Strings of any kind fascinate my cat. He is expert at shnicking right through the cords on blinds, and he’s even shortened the drawstrings on my sweat pants. And I know this about him. I know that if I leave strings around there’s no way I can blame him for following his compulsion to eat them.

Which is why I can only be sad tonight. No revenge is possible.

While I was in school, I worked slowly and methodically over the course of two years to weave a shawl. It was the most complicated pattern I’d ever done. Each repeat of the star-like pattern took 96 threads. And those 96 threads would only make up a couple of inches of weaving because the wool I used was finer than sewing thread. Thread by thread, centimeter by centimeter, inch by inch, and yard by yard, I wove my way through my degree, finishing just in time to pack my things and move toward my first job. And now, because I believe in using the things I make, I wear this shawl every day as a scarf.

And every night I make sure to tuck the minute fringes well out of sight so that they don’t mount their siren’s call for my cat. Every night, that is, except last night. And now I need to figure out some way of repairing the fringe.

My cat and I may disagree on many of our favorite passtimes. For instance, puss enjoys eating the Christmas tree, paw-painting with his water on the kitchen floor, jumping up onto the counter and the table, eating the strings that hang from window blinds, and licking every inch of his body (including the naughty bits). I, on the other hand, do not enjoy doing any of these things.

Meanwhile, I read, write, IM with friends, watch TV, and knit. Of these, puss has only shown any interest in knitting, and then only because the stings bear remarkable resemblances to the strings that hang from the window blinds.

But puss and I both agree when it comes to watching DVDs. I watch the screen and lose myself in the lives of people who lead more interesting lives than I do. I laugh, cry, ponder, and quake with the characters. Puss, on the other hand, watches the luminescent numbers on the DVD player count up with each second of play time. He keeps a close eye on those numbers throughout the most if not all of the movie. And not only are the numbers themselves fascinating, ticking up and up in regular rhythm, but at the beginning and end of the movie that mysterious, frightening, and thrilling tray pops in and out as I either insert or retreive the DVD. This is by far the most exciting function of the DVD player, and it causes his ears to prick, his tail to twitch, and his eyes to dialate and push aside all of the yellow irises that normally make them so striking.

So tonight I watch an old Dalgliesh mystery, and puss watches the numbers count up. All is right with the world.

You may remember that I’ve had difficulty traveling with my cat in the past. He clams up and refuses to pee… which can’t be good. But this time around, I followed my vet’s advice and launched a full scale attack in the first battle of the Kidney Wars.

When we arrived at our destination, I fed him a gruel of two parts water and once part Amazingly Wonderful Wet Cat Food, or AWWCF (that’s the cat’s name for the food, and I thought he’d know better than I, since it smells pretty vile to me). Then I let him sip some real chicken broth that my mom had made by … boiling a chicken. Then I have him some more of the AWWCF, followed by a handful of his dry food … doused with water.

The cat’s reluctant kidneys were no match for this onslaught.

Tonight, after arriving back at home base, the second offensive in the Kidney Wars is beginning, and I look forward to a voluminously successful outcome.

I know, I know… two posts in a row about cats… But it takes a certain amount of energy to notice things that happen outside the home, and I haven’t had that kind of energy lately. I’ve begun to feel like a bear, all tucked up and ready to hibernate through the winter, if only I could come up with a good way to get paid for hibernating.

This last weekend, though, I set up the Christmas tree. This is the first time I’ve put together a fake tree, but it wasn’t hard, and the result isn’t so bad. It’s sort of like those plastic renditions of meals that Japanese restaurants put out to entice saliva into action before you even sit down. As long as you don’t get to close, try to smell it, or (heaven forbid) try to eat it, it’s quite beautiful. My tree even has built in flaws in the form of some browning needles, carefully placed to stave off the creepy feeling that the tree might be a little bit too perfect to be wholesome.

Well, dear Pippin decided to put the tree to the taste test (though he’s done nothing like these crazy cats). He just won’t stay away from it, and I’m enough of a worrier that I have visions of walking out of the room and returning to find that he’s chewed through a cord and electrocuted himself, or to plug the tree in at night only to find that he chewed through a cord during the day and now the two frayed ends of cord are just waiting for a current to induce them to shower the room with sparks, set the place on fire, and require that I rig up some ingenious rope system to get people, cat, and social security cards safely out of a third-floor window.

My solution? Each night I unplug the tree before bed and then shroud it in a sheet, carefully tucking in the edges so that Pippin won’t find a glorious tree cave where he can sit and gnaw through the night without fear of discovery.

This seems to work quite well, but it does leave me with the prospect of waking up to a hulking, colorless, smell-less form in my living room each morning, and passing by it’s rustling formlessness at night, in the dark, after checking on the state of the front door lock.

So my shrouded tree hulks in the corner through the night and the day while nobody is home. It only gets released for those few hours of blessed freedom in the evenings while watchful eyes and trigger fingers on squirt bottles can keep Pippin from gorging himself on those perfect plastic boughs.

There haven’t been any posts recently because I was having a wonderful time visiting my parents. ( It’s amazing how much you can knit, sew, and do in general when you don’t have to go to work. I wish I could make a living without working…) And this time the dog and cat seemed to have sorted things out between them. They still aren’t playing together or curling up together for a nice mid-afternoon nap, but they will happily watch the other play or nap, which is a major improvement.

Unfortunately, my cat’s bladder doesn’t understand that visiting isn’t too stressful anymore. Poor stupid, stubborn Pippin refuses to pee for days on end (two days, to be precise) every time we travel. This freaks me out because boy cats can develop nasty bladder issues if they don’t pee. But Pippin’s bladder isn’t interested in prophylactic measures like peeing, even if such simple measures could save Pippin’s life.

What’s even more puzzling is that Pippin does everything else normally. He plays, eats, drinks, purrs… everything but pee.

Last night it came to a head (or a tail, as the case may be). He was crouching rather than sitting, to avoid pressing on his bladder, and I was trying every trick in the book to make him think with fondness of his litter box. I added quite a lot of water to his favorite canned food, I placed great vats of water in strategic locations throughout the house (he loves playing in vats of water), and I even tried running a trickle of water in the sink for an hour or so, all to no avail. Just before bed I doused his rear in water so that he’d not only have to take in water in order to clean himself off, but he’d also have to lick his poor round bladder and hopefully remind it of its proper function. Yes, I’m devious, and I was desperate.

He finally succumbed in the wee hours this morning (sorry… I couldn’t resist). But I called the vet anyway and found out that he probably doesn’t drink enough while he’s stressed, so I should “do whatever I can to encourage him to take in fluids.” Check. And I should only become really worried if he tries to go and can’t. That’s when he’s actually sick. When he just doesn’t even try to go it’s because he’s not taking in enough to need to pee in the first place.

So the next time I travel, I’ll feed him canned food with added water, give him chicken broth to drink, and even resort to getting him wet if I have to. No matter what his bladder thinks about the issue, I WILL get him to pee.