Giant Noisy Cat-Eater

I haven't been happy with my "old" vacuum cleaner (isn't "vacuum cleaner" a misnomer? I mean, by definition, isn't a vacuum already clean?), and got a shiny new one with a couple of additional features some time ago. It isn't a heavy-duty industrial strength job, but that's okay - my apartment is less that 500 square feet, and only a little more than half of that is carpeted.

Today, I took it out on its maiden voyage and commenced to discover that the old machine had left behind enough cat hair that I could easily make a whole new cat if I wanted to. The spiffy attachments for it also made short work of previously troublesome areas. For the price, I'm rather pleased with it.

The cats, however, were considerably less than impressed with it. Elf took station at the farthest point in my apartment from it, while Radar sought refuge in the bathtub (!). It took a good twenty minutes before either of them was willing to see if the Giant Noisy Cat-Eater had gone away, and both of them are still a bit skittish.

Laundry Day

It was, as the title of this post might lead you to believe, Laundry Day here at The Hovel.

Three loads were run, with the usual Whites and Colors (that's as discriminatory as I get), plus a Miscellaneous category that consisted of some towels, cleaning (shop) rags, and a light blanket that I use when the temperature is only close to Winter.

Of course, this was all met with considerable interest by the cats -- as long as nothing got actually tossed ON them during the sorting process, they felt obliged to make sure the dirty clothes didn't float up to the ceiling. Radar DID develop a fixation on one of my socks, making it necessary for me to mount a rescue operation when she ran off with it.

After I brought the dry stuff back, it was obligatory to lay on the warm piles while I hung and folded, then put things away.


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This is NOT my cat!

A common occurance around my place

Cuteness overload

Damn, I almost got diabetes just from watching this.

The Philly Post-Gazette has a puppy that's being raised to go into the Seeing Eye dog program -- and they've got a live camera on the little guy (?) during the day. Even if the cam isn't "live", you can still watch what was recorded during the day.

Go look -- you'll be glad you did. :-)

How to start a riot

It's a nice, quiet Sunday afternoon, and it's intermittently attempting to snow (we've had snow on the ground for almost 90 straight days).

In the interest of passing time (as opposed to passing gas), I got the ol' laser pointer out and started aggravating exercising the cats.

Being the older of the two, Elf has mostly caught on that the damn laser dot can't be caught -- though she can't resist trying every so often.

Radar, on the other hand, still thinks that she can catch it with enough stalking, sneaking up on it, and pure enthusiasm.

Consequently, there comes a point where Elf gives up on the chase, and just lays down while Radar is still in full catch-it-kill-it mode.

Being Evil, I today I ran Radar around for a little while by frequently enticing her into thinking she almost managed to catch the dot. When she finally began to get tired and lose interest, I simply HAD to try one last thing: easing the dot over to where Elf was stretched out and wiggling it around ON ELF.

Normally, Radar would have enough sense not to annoy Elf to excess; after all, Elf is roughly 3X her size. But after coming so close to actually catching the dot, having it wiggling around and tormenting her proved to be too much: she just had to try to pounce on it. Being the unwilling and unwitting pouncee didn't sit well with Elf, and she commenced to giving Radar a sound thrashing. Apparently feeling she was being unjustly penalized for her actions, Radar began to fight back. While neither of them used claws or bit, there was still enough wrestling, slapping, jumping-on, and other combat to last a good five minutes, followed by another ten worth of getting in the "last word" via exchanging ambushes.

My cat wears cement overshoes

Almost since the day I got here, Radar (my Emergency Backup Cat) had provided oversight while I take my shower in the morning -- every single time I get out, she's sitting there on the bathmat, waiting for me. After I step out and begin to dry off, she jumps into the tub to lick up some of the water. Satisfied that I'm still as sweet as I was, she jumps back out a couple of minutes later.

The past few days, her exit from the tub has included a detour: walking with her wet feet through the litterbox full of clumping cat litter. Of course, the litter sticks to the wet fur, and it doesn't take long for it to dry and harden into little clumps of what amounts to cement.

*sigh*

Torture... sweet, sweet torture...

Just had a nice game of "Laser Tag" with the cats.

Well, cat, mostly. Elf is old enough that she doesn't go after the dot from the laser pointer with all the enthusiasm Radar does, though she does make a few attempts to catch it when it gets close enough.

No, it's Radar that has the most fun with it. When she follows it across the floor, I can get her almost a quarter of the way up the wall as she tries to keep up with it; you should see her trying to get alternate paws on it when it zig-zags across the carpet. I'll try to get a video of it, if I can keep from laughing at the sight.

Of course, it's obligatory for me to torture her with it. She makes these little disgusted chirping noises when she pounces on it, only to have it immediately re-appear right NEXT to where her paws are. It also aggravates her to no end when she's laying there trying to catch her breath and the damn dot keeps meandering across her paws, tormenting her.

The funniest part of all, though, is what happens when I can see she's getting too tired: I'll wait until I see the little butt-quiver right before she's going to pounce, and take my finger off the switch so the dot disappears. Her head comes up in wonder at where the hell it went, and she'll spend a good five minutes wandering around my apartment trying to find it again before coming to me and complaining about her missing toy.

Dumbshit.

It was a Merry Catsmas

I live alone and (thankfully) don't have any relatives within travelling distance, so it was just me and the cats for Kwanzmasukkah this year.

A friend and I are exchanging gifts, but they're of the relatively inexpensive "Damn, I've been meaning to get one of those..." variety.

The big celebration was reserved for my "kids", Elf and Radar.

Now, I like pets and all that, but I'm not one of those people that will run out and spend $100 on a pet sweater or high-end bed or anything like that. What the cats got was a can of people-grade tuna (making me their favoritest person in the whole world... for exactly as long as the tuna held out), and a large paper bag from the local grocery store. Yeah, the bag was free, but they couldn't have had any more fun with it if I'd actually spent cash money on it.

They had a dandy time "exploring" it, ambushing the snot out of it, making it crinkle and crackle, taking turns playing 'bag-mouse', and so on.

The only bit of awkwardness came when I heard Radar complaining about something; all I could see was Elf laying on the end of the bag. After trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, I finally realized that Radar was inside the bag, and couldn't get out because Elf was holding the opening shut. Once Elf was enticed off the bag, all was well with the world again.

As expected, it didn't take long for the two of them to "break" their toy: less than 24 for them to tear a large-ish opening in the side, and another 12 to have that side of the bag completely ripped open.

Pets = Family

Sigh.

My cats (Elf and Radar) are industriously involved in a rousing game of "ambush": one of them will go 'hide' somewhere, and the other will wander around in search of the first. When found, the one that was hiding gets to chase the searcher for a little while before they swap roles.

It's usually somewhat noisy game, and I just caught myself telling them "If you two don't knock it off, you're both going to bed without supper!"

Yeah, pets are family, alright...

My cat is a perv...

Radar, the kitten I got as an emergency backup cat, has turned into some kind of pervert.

It seems that I can't make vertical use of the commode without her not only following me into the bathroom, but jumping up on the commode to watch as I take care of things; she particularly likes to watch the water swirl around when I flush.

Having an audience while I go about my business is one thing -- but I get nervous when she starts eyeing my dangly bits...

Nightmares are made of these

If you're prone to nightmares, you can have a look at this assortment of deep-sea and marine critters to see if anything looks familiar. Some of them aren't too bad -- others are the kinds of things that you'd only want to see IN a nightmare that you could wake up from...

Absentee Parenting

My Primary cat, Elf, learned quickly and easily that she wasn't allowed to go certain places -- kitchen counters, bathroom sink, dining table, my electronics workbench, and so on. Whether it's because she's more stubborn, or dumber, I'm not sure; but my emergency backup cat, Radar, isn't learning as well.

Rather than have to try and catch her in flagrante delicto to punish her (so she associates the punishment with the place/action), I'm trying something different: booby-trapping the places I need/want her to stay off of.

The booby-traps consist of multiple squares of highly adhesive tape (I'm using package strapping tape, since that's what I had handy; duct tape or similar would have done as well) along the jump-able edges of things -- sticky side up, so that they'll adhere to her foot(s) when she lands or steps on one or more of them. That way, the unhappy thing (getting something stuck to her hoof) will happen regardless of whether I'm home and/or paying attention.

This may turn into an "interesting" experiment...

UPDATE:
(11:32) Would anybody like to guess who just came wandering through the living room with tape stuck to her two back foots? Fairly radiating innocence and outraged indignation while trying to shed the tape by shaking the taped extremeties at every step?
As much as she apparently doesn't like it, I figure I'll leave her to get it off on her own -- driving the point home with a sledgehammer, as it were.

Fierce is as fierce does

If I'm ever attacked by a horde of plastic or paper bags, I want my kitten Radar on my side -- the things wouldn't stand a chance.

Cruel Red Dot

The Red Dot (tm) has turned out to be an unspeakably cruel tormenter of the cats.

It has them chasing all over the apartment for as long as they're willing/able to go after it. It also torments them by going places that they can't quite reach, wandering around in front of them just out of ambush range, suddenly disappearing without warning (only to reappear somewhere else), and exhibiting some rather dramatic speed and direction changes while it's being chased.

Of course, there's no point to being a cruel Red Dot (tm) unless it runs them up and down their cat tree a dozen times or more, leaving both of them laying on the floor panting as they try to plot SOME way to catch it.

Neither of them is showing any signs of losing interest in catching it, however.

I am Evil...

Yes, I certainly am.

While at Target today, I got a new laser pointer (mouse-shaped, $3.99 with an extra set of batteries) to annoy the cats with.

Since I've gotten home, I've:

• Gotten both of them spinning around in circles until they got dizzy and couldn't walk straight.
• Used sudden direction changes to get them to trip over their own feet.
• Let them chase it around in the kitchen, then stopping it IN their water dish.
• "Walked" around in front of them until I see the pre-pounce butt-wiggle, then suddenly turning it off ("Hey! Where'd it go?!").

Yes, Evil is Me...

Radar on Guard

Radar, in the Belly of the Beast (the Box Monster)

On the attack against the Plastic Bag from Hell

Her most dangerous foes, the Poisonous Plastic Bug and the dreaded Purple Stuffed Mouse

See? We can all just get along...

I'm trying to nap here, dude...
You woke me up for THIS?

Guard Cat

Radar, the kitten, is proving herself to be quite the guardian around my apartment.

For her size, she's surprisingly ferocious -- thus far, she has fought and defeated:

• the Shoelace Snake
• the Foot of Death
• the Box Monster
• entire swarms of Kibbles
• the Blinky Ball of Doom
• the Plastic Bag from Hell
• the dreaded Purple Stuffed Mouse
• numerous Bed Mice (the 'mice' that run around under the covers), and
• the Poisonous Plastic Bug

Elf has gotten used to having Radar around, and is pretty tolerant of the little fuzzball -- except when Radar gets too rambunctious, and starts trying to include Elf in playtime.

Kitten School

In the last couple of days, Radar the kitten, has gone through the following courses:

Class 1

• Jump up on Dad's lap, sit while watching what he does on the computer.
• Sitting is too tiring, so lay down on his leg.
• Fall asleep.
• Try to roll over, fall off leg.

Class 2

• Get into laundry basket.
• Discover all the things you can beat up.
• Jump out of laundry basket, try to drag something out to play with.
• Discover that item is way bigger than you thought, drag harder.
• Succeed in pulling Dad's bluejeans out of basket.
• Get covered by bluejeans.
• While trying to escape bluejeans, manage to burrow your way into leg, get trapped.
• Yell for help.

Class 3

• Play with assorted cat toys.
• Get tired of assorted cat toys.
• Go looking for new toy.
• Spot twitching tail.
• Ignore that twitching tail is connected to (way) bigger cat.
• Ambush tail.
• Get soundly thumped on the head for your efforts.

Most important lesson
Do NOT suddenly jump up on toilet while Dad is standing in front of it.

Blended family

As mentioned in my last post, I've opted to take in a new co-owner. After spending the day with them, I finally settled on taking the cat formerly known as Sally Forth (the one with the white paws, a female). Here's a picture taken yesterday; in it you can see (click to make bigger) why I'm thinking about renaming her to "Radar" (because of the huge satellite dishes on her head), or possibly (because of the dark smudges around her nostrils) "Booger":
Of course there was a certain amount of displeasure from my current owner, Elf, expressed as growling and hissing at the interloper; and a refusal to even share the same room in my apartment with the little beast.

Happily, that has (mostly) passed by now. Elf isn't ready to become buddy-buddy with the new family member, but has at least gotten to the point that the complaints are mild and infrequent (usually when the nuisance gets too close). Here she is watching the newcomer beating the crap out of a ball in the kitchen:
I expect that once the two of them get used to each other, they'll get along fine, and keep each other company.

In the mean time, I've had a couple each of toes and fingers tested to see if they were edible (they weren't), had assorted body parts attackled while in bed, had my feet and ankles ambushed repeatedly, and (of course) been slept on.