The Cat Near the Vent

Feb 13, Saturday, JD writing:

It was about -10 deg F at 6a.m. in our backyard in Rumford RI. For heat and summer AC we have central air. When it was being installed back in 2003 neighbors told us we shouldn’t take out the radiators or the house would get too dry in the winter... Kate didn’t like the noise radiators made, and the fact it took them half an hour to get the heat going. We never noticed any annoying dryness...besides I grew up in the low-humidity world of Colorado, and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

On the ground floor the heat comes up from vents in the floor, or in the case of the kitchen, from vents under the cupboards under the countertops. I can testify that the air coming out the kitchen vents is 125 deg F.

In spite of having permanent fur coats and the house being warm enough anyway, both of her cats will sit in front of kitchen vents and become (I suppose) super-warm. Below is our big 17 lb male cat Shooting Star next to his vent.

Shooting Star is so named by Kate for the blaze on his nose, which looks like an exclamation mark, but to Kate looked like a shooting star. The name became shortened to Starter Kitty. Starter Kitty came to us at Thanksgiving of 2003, showing up in the back yard, killing and eating junkos at our bird feeder.

At one point he sat next to the back door (glass door). Kate opened the door and he walked in, v. calmly, and surveyed the house. It turned out he knew right away how to use a litter tray. It also turned out he was neutered...not one of the crazy feral cats that roam the railroad tracks around here.

At any rate Starter has been a member of the family since then. He’s an indoor-outdoor cat but is brought inside every night. The golf pro who visits next door tells us about the coyotes that live on the golf course, that he sees in the early morning out on the greens.

In 2003 Starter blended in with two other cats already in the home: Tubby, an old retired male cat, and Marlena, a fastidious female tuxedo.

Tubby and Marlena have since gone to cat heaven. Now Starter’s housemate is Pixie Dixie, a petite seal point Siamese, 4 years old.

What do cats have to do with dialysis? Nothing much really, except when Kate comes home from dialysis trembling and in poor spirits and no appetite, her two cats will gather round let her and let her pet them, if they’re not being troubled to sit at their vents in the matter of becoming toasty warm.