The Mighty Hunter

I step into the guest room in my house to find my cat Don’t Bite Me in a crouch.  He’s fat, lazy, and not terribly bright, so for him to be in an action pose like this, there must be something big brewing.  His pupils are dilated, his tail is twitching, and he’s making that odd chatter that excited cats get.  I follow his stare into the darkness under the bed.

Don't Bite Me in a much more typical pose

My mind runs through a list of possibilities as to what my cat’s quarry may be.  Looking more closely, I can’t see anything at all.  Is it a mouse?  I hadn't seen any signs of one.  Maybe one of those sassy red squirrels that are always chittering at me from the tree when I step onto the back deck had made its way into the house.  That would be a disaster.  He'd better catch it if it's one of those.  Many years ago I found a dead rat in the attic.  Could it be one of those?  Yick, I certainly hope not!  A bat is another possibility.  Whatever is under there, I sure as heck want Don’t Bite Me to catch it, so I just stay stock still and watch.

As the seconds pass, it suddenly strikes me as odd that one of my other cats, whom I call Stop It is in the same room, but paying no attention at all to what is going on.  He’s actually on the bed in question, yawning widely at me, barely awake.  Of my three felines, Stop It is the only one who has ever shown any instincts even remotely like those of a predator, so his lack of interest here is peculiar.  His sister, Get Down saunters into the room from behind me, not even turning her sleek black head in the direction of Don’t Bite Me’s interest.

Don’t Bite Me’s rear end starts to wiggle slightly as he gets more and more wound up to pounce.  At this point, I am beginning to question his sanity.  Maybe he is hallucinating.  I don’t see a blessed thing.  His teeth chatter some more, he backs up on his haunches.  The mighty hunter is going in for the kill of something.  Claws out, he leaps forward with amazing speed for a cat who has the physique of a Dodge Dart.

It’s a small housefly.

And he misses it.  By a mile.

He’s totally mystified, I'm thoroughly disappointed, and the other two cats, if they could, would have been laughing their furry heads off.

Foster Fish

Source: http://www.thezooom.com/2012/10/7399/

I have foster fish in my house, and I am not happy about it.

For those of you just joining us, let me recap some things for you.  About nine months ago, we helped my 87 year old grandmother move into an assisted-living apartment from the large house where she lived for nearly half a century.  While the move has been very positive in many ways, it did require a considerable downsizing, and many, many things had to be left behind in her house.  Among them was her two goldfish.  There is no room for them in her new digs.

In my opinion, fish are slimy creatures with cold, dead eyes, and have about as much personality as a typical member of Congress, so my interest in them is very limited.  Nonetheless, my job is to keep animals alive and healthy, so just flushing two pet fish for which I was mostly responsible was not an option.  Of course we were more than open to anyone who was interested in taking them.  (Insert sound of chirping crickets here.)  So, the fish just stayed back at her house and I kept them in food and clean water until we could figure something out.

When winter came, we drained the water pipes and winterized the place so we could avoid most of the considerable expense of heating except for during the most extremely cold parts of the winter.  Turning off the heat, however, meant relocating my fishy friends, at least for the winter.

A second or third cousin of mine said that she would adopt the fish, but she lives out of the area, and would not be coming to get them until later this year.  So, with much trepidation, I agreed to take them in short term. No one else, it seems, could or would, at least not right now, and I am kind of a pushover.  So, I've got foster fish.

My general dislike of fish as pets and not meals was secondary to my concern about my furry housemates.  With three cats in my house, all of whom have oversize personalities and very little discipline, I was afraid that the two fish were hopelessly outnumbered and destined to become someone’s dinner, especially considering that they live in a small tank that is only slightly heavier than one of the cats when filled.  It would be easy enough for one of them to tip.  Unless I kept the fish on the roof, in a safe, or stayed awake 24/7, I didn't see how I would be able to keep the cats away.

I brought the foster fish into the house and set their tank on the table where it was to stay for the time being.  All three cats gathered around, sitting up high on their haunches, looking not unlike tourists choosing a lobster from the tank at a seafood restaurant.    They could look all they wanted, but sure as heck were not allowed to touch.  Spray bottle in hand, I stepped back to watch how things would unfold.

Stop It (see this post for background on the nicknames of my cats) has a tendency toward being a bit defiant.  This, after all, is the cat who tries to nap on my morning newspaper, every single morning without fail, no matter how many times I scold him.  True to form, he was the first of the three felines to jump up and take a look at our guests.  He sniffed at the tank and batted a paw gently against the side, the inhabitants within doing their level best to ignore him but looking very uneasy all the same.  Stop It’s predatory instincts are strong, and his dislike for being ignored is even stronger.  Fortunately for me, he is also very sensitive, and one squirt with the water bottle sent him scurrying after he started trying to figure out how to pry the top from the tank. He would be back for round two, I was sure.

Get Down, my resident acrobat and the sister of Stop It, is svelte and athletic, relentlessly curious, and hardheaded to boot.  If she wants to do something, she does it and not just halfway. Get Down is all about commitment to a task.  Of my three cats, she is the one I would least want to meet if I was a mouse or goldfish.  She is also smart, and was more than happy to let her brother go first and see what this new thing was all about.  As soon as I squirted her brother and he flew off, Get Down decided it was her turn to scope things out.  She sniffed a little, all the while keeping one eye on me.  As soon as I moved just a little bit, she jumped down, knowing that these fish were some kind of forbidden fruit.  I had no doubt this was not the end of it for her.

Don’t Bite Me, in contrast to the other two, is kind of a fat cat, and not very adventurous unless it involves teasing the others or trying to permanently maim me.  It would take a huge amount of effort for him to even come close to getting up on that table near the fish, so he was the least of my concerns.  I actually held Don’t Bite Me up to the tank to take a look after the others had had their chance, and he was a bit intimidated by the fish.  Fear of the unknown, like fear of the vacuum cleaner, can be a powerful thing.  He has not gone near the tank or the table on which it sits since.

I knew the overnight would be sink or swim for the fish, literally.  It wouldn't be practical to keep the cats or the fish shut behind closed doors whenever I was not around to supervise, so I figured I would just let things shake out however fate deemed them.  I set the spray bottle of water right next to the tank as a warning of sorts before I went up to bed that night, and wished the foster fish Godspeed.

Dread filled me as I made my way downstairs the next morning.  Don’t Bite Me was annoyingly underfoot on the stairs as usual, in giddy anticipation of being fed his breakfast, but the other two cats were nowhere in sight.  Maybe they had already eaten?  I expected a scene of carnage, with scales, bones and water everywhere.

I stepped off the stairs, and there, nested on the clear plastic top of the fish tank, was Get Down, looking quite comfortable.  The fish swimming frantically just inches beneath her in the tank looked anything but.  Stop It had been sitting beside the tank watching the fish with interest, but jumped down when I entered the room.  I shooed Get Down off her perch atop the tank, gave her a small quirt of water just to make clear my disapproval, and decided that an uneasy truce had been formed.  If those cats were going to assassinate the fish, it would have happened that night.  But it didn't.

The cats don’t seem to pay much attention to the fish now, except when I put a pinch of fish food into the tank.  Even then, I think it is only because the fish food comes in a container much like the one their cat treats come in.  From time to time, Get Down can be found sitting on top of the tank, and Stop It will lay on a chair across the room and stare at the fish for long periods, but the truce seems to be holding.  Meanwhile, Don’t Bite Me is only interested in food that doesn't require work.

Spring will be here soon, and the foster fish will be out of here, either to a new home with my relative or back to their old one for the time being.  Even if the cats have more or less accepted them, I have not.  The only fish truly welcome in my house are those on a plate with a squeeze of lemon and some tartar sauce on the side.

Crazy Cat Person

I am not a crazy cat person, though I am a crazy cat person.  The italics make all the difference here.

Let me explain:  A crazy cat person is the one most people think of when those three words are strung together.  That is one who has a houseful of cats who dominate the person’s life, social and otherwise.  He or she (usually she, frankly) talks to them regularly and treats them more like people than pets.  I am most assuredly not one of those types of people.

A crazy cat person is someone like me, who “owns” (if such a word is applicable here since it often is questionable as to who owns who) cats who are out of their freaking minds most of the time.  I am cursed/blessed with three crazy cats, named “Stop It”, “Get Down”, and “Don’t Bite Me”.  They have actual names, but those are the ones they believe they have, since that’s what each hears from me the most often.

“Stop It” is marginally the least ridiculous of the three.  He was run over by a child with a bicycle as a kitten at his original owner’s house, and suffered a broken left front leg, which was set and has since healed.  It is still a bit stiff, but he gets along just fine.  The incident with the bicycle has made him a bit cautious, I think, but not nearly enough.  When he is not getting what he wants, whether it is attention, food, human sacrifice, or whatever, he knows exactly how to push my buttons.  Passive-aggressive activity is his strong suit. His favorite trick is to claw something.  He typically uses his scratching post for such things, but has trained me to respond to his whims by scratching less appropriate things on occasion, such as the sofa or the woodwork.  He is also the one who will lay directly on top of anything I am using if there is something he feels that he needs me to do for him.  Most of the books on my shelf have cat hair on at least a few pages.  “Stop It” has been known to walk across the keyboard of my computer while I am working on it as well, which does not exactly add a great deal of spice to my writing.  And don’t get me started on his affinity for napping on clean laundry.

"Stop It" in one of his favorite napping locales.

He will also stare at the ceiling from the top of the refrigerator for extended periods of time, and no matter how many times I take him down, he jumps right back up there immediately.  I once removed him from his perch ten times in a row within the span of about two minutes, just to test his tenacity, before I gave up. There’s probably a mouse or something between the floors, but he’s never, ever going to catch it.  It has never shown itself or left any evidence of its residency, so I suspect it wisely lives a quiet life entirely between the walls, out of reach of felines.

“Get Down” is the sister to “Stop It”.  She is a sweet and gentle soul with whom you can do just about anything.  If I hold onto one of her feet, for example, she will just stand there and stare at me, even sighing in disgust, waiting me out until I just stop.  She doesn't react much.  Same thing if I start to tap her tail while she is napping: stare and sigh, wait the dummy out until he gets bored.  She just tolerates whatever shenanigans I am subjecting her to, which she must see as the path of least resistance. 

"Get Down", living up to her name.

As her name implies, “Get Down” has a habit of jumping up on things that she should not.  One of her more benign tricks is to sit on top of the television set and dangle her tail over the screen.  She is also fond of trotting across nightstands covered with “stuff” at two in the morning, laying in the seat of my recliner just as soon as I get up to go get something, and napping in the middle of my desk when I am trying to get some work done.  She loves to snooze on paperwork spread across any table or desk.  “Get Down” is the reason that anything light and of value on a flat surface in my house has two-sided tape on the bottom to keep it secure.  Delicate things literally have a short shelf life in my home thanks to “Get Down”.

“Don’t Bite Me” is the newest addition to the household, having lived with me for not quite a year yet.  He is just over a year old, whereas the others are nearly five.  Much stockier and less athletic than his housemates, and a lot more in touch with his inner kitten, “Don’t Bite Me” is as mischievous and playful as the other two put together.  If the mood strikes him, which it often does, he will suddenly try to take a bite out of you without provocation.  They are not vicious bites, but he’s so rough and foolish that he ends up hurting me or the other cats.  More than once I have been reading in bed at night, absorbed in a book and absently stroking “Don’t Bite Me” who is lying on the bed next to me, and he will just clamp down on my hand out of the blue.  Not hard, mind you, but enough to get my full attention.

"Don't Bite Me", in time out again.

He has nearly four pounds over the others, so they have developed a low tolerance for rough play with him.  When “Don’t Bite Me” wants to wrestle, “Stop It” will indulge him for a few minutes, but then some line is crossed and “Stop It” starts hissing and growling.  “Get Down”, who is the smallest of the three, does not like to play rough at all.  Her strategy here, since ignoring him has long since been ruled out as an option, is to run away.  Of course, “Don’t Bite Me” thinks this is a great game of chase.  They run from one end of the house to the other and back again, over and over, sounding like a herd of small buffalo, until “Don’t Bite Me” gets tired or is put in time out in a bedroom by me. 

“Don’t Bite Me” spends a LOT of time in time out.

One thing that will get him there in a flash is when he plays Guardian of the LitterPlex.  I have an area in the house with litterboxes for the cats, the aforementioned LitterPlex.  “Don’t Bite Me” tends to like to guard this area, especially during high demand times, like just after meals.  If one of the others cats wants to use one of the litterboxes, they have to get past the Guardian of the LitterPlex, much like Cerberus at the gates of the Underworld.  Needless to say, I do not want the other two to start using other places in the house for their bathroom, so “Don’t Bite Me” spends at least an hour or so after breakfast most mornings cooling his heels whilst shut in the bedroom.

The funny thing is, big bully “Don’t Bite Me” is actually the most timid of the three cats.  The vacuum cleaner will send him into hiding for hours, and even shaking a plastic bag will send him scurrying off.  The other two cats look at him as though he’s lost what little mind he has when he reacts to these things which do not phase them in the slightest.

One would think that petite little “Get Down” would avoid big, silly “Don’t Bite Me” like the plague, since almost everything about him is the opposite of her, but you would be wrong.  She is relentlessly curious, to the point where she just cannot resist being nearby and seeing what kind of trouble he is going to get into.  Then, of course, she gets caught up in the middle of it, usually against her will.  What seems to be true with people also applies to cats: good girls just can’t seem to resist bad boys.

What’s most amusing is when the afternoon sun spills in onto one of the beds during this often chilly time of year.  The cats, being solar powered, will all find a spot in the sun to nap.  It’s not unusual for me to walk in to find “Stop It” and “Don’t Bite Me” doing some male bonding and blissfully snoozing next to each other.  Meanwhile, “Get Down” can be found a safe two feet or so away from “Don’t Bite Me”, with literally one eye open at all times.  Those two feet of space may as well be the DMZ in Korea.  She wants to be in the sun too, but doesn’t quite trust “Don’t Bite Me” enough to relax while he is so close by.  It’s kind of an interesting metaphor, actually: Those who irritate us always seem to be enjoying themselves much more than we ever are.

The cats make things interesting around here, to say the least.  Right now, “Stop It” is sitting next to me watching me type this, patiently waiting for his supper.  I just hope he doesn’t get it into his head to jump up onto the keyboafweuag0[p9o;jlk,[o;pfasdvzcsoie][‘;l.hre’aghpIZ;lng;.vfzd