A dollar short and a day late: Saturday cat blogging at the local wireless coffee shop

I found a workaround for the graphics problem I was having--taking my laptop for free wireless access at a nearby cafe. They don't take Visa, though, so I had to stand there with my ice cream cone in one hand rummaging through my backpack for pennies to pay for my "rent".

I'm also a day late for the traditional Friday cat blogging, but that's ok--it'll just stand out more that way.

This is Isadora:




Isadora is a "feral" rescue from Yesler Way. (She's about as feral as Grandma Walton, but that's beside the point, as she was abandoned and starving when we trapped her.)



She had obviously belonged to someone as a kitten, because she was wearing a pink collar several sizes too small for her. It was so tight that it interfered with her eating (believe it or not, she was actually very skinny when we found her), and could have strangled her if it had been left on much longer.






Although she's quite reticent on the subject of her ancestry, we think she's fully or partially Maine coon cat, because of her size and coloration.





She has a cauliflower left ear. When we trapped her, she had a bad case of ear mites, and our best hypothesis about the cauliflower ear is that it must have itched so bad that she scratched it hard enough to cause a massive hematoma, filling it with blood and distorting the underlying structures. When the blood was reabsorbed, the cartilage must have collapsed.

(this is from an old, classic post on my web page. update at the bottom.)

Since moving in with us, though, to the Feral Cat Welfare State, Isadora has been doing really well. She no longer has ear mites, and she is eating well. But lately, Isadora's developed a new problem.


Click here for a clip of the problem.


She insists on sleeping on the mantel over our fireplace. But the mantel is not as wide as she is, and so she has to balance. This is not a problem when she's awake, but when she falls asleep, and totally relaxes, then gravity takes over. (By the way, that thing about cats always landing on their feet is apparently true only when they're awake. We've arranged the boxes here so that she only falls about a foot or so, rather than 4 or 5 feet from the full height of the mantel to the ground, and landing on her head or something.)

This is happening about ten times an hour now at peak times. We've been waiting for her to wise up and quit climbing back up there to go back to sleep, but after several weeks, she shows no signs yet of wising up in the least.





The problem is, the mantel is only 4 inches wide. Isadora's ass, by contrast, is 7.5 inches wide.






So we are going to build a cat shelf on the mantel to accommodate the width of her ass, and (we hope) stop the falling. (End of original post)

(Update: Finally, we got so sick and tired of this, we blocked off the entire mantel with boxes of books, and kept it that way for a few months. Although it was like living in a Costco, when we finally moved the boxes away, Isadora had totally lost interest in the mantel, and in a 180 from her previous obsession, never tries to go up there anymore. But we still enjoy watching the movie and laughing at her, even if Isadora has moved on from that phase of her life.)