Smarties

Wolf-men (or Mowgli Syndrome) seem like legends left over from the Nineteenth Century, but in fact a few turn up every decade, most famously the case of Genie, discovered in Los Angeles in 1970 and most recently Dani Lierow / Danielle Crockett in Florida in 2005 (DeGregory, Lane, "The girl in the Window," St. Petersburg Times, 31 July 2008). The most recent case is from Chita, Russia (Wikipedia | Google Maps | "Feral Girl in Siberian City of Chita Was Brought Up by Cats and Dogs," Times, 27 May 2009):

"For five years, the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and had never been outside," police said in a statement. The child refuses to eat with a spoon, insisting on lapping up her food straight from the plate, and has taken on many other behaviours of the animals with which she lived, police said. "When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks," the police said. ... The girl could understand Russian but could not speak it and tried to communicate through barking instead.

As if in an attempt to tip us off to some Times / BBC fabrication by taking the story over the line, the city where this story originates bears the name, Chita, of the sidekick to that most famous, fictional wolfman, Tarzan.

S. is very protective of Mogley. When we've gone away for any length, she has put together a package of information about his medical history and the location of the emergency veterinarian and whatnot. She sends an e-mail to the cat-sitter about precautions to observe while watching him that is so detailed and imaginative that one friend commented that is seems like we are on suicide watch with the cat.

So it figures that when S. went to Ontario for a client visit last week, Mogley had been left in my exclusive care for all of one day when he went and injured himself. He was fine when I got home, but while I was ignoring him to his wild chagrin, he put on his usual show of running up and down the hall like a maniac. When next I looked at him, he was missing a pencil eraser-sized patch of fur on his face and had grown a red knot where the fur was missing. I presumed this was some sort of blunt-force injury from an uncontrolled turnabout at one end of the hall.

After a few days in which the spot wasn't healing, but seemed to be getting worse, it was off to the vet for Mogley. I joked that he was going to get one of those lampshades around his neck to prevent animals from chewing and low and behold, here he is with what I learned is called an Elizabethan collar. His is more like a martini glass. I am tempted to throw a few skewered olives in with his head.

And 3M sure manufacturers an eclectic range of products. Who knew Elizabethan collars were among them?

It was funny at first, but the vet had warned S. that it was going to be difficult to keep the collar on him. They didn't say why. It turns out that he has sunk into a serious deep blue funk. In addition to preventing him from rubbing his wound, the collar prevents him from taking a cat bath so he is despondent and has taken to licking the inside of the collar as a substitute. His fur has started to get shabby and he has acquired a distinct odor. He slinks around like a decrepit elderly cat and whenever he tries to do something athletic like his usual sprightly self, the collar invariably catches on something making his stunt go awry.

He has no idea of the world of human intentions and designs, hence no idea that this is temporary and for his own good. He thinks this is his life now and it's like one of the rings of hell (OCD ass lickers dawn an Elizabethan collar for all of eternity).

As much as I like a pet that looks like a cocktail, I can't wait to take it off him.

It's been a sleepless week of some rather arduous posts as well as a long time since the last Friday Cat Blogging. So here is a little Friday frivolousness.

Kitty is almost entirely indifferent to human food — eating it at least: if it stinks, he will try to bury it. The one exception, oddly enough, is bread. For some reason he is fanatical about the stuff. He pricks up when it goes out on the table and will launch round after round of attack on a baguette.

And it's not some unknown factor: he wants to eat it. If I pinch off a bunch of buds of bread and lay them out for him, he eagerly chews them down as best a pure carnivore's fangs will allow.

Here he is at last night's dinner, bellying up to the bread basket like his claim to its content was legitimate and going to go down unharried.

The weather has been unbearably hot here in D.C. — though not yet topping out the thermostat for the region in August. I've often wondered how an animal with a fur coat permanently affixed to his back copes with this heat. It's never seemed to pose a problem for kitty. I guess that he has a much smaller mass-surface area ratio than me. But this year even he seems to be feeling it. He has been doing a lot of flopping, laying around and generally looking miserable.

In Mogley's defense, he only looks fat in pictures.

He's practicing his moves for the Kitty Cat Dance (do not click on the link if you want your head to remain free of idiotic songs today).