This Week With Charley: A Hormonal Cat and a Bunny Outside the Window

Charley – the black cat that Tim sent me the day after he passed – continues to be a loving companion in this strange new world in which I find myself. But this week brought something different to our house. Charley was in heat!

Since she arrived here, she’s been pretty conversational with her chirp-purrs. This week, however, she was exceptionally vocal, adding loud meows into the mix. She also seemed anxious, pacing around and looking out the window, wanting to be held a lot (I happily complied), and doing odd things with her hind end.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on (what the heck, Jane, you grew up on a farm), and since she’s nocturnal, most of this was happening in the middle of the night. At one point, she even had thoughts about climbing into the woodstove. It’s ok, Charley. We’ll figure this out.

After Googling the situation and then calling her vet – Dr. Mason at Oakwood Veterinary Hospital – I finally figured out that she was indeed in heat.

At her first vet appointment in January, Dr. Mason said she was probably nine months to a year old, so it would make sense that she’d be going through this. I had already scheduled an appointment on Feb. 18 to have her spayed, and he said it would be fine to keep that, since she’d be through this heat cycle within a few days.

Sure enough, she does seem better now. She’s back to being her normally calm, good-natured self. Well, calm until 4 a.m., when she decides to play with ALL her toys, racing around like a herd of elephants. It’s amazing how much noise one cat can make.

I also wonder how she managed to avoid being eaten if she’d gone through this during her time before she arrived here. There are lots of predators out by the lighthouse, and I’m guessing her loud meows would have made her an easy target. But I’m really glad she made it.

Her new favorite thing is getting as close to my head as possible. We finished “Good Witch” on the Hallmark Channel; our new show is “When Calls the Heart,” also on the Hallmark Channel. It’s still all I can handle when it comes to TV.

The Bunny Outside the Window

As I’ve been outfitting the house for my new resident, I decided to make a spot for her on my desk, in the hopes that she might hang out with me while I’m working during the day. So far that hasn’t happened, since she sleeps upstairs all day in her cat cave, only venturing downstairs around 7 p.m.

However, last night around 3 a.m., I heard some noises from my office and looked over to discover that she was in her cat bed on my desk. The outside light was on, and she was transfixed by the bunny eating seed around the bottom of the feeder. So cute.

And who knows … at some point, maybe she’ll venture downstairs during the day and watch the birds and squirrels at the feeder. I’d be happy to have my new officemate hang out with all my other officemates.