cat body language

OK, my cat got skunked last night.

I noticed when he came in for breakfast this morning that he wanted a little more attention than usual. My housemate noticed that he’d been skunked.

I then noticed that Slick (the cat) had that sort of tentative, as-if-puzzled air about him that cats sometimes get.

Slick is largely an outdoor cat, especially in fine weather but even during our relatively mild winters. So while I thought about where and how to give him the traditional tomato-juice bath, I figured he could hang out outside where the sun and air and whatever he might try (rolling in the grass, etc.) would do some good in the mean time. He did seem to want to stay outside mostly, as he normally would in this weather, and just popped in a couple of times for a bite.

Finally around mid-afternoon I went to get something out of the garage, and there was Slick, sitting and waiting at the back door. He came in. He went out again. He looked up at me. Then he flopped over on his back onto the concrete and started wriggling, as if trying to scrape off the stink – all the while keeping eye contact with me.

Well, whether or not you anthropomorphize that into a request for help, it seemed like a good opportunity for intervention. Sure enough, when I went and got the spaghetti sauce, he let me slather it on him and rub it in. He kept walking in small circles away from me and back, the way cats sometimes will when you’re petting or combing them, some half-dozen times till I’d covered him pretty well, including his face (keeping clear of the eyes). He then walked some three or four feet away and started licking (cleaning) himself.

I hadn’t wanted to freak him out by introducing water into this process prematurely, but this seemed like a good occasion for a rinse. I set the garden hose to approximate a gentle rain, since he seems not to mind rain, but he got wind of my intentions too soon and scampered off.

Since then, he’s been back for two more treatments, and I’ve subsitituted a body-temperature washcloth for the hose, thinking it would approximate his mother’s tongue. He resisted a bit the first time, but seemed quite complacent about the second.

edit 6/20/05: It just struck me today that we are at the height of flea season, I haven’t given Slick his prophylactic treatment for months, and I haven’t seen him scratch for weeks. So perhaps there was some benefit.

edit 2007/10/02: About a year ago, Slick and I had to go through another negotiation over giving him a daily antibiotic, orally by eyedropper, for a couple of weeks. I never learned the trick the vet showed me for inducing a mouth-opening reflex. After several attempts with mixed and at least once spectacularly unhappy results, it seemed me that Slick needed to know two things: that he was firmly supported, and that he was blocked from escape. Blocking him – looming over him on the counter with my arms poised to catch him if he leapt in either direction – was adequate to keep him still, and left both of us calmer than trying to physically restrain him. Thus stalemated, he would clamp his jaw shut until the very last second before I was ready to force the dropper between his lips, then he would lift his upper lip just enough for me to squirt in the medicine. He certainly ran away as soon as the ordeal was over, but if I followed him into the room where he had gone, not looking for him but sitting in a chair, he would reappear, jump into my lap (something he rarely does), and sit there for a while, as if to let me know that we were still OK.

I haven’t seen it, but a housemate reports that Slick now hangs out peaceably in the back yard with our resident skunks and ‘possums.

1957-2004: 47 years in review

This record was undertaken as an adjunct to the “talk therapy” I’m taking part in through my HMO. I’m running about 5 months behind here. The following is a document I prepared for my shrink (licensed clinical social worker), summarizing insights up to last January in our work together (about 4 months’ worth, meeting approximately monthly). It’s as clear-sighted and honest as I’ve ever been, in writing at least, and perhaps at all, about my failings.

———-Massing 1/18/05———-

current fantasies:
Gainful and rewarding employment will fall out of the sky.
Accomplishment requires little or no effort
(the elves will finish my work at night).
A fulfilling social life may be found on the Internet.
I can lose or maintain weight without careful attention to how much I eat or exercise.

established strategies:
1/ Delay work I’ve committed to as long as possible.
2/ Throw something together at the last minute or later with the help of sleeplessness and adrenaline.
3/ Rely on a combination of personal charm and appeals to pity to make up for the work’s deficiencies.

[This next item requires a bit of backstory. In brief, I was presented with a dilemma when I was somewhere between six and eight years old. My instinctive response to that dilemma - an impractical but inventive flight of imagination - seemed to solve it in the short term but helped form the pattern sketched above. My therapist has suggested that on the one hand I saved my life - i.e., I fled into fantasy as a way of avoiding going truly crazy - and on the other I've come to rely too much on the child's method of "solving" adult problems and dealing with adult responsibilities. So we have been trying to sort out what the (hypothetical) child "needs" today, as well as my practical needs as a functioning adult.]

obligations to my [seven]-year-old savior:
Take care of him, and stop expecting him to take care of me.
Honor him for saving my life; retire him from that responsibility [amended at my therapist's suggestion to sharing that responsibility with him].
Stop calling him/me names.
Stop presenting him with responsibilities as ugly and unfair as [that old] dilemma.

Strategies for fulfilling obligations:
Plan.
Schedule.
Work.
Allow for both up- and down-time, but be clear about which is which.