cats – Page 11 – BerthaBlog

Bad Kitty

Cat Tales, Geek Wannabe, General 1 Response »

Jul 052009

Yesterday I introduced Duchess to the Bad Kitty bottle.

Haven’t really needed it up till now. Once she got up on the table, and once she experimentally began clawing the carpet—both times I clapped my hands sharply and she immediately stopped the unwanted behavior and didn’t do it again.

But in the mornings, she’s on the other side of the bedroom door. Meowing. She learned quickly that the alarm means I’ll be coming out and giving her breakfast and petting. If the alarm doesn’t go off at a time she feels is reasonable, she’ll start meowing for me.

The time she feels I should be coming out to pet her has been getting earlier and earlier.

Yesterday she started meowing for me at a quarter to five in the morning.

I’m normally fairly patient with critters. Even when they’re being annoying, they aren’t doing it maliciously. But at five in the morning I am not a patient person. Enough is enough already. I retrieved the Bad Kitty bottle and gave her a squirt of water. She disappeared down the hall.

Twenty minutes later she tried again. Other behaviors I’d put a stop to immediately, but she’s been doing this one a while so she didn’t get the hint as quickly. She got another squirt.

It took her three tries, but she got the idea. She left me alone to sleep.

The Bad Kitty bottle seems to have worked quite well; this morning she remembered not to wake me up for food and attention.

Instead she woke up my son.

*sigh*

Should have named her Tigger

Cat Tales, Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Jun 302009

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things.
Their tops are made of rubbers
The bottoms are made of springs.
They’re
Bouncy,
Flouncy,
Trouncy,
Pouncy,
Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN!!!

She’s quite at home these days, and she wants to play. And play. And play. First thing in the morning, she’s dashing up and down the hall. She pounces on my hairbrush. She attacks my shoelaces. She literally climbs the walls—the light or shadow of something on a high shelf intrigues her, and she keeps trying to jump up to catch it.

She’s been very attached to me (can’t help it, I’m a cat magnet) and somewhat skittish of the boys. Particularly Alpha Geek and The Artist, because they’re both very tall, and tall = scary. Once they sit down she’ll come over, but when they’re standing she skitters away. She’s also been wary of The Director, because he’s a wiggly, energetic, in-your-face kind of kid and she’s not used to any kind of kid.

She has greatly warmed up to The Director, though, because she’s discovered that he’s the one person in the household who has the energy to play with her as much as she wants. He’ll run the laser pointer for as long as she’s willing to chase it. He improvises toys by tying Lego tires onto string for her. He drags things for her to chase and dangles things for her to catch.

If I could only bottle their energy, I’d be a millionaire, I tell you.

Biohazard Zone

Breeder's Corner, Cat Tales, Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Jun 222009

The Artist left on his mission trip Friday. While he’s out of town, I took the opportunity to clean out his room.

I’m sure scarybaldguy can appreciate the kind of weekend I had. He recently detoxified a teenager’s room, too. I found out why the boy has only been wearing three or four tee-shirts for the last few months of school—most of his clothes were in a big pile of random crap in the corner, and more crap had piled up in front of it so he couldn’t actually get to his clothes.

There were old food wrappers and chip bags.

There were several pieces of bread under the window.

There was black modeling clay on everything. He likes to make things out of modeling clay. It was on his books. It was on his clothes. It was on his floor.

His bed was destroyed; the mattress had collapsed and the box springs were concave. I think he must have been hurling himself into it from across the room because he couldn’t actually walk on the floor. We had to replace it.

I shoveled it all out, we replaced the mattress, and I swept and mopped the floor. I really need to patch and paint the walls, too, but I think that’s a project for another day. Now I have to put back all the stuff I didn’t actually chuck out (most of what I chucked was old papers and broken toys).

The Director spent the weekend cleaning out his room, as well. I don’t know if he was more motivated by my threat that his was next on my list, or by Alpha Geek’s bribe of a month’s worth of allowances if he got it all cleaned out, but he actually did a good job.

Alpha Geek also cleaned up his work area, which had been accumulating stuff while the giant servers of doom were blocking access to the room. Now the servers have been delivered and he can get to the walls again.

All this cleaning and rearranging was freaking Duchess out. She stood in The Director’s doorway watching him clean. She wandered through The Artist’s room, meowing anxiously at me as I sorted and scrubbed. She prowled around Alpha Geek’s area observing the proceedings. It was a lot of upheaval in an environment she’s just getting used to, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

At the end of the day I collapsed on the couch and called it quits. I glanced around and spotted Duchess, staring into Alpha Geek’s area with a worried look. Wanting to reassure her, I gave her my best imitation of a mother cat’s “come here, kitten” call.

It must have been a passable imitation; her little head swiveled around and she looked at me with the most astonished gaze. Then she ran to me and all but threw herself into my lap, purring and head-butting and kneading. We snuggled for ten or fifteen minutes. She seemed to feel much better after that.

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