House Cat: Kyoku

Kyoku doesn’t wake up early in the morning. He usually gets up between eleven o’clock and noon, and he sleeps until afternoon if it’s cloudy. He still wants to go out; but it isn’t long before we turn on the stove, thanks to the short daylight this time of year. And he loves the stove.

His current hobby is opening the sliding doors on our closets at night. Maybe he wants to know about an unknown world. The doors are often open by about one foot when we notice. Of course, he seems delighted to be inside the closet.

He’s nicknamed ‘Green’ in our neighbourhood, but he lost his green collar somewhere. So for now, we’ve changed his green collar for a blue collar with a reflective strip.

Garden Cat: Shiro

Shiro eats more than Kyoku.

She might want to eat as much as possible when she has the chance because she’s wild by nature: she usually eats three cups of dry food at a time. (Hairball care light; one cup is about twenty-five grams.) Of course her daily amount depends on the weather. If it’s a rainy day, and we don’t notice her knocking or calling, it could be one cup in a day. However, if it’s a sunny day, she calls us many times a day.

She seems to get a lot of fluid in and around her eyes, and she has a hard time opening them recently. She doesn’t let us touch her, so we can’t remove it for her, and we worry about her eye conditon. But it looks better now.

Anyway, Ms Shiro, you are originally a beautiful cat, but how have you come to look so messy!

Memorial Cat: Dosu-chan

Please click ‘Summer 2003’ below to learn about him.

Neighbour Cat: Hana

Boss Hana goes on patrol every day, including our yard. Kyoku likes to sit on the trash can by our kitchen window, but Hana doesn’t care if Kyoku is there or not. He greets Kyoku by whacking him lightly on the head, and sprays the trash can Kyoku is sitting on. Easygoing Kyoku looks on what he’s doing with great interest. We spray over Hana’s mark in a hurry, covering it with a different smell, and it doesn’t work to him at all. He comes back again.

Neighbour Cat: Maru

If we hear super agressive eating sounds at Shiro’s bowl, we are sure Maru is stealing her food. He is a brazen-faced fellow, and he never stops eating even if we yell ‘Hey you!’ at him.

It says in a book we came across that French cats have big faces, but is it true? It makes us wonder about whose face might be bigger: Maru’s, or those big-faced French cats.

–YS, Winter 2005

Date posted: 2005-01-22