Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

I’ve suffered a terrible injury. Oh woe is me.
I’m being dramatic for fun.
It’s a cat scratch and a little one at that.
I haven’t been scratched for such a long time. It was surprising.


Forewarning, I’m not sure how I’ll be at the moment. Might be a little odd.....more than usual.


Skip if your squeamish…..or a guy.
I’m a few days away from the safe time (what is generally considered to be the right time between….I’ll just say occurrences).
I wouldn’t normally worry at this kind of time but today I noticed how adorable a stuffed reindeer toy was, and later a unicorn. The last time I took an interest in cute children’s toys the slaughter house (my new pet name for it) happened a few days later. I’ve stocked up on supplies in case. Mainly dark chocolate items, far too many sweets and I still have half a bag of walnuts from my last two slaughter houses.
I read that walnuts contain an ingredient that helps with cramps and tried it. It was a little worse than usual, and painkillers do make it go away but seem to make it come back for an extra day or two so I try to avoid them, but three walnut halves later and it seemed okay again. Maybe the walnuts helped. Maybe it passed on its own. Sometimes just being distracted (usually by food) stops you focusing on it so you stop noticing. Then again it could just be a placebo. I don’t much care as long as it helped. I used to have a policy of red in for red out, deliberately steering towards red food and drink items which seemed to help and before that is was salty foods but the internet sells me that salt will cause bloating which makes you feel worse. My warning signs and coping mechanisms vary every once in a while.
I have also broken out in spots but that’s more to do with an aggressive blackhead squeezing campaign where the stubborn ones refused to evacuate and got angry.
If it is going to happen soon I’m thinking next week rather than this week but it has caught me by surprise before.
Planning to reduce the font size of this unnecessary extra information so the squeamish can skip over it if they wish.
Went for a lighter colour too so it's your own fault if you read it anyway.


So. Cats. Lovely, fluffy, aloof, little beasts that they are. Cats.
I had a cat. Henry. He died…ages ago now. In total our family has had three cats and my parents had cats at some point before they got together too. I grew up with cats.
Then my cat died and we never got another one. But I still love cats. They just don’t love me.
Over the years I’ve noticed that young cats are very friendly, even with strangers. But after maybe a year, if your lucky, they start getting more aloof. I mostly put this down to hormones mainly. But maybe they also identify which humans feed them and which don’t. What good is a random human if they don’t feed you?

Two years ago, I think, New Year’s Day, I also think, in the evening I was getting ready to walk the dog. I opened the door just to get a look at the outside, gauge the temperature and make sure it wasn’t frosty or raining before going upstairs to pee, and found a fluffy little black and white cat on the doorstep, looking at me. It didn’t run and came to say hello to me. So so so happy. The dog was in the living room, so no threat. But if I called mum to come and meet this little cutie the dog might come too. So after a while I scooped the little cat up in my arms and brought it in. It didn’t protest. Mum came out and said hello and, as it was just so nice to find a friendly cat I suggested we give it a little leftover turkey. Not too much though, even though I wanted to give it treats forever, I knew it must belong to someone and the turkey was a bit old too. Also I didn’t want it to associate us with food. Since we have a dog, and a pretty huge one at that with a reasonably high prey drive, it would not be wise to encourage a sweet little animal to our house. Then I put it back outside and closed the door and wondered if we’d ever meet again. I wondered if someone had gotten a new cat for Christmas. I called it Kitten since I figured it was still young.
Over the next few months/year I occasionally saw it in the garden and would often try to get outside in time to play with it with a little string. I did feed it again just the once. It was sat on the ground eyeing up our wild birds on the bird feeder and rather than chasing my little cat buddy off I decided to give it half, just half, of a very small sachet of chicken dog food. It claims to be primarily chicken breast and is intended as a little accompaniment to your dogs full meal. I specify this because it’s potentially harmful to mix up dog and cat food as they have different nutritional needs. But I think that’s more for long term situations. I gave the rest to the dog when I came back inside. I shouldn’t feed it if it already has an owner. I shouldn’t even feed it if it’s stray because feeding strays keeps them alive just enough to keep breeding and adding to the stray cat population. I only gave it a little food in the hopes that if it was hungry then it wouldn’t eat my birds if it had a little food and if it wasn’t hungry then a little food in it’s belly would slow it down and give my birds a chance to escape more easily. We had a little play and it left, leaving my birds alone. This year it’s become pretty aloof. It doesn’t take the time to say hello to me.
There are other cats. A fluffy tabby that looks at me like I’m crazy every time I try to say hello and stalks off. Another similar fluffy black and white one with a black smudge on the nose who never gives me a chance to say hello and a fluffy ginger one who treats me the same way. I think there were two fluffy ginger ones but they both treaded me the same so I refer to them in the same way. Fluffy Ginger Bastard. And a sweet little black cat with white patches, I call it Tuxedo Cat. I saw it a couple of times and it came to say hello to me but I haven’t seen it for months now. It was very friendly but skinny (not in a starved way but more a “I’ve not quite grown into my body because I’m still young way”) so I think it must have been pretty young, like kitten was when we first met. For a couple of days Tuxedo became my new little cat buddy.
Cats but ginger cats in particular are special to me because my cat was ginger, so getting the cold shoulder from a ginger cat stings a little more.


I see these cats out and about while walking the dog. Even on the odd occasions I’m not with the dog, they’ll run away from me. Naturally, they’ll run away from the dog. They need to for their own safety. Once, when mum walked her at night, she told me that Yuki briefly caught a cat. It escaped quickly and seemed unharmed but we are under no illusions that she would kill a cat given the chance.
She’s always interested when we see a cat but it seems to vary from desire to chase, curiosity and in one case fear. Sometimes we pass a gate with an aggressive cat that hisses from behind it. Yuki is terrified of this gate because she can’t see the cat and the sudden hiss surprises her. It’s only there a very small percentage of the time but it doesn’t seem to matter. My dog, maybe five times bigger than a cat, is afraid of a cat.
It mainly depends on whether or not the cat runs. Last time I went to the vet to deliver a urine sample, or to pick up her pills, one or the other, I took her with me and the vet’s cat was just hanging out in the surgery. Yuki was interested in him but he just stayed on the other side of the room, keeping an eye on her hut otherwise not too bothered. She seemed more curious about him than bloodthirsty. I kept her beside me and away from him for safety and all was well.
So. As you know. Cats avoid me, especially when I have the dog but that isn’t always the case.

Oddly enough, I’m pleased to report that having the dog has actually helped my relations with some of the local cats. Fluffy Ginger Bastard has now been shortened to the more affectionate Fluffy for example and cats who would never say hello to me might sometimes say hello and more.


Now. How do you say hello to a cat and how does it say hello back?
Aside from trying to talk to it, which never works, you extend your open palm to it in as non-threatening a way as you can. That is your hello. The cat them responds by sniffing your outstretched hand. Congratulations. The cat has now said hello back. If you can get beyond this then you’re very lucky. It’s the same with dogs though it’s usually best to ask the owner’s permission first and/or to assess the dog’s body language prior to trying to introduce yourself, as a dog can do you some damage. A cat scratch is less of a worry than a dog bite, mainly due to the mouth bacteria.


It seems that when a cat is safely perched on a high wall it reasseses the situation and will maintain eye contact with the dog and consider running but not fully commit. This is the time when I, holding the dog at bay with one arm as far as I can from the cat, offer my free hand for the cat to say hello. Sometimes they still run but sometimes they say hello.
This is the stage I have gotten to with Fluffy, two maybe three times. So now we’re acquaintances.
If I’m super lucky it goes a little further and the cat will let me stroke it. So so so happy. It might even lean into my hand and briefly forget the dog and let me stroke it some more. And if I’m blessed enough to get that far then I might get to have a little play with the cat if I can find a leaf or a stick on the ground. So far I’ve only been able to do that twice. Once with Tuxedo cat but we didn’t get to play much and today with the black and white smudge nosed cat that looks similar to my old cat buddy Kitten.

Smudge Nose has been a super aloof little beast. Never have I been able to say hello to it even once. It’s usually either in my garden and runs before I can open the door or on the ground when I’m walking the dog. Not a good place because all they can do is run to feel safe or hide under a car. Once they’re under a car it’s hard to get them out and the dog doesn’t help because she harasses them. Not good for building me-cat relations. Today it happened again. Smudge Nose crossed the road. I hoped to catch up to it and have it jump on a wall but it hid under a car. Yuki managed to scare it out but there was no hope of saying hello to it. Fair enough. I don’t like cats hiding under cars. I’m always worried they’ll fall asleep and not notice when it starts up and they get run over. Unless the cat has a medical condition and is a very heavy sleeper I doubt that the sound of a car engine could be missed, especially if you’re right under it.
So we continued on our walk and just before we got home we saw the same cat across the road from us, where we were about to go anyway. So over we went and joy of joys it jumped onto a wall and waited to see if we’d pass. It was a little tentative but, keeping the dog at arm’s length I offered my hand and it sniffed me. Super happy. I offered my hand again and it sniffed again to I dared to chance a stroke. I didn’t want to go for the head in case if felt threatened but didn’t want to try and touch it without it knowing, because that might frighten it too. It turned its back to us and looked like it was thinking of leaving so I went for the spot at the base of the spine/tail. I discovered this to be a sweet spot with my cat. You pet this spot on their back and their bum goes in the air. They seem pretty happy with it.


It responded the same as my cat used to. And turned, deciding it didn’t mind me after all. So I went for the head. It started leaning into my hand and purring. Super super happy. So I stroked it for a little while. Now and then it remembered the dog but I kept her away from it and it went back to letting me stroke it.
Finally. After all this time it finally said hello to me and let me stroke it too. Bliss. Then, as it seems pretty young and it’s autumn so there are leaves everywhere, I decided to play with it. So I picked up a leaf and wiggled it around and it started to play with me.
But then disaster. It caught my thumb just below the cuticle. As I exclaimed ow it got startled but didn’t completely run so I figured this was the signal to end it here. I was aware of how close its paws were to my hand but decided to risk it.
It’s the tiniest scratch and produced the smallest drop of blood. It stung like crazy though. We weren’t far from home so I waited until we got home and put a little antiseptic ointment on it just in case, purely as a precaution. I’ve had worse scratched from the dog. Her claws are far from sharp but when one catches your toe it’s not nice.
All in all I’m still happy. My first cat scratch in over a decade and I can now add Smudge Nose to my list of acquaintance cats rather than neutral/enemy cats. Yay.