The Training of My Girl

Well, it took some time to train my girl. I know I was the first cat she had ever lived with and she didn’t know much about how to take care of cats in general. At first I had to reminder her to clean out my litter box, fill up my food bowl, and to pet me. My goodness. But at least she listened to me. She did give me what I needed when I asked for it.

But she didn’t always understand what I said to her. I tried by repeating the same word for her until she got it. I don’t know why she has that problem. She’s not stupid or slow. She usually is quite smart and understood when something was wrong. She would then do her best to solve the problem.

She once told me to call her “Ali.” I am quite good with language. I am quite a vocal cat. I talk more than the average cat. This talking thing does work. You just might have to do a lot of it before the humans get your meaning. Well, I listened carefully to her. She knew I could understand what she said to me. She is one of the few who will sit down and actually talk to me as the person I am.

I’m glad she understands I’m a person and not an object. So, when she told me her name, I listened carefully. I memorized the sounds. As a cat, I don’t have the same vocal organs as humans have, so I can’t speak any human language as well as humans can. But I was able to learn her name. Yes, I could call her “Al-lee.” She understood me and got excited when she heard me say her name to her. She was talking on the phone to someone at the time and it stopped her talking to whoever it was.

She was quite impressed by it. It was hard for me to say “Ali” all the time I needed something. So, eventually I just called her “Al.” It was much easier for me. She still understood me without any trouble. She is the one person who defended me to others who claimed I was too stupid to know how to talk. She asserted because she knew me well enough that indeed I knew her name and understood her as well as understanding how I had to talk to her so she could understand me as well.

The language barrier we started out with was the hardest part of my training of her. Once we got past that, we were fine. We were able to live with each other and communicate effectively. Never mind how much we fought at times. At others, we were very happy with each other.

However, even after getting past the language barrier, I couldn’t tell her how to do everything. She had learn on her own. I watched her carefully, and she did quite well. That’s how I know she’s smart. She can figure lots of things out. She was able to give me what I needed. I never had anyone like this in my life before. Others just wouldn’t understand or even try to make things better for me. They would just leave. They would complain that I was just too whiny.

I’m glad she learned how to take care of me and kept listening to me. I did have valid complaints that she took care of. She got be to so good at taking care of me that I became quiet. For once in my life, someone understood what it was like to be me. I wasn’t complaining just to complain, or because I was whiny, but because I had valid complaints.

My girl also has an excellent memory. Once she learned what I needed, she was able to remember when to take care of what she needed to take care of for me. I no longer had to remind her of what she needed to do. She just remembered and I could be quiet knowing she would take care of everything.

Her mother couldn’t believe how quiet I had become. But my girl knew the reason. She knew she had learned how to take such good care of me. That’s all that mattered in the end. It was the main reason I was able to become an indoor cat without any complaints. I knew she’d take care of me. I no longer had to fight other cats. I was happy living with her.

Besides, I was getting older and I was having trouble with my teeth and claws. Not a good thing as a cat who wants to live outside. Not when you have to fight off other cats or even defend yourself from dogs. I didn’t have to deal with those things anymore. I no longer had to hunt. I have regular meals and plenty of love and attention whenever I ask for them.

So, I stopped going outside and became solely an indoor cat. I have never regretted my decision even though I have lost some amount of freedom I once had. Now I could stay at home in a safe place all day. I had someone who understood my needs and just took care of them without any complaints.

I was very blessed. I just had to teach her what she needed to know. She was willing and able to learn. That’s all mattered. She had earned my trust so completely, that I never want to be separated from her ever again.

October 1, 2019 0

Would You Like to be a Part of My Magazine?

It has come to my attention that we may not have enough features every month. We didn’t have any featured monthly cat charities. That makes me sad. As a cat who has needed extra care, I could have ended up just living on the street. Instead my mother raised my three brothers and me in a woodpile in a backyard. We were all taken in by humans who cared for us.

But I can’t honestly say the same happens for others cats. I do know things could have gone differently for Spot if my girl hadn’t brought him home. He’s lucky he had the two of us. I taught him all about being an upstanding cat in today’s world. And what would have happened to Isis if my girl didn’t let her move in? That black cat would have been homeless!

So, if you are interested, then please contact us via the contact page and let us know you would like to have your own featured column and what you want to write about more specifically than just as a cat or about cats. Unfortunately, our funding is so low we cannot pay you, but your voice will be heard. Sometimes that’s all we cats want is for someone to listen to us.

So, if we publish your work, feel free to tell the world. Promote your work and this magazine at the same time. We’re all in this together.

October 1, 2019 0

My Girl Much Too Lovey Dovey

Uh, I didn’t expect this. The blind guy was never this affectionate. Why would I think she would ever want to kiss me? She likes to kiss me on my head. I love the petting, but the kissing is too much. She even likes to pick me up and hold as if I’m a human baby. It’s just too much. I hate to be picked up. I do like to sit on her lap, but not when she wants to hold on to me. No, that’s just too much.

I like to sleep cuddled up to her, but not when she wants to hold on me too. I am not a stuffed animal. I’m a real animal. I’m alive. Spot, the kitten she bottle fed, liked to be held by her a lot. But I never did. I just don’t understand her need to be so affectionate. I kept asking her to stop and she would every time. But still I never knew when she would do it again.

Would a child of her have own been better for her than me? I don’t know. I know the kitten helped. He loved it more than I ever did. I guess she just wanted to treat us fairly. I know she loves me, but that kind of affection was just going way too far.

I don’t know if my girl wants a child of her own. As far as I understand she could still have one. I don’t know if she will. She doesn’t act like she likes to have human guys around for more than friendship. She certainly didn’t bring anyone home either. Not that we typically had many visitors as we did at my first home.

However, I did see a glimpse that some guys found her attractive. She didn’t respond well to them. I don’t know what it was. Perhaps she just didn’t like those sorts of guys? I don’t know what she goes for. I do know she’s a crazy cat lady and has no problem with being around cats.

I do know her fairly well now. I think she prefers cats over guys. She is certainly happy with at least one cat around. She can be too isolated and alone too much of the time. She keeps to herself and does what she can to take care of herself and any cats she lives with.

I do love my girl. I just never thought it would mean that I would have to put up with kisses on occasion. Ugh. What was also bad was that she tended to pet other cats when she was out. It used to make me so mad and jealous! I couldn’t understand why she would go and pet other cats. Then I learned she just loves cats in general very much. I learned to live with it as long as she pets me too.

At least she loves me. If she didn’t, I’m not sure I could have put up with her behavior. She does give me plenty of attention and affection. She even takes some time everyday, no matter how busy she is, to pet me and shower me with lots of love, attention, and affection. She even compliments me. I love those times. Sitting or lounging on her lap as she pets me gently and tells me how much she loves me and why she loves me.

I loved it when my whirlwind of a girl was calm and gentle. It was better than when she was hyper and chasing me around our place. Or picking me up and cuddling with me. I suppose if she didn’t love as much as she does, I would be much too lonely.

Sometimes when I was way too curmudgeonly, she would get out a damp washcloth and rub me down with it. As soon as the washcloth was on me, I was completely quiet and relaxed. She knew how to massage me! I never even told her about that. Well, I didn’t even know about it myself. I had no idea about massage and how we cats needed it done.

I doubt I could have been as lucky with others who couldn’t stand how whiny I was. But my girl took care of me and loved me truly. Even if she tended to take it too far. I suppose I have gotten used to it now.

September 1, 2019 0

Paws

We cats have amazing paws. Usually we have four unless something happens in the womb or later in life. We usually land on all four paws when falling or jumping. Sometimes things go wrong. Perhaps because I live with a klutz I caught some of it from her…

Or whatever the reason, usually we do land on all four paws. That’s where we hide our claws when we don’t need to bare them for any reason. We walk on our paws. We can box with our forepaws.

I have been known to impress my girl with my athletic prowess. She’s a klutz and has never been that coordinated in her life. She tries to focus and I think she has improved somewhat, but she’s not as good as I am. So, when she’s watched me jump and land perfectly on my paws, she is wowed by it.

She’s seen me jump over her bed while she was lying in it. She saw me just before I landed in the position I would land in. I ended up half standing half sitting. I was also trying to get away from Spot at the time. *Sigh.* He was annoying me with how playful he was at that time.

But at least I impressed my girl with my landing on all four of my paws.

September 1, 2019 0

No Charities

It is to my extreme displeasure to announce that we have not had any charities to save up money for every month. I do know both Clarabelle and my girl have reached out to different charities to see if they were interested. One was able to get an initial response from their chosen charity. The other one heard nothing.

I myself was in contact with a charity briefly. Unfortunately, they wanted to tell the sad tales of dogs in need and my magazine is about cats. There also wasn’t enough information on the charity either. They don’t have a website. I don’t have a problem with any charity helping dogs. However, because it is a cat magazine, the charity does need to focus more on cats.

For the book Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army, the charity is Dingo Venezia. That particular organization has a history of helping more than just cats. In fact the first animal rescued was a dog named Dingo. So, of course we will focus more on the cats, but also acknowledge that they have helped dogs as well. I don’t know if they still do help anyone other than cats.

So, without charities, and no donations whatsoever, I see no point in keeping this paid website. We have our free back up site at sirsockslechat.video.blog It is better than nothing. Perhaps you the readers would prefer a book to take with you than to donate to this site. I don’t know what you’re actually thinking.

I just hope you don’t believe that writers should always work for free and don’t deserve to earn money from their work. If you do, then I don’t know what will happen to people like my girl who work as much as she does and gets seems so little in return. Perhaps you don’t value writing work or understand what it all entails? It’s sad when people expect to get creative work for free. It’s taking advantage of the creative people who could easily starve even though they work. Often times creative people have their creative endeavors and a regular job too. That’s a lot of work in case you didn’t know…

So, yes, I’m disappointed, but then again I do know that even though I am serializing my memoirs in my online magazine, that not the whole book will be online. There are some behind the scenes that can only be found in the ebook version. I don’t know if it will be in print someday. I don’t know what plans my girl will be making in that direction. When I know, then I will let the rest of you know too.

September 1, 2019 0

Meow

When we cats talk, all you humans hear is meow. But we do use actual words. I myself have learned lots of English over the years living among humans. I have tried to speak English, but sadly my vocal apparatus won’t let me form the sounds correctly.

So, I’ve learned to adapt my cat language so that humans would understand me. Too many have complained that I’m loud and whiny. I’m just assertive. I am particular as to how I like to be care for. It seems to me that too many humans are too distracted or just simply don’t care enough to even listen and try.

That is until I met my girl. She is the best caregiver and caretaker I could ever ask for. She listens to my complains and requests and does something about them all. She’s learned and become so good at taking care of me that I don’t need to talk as much as I used to.

She just knows what to do now. I’ve very lucky. I’ve known many humans in my time and she’s the best one for me in spite of how silly she gets at times. *Sigh.* I do love her dearly in spite of her silliness.

August 1, 2019 0

My Girl Much Too Silly

picture taken in Second Life by Ali Noel Vyain of her avatar

A picture my girl took while in Second Life as her alter ego and a giant me…

What did I do to deserve someone as silly as she is? She likes to tease and play. This is not my ideal companion. How did this happen? Oh, she drives me crazy when she’s acting so silly! *Sigh* At least she calms down and does her work for hours on end. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get enough sleep or meditation done.

Why does she laugh so much? Why does like to play so much? She is an adult. I thought adults didn’t play as much as she does. We’re more serious and we have work to do. But yet, she likes to play with me. I’d walk around our place and without any warning, she’d tug on my tail. I’d ask her why she did it and she replied, she couldn’t resist.

Sometimes she’s just as bad as a kitten. Kittens of course like to play a lot. They wrestle each other every chance they get. They will tug on each other’s tails. They even play with their mother. She might play with them. But a human doing the same exact thing? I had no idea one would do that to me as much as my girl does.

She was one who would get out stuffed animals and make them play with me! I didn’t understand at first. That is until she finally told me and showed me that those kinds of animals couldn’t move on their own. She held one that was very much like a black cat. She held it up in the air while we stood on the floor. Then she let go and the black cat fell straight down to the floor and just laid there. I watched the cat closely as it fell. This was the same cat that I had smacked on its forehead and there was no response from the cat.

So, that was it. My girl just likes to play with stuffed animals. They aren’t alive as I am. I’m glad she told me the truth. Otherwise, I’d would have freaked out too much and far too often…

My girl is just as bad as the fairies who keep visiting me. She has seen me running around crazily when they visited me. I don’t know if she saw the little fairies on my back. But I suppose that’s another story…

At least she is gentle. She likes it when I want to play the red paw game. It makes her laugh. There were times when she wanted to get up out of bed when I was laying on her. She’d ask me to get off of her, and I refused to move. She deserved it. She was my girl and at my service when I needed her. She should have known that by then.

Then when she didn’t stop, we played a game of red paws. Eventually, I let her get up. Sometimes she would complain that she would lose her head if it wasn’t attached. What silliness is that? She’d say it whenever she would leave our place to go out and run errands or whatever it is that she does when she’s out and then come right back inside because she had forgotten something.

There were times that she liked to move me around on the floor. I would try to extend my claws to keep me anchored, but there is flooring on which that doesn’t work. And that happens to be the kind of flooring she’d push me around on. I just never understood why she liked to do that to me. She never did it long, but it was still annoying.

Yes, she was and is this silly. I’m not making this up. She was too silly for me and my tastes. But I know she loves me and takes good care of me. So, I just have to look the other way when she’s acting too silly. It was as much as I could ever do with her.

Lucky for me, she doesn’t play with me for too long. If she had insisted on doing it for quite a while longer, I would have had to call it quits on our relationship. So, she knows not to take it too far.

Oh, and my name wasn’t originally Sir Socks. It was just Socks. My girl decided one day to knight me. I have no idea why. It was completely silly. She said she knighted me and touched me lightly on both shoulders, one at a time. She has called me Sir Socks ever since. She even has gone as far as to compliment me on how much braver I am since being knighted. Especially around stuffed animals.

They no longer bother me. In fact, I don’t mind loafing among them because they all smell like my girl. My silly girl who plays like the whirlwind that she is.

me, the only live animal in this picture

August 1, 2019 0

Whiskers

All cats have whiskers. My girl likes them. They do help with balance. Once when I was looking after Spot, he annoyed me so badly that I bit his whiskers off. The little kitten didn’t seem to know any better. He’d walk around our place and fall over. He never got hurt. He was so small and so happy go lucky that he didn’t seem to notice whenever he had tumbled or fallen over.

My girl thought he was cute whenever he did that. Kittens are just plain annoying. This one wanted to play all the time. He drove me crazy. I only bit off his whiskers once. I couldn’t be that mean to him over time. It just wasn’t possible. And he didn’t get the message the first time. *Sigh.* I knew I had gone too far with him. So, I never did bite off his whiskers ever again. He still annoyed me, but I suppose it was just going to be that way.

July 1, 2019 0

My Girl the Klutz

My girl was and still is quite the klutz. I swear the first month we lived together, she kept dropping things for no reason at all. *Sigh.* She even walked into me in the dark! It startled me so much. She apologized and said she couldn’t see me once she had turned out the lights. It was her eyes. She told me she can’t see as well in the dark as I can. So, after that whenever it was dark, I told her when she was stepping too close to me. At least she has good hearing. Otherwise, I don’t think we could have gotten along as well as we do.

Oh, it was annoying to hear her dropping things on the floor. I’d be sleeping or meditating and bam! Ugh, it was too much at times. I wasn’t used to this kind of noise unless someone was about to cause some serious harm. I honestly believed her when she told me she was just a klutz. She really didn’t spill my food or water on purpose. I could tell. She typically would get down on the floor and clean up her mess. If it had been deliberate, she wouldn’t have bothered to clean up after herself. Or had bothered to apologize.

She always cleaned up her messes. That was something new and different. The place we shared was much cleaner and neater than my first home. It was amazing, but also scary whenever she cleaned. It was loud and she would move things around. I wondered if moving everything around was actually worth it. I wasn’t kidding when I call her a whirlwind… She is one in more ways than just one…

With her cleaning so much, I bathed myself until I was clean enough to be there too. I know she appreciated it. Perhaps she didn’t need to clean every week, but she seemed to think so. I don’t know why, she believed that, but I did like living in a clean place.

The blind guy wasn’t klutzy. He had never walked into me in the dark. I don’t understand why she had so much trouble. But at least she could tell me and we worked together to prevent her from stepping on me in the dark. I am glad she listened and was willing to work with me. If she had ignored me, we wouldn’t have stayed together as we have.

After that first month, I no longer woke up from a nap whenever she had dropped something. She is still a klutz, but I’m just used to her now. I am glad she’s not deliberately dropping things to scare me or to torment me. She is kind and considerate. She is what I need in a caregiver and caretaker.

I am glad she’s a part of my life even though she’s not as coordinated as I am. And there is the matter of her violin playing…

*Sigh.* The whirlwind played a violin. When I had first heard it, I cringed. I protested. I hid. I don’t know what the problem was with the violin. I didn’t know if it was her playing. I liked it whenever she played the piano as long as it’s not too loud. Her electric piano was never too loud for me. It was always pleasant, unless she got carried away with too much force. Perhaps she was just hyper?

But the violin was different. There was a horrible and hideous sound coming from it that I couldn’t stand. I don’t know why she couldn’t hear it. Something just didn’t sound right with her violin playing. I’m not entirely sure it was her. But she didn’t stop playing and eventually that horrible and hideous sound went away.

At that point, her violin playing was quite beautiful and I could sleep and meditate in peace. She had learned how to make the violin sing. But then she stopped playing it for a long time. When she picked it up again to resume her studies, the horrible and hideous sound had come back too.

So, when she was playing it everyday she had gotten the horrible and hideous sound to go away. But after she hadn’t played it often, the horrible and hideous sound was back. I have to draw the conclusion that it wasn’t her. I would have to say there must have been something wrong with that particular violin.

I don’t think she was trying to hurt my ears. She was genuinely shocked that it bothered me so much when she played the violin. I do hope if she takes up the instrument again, that she finds a better violin that won’t ever make that horrible and hideous sound.

July 1, 2019 0

Purring

We cats do a lot of purring. I know humans have wondered why and they like to study us. They can with our permission. Don’t ever forget that. I find it’s easy to purr when someone knows how to pet me just right. Of course they like to stop before I’m ready for them to and I tell them to keep petting me.

Then there was a time when I couldn’t purr. It wasn’t good. Apparently I had developed a heart murmur and my girl could hear it. She said nothing to me about it. I did hear the vet mention it. The vet thought that I had lost a heart valve. So, for a while I couldn’t purr.

My girl continued to take care of me and give me lots of love. And you know what? She’s full of healing energy and she doesn’t mind sharing it whether it leaks out or not. Some of it spilled over into me and eventually I was able to purr again.

I still had the heart murmur, but at least I could purr again and continue to get better or at least not get any worse. I had missed purring. It’s something I like to do whenever I meditate.

My girls says she heard one of my brothers also had a heart murmur. So perhaps that part was genetic. I just feel grateful to my girl for helping me to heal and to purr again.

June 1, 2019 0