Last night something happened

So this morning, I woke up to three messages to call home from my parents. Our cat Sega had a stroke and passed away. He was three months away from his ninth birthday.

Sega's life changed when we moved to Switzerland in 2007. Before we moved ourselves, we had to move Sega and his sister Atari in with my parents (thanks so much for adopting them, mom and dad). Earlier in the year, a routine vet visit for Sega to get his teeth cleaned turned into an appointment with the kitty cardiologist which turned into a hefty bill and a couple prescriptions to treat his newly-discovered heart murmur. We worried that a long flight wasn't going to make his heart matters any better so, with heavy hearts of our own, we left Sega and his sister with my parents.

Sega quickly became the favorite cat at my parents house as well - he had the best personality and just loved people. Over this past Christmas, we got to see he and Atari again and we were thrilled to find both cats even fatter, happier and more spoiled than we left them.

So, to celebrate Sega today, we've been eating black and white cake and trading stories of our best Sega memories. I thought I would share a couple of our favorites.

Soon after Mr. K and I met, he went out of town for a few weeks, so I stayed at his place to watch the kitties and keep them company. Right before I left to pick him up from the airport upon his return, I bought a bouquet of tiger lilies and put them in a nice vase on the coffee table. When we got home, the first thing Mr K said was "Sega-man, what happened to your mouth?" I looked at the cat and noticed his muzzle was Cheetos-orange. On the table, the vase held nothing but stems - Sega ate all the flowers off... and promptly barfed them up on the formerly-freshly-cleaned carpet. His muzzle stayed orange for over a week.

Sega had the worst kitty-breath ever. In desperation, I picked up some pricey kitty dental treats. He and Atari were supposed to get one treat each, twice a day. Somehow, Sega figured out how to get them out of the cabinet and then how to rip the foil packet open, after which he ate the entire bag of treats.

Sega loved to sleep under the blankets, right between us. He would curl up against Mr K's belly and roast the two of us with his kitty-heat.

Sega's favorite toy was a little plush Spiderman ball that came as a toy in a Happy Meal. We think initially the appeal was the smell of cheeseburgers permeating the thing, but long after the smell was bound to have worn off, he still gravitated toward that toy. We kept all his toys in a box in the living room and he would actually dig through the box to find his Spiderman.

Share your fun Sega memories in the comments.

We love you and miss you, Sega!

Naming cats - serious business!

Destroy!
Originally uploaded by hellomizk

Drama drama - the naming dilemma continues. We've named the white one "Taco" and he likes it. That leaves little brown kitten with no name! To the right you should see a poll - please vote this kitty a name! If you don't like any of these, that isn't a problem - vote "no no no" and leave your suggestion in the comments. Personally, I would like the names to be at least a little bit related, even tenuously. Foods, things that begin with "t", four letter words - help us out!

In other kitty news, today we had our first visit to the vet. Both kitties are, as we suspected, boys. They got shots and blood tests and some Frontline, in addition to the chance to hiss and spit at new people. By the time we got home, they were both ready for some cuddles and some play time. Now both little guys are asleep, no doubt resting up for a long night of dumping the water bowl on the floor and trying to fling themselves into the bathtub at high rates of speed. Ahhh, the life!

Please vote!

Caught - The Story

Cat #2
Originally uploaded by Arsmor

Last night, when Mr K got home from work, we collected all our various cat accessories - the cat carrier, a little toy, some tuna to lure them out with - and set out to give catching them another try, though we were fairly pessimistic about our chances of success.

Once we arrived at the church, I put a spoonful of tuna on a little plate and slipped it inside the gate. The smell instantly lured the kittens out of the underbrush in the garden, but wasn't quite enough to get them outside the gate. It might have been, given enough time, however it was at this point a small mob began to assemble. First came a woman who ran a small restaurant directly across the street - we'll call her Madame Restaurant. We communicated mostly through gestures and the occasional snippet of French. Gesturing wildly, she drug Mr K around the side of the building, insisting he climb the fence and showing him the best place to get over it. Within two minute he was inside and the kittens were so far back in the underbrush, we couldn't even see them.

Mr K gingerly stomped around in the brush for a little bit and Madame Restaurant eventually wandered back to her restaurant. At this point, a very stern looking older woman showed up (we'll call her the Stern Madame) and starting speaking in rapid Swiss German, which of course we don't understand at all. The scary thing about German is - and I know this is cliche - from tone alone you can't get much of an idea whether someone is cheering you on or about to call the police on you. Mr K hopped back over the fence and we returned to our original tactic of waiting outside the gate. Stern Madame slipped back and forth from French to German, speaking so quickly I could barely pick up a single word. She kept repeating something about needing to talk to "monsieur" and don't take kitties without talking to "monsieur". When I name-dropped the nice woman I had met before, the stern one visibly relaxed and nodded her approval - this neighborhood has an impressive grapevine!

As this was going on, an old man smoking a hand-rolled cigarette showed up to watch in silence and smile, nodding at me and Stern Madame both in equal measure. Then came another older woman, walking her dog - we'll call her Madame Avec le Chien. The crowd must have gotten the attention of Madame Restaurant, because she and two of her staff came back over. Just as all this was beginning to be way too much to follow for us, the man who I talked to before showed up - and it turns out that he's "monsieur." He assured Madame Avec le Chien and Stern Madame I was the one who he said could take the kittens. With this, Stern Madame walked off, only to appear a moment later with a key to the gate of the church!

Our hunt now had the necessary air of legitimacy. Mr K and I and Stern Madame walked back around the church, this time entering by the gate. It was back up into the shrubbery for Mr K and Stern Madame and I gave directions around the most dangerous obstacle to our hunt - the very angry maman chat who had returned a few moments before. Madame Stern, now very involved in the proceedings, kept shouting out the current location of maman et les chatons for Mr K as I translated. To the left! To the left! The white, by the wall! To the back! Attention la mere! It was exhilarating and exhausting. The first to be caught was the small striped one featured in my previous blog post. The kitten was passed from hand to hand (bucket-brigade style) out of the garden and, after a brief field trip across the street with Madame Restaurant (she took him inside long enough to show him off to the whole dining room) he was safely in the carrier.

At this point, we lost track of the little gray kitten who had been our second choice. Mr K was able to capture one of the white kittens and, as la mere had begun jumping out of the bushes at us, we decided that was close enough and quickly walked back out the way we came, the growls of mama cat loud behind us.

When we got back around to the front of the church, we were greeted by a mini-mob of jubilant locals and a carrier of two very scared kittens - no doubt nervous at the dogs nosing at the carrier - eek! We quickly lifted the kittens to safety and, after spending another 10 minutes thanking everyone and exchanging handshakes, we were on our way home with our new kittens!

On the prowl

Evening Kitten
Originally uploaded by Arsmor

Woot - my one hundredth post - and of course, it's about cats!

Last Sunday evening, Mr K and I went for a nice long walk to stretch our legs after dinner and show a guest around Fribourg. During our walks, we're always on the look-out for cats to pet as we had to leave ours with my parents in the US. On our route, we passed a small church that seems to be only used for private functions. Around the church is a neat little garden, secured behind a large gate complete with rusted old pad-lock. Just beyond the gate, we saw a pretty kitty sitting and staring at us. We looked back at her for just a moment before four tiny kittens poured out of the plants behind her and began playing at her feet.

Naturally, we dissolved into ooohs and aaahs.

Naturally, we determined to make two of the four our own.

Thus began my frequent trips into the old town, a ziploc bag of cat food in my purse. Since the first visit, I've also acquired a small litterbox, some litter, three kinds of kitten food (I found a brand called "babycat" - too cute) and a bottle of cat-milk.

On my first visit bearing food, I found the mama cat near the river, hunched over and waiting for someone to drop their lunch she could scrounge from - such a pitiful sight. This was my first day trying to feed her and she's obviously a stray (un chat sauvage) and terrified of people. I tossed pieces of food out and she munched on them, coming within about five feet of me. As I was feeding her, a very stylish middle-aged woman also approached with a plastic dish full of food. We start talking, French and English, and she told me she had been watching the mama cat for a few days and trying to feed her. She railed against her neighbor who refused to help feed the cat, even though he had three of his own ("Il est mechant! C'est affreux!"*) I told her about the kittens and we immediately headed back up the hill to look at them. I told her Mr K and I would like to adopt the two gray ones. She invited me to her house (amazingly gorgeous place - never seen anything like it before) to give me her contact information in case we caught them or just if I wanted to talk to her about them. She also told me she would be leaving for vacation in a week and I should feed them while she was gone.

Two days later, I went to check on the kittens again and found another man feeding them. He had replaced the plastic dish with a glass bowl of water and a nice glass plate of wet food - these kitties were getting spoiled! He introduced himself to me and told me about his 12 years living and working in Canada. He told me he preferred living in North American to living in Europe, adding that Europe had "too many nationalities." As I was admiring the cats, he said I was welcome to take the white ones, but some American lady (me, though he didn't know that at the time) wanted the two gray ones. Apparently the woman I had spoken to earlier about the kittens had gotten the word out - impressive!

So tonight we try again - to my arsenal, I've added two small cans of tuna, a cat toy on a string, a kitchen towel, and a cat carrier. Keep your fingers crossed, because if this doesn't work, we're going in the middle of the night and I'm climbing the fence. How exciting would it be if my first arrest was for breaking into a church garden while trying to catch some little Swiss kitties...


* "He is mean! It's horrible!"