Trying to help Jane in the garden in the early, early morning while it’s cool—I can’t spend all day parked in a chair, and I figure it will help my concentration to get a little stretch.
The Night Terror is such an odd duck…our half-Bengal. Cross him and he’ll slap you, and he’s a handful when he makes up his mind he wants to sit on your lap and you want to use the computer—he’ll hiss and slap and lash his tail—bad kitteh! Pet him wrong and he’ll nip and slap.
But at times he’ll surprise you with cooperation. He likes being outside if we’re there. He liked the cage for a while, but it’s boring and there are things he can’t get to. Like us. But…we got that figure 8 harness.
So this morning, on my way out, bleary-eyed with cuppa coffee, to help Jane, I found Shu at the door, doing his cheek-rub on the door frame, so positioned that he’ll be outa that door the instant it opens. So I get his harness, and the rascal purrs while I put it on, flops over to relax (cats’ chest areas are real hard to get to relax) so it’ll snap easily, and on with the harness with no fuss. Won’t walk out on his own…wants to be assured it’s safe. So I park the coffee cup and help him out. But once he spots Jane, he’s happy.
We got a bit done, and Shu just wandered around, trailing a long red (and soaked and dirty) leash that always advised us where he was. He’d generally prowl near us, but loved getting under the peonies, or investigating the smells of this and that. Absolutely happy to walk the paths near us. Time to go in, I carry him in, set him down, he stands while I unclip the one snap, and he’s happy as a clam at high tide.
Never had a cat take so happily to a leash. And this is the guy from the Reservation, in the woods. Weird cat, our Shu. But fun in his weird way.
Wow, I’m surprised! Sounds like he’s figured out if he puts up with the harness and leash, he gets to Explore the Great Back Yard, the Outside, with the Excellent Garden. 😀 Very cool. Good kitteh!
My two do fine, usually, with their supervised visits to the back yard.
At first, everything was a reason to dart back into Paradise, inside the house. But then for a while, both grew bold and decided to test the limits by hopping the fence to neighbors’ yards. Uh, cats, you don’t want to do that, and it makes me worry.
They will both try for the front door when I get the mail. Or they did.
Smokey turns out to talk a good game, but he really wants to be inside, in Paradise, where there are his favorite things: Food. The hew-mon. That other cat. Food. Toys. Comfy spots. Things to get in trouble with. Heh. If caught outside, he’s smart, and yells to get in.
Goober is more of a cat who walks by himself. Mr. Non-Assertive gets passive-aggressive about wanting to stay outside. — Except…there’s Noisy Things and Strange Hew-Mons out here! Lemme in Paradise! (Pretty please?) He won’t yell. He’ll huddle at the door, if he gets himself caught outside. Or he’ll hide and come out eventually. — He’s done that enough that two or three times, I was convinced I’d lost him.
Over time, they’ve settled into looking over the back yard and when done, they’ll go back inside and hang out near the door and watch. Heh. Which is just fine.
But…at some point last month, while outside in the back yard for their usual visit, they must’ve had their fill of something, because they haven’t tried hopping the fence to see any neighbors’ yards or my own front or side yard. They’ve been very content to check the back yard, hang out with me a while, and then go back in.
Well, that’s actually fine. I don’t have to worry that way. — I always check to make sure they’ve both come in anyway, and I know to check when I get the mail, in case Thing1 or Thing2 have slipped out front.
Smokey is very much like Shu. — Both he and Goober really love their brief visits Outside. This is worth being good cats for 😉 and behaving themselves. Well, mostly. 😉 — I have never tried a leash and harness with a cat. — But both mine *loathe* any collar and will work one off minutes after it’s put on, so that I gave up trying.
I think the next time I get a kitten, some future date, I’ll get him or her used to a collar quickly, and maybe try a harness and leash.
I recalculated cat birthdays (arrival days, really). Goober is over 8.5, not yet 9. Smokey is 5. Time flies! The two do have occasional annoying habits, but over all, they’re great cats, and I enjoy the heck out of having them around.
Cool! Unusual that a kitty takes to a harness without collapsing. 🙂
Totally off topic, but thought I’d ask anyway: Do you still have the original art work you did on… was it Banichi? It was an atevi drawing anyway. I thought there was a link somewhere to it, but I cannot find it anymore.
Somewhere. I don’t recall we scanned it in, but we don’t throw such things away.
Ah, well, if you find it in your day to day scratching about, I’d love to see it. 🙂
Crystal Queen, (I was 13 when I named her), used to let me put either harness on, take her outside and secure her to the leash. She would then climb the tree, catch the leash in the crotch, shimmy out of the harness and sit by the empty harness laughing at me.
Lol! Cat! That’s like PI-rate!
our three cats all tolerate the leash, which is the only way they are allowed out. they don’t exactly go on walks but they will stalk and freeze, and stalk and freeze, and sit and eat grass and so on, with someone patiently waiting it out behind them. We have a groundhog family living under the deck – four babies showed up last week – and the cats love to watch them out the windows and sniff around when they are allowed out. We are very careful not to let the cats loose. We would not want our cats meeting the mother groundhog deep under ground.
I’d get home from somewhere, and find a flea-collar, still fastened, lying somewhere, and I’d know that mine had slipped it again. (I tried a regular collar once, and she slipped that, too, and thought it was a great toy besides.)
The thing about the figure 8 is that it’s literally a running figure 8 loop around neck, crossing at the shoulders, and fastening at the chest. The leash clip is in the crossing point, but the whole harness slides freely: if it takes up in the chest, it shortens on the neck, and vice versa. If you make it so it’s snug but not too snug, it prevents the sunfishing maneuver cats use to shed an H shaped harness. We have had a panicked moment with pull, but the harness held long enough to catch Shu and calm him. I’m sure it CAN be gotten out of, but not easily, and the rig doesn’t seem to provoke the boneless collapse of cats on a lead, either: Seishi slinks and walks funny, but he’s only had it on for 10 minutes at a go, while Shu can wear his quite comfortably for nearly an hour.
I had one cat that I used to take on hikes in the woods. Until the day that she decided to hide out under a bush to try and catch a bird, and I had to fish her out by the leash and harness. And only then realized that the bush was infested with poison ivy! She loved those hikes, but not meeting people on them, and I worried about her getting the attention of some of the dogs that we passed, so she got to stay home.
For a nice, easy to care for leash, take a look at http://www.palominelines.com. They are made of a flexible polymer material, and will wipe clean easily. You can get 6 ft to 40 ft long lines (these are often used for off-leash training dogs), and quarter- to half-inch widths. I use a 15-ft 3/8 inch one with my 9.5 lb dog with no problem. And they come in bright colors, so you can find it to grab easily.
I was just out watching my hay being raked. I noticed some ivy on an “English” walnut next to the field, so started pulling it off. There was something green growing in the crotch, but… I went to the other side for a better look. Glad I did–it was a little poison oak, as we have out west.
Thanks!
Poison ivy—I’ve walked in it, rolled in it (caught a larger than usual fish and rolled off a rock getting it in when the reel jammed. Keystone Cops 101.) And never was affected by poison ivy.
Then one nature walk, I used a walking stick just to touch the plant to point it out to junior campers. And later scratched a mosquito bite on my foot, using that stick.
As best I can reconstruct it, that’s how I got a case that traveled from my shin clear up to the inside of my knee. I was, pardon pun, not a happy camper. Scratching spreads it. I have ever after given that plant ample respect.
My mother got poison oak the last time by petting a kitten that had apparently been romping through a patch of the stuff. (Leg, mostly, where the kitty had rubbed against her.) Mom was not a happy person for a couple of weeks.
Poison oak is pretty, too. I understand that in the fall, it’s a cause of many cases, because it’s colorful, and people from other parts of the country don’t know it.
Old home remedy, via Euell Gibbons: if you think you’ve been in contact with poison ivy or oak, gather a handful of jewelweed and crush it for the sap, then rub it onto the afflicted area. It neutralizes the oil that makes the rash, and will help soothe existing cases. Jewelweed is also known as touch-me-not, because of the way the ripe seedpods explode, and is distantly related to impatiens, the common bedding plant. When I was young, I was riding a bike and hit a bump that pitched me into a bank of poison ivy. Luckily, I had just read about this and there was a stand of jewelweed nearly. I slathered myself with the mashed plant and never got a welt.
I don’t know whether my preventative maintenance worked really well, or I’m just another naturally immune person, but poison ivy hasn’t touched me so far (knock on wood), which means mango sap doesn’t bother me. Mangoes are another distant relative, of poison ivy this time, and people with bad poison ivy allergies should stay away from mango sap. Even peeling mangoes sometimes will make people break out, but usually they can eat the prepared fruit.
That would be me, peeling mangos while wearing playtex gloves.
Mmm. I KNEW I didn’t trust mangoes. Raw ones just aren’t that pleasant for me. Cooked, they’re ok.
I didn’t get a rash the first time I waded through waist deep poison oak either. I’ve read sensitivity grows on you. “Sensitivity to poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac varies from a mild to severe reaction, and may not cause any reaction at all the first time you’re exposed.”
But several years ago I used a chainsaw to cut down a blight infected hazelnut, and afterward found it had a stalk of poison oak in the middle. Chips had been flying. Some apparently had gone down my collar, because I developed a rash around my waist. Note to self: Don’t wear briefs when cutting wild woods. 😉 Also not a “happy camper” for a couple weeks. Thank God for antihistamines! 🙂
One must also be careful not to burn it!
p.s. Cashews are related to poison oak, so I’ve read.
I grew up in North Georgia and so far as I know rolled in poison ivy as a child with no ill effects. That is, it was pervasive and we knew what to watch for, but we were all over the woods and it is not probable that we did not land in it at one time or another. I never got it, not ever. Then when I was 13 I went to visit family in Northern California for a few weeks, and because poison oak doesn’t much, to a 13 year old, resemble poison ivy, and because I needed to cut down a tree to build a hut for a movie set (long and uninteresting story)I was deeply involved in some poison oak without knowledge, and that was an eye opener. It was awful. Do you suppose that long generations of exposure to one will moderate the influence, leaving the other as real poison? My spouse, who is basically from the northeast, has a terrible sensitivity to poison ivy. I think if it looks at him he breaks out. And I am still, at age sixty, immune. And now I knock on wood.
The page I referenced says: “Have you ever wondered: Can I get poison ivy? What you’re really asking is: Am I allergic to the plant? Not everyone is. Up to 85% of Americans are allergic to poison ivy, leaving at least 15% resistant to any reaction.”
I’m one of the lucky ones who don’t seem to have any kind of reaction to poison oak. My Dad and brother get it. So does my aunt.
My grandfather, on the other hand, could be standing in an 8 foot thick patch, chopping at it with a machete and getting the sap all over him, burning it and breathing the smoke while chewing on a twig of it, and not get it at all. My poor grandmother would get it really badly from washing his clothes…
He may not react to the smoke of burning it, but people downwind will. Don’t do it! Just let it rot.
Let it rot somewhere the roots won’t take a second hold, too!
Well, he’s been dead for years now, so you won’t have to worry. 😛
Round-Up is quite effective on Poison Oak, especially in late summer and it’s pulling everything back to the rools, and before it starts turning red.
Haven’t had it since I was 11, don’t ever want to get it again, as it was all over my hands and forearms. Worse, I’d also been invaded by a legion (or so it seemed) of chiggers up and down my legs.
I have come in contact with poison ivy since then, but always managed to get the oil washed off before it could cause a reaction. So, I don’t know if I’m allergic to it or not, but I’m not going to test it out, either.
Taking a “proton pump inhibitor”? You may want to speak with your doctor. There seems to be a link with heart attacks according to “usually reliable sources”.
I don’t have a significant problem myself, but I’ll get heartburn in the “wee hours” myself if I go to bed with anything much in my stomach, so I refrain from eating much of anything after 6:30 or so, 5:30 is better.
I like mango juice and fruit quite a lot, but I’ve never peeled mangoes myself, or picked or grown them.
I’m also not allergic to cashews, or to peanuts, thank goodness.
But poison ivy, oak, or sumac? Ee-yii! Get that stuff away from me!
My dad was not allergic to poison ivy for most of his life, but when I was in my late teens, my dad was clearing some out that had gotten mixed in with other ivy. I don’t recall if he had on a long-sleeved or a short-sleeved shirt. It was summer, though, very hot. That time, he developed an *extreme* allergic reaction all over both arms and hands. Calamine lotion didn’t seem to help much, iirc. After that, he was always more careful about poison ivy. He grew up here in Texas and back in Virginia (in the Appalachian / Smokey Mountains). So he’d been around all three plants before, since childhood.
Chiggers — Nasty little critters. Appy nail polish to the affected area to smother them. The alcohol (etc.) also acts to lessen the itch a little. Note to international readers: a “chigger” is a very tiny insect(?) (arthropod, at least) that likes to hid in grass, leafy detritus, etc., and gets under the skin. Very tiny and itchy and annoyingly itchy as ****. (Self-censored, there.) It’s common to get them while out hiking or climbing or doing yard work, etc. So when you come into camp (or hotel or home) after a hike (or sometimes yard work), you check for chigger “bites” (the little things get just under the skin, it’s not a bite) as well as to check for ticks, etc., and bathe thoroughly and treat anything. (And wash clothing very thoroughly too.)
Right, not a good idea to burn poison ivy. The oily liquid can still get carried away to harm some poor unsuspecting innocent soul. Probably your neighbors. Hmm, who might not always be so innocent, but still… One does not wish such a thing on anyone.