Tales from the Shark Tank

I was pulling laundry out of the dryer and folding it a little bit ago, in preparation for tossing in the next load of soggy stuff.  That hardly requires much attention, so I was just letting my hands work on autopilot while my mind wandered, not even bothering to look as I reached for the next thing.  So you may imagine my surprise (and amusement) when I reached in and found my hand full of very soft, very warm fur.  To compound matters, the occupant of the fur in question turned to bump my hand with a very solid little skull and immediately started to purr like a diesel engine, an effect magnified by the echo chamber created by the dryer.  I looked in, to find a wide-eyed calico face with big innocent green eyes looking back at me.

I’m well accustomed, by now, to finding my girls asleep in a laundry basket, but Cloud evidently decided there was no good purpose to waiting for it to be put in the basket when there was this perfectly good cave going to waste.  Either that, or she felt her fur to be in need of an air fluff.  I’ve been writing this while I waited for her to jump out of the dryer.  Now that she’s wandered by, it’s probably safe to toss the wet laundry in, so that our boychick can wear what he wants to school tomorrow.

Good cop Bad cop is a time-honored method for getting cooperation out of someone.  Works with kids, works even better with cats.  With the cat, the “bad cop” needn’t even be sentient.  I have a tape-festooned chair that Miss Cloud is certain is the Meanest Creature in the Galaxy.  Why, it thwarts her every attempt to scratch it, most unpleasantly, and doesn’t even seem to notice her discomfiture!

I have a chair that she has decided is the Best. Scratching. Surface. EVER.  The problem is that I don’t want that chair shredded.  It’s one of my good ones.  I tried putting something called “Sticky Paws” on it, to no avail.  That’s basically wide double-faced tape, and the theory is that they won’t like the feel of the adhesive on their paws.  Problem is, one of my cats figured out how to hook one end with a claw and strip it off, and another how to scratch without touching with her pads.  The stuff was useless.

But I am at least as stubborn as my cats, so I tried a variant.  I got regular package tape (much cheaper, as well) and stuck it to the chair in spiral loops, kind of like the way you twist crepe paper streamers.  Catching an end only tangles the stuff on the offender’s paws; likewise scratching with just the claws, because it’s loose.  And each time putty-tat tries to move to a different area of chair, I put more tape on it.  That vicious chair grabs her paw, and then when she tries to use the other paw to brace and pull away, it grabs that paw too!  How manifestly unfair!  To make matters worse, Mommy doesn’t even help her disengage, because she’s sitting there laughing.  Laughing! It’s cruel and unusual punishment, abuse of dignity and an offense against the Kitty Constitution.  Bad chair.  Mean nasty cruel rotten vicious chair!  You can just see her trying to figure out how to report that chair to the Kitty Legal Defense Fund.

At the same time, every time she jumps up on that chair, I call her to “come”.  She’s learned that command thoroughly, although of course in her walnut sized brain, “Cloud, come!” translates to “treat time!”  She comes at a gallop, as do the other two cats.   That gets her off the chair, and by the time she’s had her treat her kitty attention span has been exceeded, and she forgets to jump back up.  Good Mommy!  Wonderful Mommy!  Mommy assuages the offended dignity with treats and pettings.  Cloud doesn’t need to bother with that mean old chair; she has better things to do, like purr in Mommy’s lap.  So runs the feline “logic”.

When my son was very small, I played the same game, putting his toys in time out if they couldn’t play nicely and then doing something fun with him.  My friend Lee refers to cats as “kids you don’t have to send to college”.  The longer I have both, the more I see the truth in that.

Wonderful husband:  “The cats are really getting desperate.  They’re starting to come to me and purr.”

I wonder what the next sign of the apocalypse will be?

Being owned by cats has brought home to me that standard vocabulary is sadly lacking in regard to feline activity and nomenclature.  It’s time to begin to remedy that.  To that end, I propose the following list.  Please bear in mind that this is only a preliminary attempt at creating a glossary for cats.

Cattitude:  Feline conviction that the cat is always right, and that humans exist for the sole purpose of serving cats.

Catloaf:  Feline mediation pose bearing strong resemblance to a furry meatloaf with pointy ears.

Catscade (aka catalanche):  The cascade of papers, folded laundry, or similar items that results when a cat jumps onto a surface that appears solid but is not.  Feline approach to redecorating human living space.

Chair-surfing:  The act of jumping toward the back of a chair, missing, knocking the chair over and riding it down.  Usually immediately followed by “I meant to do that” bathing.

Kittenize:  Scattering and/ or knocking down assorted small objects and generally creating chaos just for the joy of seeing things fall and skitter about.

Purrball:  Cat cuddling position in which the cat curls into a ball in the space between her human’s arm and lap and purrs loudly enough to vibrate the book her human was trying to read.

Purr Collar:  Portable cat cuddling position, in which cat drapes herself around the back of her human’s neck with front paws down one shoulder, back paws down in front of the other shoulder, and head next to human ear.  Warm, soft and purring – what’s not to enjoy?

Feline Follies (aka Kung-fu Kitties):  Boxing with either one’s shadow or another cat, and/ or racing through the human’s living space at top speed without apparent reason or regard for gravity, inertia or other laws of physics.  Contrary to the name, only one cat is required.

Octo-puss:  Two-feline version of Kung-fu Kitties, this conformation appears when racing or boxing cats get tangled with each other, such that it appears to be a single mass of fur with 8 legs radiating at various angles.  Usually accompanied by a variety of weird noises.

Fabricat:  Feline sewing assistant, who helps by holding down fabric and assuring that it does not escape, chasing down attacking thread spools, and trapping fluttering pattern pieces.  Also referred to as “calico cat” for the habit of sleeping on folded cotton calico and quilting projects.

This is only an introductory list.  Feel free to suggest additional terms and definitions.  I’ve only been a cat-mother for a couple of years; I’m quite certain my girls have not seen fit to disclose all their secrets to me yet.

For all the time we have had them, we have simply kept our cat’s food in the bag it came in, and they have never attempted to mess with it.  But it looks kind of tacky, so I got a container big enough to hold 20 pounds of kitty crunchies.  This turns out to be a Good Thing.

So about a month ago Mom gave me a bag of kibble her little girl had turned her nose up at in disdain.  (This cat prefers freshly cooked chicken breasts, still slightly warm.  She’s not picky, oh, no.  Not spoiled rotten either.)  It had a little hole in the bag where the other cat (who, sadly, escaped Mom in a parking lot 1/2 a mile from home but has not been seen since) had clawed it, but that was all.

My girls took advantage of that hole, declaring the contents of the bag the Most. Delicious. Treat. EVER!  I didn’t have my camera handy, but I came in once to find a “headless” black cat – which is to say her body was visible from the shoulders out, but her head buried firmly in the bag.  So they learned that bags were not impregnable, and I learned that they liked this stuff a lot.

It was a small bag, and ran out fairly quickly.  Time passed, and the bag of their usual kibble also began to run out, so we got a big bag of the new stuff.  I saw one of the girls using it as a cushion, but she looked up at me with big innocent eyes and neatly folded paws, saying “I don’t have any designs on this.  I know what it is, but I’m waiting patiently for you with the opposable thumbs to open it for me.”

Yeah, right.  No more than 45 minutes later, I wandered by that way again.  And lo, a smallish hole had appeared in the end of the bag, just big enough to paw out a few morsels at a time.  Tornado was out, but Sophia and Cloud were both much disgusted when they saw me pouring that big bag full of Wonderfulness into a large plastic container.  They watched very carefully, too, both up on their hind legs to get high enough to actually see into the bin.

Oh, the not quite finished bag of the old kibble?  Still in the kitchen, and still unmolested.  I checked.

Me to cat:  “Are you watching kitty TV?  The Birdies in the Grass Show?”

W, passing by:  “She’s watching the Food Channel.”

A little over a month ago, I gave my mom a pair of cats, one a calico and the other a tortie.  The calico is working out beautifully, but the tortie is a bit too maniacal for Mom.  (I’m not sure if it’s tortie-crazies or pure cattitude.)  Now she’s asked me if I can please either find her a new home or return her to the shelter whence she came.

So I am seeking a new home for a tiny (7 pound) tortoiseshell lady.  She’s about 16 months old, has had one litter of kittens and has since been spayed, has all her shots good through next August, and is generally a very healthy little cat.  Her one physiological quirk is that she seems to be allergic to fish.  Give her chicken-based food and she’s fine, though, and mom has found it no bother.

It would obviously be easier if the new home were somewhere in central Indiana, but I’ll work with whatever I need to.

Our black cat, Tornado, is a consummate huntress. She frequently struts past the sliding glass door to show off her latest trophy. She’ll knock on the door with one paw until I look up to see the mouse or chipmunk or frog or bird in her mouth. Then once I’ve seen it, she wanders off a few feet to the base of a maple tree and either plays with it, eats it, or both.

So I was not at all surprised to see her at the door with a mouthful of young, tender mouse the other night. I’ve learned to tell from the way she holds her prey whether it’s still alive or not. I prefer not to open the door for her to bring prey into the house; enough that I’ve gotten to clean up the remains of what’s been caught inside. I certainly don’t want live prey in the living room! She wasn’t relaxing her grip on this little mouselet for an instant, which I took to indicate a certain potential liveliness.

So she took it where I could see clearly, put it down, and started to play. It was, indeed, still self-propelled. She’d let it run a few feet, then pounce on it again, drag it back and repeat, with occasional tosses in the air with her paws for the sake of variety. After a few minutes, she caught it, picked it up in her mouth, and presented herself at the door. Clearly, she wanted to share her lovely toy. I told her I appreciated it, but that it had to stay outside.

“Mom, why can’t I bring my toy in the house?” she asked. “It’s the mostest fun thing! Besides, the Big Noisy Kitten gets to!”

I was adamant. The Big Noisy Kitten’s toys are inanimate.

She took it off where I could see and demonstrated its wonders for me some more. I’m surprised the little thing didn’t die of heart failure, but it was still trying to run away, albeit with less energy. After a few more rounds, she gathered it up and presented herself at the door again, asking me to let her bring it in. I declined.

“But Mo-o-m, all the cool cats have self-propelled toys! I’ll clean it up when it breaks, honest!” I told her I was sure she would, but she could as well clean up after herself outside.

So she finally betook herself and her toy off to the base of the maple tree again, and resumed play until after one particularly enthusiastic pounce, as such things are wont to do, it “broke”. She poked it. It didn’t run. She tossed it. It landed, flump, and didn’t move. Okay, fun was over; time to clean up. That took three bites. I watched. (I couldn’t see the icky messy part; that was hidden by the grass. I could only see her movements. That’s not so bad.) Then she returned to the glass door, but this time did not ask to come in. She made sure I was paying attention, then turned her back and pouted. I went off and took care of bedtime stuff, came back after 10 minutes. She patted the door, so I opened it, but instead of coming in she turned around and sat down again, back to me and tail lashing. She was throwing a full feline snit. So I went to bed.

An hour later I got up, as usual, to answer the call of nature. First, though, I answer the call of the cat. There she was, at the door, mewing loudly. “Mo-o-om! Let me in! I didn’t mean it! MO-O-OM!” She didn’t even back up when I opened the door, with the result that she essentially fell into the house. She ran past me as fast as her little black paws could carry her, without looking at me.

I know why she’s embarrassed. For once, I managed to out-stubborn her.