Jeepers! Creepers! Where'd you get those peepers!!

I have a jar of marbles...some are "cat's eyes"...cat's actual eyes are so incredibly beautiful, aren't they?

I sit in awe of the gorgeous eyes I have before me every day.  Missy Tee has enormous "alien" eyes....I swear they take up half her face.  Huuuuuge.  

Most of these clowns have green eyes, in various hues.  Some are deeper and darker, some lighter.  But Notte and Lupo, the two black, or nearly black cats, have green eyes.....Lupo's are more almond shaped, likely due to his Siamese heritage somewhere along the way.  Notte's eyes are more round, with the tops lopped off, exactly the same as her brother, Imp.  Calzini has light green eyes that contrast nicely with his gray, beige and white....I could build an entire room around him....

Percy, the orange menace, has orange eyes.  Really.  They match his fur.....he is totally monotone, completely coordinated and somehow, it works.  Well, he's a cat.

Scruffy had goopy eyes as a street kitten.  I learned via social media friends that this can lead to health complications....and, of course, goopy eyes are bad news in and of themselves, regardless.  I was advised to treat them with antibiotic eyedrops, which I was able to get via the local veterinarian.

His little kitten eyes were so bad that sometimes they were stuck closed.  So, as soon as I could, I scooped him up in a towel and hauled him into the courtyard.  It was amazing how strong a tiny three month old kitten could be, but he was frightened.  I had everything set up on a bench inside, knowing I would only have one hand to do it with.  I held on with all my might to keep him still..enough...to do what I had to do.  That included getting drops onto, or into, if possible, his eyes, and then cleaning them off....yuck,  ugh...and then I attempted another round of drops for good measure.  He managed to get one really good scratch in.

When I was done I stood up and approached the door to the outside and let him go.  He ran like the proverbial bat out of hell. I felt awful.  I was trying to help and I was afraid I would never see him again or that at the very least, he would never come near enough to me again so that I could touch him.

To my elated surprise, the very next day, as I went out with a tray of food, along came a handsome little tiny kitten with big clear eyes.  SCRUFF!!!  His eyes were wide open!  Green!  Counter intuitively, he actually let me apply the drops while he was eating.  I just lifted up his little head and went "squirt, squirt" and we were done.  Did he KNOW that it helped him?

Scruffy seemed, to an outsider, as just another plain, gray kitten. Nothing special.  But he is.  He has fur like a rabbit...so incredibly soft and fluffy...which is why he appeared "scruffy" as compared to others with more silky fur.  He was also receptive and became affectionate and playful when given the opportunity.  

He has severe asthma, which it seems I finally have under control with a combination of medications, all in miniscule doses, but administered daily.  He hasn't gasped for breath or coughed in months now.  I have not needed to use the inhaler.  I believe it is safe to say this little boy would never have survived in the street.

And those eyes.  Those big, clear eyes.  His are a bit different from the others.  They are not precisely green and it took me a while to put my finger on it....until I saw a few of them lined up one day (begging for chicken)...and it became clear to me.  Scruffy's eyes are aqua.  They are blue/green, not exactly one or the other, they look like liquid, like a pool.  He looks up at me with those glistening pools and my heart melts.   

You won't see me

 Missy Tee, Teetee or Titi....sometimes just plain Missy....was the first one in the door and the first to have the run of the house.  

Although she started with some digestive problems, now that she is mature and has been inside for a year and a half, her health issues have resolved and, in fact, she has gained quite a bit of weight.  She now weighs 12 pounds (5.4 kg).  

She is a gorgeous tortoise shell and sometimes I refer to her as the "marble loaf."  

Tee is rather aggressive, though, when it comes to her food.  Since she was first, she still actually demands to be the first one fed.  So, when I am attempting to juggle as many food bowls as possible at one time and march them into the back room, she wants to be the first one in the room and no one had better get in way!  She will smack and bop and go into her Ninja mode if anyone tries to get ahead.  Poor Calzini was always the one getting his head smacked until Percy came along.  Even though Percy is bigger she beats the daylights out of him, too, if he dares to sneak to the front.  They are learning to stay out of her way and a step or two behind.

Tee, along with Percy, loves the cat tunnels and I think they both feel invisible when they are inside them.

There is one other place Titi thinks she is invisible.  

I have what are very traditional white lace panels in our front window that looks out on our little piazzetta.  The clowns like to watch the birds swoop by, the street cats outside and even the people as they come and go.  But only Titi often sits behind the curtain and peers out through the lace.  Even if she starts out in full view through the glass or screen (in summer) she will still decide at times to take a step to the side and peek through the curtain.  Yes, I'm pretty sure she thinks she has donned the cloak of invisibility.

She was doing it again this morning when Lupo came along and jumped up to the sill.  He looked out the window and then did a s-l-o-w head turn and just stared at her with such an expression!!!  "What do you think you're doing? I can see you.  Are you crazy?"

"Shhhhh.  I'm invisibles!"

Send in the clowns....

 

Don’t Bother, They’re Here

 

 When Scruff was still outside, from age 3 months to 10 months, the summer of 2019 was the summer of cortile cats. 

Since the weather was nice, I brought trays of food outside for the larger gang to feast upon.  I would sit in the cortile (courtyard) sipping wine until they were done.  After that, the routine at that point, was for the younger kittens to come into the cortile and play.

There was nothing fancy about it.  Harry’s large travel kennel was still out there and we had a couple of towels inside of it for comfort.  The kennel itself sat on top of an old patio chair pad, to keep it from being in direct contact with the cold ceramic tile floor.

For their entertainment, I had a couple of aluminum foil balls and the old chair pad had the ties that were used to fasten it to a chair sticking out.  To kittens, especially feral ones, these constituted toys.

Scruff, Ink and Sib would bat the balls, roll around with the chair ties and tease each other inside and outside of the kennel.  Sometimes Mamma would settle down in the kennel and take a nap.  Once in a while Funky would join in.  Later in the summer, Imp, Tee and Calzini became part of the crowd.

 Once they were inside and past the trauma of living outdoors, past their surgeries and becoming healthy and comfortable in their new surroundings, playtime became a “thing” again.

Aluminum foil balls and string were no longer enough.  My husband found a “bargain” online, a bag full of cat toys.  There were fuzzy balls, cushy balls, sparkly balls, gray fuzzy mice, white fuzzy mice, not so fuzzy rubber ones that looked just a bit too realistic, feather teasers and tunnels.  Everything was a “hit” with the burgeoning indoor crowd, whom I soon dubbed “the clowns.” 

 A pattern began emerging.  It seems the clowns became very frisky when they were hungry.  This meant that every morning, first thing, they were raring to go.  Since my husband tends to get up before I do, I would often awaken to the sound of the thundering herd galloping up and down the  hallway or have      one, two or three of them use me as a launching pad.  Oooofff!!!

The next galumphing galloping sessions tended to coincide with the bedtime suppertime feeding.  This was the opposite of our routine outside, but this certainly made more sense…full tummies meant naps were in order. It made it somewhat easier to insure they would all go to bed, too!!

In fact, playtime is what helped each one of them to assimilate…as we added new clowns to the clown car.  Favorites were identified.  Missy Tee and Percy LOVE the tunnels.  They go inside and I swear they think they are invisible, no matter how much of them might be sticking out somewhere.

Scruff loves his very favorite mousey…a gray one that no longer has a tail.  He loves all the mice, but the sad, beat up gray one is his special one.  He loves them so much he hides them.  Then, of course,he can’t play with them, but then again, neither can anyone else.  

When enough toys “disappear” (that is, they are inaccessible under a dresser or cabinet) my husband fishes them out.  Scruffy gets very excited at this point and starts pacing behind wherever my husband is looking for the lost toys. When little gray mouse appears, he claims it once again, plays for maybe a half an hour, sometimes longer, and hides it again.  He always knows where it is, regardless.

 Lupo likes the one I call the “rat mouse”…the one that looks just a bit too much like a real mouse or a   baby rat.  The fuzzy balls are fun, too, because he can get them stuck on his claws and fling them long  distances, which is especially fun when they land on a counter or table, not so great when they wind up in a water bowl.

Everyone loves the laser pen.  Everyone.  I had 6 out of 7 completely enthralled by the moving light. Lupo figured out where it was coming from, but decided to continue to play along anyway.

Imp plays chase with the others and sometimes chases a ball, but he is smart enough to pace himself so he doesn’t have an asthma attack.

They are all over one year old now, still extremely playful.  Percy is THE most playful and finds new ways to cause mischief.  He has recently decided he doesn’t like the cat cushions we have in some  of the cages nor the one on the cedar chest in the entryway.  He attacks them, pulls them out of the cage or off the chest and wrangles with them for a while until he drags it off somewhere.  It was hilarious to watch him with the rather large one from the cedar chest as he attempted to hop down the hallway with it, one corner in his mouth, the rest of it in the way underneath him, but he was determined to kill it and bring it to his lair, wherever that is.

Now that spring is here at last, some of the wild playtime antics are being replaced by bird and bug watching in the open windows and just plain sunbathing.    The circus clowns are taking a small hiatus for the summer.