Watch Out for Black Cats!

Happy Halloween from Frank!  (He's not really a vampire, he's just yawning.)

        Halloween is a busy day around here. From past experience I know exactly how today will go.  The cats will not be happy about being confined inside for the day (to keep them safe from pranksters that might torture animals) so they'll act rotten in hopes of being thrown outside during a weak moment of frustration.  They never seem to buy the whole, "It hurts me as much as you to have to keep you inside," speech I use to appease them.  The "I'm only keeping you in because I love you," speech is also ineffective.  

Frank waiting to carve pumpkins

      Their plotting will continue until evening, when the constant opening and closing of the front door for trick-or-treaters will provide ample opportunities for escape.  I suppose I should rest for the upcoming battle.  Hopefully, we'll still have five cats tomorrow morning.

Moonbeams

A few more days until the full moon

                Oh the wondrous moon!  Blamed for centuries for inciting lunacy.  I’ve always loved the sight of a full moon but never gave much credence to its effects until we got Biff.

                About 4-5 times a year, Biff’s behavior turns very odd.  Straight-laced, don’t-go-outside-unless-absolutely-necessary-because-it’s-scary-Biff will lie in wait near the back door.  When someone enters or leaves he sneaks outside.  He stays out there all night if it’s not too cold because we either don’t see him escape or we do but can’t catch him.  Over years of observing this erratic behavior we have finally connected the dots—he only does this on the nights of the full moon.

                Once Biff escapes outside, he heads for the brightest patch of moonlight and sits...and stares up at the moon...for hours as if hypnotized.  Eventually, empowered by the moon’s rays, he stealthily guards the perimeter of the house, moving silently in and out of bushes like a guerrilla soldier.  When the moon sets early in the morning he returns to a shy quivering mass, jumps onto the window sill outside our bedroom window, and begs to be let in.

                Between Biff’s stoner behavior when he has “kitty weed” and his loony moon antics, I suspect he has an inner flower child longing to break free.   

Pill-bug

pill-bug

verb

1.  the action in which a cat curl’s around a person’s arm, locking it in place with four sets of claws and one set of teeth

example:  By exposing his tummy fluff, Toby lures humans over to pet him, and in an unsuspecting moment, he pill-bugs them.
origin:  from the noun "pill-bug,"  an insect that curls in a similar fashion

He may look safe to pet, but this may be a pill-bug trap

                Pill-bugging occurs frequently at our home because we apparently do not learn from experience.  Experience should teach us that although a cat is fully relaxed and presenting a furry belly to pet, it is not necessarily safe to pet him.  Part of the problem is that we don’t know where the pill-bug activation button is so we inadvertently hit it by mistake.  One second the cat will be purring and completely into his kitty massage and a split-second later he is permanently attached to an arm and blood is oozing out.

                Once attached, the problem is how to detach.  Due to the pain involved, cat flinging is the first instinctual method attempted.  This results in a more aggressive attachment.  Prying off the paws one at a time is futile—the disengaged claw digs right back in as soon as we move on to the next one.  A combination of yelling, flinging, and prying seems to work best. 

                I’m not a yeller by nature, but nature is overridden when cats are involved—like when I’m startled as I trip over one on the stairs, or frustrated to find all my spring seedlings uprooted and the soil distributed over every inch of the guest room carpet, or in pain like when I’ve been pill-bugged.

                Cat ownership does not always bring out the best in me.

Attila the Hedgie

This hedgie is ready to take charge

                Well, Henriette isn’t the timid little creature I thought she was going to be.  She has become a very confident, don’t-mess-with-this-woman kind of hedgehog.  Last night in her playpen she decided to show the cats who is boss.  She ran up to Frank, huffed, and charged…and boy, did he get out of her way fast.  He wasn’t taking any chances of getting spiked by a 4” ball of quills.  Once Henriette saw how effective that was, she repeatedly huffed and charged at Frank and Toby.   It wasn’t that she wanted to be in the corners they were in, she was just enjoying her new found power.  Poor Toby completely panicked when she barreled right under his tummy.  You could tell he really wanted to jump and run but he didn’t want to land on his best buddy.  Fortunately she wasn’t spiked at the time so no damage was done to either. 

                After watching this unfold for a while, I went back to reading a book on my Kindle.  I was sitting on a floor chair next to the playpen when suddenly I felt a hedgehog walk across my lap.  Hedgehogs aren’t supposed to be able to climb but apparently Henriette can (unless Frank helped her over the fence when I wasn’t looking).  I suspect this pet-sitting gig isn’t going to be as easy as I was told.

                Anyway, there are two morals of this story.  The first is that even if you are small, you can still be mighty!  The second is just because someone told you that you can’t do something, doesn’t mean that it’s true so don’t be afraid to give it a try. 

Costuming Considerations

Monty forced into a Puss-in-Boots costume

                In light of the upcoming holiday, I would like to offer some advice, based on my family’s experience in regards to cat costumes.

1.  Don’t waste hard earned money on costumes specifically made to be worn by cats.  Any able-bodied feline can escape the costume faster than you can raise the camera to get a photo proving he was wearing it.  Hence, Frank might have looked adorable in his vampire wings, but the world will never know.

2. Although it is possible to dye cats green by bathing them in lime Kool-Aid (as a bonus, the cat will have a pleasant fruity scent afterwards), the cat will not appreciate the indignity of being green and will retaliate… painfully….

3.  Playing dress-up—a beloved activity of little girls everywhere—destroys a cat’s self-image.  Cats don’t see themselves as sophisticated, fashionable, or domesticated.  To correct this misconception on the part of their childish housemates, they must demonstrate how wild they are by destroying any hat, feather boa, or dress they are forced to wear.

                In other words, for a cat to exist confidently in all its glory, it must remain naked and free.

The Pied Piper

The coast looks clear

                Sometimes I feel like a prisoner in my own home, needing to plot elaborate jail breaks just to walk a block to the library or up the hill to church.  Why?  Because apparently I am the pied piper of cats—I open the door and they all tumble out before I even cross the threshold.  This is after carefully checking to be sure no animals are in the area.  It is one of cats’ magical abilities to be able to appear out of thin air the exact moment they are least welcome. 

                Once they are outside I am doomed.   They will follow wherever I lead.  I’ll carry them home and toss them in the front door and by the time I throw the last one in, the other four manage to burst back out like clowns from a car. 

                The darn thing is, when I want them to come to me outside (usually so I can haul them back in) none of them show up.  I call out, “Finny-Toby-Frank-Biff-Jersey!” and get nothing but cricket chirps back.  Silly me, I’ll assume then the coast is clear and make a quick attempt to return a library book, get almost to the book drop, look back, and what do you know?  They are all trotting right behind me.

                The worst is when they follow me to church.  It’s one thing if I’m still on our block, but if they wait until I’ve made the gut-wrenching climb up the hill on the next block, it nearly kills me to haul them back home and make the climb a second (and in one instance, fourth) time.  So when I do finally reach church, I’m not only doubled over panting, but running late as well.  Normally, sneaking in during the procession is barely noticed, but when you are the accompanist, it’s hard to be discreet enough to avoid embarrassment.  Hence, I try to leave for church a good half hour ahead of time.  You never know what it will take to get there.

                In a few weeks the weather will turn cold enough that they’ll want to stay inside and sleep all day.  It will solve my escape problem for the winter, but it makes me a little sad to think I won’t have an entourage wherever I go.

SCAMMERS!

                All of you dog owners out there can attest to the good nature of dogs—open, honest, loyal, repentant when naughty—the kind of animal you can trust with your life.  Cats operate under a whole different code of conduct—they are self-serving scam artists.

                This morning was a good example.  My husband was up early and fed the cats.  Once empty, we normally leave the cat food plates on the floor for the other spouse to see, for reasons that will be obvious in a moment.   Today, however, my husband (being the awesome, super great guy that he is) washed all the weekend dishes, including the empty cat food plates.

                This is where the cats’ dishonest nature plays in.  When I walked into the kitchen an hour later, all the cats (I don’t know if they had a meeting and discussed it ahead of time, but there definitely was consensus) started play-acting a scene called, “Nobody has fed us yet and we’re all dying of hunger so DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”

                At first I believed them since the plates weren’t out but then I spotted the empty cat food can.  BUSTED!  As soon as they saw I was onto them, they each went “hfft” at me and the clowder crowd dissipated.

                Don’t worry that their spirits are broken.  They’ll try again another day…and the day after…and the day after that…

Evidence!