MELROSE: Hi everyone. Despite the title of today's blog entry, I do have my kitty secrets. So I'm not telling my Daddies or anyone else about my former owner, how long I lived with her, or any of the things we used to do together. I'm only going to talk about my life from the time when my Daddies adopted me from the Lort Smith Animal Hospital on 11 February, 2011, three days before my eighth birthday.
On the day before, 10 February (when I had been at Lord Smith for exactly seven weeks), at about 1.00 in the afternoon two tall guys came into the cattery and looked at me and let me out of my cage so we could get to know each other. I politely ignored both of them and wandered around the floor since I hated that stupid cage. Then a nurse carried me into a visiting room where I could "visit" with these guys. I ignored them again and decided to sniff around the desk, the chair, the table, and anything else in the room that wasn't these guys. Little did I know that they actually liked me! There were all sorts of papers on a clip board next to my cage; one was a questionnaire which my previous owner filled out, including a statement that I "might" get along better with a woman as an owner. The Nurse told my Daddies to ignore that statement (a lot of ignoring went on that day!) and Daddy Jimmy put a "hold" on me for 24 hours, which meant that if he wanted to adopt me, he would need to do so on the very next day. I got stuck back in my cage again, my Daddies said good-bye to me, and I ignored them. On the next day (February 11), a Nurse took me out of my cage, brushed me all over, gave me some stupid shot, and then stuck me in a new cage that I had never seen before. It smelled like old man cat, and it turns out that it belonged to my Daddies' former cat, Oscar. Then I saw Daddy Jimmy signing some papers, and he whisked me away into the back of a car and took me to my new home in Brunswick. Of course, I was NOT happy. I had no idea what was going on. Daddy took me upstairs to the den, let me out of my cage, and tried to show me where some food, water, and cat litter was placed. I didn't care. I ran straight behind a desk and hid and would not come out. Daddy Jimmy shut the door and let me bed. About two hours later, I felt someone coming up the stairs (I couldn't hear them, since I'm deaf), and I could smell a cat, and then I felt the vibration of a door shutting. Turns out it was Spaz Cat, who was adopted the same day as me, and Daddy Jimmy sequestered him in the bathroom (with food, water and litter) for him to acclimatize before meeting me. Then Daddy had to rush off to a meeting. About another hour later, Daddy Kevin came home and opened the door to the den and couldn't find me! He even called Daddy Jimmy and said, "Where's Melrose?!" Of course I was hiding behind a box on the second shelf of a bookshelf, in a place I HOPED no one would find me. Of course, Kevin found me. But he let me be. I eventually came out for some food and water, but that was all. OTTO: And Daddy Kevin let me out of the bathroom and I ran all over the house and I was so excited to have a brand new home but there was this locked door with you behind it and I scratched and scratched at the door because I wanted in! MELROSE: Yes, how could I forget? It wasn't until the next day that I met Spaz Cat for the first time, and I hissed at him. I was NOT in the mood to meet new people. I also didn't leave the den for a day or two, or even come downstairs for a week. I managed to avoid Otto successfully for a while, but then one night (just as our Daddies were trying to sleep), we finally had it out with each other. It looked something like this:
We weren't exactly best friends after that, but let's just say I worked out some of my "issues." OTTO: Hey you were the only one with the issues I just wanted to play.
MELROSE: Oh, stop touching me. Just so you all know, I am completely deaf. In both ears. Lots of white kitties with one blue eye and one green eye (like me) are deaf only over the blue eye:
(see my eyes?); but I'm deaf in BOTH ears. My Daddy Jimmy proved this when he was feeding me in the kitchen and accidentally dropped a dish on the floor right behind me and I didn't flinch. And no sounds wake me up when I sleep (like this):
I only wake up if my Daddy shakes the chair or touches me. I do notice vibrations, through, so if a door slams or a tram rumbles by the house, I feel it. My deafness is why that stupid Spaz Cat Otto drives me crazy. I can't hear him creeping up on me so I always like to have him in my sight, like this:
Otto figured out early on that I couldn't hear him, so he started pouncing on me while I was using the litter box. At that time we had two litters boxes, both with lids, and I used to face the back of the box whenever I would use it. And Spaz Cat would pounce on me, sometimes in mid-poo, sometimes as I was trying to bury it.OTTO: Play play play!
MELROSE: It drove me crazy! And sometimes Otto would creep around the edge of a door and just give me that LOOK.
OTTO: Yeah the one that says I know you're about to go to that box and I'm going to get you! Play play play!
MELROSE: Ugh. Finally I had to give my Daddies a message, so one day when Daddy Jimmy was in the den working, I positioned myself next to a plastic bag that happened to be on the floor and I peed and peed and peed all the pee I had been saving up in my bladder. Daddy got the message, took me to the vet, did some tests and got some advice from the doctor. There was nothing wrong with my urine; but I was giving the message that I wanted the hood off my litter box removed, so I could see Otto whenever he was lurking by. And Daddy Jimmy did one better: he got a third litter box without a lid, so now I have three choices for where I want to do my business. (But the litter box in the upstairs bathroom still has a lid, since it's right next to the toilet that our Daddies use). Of course, whenever I want to get Daddy's attention, I pee, usually on a towel (because they clean it up fast). I peed on a towel on the bathroom floor just last month, and right away Daddy Jimmy cleaned our litter boxes (which were stinky since he hadn't cleaned them for three whole weeks!). And then I peed on a bathroom towel again just last week, and I'm going to let my Daddy Kevin guess why. (It's not because of the litter this time, since the litter was clean and fresh when I peed. Maybe I want Kevin to take the lid off the litter box in the bathroom next to the toilet?) My deafness also means that I sleep through most of Spaz Cat's excitement. One time he caught a mouse, and I slept through the whole thing! Daddy took lots of pictures:
OTTO: Pretty mouse! 
OTTO: Yummy mouse! 
OTTO: I can has mouse!MELROSE: No, you may not has mouse. You were playing with it and tormenting it rather than killing it, and our Daddies took pity on the little animal and took it away from you and put it in a little container:
OTTO: They took away my mouse!MELROSE: And Daddy Kevin figured that the mouse was injured so he took it to a nearby park where it could die quickly, rather than be tormented by Spaz Cat (and he didn't want Spaz Cat to dump the mouse in his bed!). But I couldn't hear a thing so I slept through the whole drama. Daddy Jimmy loved the fact that Otto was a good mouser but was horrified that a mouse got into the house!
OTTO: They took away my mouse!
MELROSE: So nowadays, Spaz Cat and I are not exactly BFF's, but I don't exactly hate him, either. We eat together:
And we share the same space, with me usually ignoring him: 
OTTO: Can I lick you again? Can I can I please?
MELROSE: Oh, God, not again.
OTTO: Please please please please?!
MELROSE: Oh, somebody save me!
