Kitty Cat Games in the Driveway

When the weather is nice, and we don't have anywhere we have to go, my husband and I like to sit in our yard and listen to music and read our books. LGK, the neighbor kitty, often comes by to visit us. He likes to play games with my husband, and this is a photo of LGK playing with a favorite bit of string. He also likes to chomp on that blue thing, and give it rabbit kicks with his back paws.

LGK, for Little Gray Kitty, actually belongs to a neighbor, but he spends a lot of time at our house. We had a scare about two weeks ago. LGK was walking around doing stuff. I saw him lick bird poo off the pavement, and then he barfed, right beside me. As he went to walk away, he lost all muscle control and then collapsed and fell over onto the driveway by my feet! It scared the heck out of me!

I grabbed him, of course, so that he would not hurt himself. And I quickly sat on the pavement, holding onto him, monitoring his breathing and his heart rate, hoping he'd pull out of it, preparing to rush him to the vet, which is conveniently one mile away. Within a short while, he seemed to be walking and moving around rather normally. He bathed and then napped on my husband's lap.

I wondered later - my gosh, could eating bird poo kill a cat? But then my husband said he had seen LGK eating something (he eats ALL KINDS OF THINGS, including not just bird POO, but our actual birds!), maybe a plant. But what KIND of plant did he eat?

And when I examined the barf carefully (hello, CSI, and geez, the things we do for pets), I saw some green stuff, but could not identify what plant it was from. On that day, LGK pulled it all together and walked home by himself. I worried about him, though. Would he be okay? What a relief when he showed up on our porch a few days later, seemingly good as new.

We have many plants in the yard, including a bunch of day lilies, and as you know if you have cats, lilies are deadly toxic to cats! The day lilies were here long before I got here. I saw LGK walk over to one on this day and start to chomp on it.

So I wonder if that is what he ate, that made him sick, on that other day. I quickly chased him away from it, but I wonder now what I should do. Should I rip them all out? If I see him at them again, that is exactly what I plan to do. Safety first.

Anyway, that is my strange tale for the day. In the meantime, here is a cat, and here is my husband, playing kitty cat games in the driveway, on a sunny May afternoon.

My soundtrack song is this one: Wicked Game. I love this song and here are two versions: one by Chris Isaak, who wrote it (it's on the soundtrack for the amazing film Wild at Heart). And one by Chris Klafford, who did a very nice cover of it.

Public Service Announcement: Lilies can kill! Watch your pets carefully, and if you have cats (or even if you don't have cats right now, and are babysitting your neighbor's cat), please keep lilies out of their mouths!