about the "business" and that it was "accepted tradition" was to leave the "lady" with buns baking in her oven.

Hmm, I made a mental note here to check with Sam, who seemed to be living happily with his "ladies" and his young 'uns. Now wasn't that a happy family? Maybe he "loved" his ladies [see red heart in picture] in a way Bob has never done?

Bob then asked me how I dealt with The Urge when I wasn't allowed out of the house. Where did I find relief, he wanted to know. I looked blankly at him.

Me: "Urge? What urge?"

Bob: "Oh my... don't tell me you were "done"?"

Me: "Done"?

I was feeling panicky. How was it that I didn't know all this stuff?

Bob: "Hmm. We got more than a virgin here. We got us a eunuch. Don't you remember the visit to the vet when you got "done"?"

Here's when my vision got blurry - you know how they do it in the movies to signal that a flashback is coming up...

Yes, yes... there was that one time long ago when I was brought to the vet not long after I had moved in with my human - and it was not for a cold, or diarrhoea, or for my annual shot.

She brought me to see Dr Ng, who explained to her what he was going to do [against a background yowling-spitting-hissy "song" provided my yours sincerely]. I recall now his saying that "it" was going to be a "relatively simple job since he's a boy", and that I'd recover in a couple of days - no stitches needed on my family jewels, even.

I was put under and everything during and a few hours after the operation was a haze. Luridly-coloured fish danced before my eyes and I floated in mid-air.

When I became more aware of my surroundings, I felt a numbness between my rear legs - and a huge satellite dish around my neck. What the fuck?

When the anaesthetic wore off, I felt a little sore down there, but it wasn't that bad. I wanted to turn around to lick myself, but that white plastic monstrosity got in the way.

I heard my human describe in detail to her husband that afternoon what had happened to me. She said the vet had cut open my testicles, pulled out my spunk tooobs, made a cut and "just stuffed everything back in the sac". EEEEWWWW!

They spent the next few days laughing at my satellite dish, saying things like maybe they could now get FM Gold 90.5 in the house [which has unaccountably bad radio reception].

The "unkindest cut of all" on my jewels healed nicely soon enough.

Bob [in impressive mimicry of a computerised voice]: "Earth calling Eunuch. Earth calling Eunuch."

That snapped me back to my present.

Me [in a flat voice]: "I don't have The Urge. I never taken a lady and never will. I'll never have young 'uns."

Bob: "Why are you blubbering about? I just do it when the time comes around during the year. I can't help it. Something kicks off in my head that tells me it's time, and I go look for a lady to take. Don't get so damned sentimental. You are a cat, for crying out loud."

All of you out there who hope to read salacious cat porn in this blog can leave now.

[Should I be sorry? You humans believe sex sells, right? I mean, that's why people like Xiaxue can afford to live off the advertising revenue she gets in her blog?]

Wanderlust

2006-05-04T23:04:00.000+08:00

My human kept me as a strictly indoor cat. I didn't complain, but hey, a cat's wanderlust never quite goes away, right?

From hanging out daily in the balcony, I saw what the world outside - the world beyond the balcony - looked like: There was a swimming pool to my 2 o'clock, a garden beyond that, and a Very Interesting Neighbourhood of landed properties to my 9 o'clock beyond the fence ringing in the small condo that was my home.

But dang, she was always careful to keep the front door shut, so there was little chance of my walking out the front door.

The apartment was only on the first floor though, and the balcony always looked safe enough for me to jump. [That's me in the picture, doing one of my "shall-I-jump" stocktakes]. For a long time, I never did - not even when she stood just below the balcony once, holding out a chicken wing from their garden barbeque and calling my name. [Her friends always asked though: "Doesn't he ever jump off the balcony?"]

Maybe I had come to regard their home as my territory, and it was enough turf.

Maybe I was just a wuss...

But one day, wanderlust got the better of me and I leaped off the balcony. I landed on my feet, no problem, nothing broken.

I Was Free!

I first explored the basement carpark of the condo. Nothing much interesting there. It was a week day and most of the residents' cars were out. The half-dried out oil stains on some of the lots smelled disgusting, it went all the way to the back of my nose and then some.

I next slunk my way across the garden, across the service road and leapt up the chain-link fence on the boundaries of the condo. I was outside it! It was amazing how big the world was.

I was in the Very Interesting Neighbourhood. The houses there were bigger, all with gardens and fancy front gates. Strange smells assaulted my nose, including dog pee, other cats' pee - I made a mental note to be careful - as well as cooking smells coming out of kitchens.

What if I came across other cats? I was on their territory. Should I hang my head and acknowledge their supremacy, let them know I was just passing through? Or should I put up a fight as only a big boy like me can - a [ahem!] muscular mass of flying white fur, flailing claws?

I went for Option A. I had no other choice, really. Outside one of the houses, I had come upon at least seven cats [including adolescents and kittens]. They were all strays, four younger ones, a couple of females and a male. [I was the bigger boy.]

After some opening snarls and raised hackles, we sat about 2 metres apart, seemingly at detente, till they figured I wasn't going to play hero.

I went no closer but a civil conversation ensued, nevertheless.

They said they hung out there because food came every day courtesy of the nice family from the corner house. There was enough food to go around, and fresh water too.

They seemed a happy lot, a pecking order among them was in place.

So I asked them: "Don't your humans ever let you into their house? Mine keeps me in there!"

They looked at me like I was loopy.

Sam, the black-and white male who appointed himself the spokescat, spat and said imperiously: "Why would we want to go in there when we can be free? Take me, I'm free to roam anywhere I please. I can just 'take' any of these ladies here any time too. Look at the brood they gave me!"

Um, er. I had little idea what he meant by "taking ladies" and how that connected to the young ones, but I wasn't going to show I had a "critical information gap". Gotta find this out, somehow.

"Well," I replied, adding: "Do you have a bed that's dry and warm, especially for colder nights? What if you fall sick or are run over by a car? And how do you know your little ones will have enough to eat when you go? What if this human family moves away?"

Sam narrowed his eyes to slits and arched his neck towards me. He hissed: "I don't live for the 'what ifs', you dumb clod. I just live. If I go, I go. If you keep assessing risks, the what-could-have-beens, you miss what's under your nose. C'est la vie, you pansy."

Hmm. I was sure there was a deep thought about life here ... like: So, he didn't consider the "what ifs". But then, neither did I.

But my case was different, vastly different. I didn't have to dwell on the "what ifs" because food, safety, territory, a place to sleep, medicines when I got ill ... they all came to me because my human ensured that. I never needed to wonder.

Maybe, I thought, I should appreciate what I had more. Mine seemed an easier life by far.

I explored the rest of the neighbourhood and didn't stop to talk to anyone thereafter. The assault on my sense of sight, hearing, smell and touch was enough to deal with. I ducked under cars parked on the roadside whenever I saw humans approach, and also when cars whizzed by.

I stayed out all night. I wanted to see the place by night, when I was in my element. I stayed under one car for half an hour as the light faded. It had just been driven and there was a nice warmth coming from the engine as the human slammed its door, strode across the street and entered his "gate house". [Hmm. I wondered why my human didn't live in such a double-storeyed monstrosity. I wonder what he did for a living, this fella.]

Under another car later that evening, I saw other denizens of the night come out. Roaches, for one! I swatted one and its wings flapped. I played with it between my paws and then let it go when it was 74.26% dead.

I felt a bit hungry and wondered whether the roach would be crunchy. If one were to believe that half-crazed, opinionated celebrity cook Anthony Bourdain, who travels to God-forsaken Third World nations to try out their food, bugs are crunchy. I'll take his word for it.

I thought about going back home soon for some kibble.

I slept for a bit under the car, but kept an ear cocked all night. The experience was too weird for me to allow myself a full-on slumber. Nothing like my basket back home with its coloured cushion, all infused with Eau de Nookie...

At around 4am, I made tracks for home. Then a problem hit me: How was I to get back in? The balcony looked a tad too high for me to jump back in. Gravity helped me get down earlier, but now...

And it wasn't just a matter of jumping that high up - a lot of precision would be required to land exactly between the vertical railings too.

I decided to go home by the front door. I had no problems figuring out which one it was. I made it up two flights of steps and there was The Door. I had always been on its other side, wondering if I could ever get out for a walk. Now I was wondering how to get in.

I meowed once, loudly. Everything inside was still. I guess they were asleep. I looked up at the door and the crucifix on it and the dried-out palm above that.

"Jesus-Mary-Joseph, please come open the door," I willed silently. Nothing happened. Maybe I wasn't praying right. I lay down and tucked my front paws under my chest, and figured a long wait was in the offing.

Early morning saw the block's earlier risers clatter down the stairs on the way to work or to school. I had to duck somewhere to hide each time these people went by my human's door:

There was Justin, the noisiest kid in the neighbourhood from upstairs, going to pre-school, and his executive dad Robert in his pressed, long-sleeved pastel shirt and tie. There was also the young fella from the fourth floor - was it Joshua or Moses or some sorta Biblical name - and the Chinese couple from the apartment just across from my human's.

At around 8:30am, my human's door opened! She had come out to get her newspaper. [Sheesh, she works all day in a newspaper office and still has to read this smelly, inky thing first thing every morning? I just don't get it.]

I sat up immediately and meowed. She looked at me, smiled broadly and went: "Nookie! You are back!"

To her husband, who was somewhere in the flat, she called: "Hey, the cat has come home!!" I swear I heard the man go: "Oh damn, oh fuck."

I padded in, lay down at the foot of the dining table while she patted me, and looked me over.

"He seems fine, just a little bit dirty, but he's fine," she said to the man, relief flooding her voice.

"Damn," I heard him mutter again.

I was home.

Zzzz...

2006-05-03T13:25:00.000+08:00

Oh! Sleep it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole,
To Mary, Queen, the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven
That slid into my soul.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

The vigorous are no better than the lazy during one half of life, for all men [and cats!!] are alike when asleep.
- Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.)

Cat toys

2006-04-28T23:28:00.000+08:00

When I first came to live with my human, her husband - the one who loathes cats, remember? - bought me a "welcome" toy. It was more, I suspect, to please her than me.

It cost him about $18, this plastic bowl-like structure in lime green. It rocked about on its round bottom and had a rod sticking out of the flat top, to which was tied a piece of string, at the end of which was a feather.

I was supposed to swat it and go stir-crazy chasing the feather, which would dance as the bowl rocked. Cool enough for amusement, I guess - but it kept me occupied for all of less than half a day. It just collected dust thereafter.

Over the years, with a steady stream of her visitors falling prey to my obvious charms, I was to get a few more cat toys. A fake grey rat, a pink ball with a bell embedded in it...

But my all-time favourite toy [see two samples in picture above] really doesn't cost any money. It is simply a balled- up plastic bag, held in shape by a rubber band. I could play pawball for an hour straight with this thing - and my human's home with its smooth, white floors makes a perfect playing surface.

The ball goes far with each swat and I get my workout. It's like doing the "zooms" with a purpose. [You do know what the "zooms" are, right? It's when we cats just dash madly up and down the longest runway we can find in our homes with no particular object of the chase in mind.]

The crackling sound of the plastic just drives me crazy. It's better than catnip. Hearing the sound of those plastic bags being bunched up is enough to make me drop whatever I'm doing - be it eating, dozing, watching those *&^% birds or just "being". [Sometimes, when I think a pawball session is imminent, it's a false alarm. My human, going about housework, is simply fiddling with these bags to bag up her trash, not make me a pawball. Dang!]

The best play sessions have been the ones where my human joins in. She picks up the ball, tosses it and I go after it. Sometimes we race to get it.

Those days are past now. Am I a fool to hope they will return?

My kill, a gift

2006-04-26T00:21:00.002+08:00

A sparrow flew into my human's living room through the balcony one day. Stupid bird that it was, it couldn't find the way out.

Such critters should be taken out of the animal kingdom's gene pool, right?

I - *sniff* - became the (self-appointed) hitman.

I watched. I swished my tail excitedly. I voiced my excitement in the series of un-meow-like clicks that all cat-owners know about.

I pounced - and missed - a few times. Then one swat of my right paw got him as he flew low for a second or two. I think I broke his wing, which bled a little. He fluttered along the floor, leaving little bloody marks.

I smacked him down one last time. [You can just picture me doing that, right? Me, the superior, flashing vision of white fur, moving with lightning speed?] I saw the whites of his beady little eyes as the light faded out of them.

No mercy at King Nookie's paws. Mua hah hah hah! I was triumphant.

This would show all of those friends of my human who laugh at me, call me fat, call me spoilt and a poor hunter because I had food fed to me every day. This would show 'em. We never really lose it, our wild side.

Actually, my first thought was to make a gift of my kill to my human. She deserved this tribute.

This wasn't my first kill. I presented her a lizard a few years ago, laying it at my feet, as I sat up very straight and looked up at her for approval. She praised me then, even though she screwed up her face in unmistakeable disgust as she picked it up.

What can I say? Humans just don't quite get it, right?

Anyway, I picked up the sparrow in my mouth and set him down in my food bowl. My human would be bound to see it there, since she cleaned it out every morning before giving me my fresh Science Diet kibble. [I'm smart, I am.]

I watched as she approached the food bowl - and yelped.

She recovered really quickly though, and picked up the bird gingerly with a kitchen towel. She came to me and knelt down, holding the bird in one hand. With her free hand, she stroked me and said soothingly: "Good cat, Nookie! Thank you for the present."

I was bursting with pride.

A cat called China

2006-04-19T17:07:00.000+08:00

This one's for you, China, wherever you may be.

He began life as a bedraggled kitten in the early 90s, scouring the tough streets of Chinatown - hence his name. He was picked up and adopted by a couple who were in the area for dinner one night. The woman, Auntie A, was my human's sister.

The dark grey-brown tabby was brought home to their cosy sixth-floor apartment in Newton, where he grew up to be a really handsome cat. He often looked like he was pursing his lips. Everything about his face was sharp-featured, and he had a long, completely perfect tail [unlike me and most of Singapore's "drain cats", who have a kink].

China was there as the couple did up their home. He was there when they welcomed their first baby. He moved with them when they put up the Newton apartment for rent and went to live in a highrise just off Orchard Road.

Most of us would have heard of horror stories about cats [or pet dogs] who, in a fit of jealousy upon the arrival of a baby, would bite or otherwise hurt the child. Not China. He watched silently - he didn't meow much - with his liquid hazel eyes as the couple grew into their roles as parents.

China never lacked for attention though, despite the new baby being around. He was Family, and much loved for his quiet ways.

And as the couple's little girl grew into a toddler, she would treat China as a miniature horse, or pull his tail. But China never retaliated, the gentleman that he was. He was also popular with the little girl's granddad, who would often bring him dried scallops as snacks. [Hey, they are Cantonese. Of course they always have a stock of these morsels at home for chucking into soups.]

One day, at the ripe old age of 15, China walked out the front door of his 10th floor home into the lift landing ... and never came back. The door to the fire-escape staircase was open that day and he must have gone downstairs that way, or gotten lost in one of the lower floors.

Auntie A was and still is really upset. It has been almost three months and she has stopped hoping he would pad back through their front door.

She checked with the development's security guard-cum-car-washer, who confirmed that he had carried a cat matching China's description to the ground floor after some neighbours had alerted him to a collar-less cat wandering on their floor.

That probably set the stage for China to get lost, Auntie A reckoned, in tears. How was he to find his way home when left in the grounds of the housing estate? He's old, unused to having to fend for himself, though he seemed otherwise healthy. [Fine, so he sometimes limped a bit, but he was old...]

Maybe he knew it was "time"? Some frantic online searches were done into cats and their impending death. It wasn't conclusive, but there is anecdotal evidence that some cats do hide or go away when they think their time has come.

Maybe it was so for China. Rest in peace, ol' boy, if you have gone to play among the Big Catnip In The Sky. [But if you haven't, maybe St Francis of Assisi will bring you home soon to that 10th-floor apartment off Orchard Road. It still is your home.]

Names for pets

2006-04-17T18:36:00.000+08:00

Meet Mummy, one of my room-mates. She is so-called because she has borne two little ones. I wonder what she was called before she became a mom??

This brings me to the subject of pet names. I think that pets - cats or dogs - should have names that aren't human names. Call me anal, but it has to be. We are different species.

I always do a double take when I hear of pets that have been given human names like Mary or Wong Kim Cheong. Don't you find that weird?

This is why through history, dogs have commonly been called Rover, Spot, or (less imaginative) names like Blackie, Brownie or Snowy (often used also for rabbits, gerbils, hamsters or guinea pigs also).

My human has heard of someone's cat named Katmandu. Quite creative, huh? My own name, suggested by my human's husband, has never - and I hope never - been used on a human. It incorporates a pun. [See my first post in this blog.]

I was called something else before when I first lived with my male owner, but I don't remember what it was now. When I was rescued by Auntie J, she named me Arkle, after my somewhat spastic meow. I do sound like "Arrr, arrr" though I'm also capable of a full-throated cat's meow, like the best of them.

My human and her husband thought Arkle a dumb name, so began calling me Nookie and after a while, that stuck. I answer to that now.

Her sister had a cat too, a tabby named China, after having been rescued from a Chinatown street. But China is gone now, either lost or dead. More on him in another post soon...

My human's own previous cat - yeah, I wasn't her first - used to be called TC. The name would unfailingly raise the question, "Oh, what does it stand for - Top Cat?", to which my human would put on a deadpan face and reply: "No. It stands for The Cat".

TC, a beautiful persian-tabby mix in silver grey, is dead now. He died at age four of some acute stomach infection that left him bleeding internally. Till today, my human says the vet did wrong by just treating the symptoms - pumping poor TC with antibiotics, putting him on a drip...

What about tests? Why not do some tests to find out why he's so sick, my human asked the vet, to which he confessed he didn't know what he was dealing with, so he "didn't know" which test would be relevant.

This blog has been named Top Cat - what people often thought he was called - in his memory. He really was one.

Dogs

2006-04-13T12:33:00.000+08:00

I know that we cats are supposed to be traditional enemies of dogs and all that.

But really, I don't have strong feelings for or against them. My human suspects that it is because I have never had real encounters with dogs and so haven't gotten down to working myself up into a furball over them.

Before I came to live with her - from the time I was born till the time I was nearly a year old - I was living with a bachelor in a highrise on the edge of Marine Parade. I think it was Lagoon View or Laguna Park or something like that. I don't think dogs figured in my life then. Maybe I didn't even know what a dog was.

One day, the guy moved away - just like that. He took away all his things, but I guess I didn't figure in his future plans, whatever they may have been.

I wandered around the lobby of his floor for I-don't-know how long. There were three other flats on that floor, but the families there ignored me. Then a lady by the name of Auntie J came to "rescue" me. She lived in one of the neighbouring blocks and had cats of her own. So I went to live with her. I didn't know then that she wasn't intending to keep me.

Before I knew it, she had found someone from her office - she was a journalist - to take me in. Her colleague, also a journalist, was my human. So that's how I came to live in the East Coast with her and her husband.

They were busy people who worked long hours. They had no other pets - let alone dogs, who, I understand, are wheedling, needy critters who smell after four days without a bath.

My human kept me as an indoor cat, so her front door was shut all the time to stop me running away - not that this was bad, because I came to take their 900-sq-ft apartment as my kingdom, my world.

There used to be a dog living on the top [fourth] floor of the block. Bud, his name was, and he was a collie. His nail would click all the way downstairs from his home upstairs as he went on his daily walk, and then click all the way up after.

I would put my nose at the crack at the foot of my human's front door each time he passed by, so I know exactly how he smelled, even if I didn't know how he looked.

Then came The Day I Went Face To Face with him. The front door was open and my human was at the metal gate, saying "hi" to Bud and his owner. I stood at my human's feet and stared. And stared.

He was a massive blob of brown-and-white long fur and he had a really pointy face softened by the bangs that hung on either side of it. He stared back. He didn't bark and I didn't raise my hackles. Neither of us knew what to do. Maybe it was his first meeting with an un-dog.

Now that I live with Auntie S, I know Lucky and Godbless [that's them in the pictures in this post, Lucky is the black one] as the Animals Who Live Beyond The Door. They hang around Auntie S' living room and even watch TV. They are the welcome party for visitors. They bark when visitors show up, but it's more a welcome bark than a "Keep Away" one.

They seem to get along with Auntie S' cats, which holds out hope for cat-dog peace. That's why I think the movie The Truth About Cats And Dogs is unnecessarily pessimistic.

I really don't mind them, these un-cats.

My roomies

2006-04-12T20:26:00.000+08:00

Time for a little information about some of my roomies:

Mummy: She's so-named because two of the cats in this room are her babies. I haven't yet found out which ones!

Cutie: She is the pretty grey cat who is really affectionate, even with humans she's just met. [That's her in the top picture.] She often parks her petite frame on the second rung of the ladder of the bunk bed. Quite a vantage position, really, because that puts her more in the line of sight of the humans who come into the room, unlike the rest of us who hang out at floor level.

Candy: She's the tortoiseshell cat, mostly white, with blobs of black and tan. She likes hanging out on the ledge just facing the garden. [That's her in the bottom picture.]

Buster: He's the silent, the El Moroso. He looks old, and sits there staring most of the time, a bit of his tongue sticking out of his lip. He came back from the vet this week because he had a bad tooth, which infected his gums. When I first moved in, he looked unkempt. Auntie S said he wasn't grooming himself any more, which puzzled me. Since he got back from the vet, he has looked cleaner, because Auntie S cleaned him up some. But he still doesn't bother to groom himself. It's like he's given up on life. I hope to talk to him soon.

Name unknown [but I'll find out soon]: The room's biggest ginger cat. I think he might be bigger than I am. [Ulp.]

Name unknown: A Siamese, also rather heftily built. This fella likes to hang out by the bedroom door. Maybe he's planning to bolt the moment someone comes through the door!

Name unknown: Black-and-white tom, another of the room's big cats. He looks like he's wearing a super-hero's cape and headpiece in black, heh!

There are also Animals Who Live Beyond The Door, who we boarders in the room seldom see. These are Auntie S' own pets. I hear them, and smell them. From overhearing what Auntie S told my human during one of her visits, I can fathom they are [and this list is not exhaustive]:

Leo: Auntie S' prize-winning tabby. All the ribbons pinned on one of the cupboards in Auntie S' living room are Leo's. He's a silver-grey tabby with beautiful stripes and the most bewitching eyes.

Godbless: She's the brown mongrel.

Lucky: That's the black mongrel.

Godbless and Lucky are two really sunny dogs. They come up and greet visitors with smiling faces and wagging tails. I guess this means they aren't guard dogs!

I was a cat with a manicure

2006-04-10T15:40:00.000+08:00

For a short period late last year till earlier this year, all my front claws were coloured green and red - in keeping with the Christmas season.

Don't laugh. I've had enough laughter at my expense already, from my human as well as her friends who came to visit. It seemed highly amusing to them to see my coloured claws.

No nail polish was involved. The "manicure", courtesy of Softpaws, actually involves my wearing vinyl nail caps, all in the name of limiting my destruction of my human's furniture. [You can just make out the green tips on my front paws in the picture above. The nail caps were red with green tips.]

My human learned about Softpaws online and ordered two sets - one in green and red for the Christmas season and the other in her favourite colour, purple - on discovering that I had begun to destroy her new furniture. [As you may figure out, they didn't quite work, which is why she still ended having to give me up to Auntie S.]

After the Softpaws arrived in the mail, she eagerly tore open the packaging, read the instructions, and then summoned me. OK, I fell for it. She shook my can of snacks and I came running. Call me a sucker.

She held me down, trimmed each of my front claws slightly, stopping to give me a crunchy snack every few minutes. Then I watched as she put glue - yes, glue - into each nail cap before gingerly attaching it to each of my 10 front claws. My rear claws were left untouched because I don't use them for destroying her furniture.

When she was done with all 10, she gave me a few more of those crunchy snacks after checking that the glue had taken hold.

It felt weird and smelled weirder. I took a few tentative steps, treading gingerly, all the while feeling something on my claws that weren't part of my anatomy.

I licked them and then used my teeth to try yanking them off, but it was no use. It was something I was going to have to get used to, I guess.

I did get used to them. They weren't supposed to stop me doing my usual cat thing, like scrabbling about in the litter tray, or even stropping. The difference was that when I scratched any of her furniture, it didn't leave any puncture marks.

It seemed to be a solution, right? Well, not completely.

She was supposed to have checked my claws periodically to see if any of the nail caps needed replacing - and they would need replacing, either because I had succeeded in biting them off, or because she hadn't applied enough glue, or simply because my claws had grown out. When claw falls, nail cap falls with it.

So yes, this meant that if she weren't vigilant enough, I could still do damage with the odd exposed claw here and there. This is why, although Softpaws is a good product, it wasn't a water-tight solution.

Since moving in with Auntie S, my nails have grown out and all the nail caps have fallen off. Sigh. If I had a choice between wearing those ridiculous coloured nail caps [and staying on with my human] and doing without them while staying with these 22 cats in Auntie S's home, I'd go with the manicured look.

It is a small-scale change that I could live with. Now, I have to get used to a whole new environment, which is pretty tough. You know how we cats are such creatures of habit.

Dealing with change

2006-04-09T16:10:00.000+08:00

I used to be the only cat in my human's house. Now, I share a bedroom with - get this - 22 other cats. Talk of having to adapt to a change.

It's not as cramped as you think. One of the bedroom walls has a hole in it at floor-level, meant for an airconditioner. [You can see the hole on the extreme right edge in the picture.] The hole gives me and my 22 roomies an access route to a garden outside. Most of us spend the morning basking out in the garden, which is rather nice. It is fenced in and has an awning. It is bright but it keeps us dry if it rains.

At night, when the temperature drops, most of us head back into the bedroom.

I used to be able to go where I pleased in my human's home, except for the two bedrooms. I would walk all over the place, and even sneak into the bedrooms whenever she wasn't looking, or when she had forgotten to shut the bedroom door before going out.

Now that I share this bedroom with 22 other cats, each with his or her own smell and story, I can't mark where I please. Until I suss out the dynamics in play among them here, I don't think I'll do much yet. But one thing is clear though: I'm one of the biggest moggies in this room, so none of them had better mess with me.

For now, when I wake up in the mornings, I head up to the upper bunk of the double-decker bed in the room. It's so I can escape the smell at floor level. The air is fresher 2 metres off the ground. Heck, with 23 of us in there having slept through the night, it can, of course, get downright funky. And half of us do use the row of litter pans there in the mornings, so until B [Auntie S' maid] comes in to clean the pans and feed us in the mid-morning, it's a whole bad-air zone.

Sometimes, when I wake up, I forget momentarily where I am. [So shoot me. For almost nine years, I woke up in the comfort of my own basket and would be fed kibble about an hour later, after I got my eyes and ears cleaned.] Then the smell hits me.
Sometimes, those roomies get too close for comfort. I tell them off with a growl and hiss that I'm not ready to be that chummy yet.

It's a funny thing, Change. The thought of impending change is sometimes more daunting than the change itself. It might even be better to be surprised with change than to be told in advance of its arrival. Advance warning just gives room for worry.

...that is, if it's an unpleasant change. Nice changes just breed anticipation. Then again, we aren't talking of a nice change in my case, are we? In my case, I didn't have much of a warning. She just talked to me, gave me my snacks and put me in the carrier and drove me out here.

Getting into the car is always bad news to me. It can mean either of two things: Going to the vet, or going to the Pet Hotel. Both occasions freak me out.

Of course, on Feb 7, 2006, I found out the third meaning of being bundled into my purple pet carrier and being put into the car. I was to be dumped in a new place. Ten minutes into the drive, I stopped meowing and went quiet. It was when a bad, bad feeling came over me.

The feeling was fear... fear that it wasn't the vet or the Pet Hotel. No matter how bad those two other types of outings were, they always ended with me being brought back home. Not this time.

I reckon I have another five years or so of life. Is this where it's all going to end? Or maybe my human might come and bring me home again one day? As long as she comes to visit without lugging a pet carrier, I know it's not going to happen. So it looks like I'll just have to adapt, find a new routine, set up a new paradigm. [Wow, I used that word. I'm so with-it in management-speak.]

Me and the Christmas tree of 2005(already brown, post-Christmas)

2006-04-08T13:32:00.000+08:00

I was dumped

2006-04-07T21:30:00.000+08:00

My cat blog looks fine!

Hmm. I think I'll upload a pic of me soon. All of you out there - especially the cat lovers - would be wanting to know what I look like, right? The reason I can't do it now is that I'm clogging from this PC and that's not where my pics are stored.

My pics are all in a Mac in another place. Uh huh, yes, I am in the Mac camp, most definitely. User-friendly and beautiful machines to boot. There's no way to advertise one's uber cool status faster than to use a Mac. [OK, I hear all you PC-philes swearing never to return to this clog already. Go if you have to. No skin off my pink, heart-shaped nose!]

In my last post, I promised to tell why I no longer live with my human. It's a sad story and I know she's pretty broken up about it and still thinks of me often. I know for a fact that she has pinned up six pics of me at her cubicle at her work place and has a picture of me on her computer desktop...

I came to live with her and her husband in their East Coast apartment in mid-1998. From the start, the situation didn't look good. She wanted a cat. Her husband was [and still is] a dog person. But he said OK to her anyway.

She took real good care of me: I got my yearly shots at the vet, and was brought there each time I fell ill. I was fed Science Diet premium cat kibble, and yummy tinned food on Saturday mornings. She cleaned my eyes and ears every morning with damp tissue and talked to me.

In return, I hammed it up for the guests who came by for their fabulous dinner parties. [Her husband cooks really well.] I was a real centre of attraction with young and old alike. I was variously described as "big", "muscular", "fat", "aggressive", "psycho" ... and "pretty". [Me, a big boy, "pretty"? I object!]

In July 2005, my human and her husband decided to get their home remodelled. This entailed moving out - all the three of us. They went to live with his mom [a non-cat person] in Telok Blangah, and I became a boarder with Auntie S in Punggol for those three months because my human didn't want to "impose" on her mom-in-law with a huge, scratching, fur-shedding critter.

Living in Punggol with Auntie S was fine, because I knew my human would come back for me. She always came back to get me, even back when she used to put me at the Pet Hotel in Pasir Ris whenever she went on short holidays with her husband.

When the work was all done, she came to get me in October, as I expected. But what I wasn't prepared for was The Change. What had they done to my world?? I was terrified.

The floor was white and shiny. The walls were all white. The cabinets were now all in dark brown wood. Some walls I remembered brushing against were gone. And this was just the shell of the house.

The Change affected the furniture as well: Where was that wonderful cane set where I used to strop my claws? In its place, there was this hideous scarlet sofa, all fabric, no hard bits to give some resistence when my claws itched to be stropped off. The dining room chairs were now in this smelly black leather, eeewwww.

I spent a good part of the following two months trying to make sense of it all - the new colours, the new textures, and worst of all, the new smells - wood, leather, aluminium strips, glue, paint.

Were they doing this to traumatise me? Why weren't THEY traumatised?? How could they accept such change?

Hold it. They were not just accepting of the change. They seemed to revel in it, and were proud of it. They hosted more of their fabulous parties and more humans came by. All of them cooed at how wonderful the place now looked. My human gave running commentaries about what was done, and her continuing battles with the interior designer to unf*** some of his shoddy work.

Me, I wasn't happy. I stropped my claws on that red monster sofa. Hey, I found out the fabric had some give. Little threads came loose and did fine to relieve my itchy claws. I also left some of my Eau de Moggie marks at the corners.

And, bad as the black leather smelled, I made a wonderful discovery one day when I deigned to leap onto it. I dug my claws in and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Soon, there were long scratches on it and bits of green sponge filling were spilling out. And my overgrown nails flaked off. Sweet relief.

She noticed my artwork soon enough and became angry, very angry.

I. have. to. leave. my. mark. somehow. It's a cat thing. All this new, unmarked furniture was just calling out to me. WHY couldn't my human see this? She yelled at me and spat out something that sounded like "BAD CAT!" She wasn't happy, that much I knew. I could tell it from the tone she used as she shouted at me.

Her husband was also saying things about me in my direction. He wasn't happy either, and it was also clear from his tone of voice. In my seven years under their roof, he and I had just steered clear of each other. He never petted me [except when he was a little high on beer], but never hit me either. I knew he was just tolerating me for her sake.

She even smacked me on my rump one day, but I don't know why.

The furniture became more "me". But somehow, in their terms, they called it "getting worse". Things came to a head. I know my human had a few discussions with her husband, and that he said the decision about what to do was up to her.

One quiet Saturday afternoon, she fed me my usual tinned food and told me tearfully that she had to give me up. She explained that she had thought about it, and that this wasn't just her home. It was his too. Already, he had put up with seven years of:

scattered litter,
my fur flying all over the place and sticking on clothes,
bedroom doors needing to be kept shut in order to keep me and my fur out,
the smell from my litter box (despite an industrial strength litter),
brown stains on corners of walls - my "dhoby marks",
occasional pee accidents,
puddles of vomit, usually after I scarf down my food in the best Homer Simpson tradition.

The damaged furniture was the last straw. Did I know the new furniture was a gift from her mom-in-law, she asked me. They were only four months old and they looked like shit, she sighed. She said she couldn't go about repairing it if I was going to be around. She held my face and asked me: "Why can't you stop doing this? Why?"

She took some pics of me, put me in my pet carrier and drove me to Auntie S's in Punggol. So that's where I live now.

Auntie S has cats too, some of which have pretty sad stories of homelessness and abuse. These cats are now up for adoption.

Me, I' m not for adoption. I've just become a long-term boarder. I still belong to her. She comes to visit, but I don't think she will come to bring me home any more. I think I heard her negotiating with Auntie S about how much she had to pay every month to keep me here.

I'm angry that she has dumped me here. The last time she came to visit, I refused to take my favourite cat snacks from her hand and walked away from her to show her I was hurt.

She came again to visit this week, and I was so happy to see her, I went up to her and purred, hurt feelings quite forgotten.

I could see she was happy to see me. She hugged me - I hate this, can't she ever remember? - but I could see it in her eyes she was sorry and feeling guilty she had to make me adapt all over again to a new place at my old age.

But this is how it is going to be. Top Cat checking out for now.

Dog blogs, my paw. Here's my cat blog!

2006-04-07T17:27:00.000+08:00

Did you guys read last Sunday's newspaper [Sunday Times, April 2]? There was a feature there about dog blogs, or dlogs, started by their humans.

It got me thinking - what about cat blogs?? Maybe they are out there, who knows. It's just that SunTimes is so pro-dog that they probably didn't think to go out to look for them. [For a start, check out About.com's aggregator of cat blogs here - and I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list.]

In any case, I'm starting my cat blog here and now, so there is at least mine to count.

Let me introduce myself: I'm what vets call a DSH, or Domestic Short-Hair. Some mean humans call me "pariah cat", "longkang cat" or "ordinary" cat. [The Cat Welfare Society has a tee shirt which declares "There are no ordinary cats", so so true. Each of us is really special!]

Top Cat is what I'm calling my blog, though my humans named me Nookie. [Cat = Pussy = Nookie, geddit? If you don't, never mind. Think of it as a regular name.]

I'm an old boy, almost nine. When my human got me in mid-1998, she brought me to the vet first thing to have me checked. The vet peeled back my lips, looked at my teeth and pronounced me a fit and healthy cat, "aged about one year". So I reckon I must have been born around mid-1997.

Actually, I'm speaking to you now from my new home. I'm no longer living with my human, but that story can be for another day. I'll just get this maiden entry uploaded first to see how my blog looks like, and check back with you on another day.