We caught these three relaxing on the front walk a few days ago.

The Three Amigos — Sylvester in black, Zoe in white, and Smokey in gray.

They look pretty comfortable together here, but they aren’t really all that friendly with each other or with any of the other cats.

Zoe made his routine visit to the vet on Wednesday. He feels more comfortable if he stays in his carrier.

Everything went pretty well at first. They took blood and stuck a thermometer up his … well, you know. And the doctor saw …

His ear!

I had just found a scab in his ear while we were waiting for the vet to come into the exam room. When the vet saw it, he ripped the scab off and said there was an infection, and he needed to clean it out and stitch it. That meant the vet had to put him under, and Zoe had to spent the night.

WHAT!

He was ready to be picked up Thursday morning. We expected it to be expensive. The total for his shots and exam and the surgery was $457. Ouch. Way too much money! But we had to do it.

Here he is at home afterwards.

You can see the stitched wound in his ear and you might be able to tell that the side of his head was shaved.

We think he got into a fight with one of the other male cats and got a claw in the ear. We don’t know whether it was Smokey, Sylvester, or even Dusty. We know that Smokey and Sylvester jump on the other cats and on each other, but we haven’t seen Dusty do anything like that. So it was probably Smokey or Sylvester.  Mark suggests that we check under their claws for Zoe’s DNA.

Zoe is pretty happy to stay outside almost all the time now, but sometimes he wants in.

Is anybody in there?

He went out, laid in the sun for a few minutes, and then decided to come back in for a little more supper.

Mark and I are both suffering from what must be some kind of summer cold. Mark has been coughing so much for a week that he’s been sleeping, or trying to sleep, in a spare bedroom to avoid keeping me up. Now I’m so hoarse I can barely talk. Mark saw his doctor on Wednesday for something else. The doctor gave him a sample of Advair, a steroidal inhalant, because he heard some bronchial congestion. He told Mark if he wasn’t better by next week, to come back in and he would put him down. Actually he’ll just get a chest X-ray and maybe something stronger.

Are we the only ones with this crud?

Zoe got another short cut last week. Now when he lies down his cute, little pink belly is really obvious.

It’s more noticeable when he walks because it sags. I think maybe he needs a girdle.

On a more serious note, we think he might be hurting more lately. Thursday night when he came to the door wanting in, he hesitated. I petted him to encourage him to come in, and he meowed loudly and hissed. Then he hissed another couple of times once he was inside. He has a kind of stilted walk that looks really awkward, which our vet thinks is because of his arthritis. He takes pain medication, but cats can’t take all the different types of medications that dogs can.

Zoe has always liked to play patty cake. Sometimes he does it from behind a door. This time he was in one of the kitchen chairs.

He looks like he’s giving me five down low.