Buddy

Here's to Sir Isaac Newton, inventor of the cat door.

I sometimes wonder if Newton's apple story is just that - a story - and he pondered gravity because he watched how his own cats defied it. Whenever I get that paranoid feeling I'm being watched, I look high up in the Ponderosa Pines and there I see my Buddy, perched at a precarious level, peering down at me with those Velociraptor eyes.

My neighbor has a mean 90-pound dog and I have a 10-pound cat. On the day I was cornered by this vicious, growling dog, my 10-pound whirling dervish flew off the porch and lit into my attacker. Buddy sizes up dogs on a confidence scale. This one never knew what hit him.

The problem with cats is really a problem with us. They're smarter than we think. Indoor cats get bored pretty easily and toys hardly ever do the trick. Try planting a little catnip. Indoor cats need chloryphyll in their diet. (Which is why they often destroy your house plants.) Mauling a catnip plant is a lot of fun for a bored kitty. (It’s even more fun if he thinks he’s not supposed to!)

Start catnip, by seed, in a sunny window. Sweet-tasting oat grass and Kat Grass make for good grazing, too.

Or, grow it in the garden. Seedlings need moist soil, but mature plants are very drought tolerant. (Harvest when it reaches about 1 foot tall.)

There are lots of exotic varieties though Nepenta cataria, common Catnip, has been voted best of breed by cats everywhere.

I recently discovered that Buddy is a Tuxedo Cat! Meet Bud's doppelganger.

How you behave toward cats, down here, determines your status in Heaven.

- Robert A. Heinlein

* Velociraptor, meaning speedy thief, was a small meat-eating dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period.