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Buster busts the camel's back
Saturday, February 4 2006
After teaching her library sciences class at the local community college, Gretchen continued south towards Maryland to attend the state-side wedding party for her childhood friend Dina and her husband Gilad (as you may remember, that wedding was the reason we were in the Holy Land back in October). At some point I realized Gretchen had forgotten to move the EZ-Pass automatic toll paying device from the '97 Honda to the '98 Honda, the one she was driving. So I tried to catch her before she left the community college but missed her by a few minutes. (It takes about five minutes to do a scan of every car in every parking lot there.)
When I returned home from that excursion, which included a stop at P&T Surplus for pieces of perforated structural iron, I found myself wondering what had become of Lulu, the crankiest, greyest of our cats. There had been an altercation last night involving her and Buster, but I'd expected her to be able to figure out how to deal with him. Still, I needed to know where she was. So I called around in the house and looked for her in her usual place: in a wicker basket on top of the kitchen cabinets. She wasn't anywhere in the house, so I called for her outside and she eventually responded. As she reluctantly came towards me I saw that she was injured; she didn't want to put any weight on one of her front paws.
Now there was nothing visibly wrong with the paw, but her actions didn't lie. And it could have been a complete coincidence that her injury happened the same night as her altercation with our big new psychopathic cat. But I didn't think so. The circumstantial evidence was strong enough for me to conclude that Buster was a real menace and that he had to leave as soon as possible. After communicating with Gretchen on the road I called up the vegan friend who had dropped him off. I couldn't reach her of course, so I had to isolate Buster for the rest of the day. I also had to isolate Lulu, who was no longer in any position to deal with the usual taunts and harassments of Julius and Clarence. I set her up on a pillow next to a heat radiator in the laboratory, and nearby I also set out a fresh tray of cat litter and a bowl of dry food (Lulu doesn't eat wet food). When Julius demonstrated that he could behave himself around Lulu, I also let him hang out in the laboratory. Before long the laboratory litter box was full of shit and piss and the container of dry food needed a refill. There's nothing a cat likes more than a brand new place to shit.
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