"Bayla's Tale"

My name is Bayla. I'm a cat. I was born in 1994 near Chicago, Illinois. My human got me on the same day she was moving to a new house, and I had to spend the day in an empty fish tank. Fun.

In 1998, we moved to California. That was my first experience with a long-distance road trip, and I was glad it only lasted a few days. There wasn't anywhere dark and cozy to hide inside our cage, and it's hard to nap when everything is noisy and shaking.

In 2008, we moved again, and this time the road trip lasted five months. I know what you're thinking: How could any self-respecting feline spend all that time on the road? I got used to it. We made plenty of stops. The humans brought a lot of my stuff, and there was always a bed for me to hide under.

We drove all around the United States, to lots of different places with many interesting smells. Still, five months was my limit, and I pointed this out to the humans by puking in the car. They got the message and settled down in Vancouver, Washington.

But the humans still traveled by themselves, and I got lonely when they were away. So in October of 2009, I went on a hunger strike. That got their attention. They stopped running around so much and spent more nights at home with me.

I suppose I should mention that I've always had a bit of a skin condition. The medical term is "eosinophilic granuloma," but it basically means my belly itched all the time. The humans used to worry because I would lick the fur off until I started bleeding, but it got much better after the vet prescribed THE MIRACLE DRUG--I think she called "cyclosporin" or something.

Anyway. Fall of 2009. Hunger strike. Despite subsequent force-feedings of icky meat-pudding, some good things also happened: I got to play with curly ribbons and eat anything I wanted (the humans are obsessed with weighing cats--go figure), and I finally had my own pillow on the bed. Life was pretty good.

I died on December 9, 2009. The humans were driving me to the vet for a check-up, and a few minutes before we got there, I felt weak and lay down in my carrier. I never got back up.

I think I had a heart attack. It didn't hurt. The last thing I felt was one of the humans holding me and stroking my fur. She was making unhappy noises, and I wanted to tell her: It's okay. It's okay.

I died in the car where I'd spent so much time the year before, traveling all over the country. I wasn't afraid. I was glad the humans were there. It was familiar. It felt like home.

My name is Bayla, and for fifteen years, I was part of a family. I loved them, and they gave me a good life. The end.

Famous!

I am told that one of the humans mentioned Bayla and me by name in this month's Stanford Magazine Class Notes. I believe this means that we are now FAMOUS!!!!!1!!!eleven!

Welcome to all you Stanford Magazine readers! You really should have been reading this blog, like, six months ago, but it will still be quite exciting for you to go through the archives and see what we thought of places like the Grand Canyon or New Orleans or Niagara Falls.

Oh yeah! PHOTOS! LET ME SHOW YOU THEM

And here are some new friends I have met recently:

Address!

We cats are very helpful and informative! Here is the address of our new maxi-house:



Do you want to "telephone" the humans instead? Use this magic button:



I'm still getting used to this new place. There are lots of strange noises around here, but also SQUIRRELS! And OTHER CATS! I love looking out all the different windows.

We're in a maxi-house now.

The day before yesterday, she packed us into the car and took us for a drive. I thought we were going to yet another mini-house, but this place is much bigger.

This maxi-house is a lot like a mini-house. We're in a small part of the building. There are other humans (and a few other cats) in the building too. I can hear the humans next to the kitchen, everywhere above us, and thundering up and down the stairs by the bedroom. Mostly, the cats just respond when Jasper or I call out. There's one upstairs somewhere, and another one who gets to go outside. I ignore the dogs.

Also like the mini-houses, the car storage is nearby. I can see it sideways out the bedroom window, when I'm not watching squirrels and birds and humans on the path outside the window. The window is almost on the ground, but I like this view. We can see a lot. Jasper is very jealous of the cat that gets to go outside. He was chasing squirrels yesterday.

Unlike the mini-houses, however, our stuff is here. The little bit of it that was still at home when we left, anyway. Most of it is still in boxes, but I can walk around and sniff the boxes. Yesterday, I slept on the boxes for a while. It's good to be surrounded by my stuff again, even if I can't actually touch it.

I don't know where he is. He left a few days ago and hasn't been back. Hopefully, he's gone off to fetch the rest of our stuff. I'm not hopeful, though. Other humans came and took it all away before we left on our tour of mini-houses. In my experience, whenever humans took stuff from our house, they never brought it back again.

Of all the stuff I've missed, I've missed my bed the most. But the bed here is my bed. I recognized it immediately, even if it was on top of some unfamiliar carpet, was missing the privacy dropcloth, and has different sheets. I've spent years sleeping under and on top of this bed. When I'm not exploring the maxi-house, eating, or sleeping on a box of my stuff, I'm enjoying my bed. It's good to have it back.

It's also good to see that she keeps going out and bringing back new stuff. Each time she does this, she puts away a little bit of our old stuff too. I've seen this behavior in humans before. It means that they plan to stay for a while.

Finally. I want my home back. This maxi-house isn't home yet, but if we stay here long enough, it will be.

Indignities!

Our last two car trips have been horrible!

They weren't as long as some of the others, but Bayla was pretty upset about not going home when we were back in the bay area, and has recently decided that she's going to be carsick.

She threw up on me. TWICE! The first time I yelled and yelled, but the humans just ignored me.

I suppose you're going to say it's my own fault for crying wolf.

Well I wasn't crying wolf! I was crying VOMIT! It's a totally different meow. I can't help it if humans are completely tone-deaf. The second time, at least, they stopped the car and cleaned me up a little.

I've forgiven Bayla. She's old. Oooooooollllldddd. Like three times as old as me. I hope I don't get all crotchety and pukey when I'm that old.

Being nocturnal is not a lifestyle choice.

The humans have developed a terrible habit lately. They don't refill our food bowls before they go to sleep at night. By dawn, Jasper and I are hungry and pleading for sustenance. In this new mini-house, they've compounded the problem by only putting out the yummy soft food and tuna during the day.

Let's think about this a little bit. Cats are nocturnal. Nocturnal means that Jasper and I are hardwired to sleep during the day and be active at night. If I'm active at night, it might also stand to reason that I eat at night, too. Often, the humans go to bed before the night gets properly started. They just don't see me eat that often.

Trust me; by nighttime, the yummy soft food is far from yummy. It's pretty bad if we don't get to it within the first hour or so. In effect, we're living on half-rations, which means that the bowl of dry food is empty before the night is half over, while the bowl of spoiled wet food goes untouched.

The conclusion seems pretty obvious to me: put more food in the dry bowl, or feed us the wet food after dark.

The humans, however, seem to believe that I'm not eating. She's put me on the scales twice in the last three days. That always means she's not happy with my weight, but what did she expect to happen? It's a pretty clear-cut case of cause and effect: if the available food is nasty, I don't eat as much; if I don't eat as much, I lose weight.

I hope they don't overreact like last time and start squirting the meat-pudding into my mouth. I hate that stuff.

Plays!

The humans abandoned us on our first day in this new place to go see some "plays." I've never been to a play, but I think it's when a bunch of humans get together to watch other humans put on a TV show in person. Not my thing! TV is boring. It can't be any more interesting to watch live.

I think the humans were bored, too. She said, "'Loved not wisely, but too well.' Hah! If that's love, save us all from being loved too well."

I agree! It's awful to be loved too much. I like cuddles as much as the next cat--maybe even more!--but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Especially when the humans are sleeping, and I just want them to wake up and feed me. They always have to drag me into an unwanted hug. They always fall asleep again without letting go! It takes forever to wiggle free.

It's Caturday.

Here are your goddamn cat pictures.







Making LOLcats is left as an exercise for the reader.

Communication!

Humans can be so dopey! You would think with those huge heads of theirs they'd have more smarts, but it just isn't so. Half the time I'm telling them we need food, they try to play with me; and then, when I'm telling them I need playtime, they give us food!

It's possible they just get confused about which is which. The stretchy red string is for playing. The big bag with food in it is for eating. One does not equal the other!

Training humans can be really tough sometimes.

I can smell home.

We're staying in another mini-house, but I know we are close to home. The humans went to the book-place and came back with a bunch of books. They smell just like the books that came from the book-place close to home.

Every night this week, when the humans came home, they've smelled like the people that used to come over to our real house. Different people every day, but they all smell familiar. A lot of them helped empty out our real house before we started going from mini-house to mini-house.

At first, I wondered why the humans didn't just take us home. Then I remembered how empty and dusty our real house was when we left. I wouldn't want to come home to that.

I hope the humans are setting up our real house so that we can go back to it soon. Variety may be the spice of life, but I'm ready for some comfort food. If you know what I mean.

GRASS!!!

I got grass again! It's been weeks! This time, the grass came in a pot. It stands up on its own, and I can take bites whenever I want them. Even when the humans are gone for a long time! Like yesterday.

I've eaten about half the grass already. It's really satisfying, just like the stuff that we used to get when we lived in our real house.

I like grass even better than bugs! Well... maybe not. It doesn't run away. But it's still grass!

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is, the humans are still stepping on me when I hide under the edge of the bed. It's really egregious. Look. Either I leave my tail hanging out for them to see, or I make a completely obvious lump in the bed skirt.



I mean, come on. Not even humans can be that stupid.

The good news is, they've been feeding us a lot more of the tuna soup we love so much. Sure, they still give us that dry stuff, and Jasper still eats it, but they're being much more generous with the wet fishy goodness. I approve.

Beetles!

I love chasing bugs and spiders. They're more fun than even my best toys. They run and move and hide and sometimes even fly! Catching and eating them is so much fun that I even let them go sometimes, just to make the fun last as long as I can.

Sometimes I let it go on too long. The humans always take away my bugs if they see them!

Bugs and spiders have been very scarce in the mini-houses. But not at this one! There are beetles that come in from outside. So far, two or three of them every day.

As usual, the humans took away the first two beetles I found. Even though I tried to be quiet about it, they caught me with the third one. I had to eat it really fast!

After that, I guess they got tired of taking beetles outside. They don't even try to take them away anymore. I get to play with my beetles as long as I want. I love this mini-house!

Yes, we are shedding.

It's summertime. We're cats. Deal with it.

Also, I win.

Toys!

This new mini-house is very tall! I can see the roof below me when I look out the window. And I can also see all the way to the mountains far off in the distance. Up high like this, I usually get to see lots of interesting animals go by! But not this time. :(

The only moving things I see are cars, cars, cars, cars, cars, cars, cars, the occasional human, cars, cars, cars, and more cars. It's very boring. No birds or animals at all. Not even dogs. There was smoke in the mountains for a while, but it's gone now.

I spent my whole day yesterday looking for toys when I wasn't sleeping, or trying to get the humans or Bayla to play. Finally I found a piece of broken rubber band. That was fun for a while! Until the humans took it away.

But they gave me a bouncy twist-tie ring instead! I love those. I chased it all night! It's not so much fun anymore. This morning, we played volleyball with a paper ball. And I got to chase a string. And my fur-mouse is out! And catnip! Lots of toys! I love toys!

I just wish there were some animals outside the window.

Humans are high maintenance.

Jasper and I have been pretty busy trying to keep the humans out of trouble. As I've mentioned before, they have some serious flaws. Two of those flaws caused some serious problems at the last mini-house: their inability to listen to anyone except other humans, and their almost complete lack of a sense of smell.

While I do like it when the humans are sick, I want them to be mildly sick. Ideally, they'll be just sick enough to stay home, to take long naps, and to spend a lot of time paying attention to me. Sicker than that, and things get downright inconvenient.

She got sicker than I like at the last mini-house. She's had this illness before. It's the one where she holds cold things to her head, makes noises while she sleeps, won't wake up to give me pets no matter how many times I tap her face, and staggers off to throw up hairballs. Human hairballs smell bad and sound quite uncomfortable.

Worst of all, she caused the whole thing herself! The humans like to rub smell sticks under their arms. Apparently, the old one ran out. She bought a new one with a different smell. It was full of the bad kind of fake flower smells.

Of course she couldn't smell it, but Jasper and I knew right away that this was a bad smell for her. I sent him in to watery eyes and sneezes at her, but she didn't pay any attention to us.

That's normal but frustrating. It was even more frustrating to see that she could tell something was wrong, but didn't know what it was. She kept wrinkling up her nose every time she moved her arms.

This is not the first time strong smells have made her sick. They don't get her right away, usually, so we had another chance when the humans got back that night. Jasper and I both made stinky faces and watery eyes at her before bed to tell her that she needed to go douse herself with water. Humans do that sometimes. Although I wouldn't recommend it for a more civilized creature, it does help to keep down the worst of the human smells.

She didn't listen to this request either. She just went to bed. So she woke up sick, and we had a bad day. Jasper and I took turns curling up with her and patting her face whenever she made too many noises while she was sleeping. Sometimes, it was so bad that we both had to give her snuggles at once.

She was mostly better the next day. But she didn't listen to our warnings then either, so she put on the smell stick. I could tell she was wondering why she felt so bad, but humans are just oblivious. I guess they'd rather suffer than listen to anybody else.

On the THIRD day, she finally figured it out. We left the very next day, so I didn't even get to enjoy sleeping under the big bed in that mini-house.

At least this mini-house also has a bed I can sleep under. I haven't been able to enjoy it yet, since she's been out of sorts until now. I'm glad she's better. I'm looking forward to spending the whole day and night under the bed tomorrow.

It's about time.

Grass!

I got to eat grass tonight! For the first time in weeks! I was so excited and happy I almost forgot to chew. I love grass!

Apparently the humans went to "Mall of America," a big building where they can buy all sorts of things they don't need. Besides my grass, they also came home with:

• photos of other places they've been recently!
• one card game "upgrade kit"!
• eight chocolate balls!
• two knife safes!
• two bottles of flavored olive oil!

But of course the most important thing was the grass! I guess they got it from a place that normally juices it up for people to drink (humans are weird!), and the people working there were confused when they said they wanted the whole grass. Well, now they know! Maybe more cats will send their humans there and give them more business!

I do not pick the mini-houses.

If I did pick the mini-houses, there would be a few changes. For one, all mini-houses would have beds a cat can comfortably sleep under.

This one has another of those boxes that fit under the bed and block almost all of the space. They always leave just enough for a cat to almost--but not quite--fit under comfortably. I like to sleep under the bed, so I do my best to alert my humans to the fact that I'm sleeping under the bed. I let my tail or one of my feet show. Or I make sure that I'm completely covered by a blanket. I even make sure to sleep in the same spot under the bed, once I find the best one.

Even so, the humans insist on stepping on me. We've been in several mini-houses with boxes instead of a proper space under the bed. I've been stepped on at each one. By now, you think the humans would have learned to look where they were walking. They apologize right after, but still...

They're stepping on me!

The first time I get stepped on at a new location, I can forgive it. But after that, it's just willful lack of concern for my well-being. And if that's not an insult, I don't know what is. It also occurs to me that even if I don't pick the mini-houses, the humans do.

I hope they're not insulting me on purpose, so I'm going to give them one last chance. I'll wait to see if they step on me again. If they do step on me before we leave this mini-house, I'm going to know it was an intentional insult.

A tip: don't offend a cat. We watch you while you sleep.

Sleep!

I don't understand humans at all. They hardly sleep at all! They even set "alarms" to tell them when to stop sleeping! That's just silly.

I thought the humans had come to their senses in the last mini-house, when they spent several days lounging around in bed. That was great! I laid on top of them or between them and slept for hours and hours and hours and hours.

But now, they're back to their old crazy habits. They leave the mini-house for hours at a time, and many days they don't come back until after dark. And then they still don't go to sleep until after they've surfed teh internets for a while! It's as if sleep isn't one of the top three most important things in their lives! (The other two, in case you're wondering, are food and playing. Maybe playing is tied with snuggles. I can't decide.)

Humans are weird. I'm going to take a nap.

This is bad news.

She is taking everything out of the drawers. The packing has begun. I guess they knew that we were getting comfortable here. We should never have let them catch us both in the window at the same time!

Okay. Now it's confirmed. She's putting away all their smelly bathroom liquids. We're definitely moving to a new mini-house. I need to go hide before they pack me up in something less comfortable than our car tent.

I just hope the next place is almost as good as this one. We had such a great window here.