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They said, “If you get a cat you’ll become obsessed.” I said, “Nonsense.”

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  • PA Cat February 11, 2019, 6:32 PM

    Yep, cats; and there’s that other obsession– the American pastime. In honor of Spring Training starting tomorrow, here’s a video preview of a Hallmark Paw Star Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ7Ib0HV9Ew&ab_channel=HallmarkChannel

    Hallmark should have had a kitten named Catfish Hunter, but I guess that’s ancient baseball history to them.

  • jwm February 11, 2019, 9:17 PM

    I’ve been working at the computer and not paying attention. It’s almost 9:00, and The Skinamalink is still out. After losing Littlecat to a coyote I don’t let either of the two cats out until late in the morning, and I always have them in by 6:00 or 7:00. I call at the back door. No cat. Look around the yard. No cat. Open the front door just in time to see a coyote loping down the street. Shitthefuck! So I grabbed the flashlight, and called at the back door. Thank God, there’s my cat. But he’s sitting on the wall, and doesn’t feel like coming in just yet. fucking cat games. I’m freezing in my bathrobe trying to coax that animal off the wall.
    He finally decided to let me bring him in
    Nice of him.
    Now he wants pets and scratches…

    JWM

  • ghostsniper February 12, 2019, 8:20 AM

    Subtlety is their weapon.

    At first you never see em, they prefer to be hidden in obscure places, watching. Observing. Recon.

    Then once they have memorized your routines they start moving in. Very slowly. Hit and miss. They are still learning you but have moved everything up a notch.

    Now a big step forward, the cat will jump up next to you and stand there. Waiting for you to recognize it. Will you shoo it away? Or will you welcome it with some baby talk, and maybe a soft touch? If the latter it’s job will be easy. If the former it has some more steps to take.

    Once the cat has you trained to allow it inside your personal sphere it’s next step is to reduce the diameter of that sphere and inject itself fully inside it. This will start when it puts it’s hand on your leg. If you brush it away it has more work to do. If you don’t brush it away, shortly the other hand will follow. Then a foot. And another. Yes, a full sized cat can balance on your one leg. But it won’t stay that way for long cause it’s wobbly. Cats require stability.

    So while wobbling on your leg it turns the motor on and the purring sound starts working on your subconscience. As you go about your work on that keyboard you are only slightly aware of the additional weight on your leg. And that won’t do. No sirree. Cat’s don’t like to be ignored against their will.

    It will raise, from it’s sitting position on your leg, up into the void between your belly and the edge of the desk. It will look at what has captured your attention. Becoming instantly bored with the nonsense on the monitor and not understanding how it can capture you so, it moves to save you from yourself.

    The cat stands all the way up, between you and the desk, and with it’s hands on the desk and it’s motor running full speed, it will lean down and mock sniff your keyboard, intercepting your typing hands in the process, then stand tall again and turn and look at your face. Looking for a signal through squinty eyes.

    No signal is a good signal and the cat starts rubbing the sides of it’s face on your shirt. You must smell like the cat no matter what. Always. And show physical evidence as proof. You keep typing around the cat the best you can even though you are mispelling and backspacing and correcting you continue on with your task. And that’s unacceptable to the cat.

    The cat realizes that that keyboard is preventing it’s takeover and this means war, of the psychological kind. Suddenly your keyboard gets crowded, what with 2 more hands on it. Small furry hands. That don’t know how to type, but try none the less. More backspacing and correcting happens.

    The cats shifts into high gear and it’s entire everything is now up and on the desk. Yes, that small strip of real estate in front of your keyboard had a “For Rent” sign on it that was only visible to cats, and now a “No Occupancy” sign has replaced it. That. Motor. Running. brrrddd…brrrddd….brrrr…ddd

    So you resolve to just use the mouse to move around on websites until such time that the cat leaves. Silly fool. The cat is only just starting your take over. It sees that that, well, that “mouse” (blech) has captured some of your attention and well, guess what? What do cats do with mouses? Right. They subdue them.

    You now have 2 hands on your mouse. Yours and a small furry one. And the furry one is insistent. It doesn’t like being a backseat driver. Then a 2nd furry hand is on that mouse, you are outnumbered. Now the padding starts. The cat thought the musculature of the back of your hand was tense so a massage was in order. Cats are excellent massagers, just ask em. This is a case of the massager getting more out of the massage than the massagee. If the cat has claws there may be blood. Get over yourself. If you don’t have hundreds of long linear healed cat scars on your arms, hands, and legs you must be a noob. In time my pretty, in time.

    All of this activity, the planning, the slow advancement and takeover, and realizing your submission, has worn the poor little keekee out and nobody does nappy time like el gato. Cats don’t put much effort in preparing a sleeping place, any where will do. And since it is right where it is, that is where the nappy happens. You look at the monitor and see that the right click menu is open and the letter m goes across the screen line after line after line. On dear.

    So you get up from your chair and put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher then go start a load of laundry and make the bed and a whole bunch of other things that you’ve been neglecting and not once do you realize you have been owned and fully submitted to the very socialist nature of the invader of your heart. Now go dump, rinse, and refill it’s water bowl.

  • theduchessofkitty February 12, 2019, 9:22 AM

    A good reminder of who really is boss. I see it daily. Meow!

  • Jewel Atkins February 12, 2019, 11:27 AM

    We just got 2 young scratchers…the kids are all grown, and we’ve never had pets. We call them kitty kitty. Not that it matters. But watching them play has finally ended the power of our television….who is not nearly as entertaining as kittens. And now I wonder how I managed to get through my marriage and child-rearing days for so long without one of Nature’s Natural Vibrating Therapeutic Biomechanical Beings.

  • Lance de Boyle February 12, 2019, 12:06 PM

    Laying on my right side on the deck one middle of a freezing night. Warmed by coals in a low brazier, or metal thing that holds fire. All of a sudden, or suddenly, a low shadow creeps out of the dark—it being dark at the time–climbs onto my hip and lays down, purring. “Cheeky wench,” I advised a passing snail. Half-chewed ear and snaggle fang suggested feral. I dubbed her Master Chief. Gifted me with limp snakes and well-gummed mice. Stayed on 10 years. Blubbered hard when she died.

  • PA Cat February 12, 2019, 5:57 PM

    For theduchessofkitty: “A good reminder of who really is boss. I see it daily. Meow!”

    French example of feline home intrusion (English subtitles “pour nos amis anglosaxons”):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHdFQlqSBA4&ab_channel=Paroledechat

  • Marica February 12, 2019, 9:03 PM

    My cat story.
    A post about Tiger. https://www.bigfoodetc.com/2019/02/12/a-post-about-tiger/
    Stupid cat, wanting to eat the Sheep Food and come into the house.

  • H February 13, 2019, 4:53 AM

    They’re resilient little shits. This article appeared in Texas Monthly magazine last year.

    https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/rattlesnake-bit-my-cat/

  • ghostsniper February 13, 2019, 7:09 AM

    H-
    There are so many things wrong with that article, I’d like to grab the author and punch her in the face.
    People that let their DOMESTICATED pets run loose to terrorize the neighborhood and other creatures should be punched in the face too. And what kind of rotten idiot enjoys their cat dragging dead animals into the house?

  • Punditarian February 13, 2019, 9:51 AM

    May I commend to your attention, “The Silent Miaos” by Paul Gallico (1964) with photographs by Suzanne Szasz.

  • churchladyiowa February 13, 2019, 10:35 AM

    Ghost, that was thee best analysis of cat reasoning I have ever read! And I love the “keekee” term; in fact when we walk our small terrier dog (almost a cat) we refer to the re-incarnation of our 1976-1994 cat as “keekee.” When we ask him where that keekee is, he immediately goes to the heated house and peers inside.

    Said KeeKee has been MIA for about a month now. We figure he must have a situation like the “Sister Wives” TV show . . . somewhere else in town he has a whole other family who loves him. When he does show up, he is either extremely clean and well-fed, or scroungy/bleeding and dirty. At one time I could pick him up and pet him, but not for a long time now. It’s like we start from scratch in the making-friends department every time he returns. Wants no part of coming in the house. Come summer, he sleeps in the yucca plants. Another curious thing about him: he will only eat dry cat food—not canned, and not even the choicest meat scrap. His longest time of being on the lam was six months and he was pathetically thin.

    BTW, the video was quite amusing. It reminds me of the 1930s story book I have of cats dressed in human clothes, doing human activities.

  • ghostsniper February 13, 2019, 11:29 AM

    churchladyiowa
    You haven’t bond with him. It takes time. The longer it doesn’t happen, the longer it takes.
    They have to realize you are their salvation and when that occurs they will never leave.

    Our Bella-Boo (Isabella Rosalini) for example. She was our wild one. Someone didn’t care for her and set her loose, for how long, we don’t know. She showed up here, way back in the sticks, exactly one month to the day after my favoritist dog in the world died. I had a wound that needed healin and Bella was my Florence Nightingale. We didn’t bring her in immediately, we let her run cause we didn’t know who she belonged to. See, there are idiots here too that let their domesticated pets run loose. If you ask these idiots, they will tell you their animals are free. Then you see them splattered on the road. They never seem to learn.

    After 3 days of watching Bella do what she needed to, to survive, and losing several of our cardinals in the process, we brought her into the fold. She, with our 4 other cats, are strictly indoor cats and they will have it no other way as we have bonded with them.

    I was just in the house and there was Bella-Boo, laying in front of the sliding glass door in the living room staring outside. She was laying right there when I went in the house 4 hours ago. And all day yesterday, and the day before. That’s what she does. When it’s nice out and the cats go on the back porch Bella lays there and stares into the woods. For hours. All day. Is she reliving her time 5 years ago when the woods were her home?

    Last summer I put the leash on Bella and took her out in the yard, on the grass, and set her down. Then I sat down beside her. She stood there shell shocked, no walls, and in a few seconds came over and got right up against me and didn’t leave. She was on her leash and could have went anywhere in a 20′ radius but she stayed by me. She loosened up and started sniffing the ground and then chewing some grass and after 1/2 an hour she still wouldn’t go more than about 6 feet away and only for a few seconds. Reality would set in and she’d hot foot it back to me, her rock, her anchor.

    That is what it means to be domesticated. They depend on us for everything. They can’t show appreciation for what we do for them but there is no denying their loyalty. You can only realize this with effort over time. In this 30 second world almost nobody has the time. Thats why all the shelters are slammed all the time.

  • pbird February 13, 2019, 2:44 PM

    I have watched a lot of Japanese and Korean cat videos and it seems to me that they must play with their cats a lot because they are so responsive, etc. I play with mine too.

  • PA Cat February 13, 2019, 3:23 PM

    “I play with mine too.”

    I think plenty of playtime (as well as watching baseball videos) is why my Casey has mastered the inside-the-kitchen unassisted triple play: he 1) catches line-drive cat treat; 2) pivots to block Coco from her kibble dish; and 3) tags the human in a rundown to the coffee machine.

    And no, he doesn’t run the bases or do anything else outside– too many coyotes, even though I live in an urban area. He’s definitely bonded to his home team.

  • Teri Pittman February 14, 2019, 4:45 PM

    I had a cat survive a rattlesnake bite, back when I lived in CA. Cat’s name was Grunkus and he used to hunt jack rabbits. He was bit in the back of one of his rear legs. Swelled up badly, but I kept it open and cleaned out. I no longer remember what other doctoring he had, but the swelling did go down and he survived it. I’ve heard that rattlesnakes don’t always have a full load of venom. If they’ve recently struck something, they might hit you with a third of a load.

  • H February 15, 2019, 5:40 AM

    Ghost, old buddy, normally I’d be in agreement with you, but those folks live on a ranch miles from the nearest neighbor and regularly write about ranch life in West Texas.

  • jefferson101 February 17, 2019, 3:06 PM

    My dear wife has three cats. Note that I say that she has three cats. I am a Dog person.
    Two of the three are “rescues” who were picked up at between two and five weeks old and bottle fed until they got onto dry food. I generally stayed out of that part. (Yeah, generally. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and occasionally that includes helping rescue a cat, regardless of my personal preferences…)

    Whatever, the all think that I am their favorite person. One of them thinks he’s my “shoulder Cat”, a la Dylan and “Like a Rolling Stone”. It was cute when he weighed three pounds, but at close to 20#? OUTCH! He’s the clumsiest cat I’ve ever seen.

    Being on blood thinners makes me bleed a lot, and I generally point out to the Wife the blood trails down my arms or back, or wherever, but it don’t matter. The cats own the place, and I and the dog may as well shut up and get used to it.