Slo-mo Cat Fight by Brucie and the Cat Chorus
My parents have this cat, named Brucie. He is supposed to be named after Bruce Springsteen, but we end up calling him Brucie, or Brucetopher.
(I don't know how this happens, so don't ask. We also had a bunny, named Willie II after the first Willie that my Grandma cooked for dinner, to dad's chagrin . . . we also called it Obi-Wan-Ka-Bunny for a while, but when we realized it was female we settled down to calling it Buns, or just The Rabbit. Due to her untimely and unorthodox death, we sometimes refer to her now as the Headless Rabbit).
Anyways, Brucie is a massive neutered cat with a very long white coat with uneven black-and-tan tabby splotches. I don't want to imagine how big he would have gotten if we hadn't raised him from a 4 week old feral kitten . . . with mother's milk for another month, he might have reached gargantuan proportions. I think it is a good thing we got him neutered, or we would probably have a whole run of massive hairy distinctive looking and even weirder sounding cats in the area.
It's not that Brucie isn't attractive, because he's pretty cool. He has an aristocratic shaped head, a very lengthy lean body, and dense soft fur. This makes him fun to hang around with, unless you are wearing black (unless he tried to go up the chimney again, and you're wearing white). His meow, however, is just plain weird. Like a lot of big cats, he doesn't really 'meow' per se . . . he makes a whole range of other assorted noises instead. He has this high chirp when he wants food, a low threatening 'vrum-vrum-vrum' like a motercycle when he gets pissed . . . it gets faster and louder the pissier he gets . . . and a new noise, which I heard last week.
I was in bed about to fall asleep, when I heard this weird yowling noise like a cat-fight in slow motion. For a short while I wondered if a cat was injured, then I realized that there was definitely two cat voices, doing a really strange cat chorus. I went outside in my robe to look, and lo and behold, Brucie is herding a dark feline interloper off the road in front of our house. He was emitting this slow drawn out wail, and making the other furball back up off his territory. Apparently Brucie's territory extends far past our property line, because Brucie kept this up, with the other cat defensively yowling in a contrasting key, well past the driveway of the place next door. The other cat finally turned tail and ran.
The next night a different cat made the unfortunate trasgression of actually stepping on our lawn. A full on catfight was in the works when I looked out the window, to see two white-with-black-splotches cats duking it out in the ditch. I thought I was imagining things, until I realized that only one cat had Brucie's big black splotch on the top of the head. Brucie also has a splotch on his muzzle, making it look like he has a white Zorro mask across his face.
I originally called Bruce 'Gringo Zorro', but Mom refused to stand on the porch yelling that, so he got renamed. They did the same thing to his runt sister . . . Curious 'Faceplant' Georgette was supplanted for the iffy name of 'Shania'. More about her and her Command Meow later.
(I don't know how this happens, so don't ask. We also had a bunny, named Willie II after the first Willie that my Grandma cooked for dinner, to dad's chagrin . . . we also called it Obi-Wan-Ka-Bunny for a while, but when we realized it was female we settled down to calling it Buns, or just The Rabbit. Due to her untimely and unorthodox death, we sometimes refer to her now as the Headless Rabbit).
Anyways, Brucie is a massive neutered cat with a very long white coat with uneven black-and-tan tabby splotches. I don't want to imagine how big he would have gotten if we hadn't raised him from a 4 week old feral kitten . . . with mother's milk for another month, he might have reached gargantuan proportions. I think it is a good thing we got him neutered, or we would probably have a whole run of massive hairy distinctive looking and even weirder sounding cats in the area.
It's not that Brucie isn't attractive, because he's pretty cool. He has an aristocratic shaped head, a very lengthy lean body, and dense soft fur. This makes him fun to hang around with, unless you are wearing black (unless he tried to go up the chimney again, and you're wearing white). His meow, however, is just plain weird. Like a lot of big cats, he doesn't really 'meow' per se . . . he makes a whole range of other assorted noises instead. He has this high chirp when he wants food, a low threatening 'vrum-vrum-vrum' like a motercycle when he gets pissed . . . it gets faster and louder the pissier he gets . . . and a new noise, which I heard last week.
I was in bed about to fall asleep, when I heard this weird yowling noise like a cat-fight in slow motion. For a short while I wondered if a cat was injured, then I realized that there was definitely two cat voices, doing a really strange cat chorus. I went outside in my robe to look, and lo and behold, Brucie is herding a dark feline interloper off the road in front of our house. He was emitting this slow drawn out wail, and making the other furball back up off his territory. Apparently Brucie's territory extends far past our property line, because Brucie kept this up, with the other cat defensively yowling in a contrasting key, well past the driveway of the place next door. The other cat finally turned tail and ran.
The next night a different cat made the unfortunate trasgression of actually stepping on our lawn. A full on catfight was in the works when I looked out the window, to see two white-with-black-splotches cats duking it out in the ditch. I thought I was imagining things, until I realized that only one cat had Brucie's big black splotch on the top of the head. Brucie also has a splotch on his muzzle, making it look like he has a white Zorro mask across his face.
I originally called Bruce 'Gringo Zorro', but Mom refused to stand on the porch yelling that, so he got renamed. They did the same thing to his runt sister . . . Curious 'Faceplant' Georgette was supplanted for the iffy name of 'Shania'. More about her and her Command Meow later.
posted by Lu Hill at 12:30 p.m.
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