Tabs

If there’s a cat out there able to make a candy corn Halloween bow tie look extra dapper, hello! — of course it’s Tabs.

He found this adorable bow tie on Etsie this week and had me order him one ASAP. The store is called BellaLovesAlex, and the owner, Jodie, does these high-quality handmade kitty bow ties, collars and bandannas that are SO MUCH better than anything I’ve seen at Petco.

Quality stitching, durable fabric, gorgeous patterns, and they’re affordable, too. Tabs endorses them enthusiastically. As you know, he likes to promote and support talented kitty-loving entrepreneurs. 🙂

Some of the designs available at the BellaLovesAlex Etsy store

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As soon as the door opened, Tabs shot off like a rocket! This morning he was over the moon to be going for his walk right before dawn, because, as you know, cats are crepuscular, and they get extra fired up at dusk and dawn.

It started out great, too. He had a spring in his step. First thing he did was dart around the corner toward his favorite bamboo plant, and then doubled back like a kitten and scooted up the steps toward the common area grassy knoll, where he likes to chomp down on grass.

Things were going fine until… Holy crap! That same long-haired tabby interloper showed up! We both looked up and there he was, silently watching us like Kitty Krueger from Caturday the 13th.

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It was smoky outside today, so Tabs and Connor Claire didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors. They did do some gardening, though, because the poor garden needed some love. They watered together and pruned and moved the watering can from one end of the deck to the other, and back, and back again, and nibbled on cherry tomatoes and catnip leaves.

Tabs was, of course, acting in his customary supervisory role, but Connor didn’t mind taking orders today. She just wanted to do her best and take care of the garden.

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What’s up with these damn cat stalkers?! Every week there’s a new one trying to dominate the common area, which sucks because that’s where Tabs likes to do his morning exercises and tai chi.

Every time he goes out there, there’s a different cat skulking around the employee parking area, even though there are signs posted everywhere that say, “No soliciting cats. STEP OFF!” and whenever Tabs turns to head back to the office, there’s always some cat intruder trying to sneak around the corner to make a move on him.

It’s enough to make a cat nervous!

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Whiskers, ear tufts, tums, tails and haunches always get the cat lady love, but I think toe beans deserve more attention.

If you’re already wearing your official crazy cat lady cap, welcome! You’ll probably know what I’m talking about, but if you aren’t/don’t, allow me to extend a warm welcome to The Land of CCLs! 🙂

Second of all, you know how cat paws have those soft pads, right? With the fat pad in the center, surrounded by the four little pads under their claws? Well, in casual CCL convo, those are referred to as “toe beans,” and methinks they’re lovely.

There’s a subset of the crazy cat lady community that’s kind of obsessed with them (from my working knowledge!), and I can see why, because toe beans are THE BEST.

Now that Tabs is, you know, in the mature stage of his kitty life, his toe beans have… Well, I won’t call them wrinkles. I’ll call them “experience lines.” His toe beans have more experience lines than they used to, and his toe beans aren’t as shiny as they once were. But I still ? them. They’re dainty and sweet, and whenever I touch them, Tabs throws me shade, as if to say, “Lady, it’s not healthy to be so into my paws. Get a life!”

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When we lived in that rickety old second-floor apartment in Mill Valley and Tabs was just a friendly neighborhood kitty who stopped by from time to time for canned tuna and deep-tissue kitty massage sessions on my lap (this would have been around 2008), there were lots of other outdoor cats in the neighborhood, like Thug, the husky long-haired calico who Tabs always had cat standoffs with on the back stairs; and Snowflake; and Orangey, and a bunch of other outdoor kitties, many of which looked a little rough around the edges, but they mostly seemed happy, and it was a great area for cats, because the apartment complex backed up against an overgrown hill with fallen logs and thick underbrush and vines to hide and skulk around in. Who knows what those cats got up to at night, but there were a LOT of them in all shapes, colors and sizes.

We would hear them deliberating late at night in their cat town hall meetings…

Sometimes I wonder if cats ever bump into each other later in life after they move away with their people, and if they do, I wonder how those reunions go.

Tabs has always been a very standoffish kitty when it comes to other cats. I think that times were tough for him when he was a young cat on the mean streets of Mill Valley. Maybe food was hard to come by, or maybe he had to compete for human affection, because he’s always been crazy territorial, ever since I met him. If he catches sight or sound of another cat, his haunches go up, tail poofs out, and he makes a deep, guttural growl that doesn’t sound anything like his regular kitty meow.

I never hear that growl from him any other time…

Anyway, I wonder if Tabs has ever bumped into any of the cats he used to hang out with in Mill Valley. I mean, people run into each other sometimes after moving out of town. Maybe they see each other at the mall or buying lemons at Safeway. You never know, right? We’re only about 20 miles from Mill Valley.

Stranger things have happened.

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Every morning like clockwork Tabs follows me downstairs into the kitchen, kitty hugging my legs and meowing all the way. Then he sits in the same spot on the kitchen floor looking up at me, then up to the cabinet where I keep his extra large family-size bag of Feline Greenies Dental Treats in the Oven Roasted Chicken Flavor.

He’s always been a creature of habit, but it’s gotten freaky now. Now, if he doesn’t get his Greenies at precisely the correct time, his meows rise in pitch. After a couple minutes of that, the meows turn to concerned, longer mewls, and then basically panicked loud cat mrrrrrrrrrowwwwwws until the Greenies miraculously appear.

It’s like WTF, woman!? WHERE ARE TEH GREENIES?

And it has to be between 10-14 Greenies. No more, no less. His day can’t start without them.

After he eats them, he usually disappears and heads back upstairs to sleep on the bed for a couple more hours, but if he doesn’t get those Greenies, he’s out of sorts and extra needy the rest of the day.

Weirdly, I think he also has a sixth sense for what day of the week it is, or at least when it’s Sunday, because that’s the day when we usually go for our long walk super early and spend more time outside than usual.

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I can’t get over how much this cat likes carbs! It’s crazy. It doesn’t make any sense to me. He’s a full-on carnivore, so why would he rather eat a zinnia flower, a croissant or a piece of toast than a slab of bacon or an egg?

The only thing I can think of is that his old dry food (Hill’s Science Diet) contained whole grain wheat and other veggie fillers, which I didn’t think twice about at the time, but then a few years ago Tabs was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, and his vet said he should lay off the carbs.

These days he mostly eats low glycemic grain-free Nutrisca crunchies and grain-free wet food, which he eats…reluctantly.

Well, he loves his nightly wet food (mostly Sheba Paté, but sometimes he gets $$$ ZiwiPeak), but I don’t think he loves it as much as he used to love regular Fancy Feast, which has wheat in it to make that delicious gravy.

I’ve asked a couple different vets why some cats like to eat grass, other plants and flowers, and they weren’t sure. I guess there are different schools of thought. Some vets think cats do it as an instinct to clean their teeth, because the plant fibers can get down in there between their teeth and gums, or to supplement their diet with certain nutrients that they don’t get from meat, or to force themselves to barf, because it helps them clear out their digestive system. Even wild cats do it.

I don’t know the reason, but I do know that Tabs is a fiend for grass. He’ll eat grass and flowers till he barfs every chance he gets if I let him, which I do sometimes.

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