For all the geeky cat lovers…

Awesome!

And the Award Goes To…

I am a baaad kitty mom.  Everyone seems to have recovered, but I still feel horrible.

When I arrived home from work yesterday, I became officially worried.  Two of my cats, Daphne and Imp, had been missing for a day.  There was no sign that they had eaten, the litter boxes had not been used.  They were somewhere inside the apartment, but where and why had there been no trace of them? By 7, I was worried.  I began to search all the hiding spots I knew.  No sign.  I finally resorted whisteling non-stop.  Daphne always responds to this.  Nothing. 

I sat down to think.  Sunday I had finally attacked the mess that was my craft room.  Part of the whirlwind of organization involved putting stuff in the closet.  The closet!  I went into the room to find Goblin (who had been decidedly smug this whole time) watching the closet door.  On cue something thumped and I heard a faint “meow”.  I opened the door and Imp shot out of the door.  I could hear Daphne crying and moving around in the closet.  At last she appeared and crawled out of the closet.  So, my poor felines had been closed in the closet for 24 hours.  And apparantly learned nothing.  This morning I caught Imp crawling into the closet once again.  *sigh*

Can Cats be Foodies?

My rotund feline beast, Imp, is a big television watcher.  Sometimes it will be just a momentary image that captivates her; other times she will sit through entire shows (she’s a huge fan of the original Star Trek series).  She comes running whenever I pop in the Cat Sitter DVD, and will spend a good five minutes trying to get into the television to chase all those tasty mice.  She hasn’t really tuned in for awhile, though, and I started to think that perhaps she’d outgrown it.  Turns out, I apparently haven’t been watching the right shows.

Yesterday I was at home busily working on something on the computer.  As usual, I had the television tuned to the Food Network.  Barefoot Contessa was on, which was somewhat of a novelty (not because I don’t like the show – I do- but it’s air times rarely coincide with a time that I’m actually home).  I was really only half paying attention to the show…something with individual chocolate chip cakes…yeah, yeah sounds good, whatever.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something.  Imp was sprawled in front of the tv, raptly watching Ina add chocolate chunks to her batter.  She continued to watch as the batter was spooned into individual cake forms and placed in the oven.  Only when a commercial came on did she lose interest and wander off to find something else to occupy her.

So.  I have officially been blessed with a food-loving geek in feline form.   A feline Alton Brown, if you will (a show, incidentally, that Imp has no interest in).  I suppose I shouldn’t be terribly surprised.

Do they make Vulcan ears for cats?

The Year of the Mattress

Goblin – Proof that he is no angel

I’ve been hesitant to write about this, mostly due to embarrassment.  But, I’ve definitely learned a lot during this long escapade.  I sincerely hope I am not jinxing myself.

I have declared this year The Year of the Mattress.  I am going to, finally, purchase a real mattress and box spring and sleep in my bed like a normal human being.  What am I sleeping on now? Well, allow me to elaborate *harp glissando*….

When Mark left, I started suffering from insomnia.  A friend advised me to wash all the bedding (even the pillows), which I did, but it didn’t help.  I decided that part of my apartment redecorate would involve the purchase of a new bed.  Accordingly, I started watching the ads, and soon found my ideal bed: a beautiful sleigh bed.  It was available through World Market, and knowing that they regularly had sales, started stalking their website, waiting for the bed to go on sale.  Accordingly it did, and I borrowed a friend and his van and his teen-aged son to pick up the bed and move it into the apartment.  It lived in my hall for a bit, and then, with the help of my mom, I assembled it.  What I didn’t have was a mattress, but I vowed to start watching the ads.  In the meantime, I set my old futon under the bed and purchased an air mattress to sit on top.  I made up the bed and slept well for the first time in months.

Within a week, Goblin started exhibiting a truly obnoxious behavior: he started peeing in the middle of the bed.  At first, I was willing to excuse this; our world had been completely upended, after all.  I was stressed and I understood what was happening.  I couldn’t imagine how the comings and goings of the previous months were being processed through his little kitty brain.  So, I changed the bedding.  I forgave him.  I thought it would pass.

He did it again the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  By now, I was annoyed.  It was spring and I was working 12 hour days.  The last thing I wanted to do was come home and wash bedding.  Never mind that I was going broke doing it between the washer fees and bottles of Nature’s Miracle.  I started completely stripping my bed every morning before leaving; at least the bedding would be okay.  I could deal with mopping up a puddle off the air mattress (though sometimes he was sneaky and would pee while I was in the shower after I got up).   I put off my mattress plans until I could find a solution, and began my research.

Short of crating him, I tried every solution I could find.  I kept the boxes clean; I changed the litter brand; I purchased an uncovered box and put it in a separate room; I made sure to play with the cats every day; I tried to keep him out of the bedroom as much as possible.  The vet found nothing wrong.  Things would work for a few weeks and then, suddenly, the behavior would return. 

Finally, after he peed on the bodice of a ball gown I was making (this had now been going on for a year), I hauled him into the vet’s office for them to address this specific problem.  The vet listened to my tale, her eyes growing wider and wider with each trial and error.  She poo-pood the idea that he was suffering from separation anxiety (which, to this day, I disagree with…if there’s one thing this cat DOES suffer from, it’s separation anxiety).  When I told her that I was still stripping my bed every morning she stopped me.  “I think you’ve reached the drug stage.  Trials out of UCD show some promising results with Prozac.”

“Prozac? Really?” I had somehow managed to not stumble across this little nugget of wisdom.  I was a little hesitant to go the medication route.  After five years of diabetic Spunky, I was rather enjoying not having a cat that I had to dose every day.  “Let me think about it.”

“I’ll put a script in his file.  Just give us a call if you decide to do it.”

I mulled it over.  The behavior had (again) dissipated.  I went away for a long weekend, arranging for  a friend to drop in and look in on the cats.  I arrived home at one in the morning after a horrendous day of delayed flights and missed connections to find that the bed had been peed on (not surprising).  I prepared to sleep on the couch (my standard operating procedure for these occassions).  He had peed on the couch.  My beautiful, just barely a year old couch.  Fuming, I inflated the smaller mattress I kept for visitors and went to sleep.  The next morning, I began the long process of descenting and cleaning the cushions.  And I placed a call to the vet’s office.  “I’ll pick up that script on my way home this evening.”

That was last June.  Things have improved enormously.  I have only had two incidents of bed peeing: one about three months ago and one last Saturday (which was the only time he’s ever peed on me).  I have gone on several trips, and come home to a bed that has only cats, no cat pee on it (though the throw rugs were not so lucky).  If I am absent for long days, I can sometimes come home to a marked corner, but the huge, overwhelming bed puddles seem to be a thing of the past.

I officially delcare matress hunting season open.

Merry Christmas….and pardon the slobber

I’m convinced that OCD exists in cats.  I am convinced of this because my oldest cat, Daphne, exhibits an absolute compulsion towards linear objects (string, thread, hair, ribbon) and cellophane.  She must, must, MUST chew on them.  Christmas is absolutely her favorite time of the year, between the curling ribbon and the cellophane that so many gift baskets are wrapped in.  She is in absolute heaven. 

This evening, I finished ribboning the sweets I had made for my co-workers and , silly me, left the spool of curling ribbon on the floor.  She has managed to unravel a good foot of it and left her mark on the entire length.  When I hosted Christmas last year, I gave up trying to protect the ribbons on the presents under the tree and just signed everything “and Daphne” since she had chewed every inch of ribbon on every single package. 

So if you receive a gift from me with the telltale teeth marks, please do not blame us.  She does not know what she does; it is a compulsion and cannot be helped.

I’ll try to at least let the slobber dry, though.

Limerick for Cat Lovers

My friend, Richard, sent this to me quite awhile ago (long before this blog existed).  I loved it instantly and sent it to everyone I knew.  I’m reposting it now so that I can show it to everyone I don’t know!

There once was a curate from kew,
Who kept a black cat in a pew,
He taught it to speak
Alphabetical Greek,
But it never got further than “mu”.

To Tree or Not to Tree…

With Thanksgiving over, we have ventured into the real holiday season (despite what the stores want us to think).  I am now faced with a dilemma.  Do I get a Christmas tree?

I do not really celebrate Christmas, other than, perhaps, how the retail world would like me to celebrate it.  I use it as an excuse to buy or make people presents, but I do not honor it as a religious holiday.  For years, I didn’t bother with a tree – it was too much trouble, there was no place to put it, it was an added expense.  In addition, there were all the environmental reasons: the tree would need to be trucked in, I would have to figure out how to recycle it, and, the most troublesome to me, it’s a tree that’s being cut down to sit in my living room.  All very good, sound reasons for not getting a tree.

Last year, my mom came and stayed with me for the holiday.  This was the first year I had ever hosted on Christmas, and I decided to go the traditional route.  I got a tree, I piled presents under it, I hung a stocking. 

I have always loved the smell of Christmas trees.  That fresh, sharp smell that greets you when you first walk in the door is so unique, and immediately feels homey and warm to me.  Until last year, I had forgotten how much I loved that smell.  I found old ornaments that had lived in a box for years.  In other words, I guiltily admitted that I really enjoyed having a tree in the house.

If I enjoyed having the tree, the cats LOVED having a tree.  I would come home every night would find at least one napping underneath the branches.  They would peer out from under the limbs and, I imagined, fantasize that they were stalking prey on the wild tundra.  They chewed the curling ribbon on the presents to pieces.

And this is the main argument for the tree.  My cats are very spoiled: they have two baskets filled with toys; they have cat trees and kitty condos in every room of the house; I buy wheat-grass on a regular basis for them to chew on.  The memory of how much they enjoyed their first tree is enough to convince me that the treat must be repeated.  It’s the best present I can give them.

Drunk Cat Walking…or not

Tech week is a high stress, little sleep event.  It involves an early day at work so that I can leave early to race home, grab a 1/2 hour nap, practice for 1/2 an hour, eat dinner and drive to the theater in time to be warmed up and ready to go by whatever time we’ve been called (usually 7:30 or 8:00).  Depending on the show, rehearsal usually goes until at least 10 (often to 11 or later), and then I drive home, go to bed, and start over. 

Yesterday, Goblin went in for his yearly dental cleaning.  This is the first time in his three-year life that he’d been anesthetized since he was neutered.  As someone who has worked in vet hospitals, I realize the importance of dental care for animals.  As someone who no longer works in vet hospitals, I also realize that dental cleanings can be prohibitively expensive, particularly with multiple animals.  So, I was delighted when the Wellness Plan I have all of my cats on (through Banfield Hospitals) began including dentals as part of the service.  I scheduled the appointments, and, Goblin being guinea pig number one, fasted him Sunday night for his drop-off Monday.  I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Somewhere, there is a hidden expense.  But no, I picked him up at 5:30 and the only fee was the $10 to have his nails clipped.  Score!

And now we come to “How I Spent my Evening with a Drunk Cat”.  I was secretly celebrating the fact that I had excused myself from rehearsal last night.  After all, my cat would be recovering from anaesthesia and I needed to keep an eye on him.  This also meant that I could have a nice early evening and thus prevent some of the zombification that always occurs by the last night of tech week.  I could tell that Goblin was still a wee bit woozy on the drive home (not being able to keep his head straight was a pretty good indication).  I didn’t realize HOW woozy until I got home and opened the carrier.  He took three weaving steps and fell over.  Got up and repeated.  Got up and repeated.  After preventing him from cracking a rib on the CD cabinet, I thought I’d set him up on the couch with a nice, soft blanket.  Nope, he didn’t want that and almost fell off the couch before I could get to him.  So, I let him be, figuring the effects would wear off soon.

Or not.

When I went to bed three hours later at 9 (nice, early night, remember?) Goblin still hadn’t acquired his sea legs, but I figured with everything dark, he would at least settle down.  And he did.

Until the drugs wore off.  At 2 AM. 

I awoke to a cacophony of feline squeaks and shrieks.  Made by one cat (the other two were practicing their looks of righteous indignation on the bed).  I called “Goblin” and he came trotting in, jumped on the bed and clambered over me until he found a comfortable spot (and cut all the circulation off to my right arm).  We fell back to sleep.  Until 3 AM. 

At 5:00 I gave up (I had to get up in half an hour anyway – and it wouldn’t kill me to go in early and get some work done).  I showered, got dressed, fed the cats.  Goblin made a brief appearance for food, and then vanished. 

I think he had a bad trip.

Cats and Flutes

I’ve been a flute player twice as long as I’ve been a cat owner (or that cats have owned me), and it still amazes me how each cat responds differently to (live) flute playing.  Spunky, my first cat, was so mellow that there was very little in the world that would disturb him.  He would simply stalk out of the room when I started playing, fluffy tail held high in indignation

Piccolo (who’s not my cat, but I did live with him for three years, so I’m including him) will stay in the room until the player reaches first ledger line “A”.  He then emits a disgusted squeak and exits the room.

Daphne will run squeaking from the room the minute I open the case.  She will hide until I’m done.

Imp sees the instrument and runs, terrified, from the room.  She will stay in hiding until some other noise has replaced the flute (unless it’s the vacuum cleaner).

Goblin is the oddest.  He will not leave the room.  He will not make noise.  He will make himself as small as possible (and if available crawl into a kitty condo or cubby) and endure.  Once I’m done, he will meow three times and be very insistent on lap-time.

I have yet to find a cat that will endure piccolo playing for any amount of time.  I think they are the wiser for it.