Stairs are a New Thing for Max

I went to see Max today. I felt the need for kitty fur against my hands and more than that, I wanted to see how he was getting on.

Apparently sleeping all day. Not that this is a major change. He was always more active in the mornings and evenings. He was happy to see me, woke right up and came over and wanted ear scratches and when I picked him up and cuddled him against my shoulder, he didn't even object. 

Much.

The other kitties were still hanging out at the shop with Chuck, and so it was just Dawn and the dog (who was outside) and Nubbins, who never made an appearance while I was there. Max has been leaving the elderly Nubbins alone. It helps that she hisses crankily at him every time he gets near her.

Nixie Cat, who you may remember is top cat in the household, has actually unbent a little in regards to the giant kitten. Dawn said she's been able to use a wand toy with a feather at the end to play with them both in the same room. The two are on opposite sides of the room, and the toy is alternated between them, but this is improvement, especially in only 6 days!

Max has been slowly allowed to explore more and more of the house over the past 6 days. Yesterday they opened the door to the downstairs. Max stopped at the head of the stairs and looked back at Dawn. Um, what are these things? What do they do? What are you supposed to do with them?

He rapidly got the idea, and was enthralled with it. Stairs were for going up and going down, as rapidly and noisily as possible. Chuck and Dawn were at the bottom of the stairs watching tv. The tv faces away from the stairs, blocking view of the stairs. So all they knew was they could hear thunder thunder thunder as Max galloped up the stairs, a skidding as he came to a stop in the tile-floor kitchen, and then (getting louder this time) thunder thunder thunder as he came galloping back down the stairs. Chuck emailed me about it and said he must have done it 5 or 6 times before finally getting tired of the game and going to investigate the furnace room (again).

Last night was the first night that the door to the sunroom has been left open during the night, allowing Max free roam of the house (barring getting hissed at by another cat or invited to play by an overeager dog). Dawn said although Max was in the sunroom when she got up this morning, there were toys scattered down the stairs.

Apparently Max had to introduce his favorite toys to the wonderful concept of stairs!

When I made the decision to give Max to Chuck and Dawn, I was almost sure I was doing the right thing, but I had that nagging little bit of doubt you almost always have with these major decisions. Now I know I was doing the right thing.Max looks so much happier and bouncier (in a good way). He was bouncy at my house but it was almost desperate. (Play with me please!) Now it's Hi! Happy to see you! Want to play?

I'm glad he's happy. And I really hope that given time, he and the dog will become friends (it's only been less than a week). Circle Tail would dearly love a fourfooted companion to play with, since humans can't keep up with his speed. Of course, I don't know if Max could, but he'd be at least less likely to careen into furniture and fall over while trying!

Sunday: Max and Nixie Cat meet Face-to-Face

Max wasn't quite as desperate to see me Sunday. This is good because it means he's settling in. This is bad for my feelings because I feel unwanted. Irrational is my middle name. This is what I wanted, silly me! I want him to be happy with Chuck and Dawn and their extended four-footed family.

But Max was still happy to see me, just not with the underlayer of desperation that he'd had Saturday morning.

Again, my laptop still needed setting up, so I parked in the sunroom and did things to the laptop, and occasionally tossed a toy to Max. Chuck came in to help with the computers (that's his area of expertise, welding is just something useful (really useful, wish I could do it) that he can do.

Chuck's style of interacting with cats is actually far more suitable to Max's personality than mine. This day Chuck started "stuff on my cat" by lining up toys on a sleepy Max. The big gray kitten likes to nap in the early afternoon and we were pestering him.

All the toys (minus a few) that he brought with him

Yes, I know he's a big cat. He's only a year and 3 months old, and Norwegian Forest Cats mature slowly, and even if he is only a NFC mix, he's definitely still a kitten mentally!

Finally we stopped bugging him, and he drifted off to a fairly deep dreamland on top of the litter box enclosure (which has one of the towels I brought with him on it).

Nixie Cat (remember her? The one we thought would be the buzz-saw attack cat problem if any of them were?) Yeah, she's at the door. Looking calm. Wanting in.

Chuck looked at me. I looked at him. He said, well, if this turns into a ball of fur, I'll get her and you get him. And then he let Nixie Cat come into the sunroom.

She went around the room sniffing. There was a strange cat here. She must investigate thoroughly. She must become familiar with his scent so she can tell where he's been and what he's been doing. 

Max stayed asleep for the longest time during all of this. Finally he woke up and saw her. Being back to his old bravado self, he jumped down off the enclosure and made as if to go over to see her. 

Nixie Cat was having none of this and told him in cat language, "you stay put right there, mister!" (Hissing and a slight fake-charge.) Max, with an air of aggrieved astonishment, sat down as if commanded to for a treat, and stayed put. She continued to investigate the room. He continued to stay put. Once or twice he stirred as if to get up, and she'd whirl and hiss at him: "What did I say, young man? You stay there."

Nixie Cat investigates

So he kind of rolled over a little bit and let his feet stretch out, relaxing some. I mean, if she wasn't going to let him move, he might as well get comfortable.

Here's where it gets surprising. She approached him, slowly and cautiously, and sniffed his back feet. He naturally pulled them back in under himself defensively, but that was the only reaction he made, and a stern hiss was the only reaction she made. They repeated this sequence with the end of his tail. (All three girl kitties have no tail or very short tails, since they are Japanese Bobtail mixes (Fat Mama and Nixie Cat) or Manx mix (Nubbins).

We decided that things had gone very well and we should end on a high note, so Chuck had Dawn come to the other side of the sunroom door (she had waited outside so Nixie Cat wouldn't feel compelled to defend her person against Max) and call treats to Nixie Cat. Nixie went right out the door for her treats, and then I treated Max as well. 

See, good things happen when you're together!

We actually let Nixie in another time before I left that night too, and things went just as well.

The other surprising thing that happened was Circle Tail (the dog, remember) who had been pacing around the outside of the sunroom on the deck as well as looking through the kitchen door to the sunroom when he was inside. At one point late in the day Circle Tail came over to the kitchen door to check out Max again. Max ran over to the door and put his paws up on it. 

But he didn't hiss, and the paws weren't smacking the door, they were just doing what he does when he goes up on a human's leg to be petted. So we opened the door enough for Circle Tail to get his head through and sniff. No, Max didn't go up to the actual dog nose; I think we'd have fainted from surprise if he did. But he didn't hiss or spit or go all poof cat at Circle Tail. This is all most promising.

And then I managed to get my feelings hurt because when I went to say goodbye to Max all three of us humans were in the room. Max walked up to me and I patted my leg and said "Up?" which usually results in paws up and ear scratches.

Max kind of gave a huff sniff and walked over and rubbed on Dawn's legs.

Oh, no I've been replaced!

Oh, wait, that's what I wanted.

Dawn planned to open the door and let Max explore the top part of the house today before Chuck gets home with Mama and Nixie who go to work with Dawn early and come home with Chuck late. That means the house will have just Nubbins (who will ignore the entire proceedings unless Max gets too close, and will hiss at him if he does) and Circle Tail, and Dawn's going to put the dog door up in the sunroom door so Max can retreat if Circle Tail is too much for him.

I wonder how that went?

So, okay, from here out Max is their cat, and while I can report stories about him, and how he's getting on, it won't be something I can write about a lot because I don't live there.

Max adopts a cat bed he didn't bring with him from my house!

But there is still Guardian Pizza and Friend Pippin to write about, and although they have both passed on, I have lots of funny stories about them. So the blog will keep going, never fear.

Saturday: Take Me Home Mommy

Dawn reported to me that Max cried (meowed) once or twice during the night, but nothing constant or fretful. They said he was not very bold or brave Saturday morning.

Max investigating while Nixie Cat looks on
from the other side of the door.  

Until I got there around 11 am. I went into the sunroom, and Max rushed up to me, put his paws up on my leg, and was almost pressing himself into me. Max doesn't usually like being picked up (we're trying to get him used to it) but I picked him up and he leaned his head into mine, purring loudly and happily. (Read "Mommy, mommy, take me home!" into this behavior.)

I was quite astonished, actually. I didn't realize he liked me quite so much. I asked him, baffled but irrationally pleased at his reaction, "why can't you be nice kitty when we were at my house?" In answer he turned his head and bit at my hand.

Seriously? Sigh. So I put him down (if he bites me while I'm holding him, I put him down and ignore him for a little while).

I stayed for the next four hours. I had, for the first time in over a decade, gotten a new laptop. I am writing these latest blog posts on my new laptop. It's all zippy and fast and I really quite like it. It's Windows 7, which my old laptop was a slow, boggy XP (it was zippy and fast when I got it, too, but like I said, that was over ten years ago. Maybe even fifteen, judging by the purchase dates on some of the games I loaded up onto this new laptop--and they worked!)) And by the way, I hate change, and new things are automatically bad, so the fact that I like Windows 7 better than XP after two days of using it ought to tell you something.

Anyway, I had a lot to do setting up the laptop, so I did that while sitting in the sunroom with Max. Fat Mama seemed relatively calm around him. The cats can see each other through the door into the kitchen which has glass almost down to the floor. And so later in the afternoon we let Mama in to investigate Max. As long as Max kept his distance (which he did once hissed at), Mama was fine being in the same room as Max. She didn't charge him or try to smack him or in any way offer violence, and Max was being a very good obedient kitten to Mama.

This was very promising.

If you've ever migrated files to Win7 from an old computer, you know it takes ages. And I had to do it twice, as it wouldn't use the secondary hard drive on the new computer for the migrated files, so I had to migrate some of them, move them to the second drive, and then migrate the rest. I was bored, and so I went in and out of the sunroom, getting Max used to the idea that I would come and go.

I got to watch Chuck do some welding. That was most interesting. Fireworks and sparks and melting metal, oh my! Made my chemist's pyrotechnic heart go pitter patter.

Max was playing with toys, and responding to his trick commands for treats, and all in all, when I left Saturday night he seemed to be adjusting well.

Even so, I came back Sunday to help with the transition some more. I don't want him to think I've abandoned him like his old owner did. I'm just the favored "aunt" rather than "mommy."

Max Goes to Live With My Brother and His Family

Friday night last week, I packed up all Max's things. To help him get settled in, I put all his favorite stuffed toys into the carrier along with the two towels: the one he'd been sitting on all week and the one I'd been sitting on all week. Scent is very important to a cat's comfort level, so this gave him both his person's scent and his own, since he was going to a place where he had neither established.

This meant he was rather crammed in his carrier, as it was too small to begin with. However, he made no sound on the way up (my brother lives on the side of what we call here a mountain but what someone in the West would call, with derision, a foothill) to my brother's house.

I also brought his favorite cat tree, since it was the smallest one and I could actually move it. Why that became his favorite cat tree I shall never know, because he dripped off of all four corners of the perch, and made it rock something alarming when he launched off it or landed on it. But that was the favored perch, not the big tree which also had a window to look out of and at least didn't act like it was going to fall over every time he jumped on it.

And his treats, and his food, and his food dispenser (since Max has a slight problem with bolting his food and then unbolting it onto the floor if you give him lots all at once). And his horizontal scratcher as all Chuck & Dawn's cats are vertical scratchers so they didn't have any horizontal ones.

Never let it be said that I sent Max off destitute! I felt like I was packing for moving house. Which in a way, I guess I was.

First we took all the stuff inside. They have a sunroom, windows all around, that is cat central. Well, that was going to be Max central for a while, and the other cats were locked out of it. Then we took Max in the carrier into the house and put him (still in the carrier) on the kitchen floor so the resident cats could come see.

On the way into the house, Circle-Tail (the brindle boxidor mix dog) escorted Max and I very enthusiastically. Max was not enthusiastic about this large four-legged sniffy creature and hissed very indignantly at him. Circle-Tail is used to be hissed at when he gets too close to the cats, so it didn't phase him at all. He's a very happy dog and nothing much phases him, quite honestly. He was shut out of the kitchen for the feline inspection parade, however. Let's not add too much complication to this mess.

Fat Mama (who if she sits down in boat mode and you look at her from above, is quite literally square, thus the nickname) is a very laid back cat. Not much bothers her for long. She gave the carrier a sniff and a perfunctory hiss, backed off, and simply watched the proceedings.

Nubbins is the elderly kitty of the family. Nubbins would love to be an only cat with only Chuck. She puts up with the other cats (who were introduced to her when they first came into the family--she's the original). So it wasn't with much surprise that we watched her come up to the carrier, ascertain a cat inside and a stranger at that, growl violently at the carrier and then stalk off into the recesses of the house. Basically if Max lets her alone she will let him alone. Nubbins is a Manx mix and as such, is far more likely to growl where most cats hiss.

It's Nixie Cat that we all anticipated being the problem. She's the youngest, the most active, and the most territorial of the three. She did not disappoint. Not only was there much hissing, but she had to go be soothed by Fat Mama (who is also her biological mother, and no, no more kittens will come from Fat Mama--my brother and sister-in-law know better and had her spayed after she had her kittens since she was already pregnant when they rescued her). And after the soothing there came more hissing. Nixie Cat is Dawn's cat, and so Dawn came in for her share of accusatory looks from Nixie Cat.

Then we took the carrier into the sunroom (leaving all the other cats behind) and opened the end.

Max emerges and instantly begins to investigate

Max was allowed to investigate to his heart's content. This mainly meant a brief round of the room, finding the things that were "his" from before (see the plastic bag on the floor? He likes to sit on plastic bags. That's the one that was his to sit on in my kitchen. I brought that and the cardboard slice, too.)

He was a very brave cat, but he discovered the litter box enclosure Chuck built, where it's a wooden box that's bi-level, with the litterbox on the second level, and the cat has to go around and up to get there. The around part gave Max a place to hide, which, after all he'd been through, he decided was not a bad thing.

So we left him hiding and I went home. I missed the way he'd greet me when I'd come in my door, all happy and wanting to be petted--but I didn't miss the part where five minutes into the happy petting and ear scratching session he'd remember I'd been gone all day and he was irritated with me for being gone all day, and would promptly bite me.

Next post: Saturday

Irreconcilable Differences

Mostly this here is in defense of the decision I made regarding Max. We have separated due to irreconcilable differences. No, I did not give him back to the shelter. What kind of person do you think I am (although to be fair I did consider it that first 6 weeks I had him)?

Here's the deal: Max is new in my life. I got him right before Thanksgiving last year and there were a lot of problems. He started out in pain due to the shelter insisting on doing the neutering (I would have taken him to my own vet and gotten pain meds for him), and sick because the kitty cold showed up one day after I took him from the shelter. So he was sick and had three vet visits in as many days.

And I was in emotional pain and not ready to connect to a cat who was the same size as Pippin (who had passed away two months earlier) but was a giant kitten at heart.

But we worked on it. I worked with Max and Max tried to work with me. And I waited until we had reached an arrangement where I liked Max and (more than I realized) Max liked me. Because I didn't want to make a decision from a place of anger or hurt or pain (mine).

So at this point, I realized that I could not give Max what he needed to thrive. Max is a very high active cat who needs a lot of stimulation. Had I known this to start with (he did not act like that at the shelter), I would have known to get a second kitten to keep him company. However, Max is also extremely territorial. He was even challenging me for territory in my own house (and getting so annoyed when I kept sitting in his chair). If I'd brought a kitten in then, the kitten would have been a threat to Max's territory and Max's person.

Max grew up without another cat, just with a single human. So cats aren't companions to him, they are competition.

Back when Max and I were having a lot of trouble (I even consulted a veterinary behaviorist because quite obviously I'd had way too many years of having a cat -- Pippin -- who was so far from a typical cat that I'd forgotten everything I knew about kittens, adult-sized kittens, and relating to them), Chuck and Dawn (my brother & his wife if you remember from previous posts) had offered to take him if I just couldn't deal with him.

I decided to take them up on this offer. They have a large household consisting of three cats and a medium sized dog (who is well trained with the cats), and they stagger their work schedules so they are only both gone in the middle of the day for 3-4 hours (contrast that with my work/sleep schedule, where I'm only awake and at home for 3-4 hours!) and, if Max becomes a behaved kitty, he can even go to work with them with the other cats (minus the most elderly).

This provides Max with lots of stimulation and play buddies (if they can reconcile the differences). He is going into their territory which means he has none to defend and has to learn their cats' rules rather than trying to inflict his own on someone smaller than he.

Well, all last week Chuck and Dawn came over to my house after work to play with Max and get him familiar with them. You read about some of it. Now Friday afternoon around 6 I brought Max to their house to live.

I wish I could have kept Max. He had the makings of a really sweet cat. But he's just too high-energy for me to give him what he needs to be happy, and although he was working hard to resign himself to my constant fatigue and not-being-there, I didn't want him to have to settle for resignation. I want him to be happy. Even if that means he's happy without me.

Also, lesson learned. If/when I get another cat, I will get them in multiples of two (the house isn't big enough for more) so that when I'm too tired to play or interact, they can interact with each other.

You can train your cat to do tricks

I have been training Max to do tricks for food. I've read about the cat circuses where they have ordinary housecats doing things like jumping through (literal) hoops and how they train them. Basically what I remember from this was that unlike dogs, cats aren't going to do stuff just for praise, and if a cat doesn't want to do something, you're not going to be able to train them to do it.

So those cats who jump through hoops are the cats who like jumping from one piece of furniture to the other, and you train them to do it on command and hold a hoop up for them to go through. This is the basic principle I use to train my cats.

I started training Pippin to do things about two years ago, when it finally occurred to me that this would be something fun for both of us to do together. His arthritis made a lot of physical activity difficult/impossible, and so I never was able to teach him to sit because we always started out sitting. But I taught him to pat my hand with his paw (his version of "shake") and to rear up and rest his front paws/arms over my arm (because supporting his own weight hurt him), and to rear up and come back down (again, holding the position on his own hurt him). He seemed to have great fun comprehending what I wanted him to do and then doing it on command.

When Max came into my life, and was a right royal pain, I thought that perhaps training him would help with the pain part, and also give him some interaction with me that he wouldn't ordinarily have. It worked for the second part of the concept ...

Max is actually very trainable. I have taught him "sit" and this trick he is very consistent at doing. It's the first trick you normally teach a cat because it's easy to teach. You hold the treat where he can see it, and then slowly move it up and back over his nose and then head. He will automatically follow the treat with his nose, and then that ends up compelling him to sit because he can't make his head go that way and still stay standing easily. The minute his butt hit floor, I said "good boy" and gave him the treat.

Saying "good boy" is my version of the clicker. You might have heard or read about clicker training. You have to do something to let them know the instant they complete the "trick" you're trying to teach them, because often you can't get the treat to them fast enough. But clickers are loud and I don't like them, so I used "good boy" instead.

Okay, so you train a cat to do on command what comes naturally to them. Max likes to put his front paws on your leg and have his ears scratched. So that became "up". If I hold the treat across from him over a piece of furniture, "up" becomes "jump up on the furniture", so it's a multi-purpose word. And Max understands what "up" means in both circumstances. He's really quite clever.

Then I worked on "down" (he's not quite consistent with this one) and I've been working on "come", but since when you're holding a treat it's natural for him to walk toward you, I'm not sure about just how much he knows that "come" means "come over to me." I think he does know, because when there's a bird or something outside that he wants to watch, and I say "come" and hold out the treat, I can see that he's torn between watching the bird and getting the treat. (Food usually wins the day.)

And then I've starting chaining commands. So he has to "come", "up", "down", "sit" and then he gets the treat. Sometimes he feels like I've gone just a bit too far with this and refuses to do anything at all (he flops over onto his side). This often happens if I try to repeat a command in the sequence. "Up", "down", and "up" got me a side flop and an exasperated glare. (Both "up"s were the same, not the two varieties of "up" that he knows.)

My brother Chuck is trying to teach him "lap" (jump up on lap). Unfortunately I have discovered that I can't reinforce this one because my lap isn't big enough for Max to stand on with all four feet going across my body, and the one time I tried to compensate, he fell inbetween my knees and off the chair completely, which sort of put the kibosh on me using "lap" as a successful command.

Dawn, my sister-in-law, (Chuck's wife), began to teach him "stay" but I don't know that this will work until Max is older and less of a giant kitten. "Stay" is so very not in his vocabulary right now!

Max tried to bite Dawn the same as he bites me, but she was having none of it. She got hold of him and ended up with him on her lap, unable to bite, but perfectly comfortable (if he'd relax) otherwise. And she held him there and made him stay still until he stopped trying to bite her every time she let go a little. I watched it happen, and I'm still not sure what exactly she did to get him that way. It was like a small miracle. He always bites me and I can't make him stop, persuade him to stop, compel him to stop, or anything else. The only thing that works for me is to get out of range.

He tried to bite Dawn again a little later that same night and she just looked at him and made an "unh-uh" sound in the back of her throat, and Max subsided and was a good little kitty (well, at least he didn't try to bite).

For you see, teaching a cat tricks is all very well and good, but teaching a cat to not do something is even harder. And apparently, out of my reach as a cat trainer.

Oh well. He sits marvelously for me. Guess I'll have to be happy with that.

Max Takes a Shower and Almost Gets Stuck

Today I took Max into the bathroom with me while I took a shower. I let the water run in the bathtub to get it warm while I combed out my hair. When you have waist-length hair, showering with tangles in it is not recommended.

So while I combed out my hair, Max jumped into the tub and played with the stream of water.

Trying to catch water never fails to fascinate

He was getting bored by the time I finished and was about to leave when he saw I was doing things to the water end of the tub, so he came back to see what I was doing. What I'd done was close the valve so the water starts collecting instead of running down the drain. He observed the puddle coming closer to him with equal bits fascination and alarm, and decided that he would leave after all.

As he left, I stepped into the tub, just in time for him to see me deliberately put my feet into the puddle of water that had just driven him off. So he had to jump up on the side of the tub to watch this process, in case I was doing anything particularly useful to know (like how to deal with water puddles). 

Now my shower switch doesn't work (leaves most of the water still coming out of the faucet) so I use that over-the-faucet shower thingy you can see hanging beyond Max in the picture. This does mean that I can get my hair wet with Max sitting on the edge of the tub and the shower curtain pushed back without getting water spray all over the bathroom.

Luckily Max has a short attention span, and he jumped down (on the non-water side) before I'd gotten to the point where I need to hold the shower thingy above me (which does get water everywhere). I closed the curtain after he jumped down.

Up came an inquisitive paw to push the curtain back. I helped (he only had the curtain, not the liner, which wouldn't have done him much good in the seeing department). He saw that nothing had changed so he let the curtain drop back, and I continued with my bath.

When I'm done, I have to rub hair oil through my hair or it gets all kinds of split ends. But you don't need the water to do this. I unhooked the shower thingy, turned off the hot water, and let the cold water run down the drain (tub having previously been drained) while I did the hair oil. (It takes ages.) I was expecting Max to come investigate, but by the time he did, I'd forgotten why I left the water running, and was very surprised when fur brushed by my leg. He'd come in on the far end of the tub in case that puddle was still hanging about.

So he played with the water some more while I finished up, and then (conveniently) he decided to leave again right before I needed to squeegee down the walls and tub floor and then dry them with the tub-drying-towel. This is because between the hair oil and the conditioner I use, the tub is very slippery when I finish, and is even more slippery if I let it dry and then re-wet it the next time I shower.

Max found out it was slippery because he didn't quite make it out of the tub on the first try and sort of tumbled over the edge. He rose back up over the edge from the non-tub side, wanting to see just what had tripped him! Often he will decide that these things are caused by me, but this time he saw I was slipping around just like he had, and I guess he had the smarts to figure out the tub was doing it to both of us, not me doing it to him.

Well, once the tub was finished with, I had to get the fingernail clippers out (one's toenails are softer and easier to clip after a bath). This meant that a new drawer was opened in front of Max. He was fascinated. Should have called him Fascination Max. But the drawer is little, and won't hold a large cat. The entire structure (two drawers on each side, cabinet in the middle) is open, however, so if he goes in the cabinet he can investigate the drawers as well. 

I opened the cabinet and let him in.

The hinges deserve investigation as well.

This gave me a very happy cat. He investigated, I clipped toenails, and all was well. Until I noticed he wasn't moving around anymore.

"Are you stuck?" I asked, observing he'd managed to push his head into the bottom drawer with the top drawer still above it. He simply tensed his body and pulled back, to no effect.

"I think you're stuck," I said, trying to remain calm, and instead envisioning a future where I had to butter my cat to get him loose. I couldn't free him by removing the top drawer; it runs on metal plates which don't come out when the drawer does. I couldn't free him by removing the bottom drawer, either, since it has a "stop" and won't come out the whole way.

So I wiggled my hand in next to his head, and felt around, and decided that if I tilted his head up a little, it would make it narrow enough to be pulled back through (kind of like turning your shoulders sideways to get through a narrow spot). 

Much to my relief, this worked. Max didn't even try to bite me for the liberty I'd been taking with manipulating bits of him (he often objects to that sort of thing).

He did, however, have to wash his dignity.

Dignity must be maintained.

Caterday (yeah, little late)

In the pink room of my house, which is also the guest bedroom on the rare occasion I have one of those (guests, not bedrooms), there is a place where two of those collapsible cloth hard-sided bins go. I always have them pushed in, although they are empty.

Ever since Max came I keep finding one or both of them pulled out, not far, just enough to notice.

Last Sunday I got photographic proof of just what was going on.

From the expression he has,
I don't think I was supposed to see this.

Snow Day All Day

As there was no question of going into work today, and there was no question of being able to go for my walk (boots aren't good enough to walk an hour in without causing foot pain; shoes aren't high enough to keep out the snow) I decided to go back to sleep. I actually managed to sleep last night and the experience was so enjoyable I wanted to continue it!

Since I did get up and have breakfast before going back to bed, Max at first thought it was playtime and poked an inquisitive nose into my cheek (I'm a side-sleeper mostly). I made sleepy uh-uh noises and pulled the covers over my head.

There was a pause. And then the trampling of paws as Max decided if I was going to go back to sleep he was going to join me, only he couldn't decide if he wanted to trample a spot to sleep in on my legs (nope) or my arms (not that either) or perhaps just next to me. Which is where he finally settled, and we went back to sleep.

Turns out, all it takes to turn Max into a loving kitty who wants to be with me and doesn't bite me or otherwise act like an entitled brat is: me not going to my job. Unfortunately someone's got to pay for the food and the house, and unless Max can come up with an inheritance for us to live on, I have to go back to work eventually. And then he will turn into cranky, bite-y, destructo kitty again. I will enjoy the reprieve while it lasts!

Later in the afternoon I sat down in the evil villain chair to read the comics on my phone. I heard Max leap up and scrape his way down the wall. Is there a flying bug? That would be odd since I haven't gone outside for a while. I went to see, but every time I got up, there was nothing to see. Once I even lifted him up as far as I could so he could bat at whatever it was (I've had cats chase what were apparently ghosts before) but although he did not bite me for the presumption, and indeed seemed to appreciate it, he didn't target any particular spot.

The invisible toy

Finally I looked over while still holding my phone in the same way, and realized that what he was chasing was the reflection of the sun reflecting off the snow reflecting off my phone! I tried to play with it (and him) for a while, but I really couldn't since most of the time, if I was leaning far enough forward to see around the evil villain chair's wing, I blocked the reflection. So I left the light on a closet door low enough that he could "catch" it, and then got up and went to the rocker so I wouldn't be taunting him with a toy he couldn't get.

Max made a mental connection between the moving light on the door and the cloth string hanging from the top hinge. I wasn't expecting this, but when I saw him leaping for it, I decided if he got it, he got it; I wouldn't try to stop him as I was here and could keep an eye on him. (Cats' tongues have backward facing barbs. If they get a string or other long thin object stuck on the tongue barbs, they can end up swallowing the entire thing by trying to get it out of their mouths. This is why toys like string, yarn, and fishing pole toys are supervised only; you need to put the toy away if you're not going to be there to avert a disaster.)

I didn't expect him to get the string, anyway; from what I saw of his leaping, it was out of reach. 

I need to stop underestimating him!

He startled a laugh out of me when he came trotting towards me, carrying the end of the string in his mouth, head high to avoid tripping over it. He decided he wanted company while he played with it, so he came all the way to where I was sitting in the rocker and then coiled up on the floor, play-fighting the string.

All wrapped up in his playtime.

After he lost immediate interest in fighting with the string, I picked one end up (the green-ish non-stretchy end) and took him for a ten-minute walk through the house. I didn't do more than that because the last time I did, besides bringing him to the point of gasping for air, I also made my feet hurt for several days.

I like this snow day. So does Max. He's been happy upside down kitten a lot today. Pity the snow is melting and I'll have to go back to work tomorrow.

Next morning Addendum: When I woke up the next morning, I found the green string in bed with us. I'd hung it back up the night before, and apparently he'd decided to bring his new toy to sleep with!

Snow Day

It is snowing. It usually snows once or twice a winter around here. Just enough to etch the branches of the trees and lay lightly on the grass.

Not this snow. This snow is the fine pieced, heavy fall of a northern blizzard (although I have to admit since you can still see through it, not as much as a northern blizzard). I woke at 11 pm last night and couldn't sleep, but it wasn't snowing then. It wasn't snowing when I went for my morning walk, and it wasn't snowing when I went to work. By 10:30 it had snowed enough that my workplace closed and sent us home (those of us who hadn't left yet, anyway).

That's an amazing amount of snow to fall in a short time for us. And the wind is whistling and blowing snow quite nastily. I'm glad I am home and indoors. The drive home was, shall we say, interesting? I was cautious, and there were few people out (but more than I expected, honestly). There was only one place where I felt the car start to slide. I was trying to come to a halt at a four way stop with no other people on the other three ways. So I just took my foot off the brake and let the car coast through the four way stop, feeling guilty and defiant at the same time.

I don't have a garage, so I had to tramp through snow to get to my house. Just a short walk, but snow caked up on my shoes anyway. When I came in, much to Max's delighted surprise (yes, there's a cat in this story), I brought the snow in with me. Max likes to imagine he is a big fierce outdoor kitty and tries to dart out the door anytime you come in, so I didn't bother to even try to knock the snow off my shoes before coming in. It's just water. It'll melt on the carpet and evaporate. No big deal.

Oddly Max doesn't usually try to dart out the door when you're leaving, just when you're coming in. I find that very strange.

Anyway, I've brought snow into the house, mainly from trying to not have to run all over the yard to catch a crazy cat. Max was instantly diverted from the novelty of me being home so early and had to examine the snow carefully.

A treat to be eaten?

A toy to play with?

He wasn't sure if the snow was something to be played with, something to be chewed, or something to be licked, so he tried all three multiple times. He managed to lose interest and wander away before he would have inevitably have noticed it vanishing to be replaced by ordinary water. Which I was grateful for. He often blames me when things don't go his way, and I get very tired of being bitten.

I'd started Pegasus (by Robin McKinley) last night when I couldn't sleep and had managed to get most of the way through it, so while Max watched the snowy world from across the room, I curled my feet up on the evil villain chair and delved back into the world of my book.

(You know what an evil villain chair is. Most people call it a wing-back chair. You sink back into it and only your long crooked nose sticks out past the wings and the firelight ripples menacingly off the edged shadows of your face. Of course I don't look like that, and I don't have a fire, and the chair isn't quite that big (I would love one that big) but it's in lots of movies that way.)

After a while Max came over and decided that I was sufficiently occupied to be sat upon, and forthwith did so.

He leaves no space for my arm,
so it has to go around him,
but he doesn't seem to mind.

It's actually fairly difficult for me to sit very long with him on my bent legs like this. My legs don't mind being in that position if there isn't fourteen pounds of immovable weight pressing them down. But after I finished the book and put it away and got out the phone to see when the sequel was being released (it ends on a cliff-hanger, which I was unaware of before I got there, and ARGH) (oh, and sometime this year); anyway, Max apparently thinks phones are a different category of "settled human" than a book, and he got up and left. I was enjoying his company, but my legs were rather relieved to have him leave!

Max, in a green "cup" cat tree,
with my car and gardenia bushes covered in snow.

He is currently at the other window watching the snow as I type this. The snowflakes keep changing their minds; sometimes they are tiny and fast, and sometimes big and flaky and slow, and sometimes the wind makes them go horizontal across the windows instead of vertical.

The Oak Tree Won

This has nothing to do with my cats, but was so very unusual a thing to happen in my life that I thought I should share.

As usual, 6 am-ish, I started out on my walk. At the head of my street, if you make a right turn, there is an oak tree at the corner. It isn't very close to the corner--it doesn't block your view or anything (even driving), but it's close enough to be considered in the corner.

This morning, there were all kinds of lights up there. Police lights, yellow lights that I first thought was a fire only no crackling noises, and several non-police vehicles, one of which was the cause of all the commotion.

 For some reason known only to himself (and probably his GPS), someone drove a full size 18 wheeler with trailer up my road (which goes nowhere interesting) and then didn't swing wide enough to get around the corner. Notice he managed to leave the stop sign intact, but he did his best to take out the tree.

Big oak tree usually wins over half-empty trailer

This picture was actually taken on my way back because it didn't occur to me till half an hour into my walk that I should have taken pictures! Some reporter I'd be. But that bend in the trailer? That was quite precisely where the big tree next to the stop sign was.

When I first came by they were unloading the trailer by hand (and there wasn't a lot; it was front loaded with only a few pallets high). Me and my near-sighted eyes couldn't make out the product. But there was also a tow truck there. Not a tow truck that could handle the big rig. Just a baby tow truck like you or I would call to put our vehicles on the back of it.

Coming back through I discovered why the little tow truck was there--they were using it to transport the goods they unloaded from the trailer. Makes sense. Easier than trying to get a small truck there.

I talked to one of the cops who was going back to his car (which was blocking traffic at the other end of the cross street) and asked what happened (he didn't know any more than I did) and if I could take pictures.

This is what the inside of the trailer looked like. He squashed it but good!

He said sure but don't get too close; they're currently moving the damaged trailer and it's partially suspended. I said don't worry, my dad drove 18 wheelers for 50 years, and I have a healthy respect for their power and weight.He looked skeptical, but didn't say anything.

(You can see the big tow truck that can move 18 wheelers in the corner of the picture.)

And then I saw what he was hauling, stacked up neatly on the baby tow truck.And the punchline is:

He was hauling Bud Light. It was a beer truck! I wonder if they tested the driver for intoxication. Perhaps he was sampling his goods?

Seemed strangely appropriate

Oh, and sorry for the photo quality, but you try taking pictures from a ways back in the dark with just an iPhone flash! And the cop was quite correct--there was no way I was getting any closer to a big rig being moved. I've seen my dad's old tractor (the engine part of an 18 wheeler, as opposed to the trailer part) run over an apple. It's a messy way to make applesauce and will, guaranteed, make you positive never to put a body part anywhere near a moving truck. 

Addendum: I checked the tree out the next day. Aside from a double-palm sized area of bark removed about a foot from the base, and a much smaller scratch higher up, the tree has suffered no ill effects. As long as it doesn't get a tree-cold through the place where there's no bark, it should be fine.

Brushing my teeth has become more complicated

Max has a great fascination for water. When he discovered that every night before I go to bed, like clockwork, I go into the one specific bathroom and run water, he thought this was a perfect opportunity to engage his fascination.

Not quite sure he's allowed there.

At first he was rather nervous about participating in the teeth brushing ritual because I have been known to be unreasonable about what pieces of furniture he's allowed to be on. (What possible difference could there be between a desk and the kitchen counter? Unreasonable, I tell you, that's what it is.)

Other than making my life a bit more complicated, I figured there wasn't really a good reason to keep him from "helping" me get ready for bed. It's not just brushing my teeth. I also wash my face with cleanser. I usually brush my teeth first and let the hot water run while I'm doing that so that by the time I want to wash my face, the hot water has actually reached the faucet from where it usually sits taunting me in the hot water heater. 

Yes, he actually keeps going and passes his paw through the water.

Repeatedly

Max quite enjoys playing with the running water. At least, he does until the water gets hot. At that point he leaves, rather puzzled and a bit put out. (And how many nights of this did it take me to figure out that it was the water getting hot that bothered him? Sometimes I doubt my own intelligence.)

When I finish with brushing before he finishes with playing, I have to find a space to spit that isn't occupied with cat. He's a large cat which makes this a challenge, but I usually find a way. I've only gotten him once, and that was a splash-back from the sink where he was standing at the time.

So now we have this ritual, and if I ask him if he wants to come help me brush my teeth, he'll immediately leave off whatever he was doing and come running down the hallway after me, eager to help.

Caturday Pic

The bucket is in the bathtub because the faucet leaks. The Max is on the side of the bathtub because he likes to drink out of the bucket. (And the red towel is on the side of the bathtub because the shower curtain dries against it.) 

Max usually gets all the way into the tub from the other end to drink from the bucket; however it is difficult to get pictures of him actually doing this. He's got feline sensors that let him know when I'm coming with phone camera out and leaves before I can get a good shot. So this is the best I've got.

Almost lost his bestest favorite toy

Woke up at 3 am this morning (not unusual) and couldn't go back to sleep (which is unusual). So I lay there, bored, not wanting to play with my phone because that would wake me up even more, and I decided to see if Max was around. I called his name, softly, and only once.

He bounded into the room, up onto the bed, said hello, and back down onto the floor. I could hear him moving around, but didn't think much of it as I was slowly drifting into that annoying state where you aren't going to sleep but you aren't getting more awake, either.

Then it occurred to me that at some point I'd been hearing a rather repetitive scratching sound. Or not quite scratching, but like he was trying to get under something. I roused myself enough to get out of bed, only to discover that poor Max had brought his pink mouse in with him, to play with, rightly assuming I wasn't going to be much fun, and he'd lost it under the blanket chest. He could see it, he could almost touch it, but he couldn't quite get to it!

Max's bestest favorite toy.
It's lumpier now and always rests on its side so the pink side is up.
The other side is lavender.

He lost this mouse before in the same room, under the dresser. It stayed lost for days before I found it. He knew where it was; he just couldn't get it. I had moved the entire dresser and couldn't find it, but that dresser has corner feet, one of which had caught the mouse and moved it with the dresser, thus hiding it from me as well. I finally realized that was what had happened and there was a reason Max had developed a sudden fascination with the dresser, and was able to retrieve it for him. He had gone all mopey and depressed during the days it was gone. I didn't want that to happen again.

He must have been in an absolute panic, losing it yet again where he could see it but not get to it, and no guarantee I'd be any smarter about its location this time! But even groggy with sleep I could see the mouse under the blanket chest. It's probably three inches off the carpet. I pulled the mouse out and handed it to him (you could just see the relief) and then crawled back into bed. Even if I can't sleep my body needs the rest, I have learned.

When I got up for real this morning, I couldn't find the mouse anywhere as I passed through the house. Oh, no, I thought, did he lose it again in the bedroom somewhere? I asked him where it was, although this has never produced the mouse.

However, when I got back from my morning walk, there it was, lying innocently in the middle of the kitchen floor where it had most definitely not been when I left, so apparently he brought it to the kitchen to show me that yes, he did know where it was.

Harness Training Day One

After I wore him out with the laser pointer tonight I thought it would be a good time to start harness training.

We had tried the harness one time before, but it was too early in the relationship; we were having other problems; and I got it on wrong, so that was a total disaster. I waited a good month and a half before trying it again tonight.

Putting it on involved a great deal of biting and him holding on to bite harder. He would perhaps do better with a harness that only had a top strap, not a top and bottom strap between the two circles.

However, once it was on, I initially distracted him by throwing treats for him to retrieve (I wanted him to understand that he could move with it on without any problems). He retrieved treats admirably. Then I sat back down to observe how he dealt with it on his own.

This resulted in him coming over and launching himself at my arm, trying repeatedly to bite me (this is how he expresses displeasure). So I got the laser pointer out again and, after finally getting him to see the dot and not attack my hand every time it made the click sound when the pointer went on, he decided to chase the dot for a while.

Then I left him to rest, which he did (finally). He tried to examine the harness after a while, washing the bits of himself between the harness straps (shoulders, etc). At one point he nearly did a headstand trying to see the underside of it.

But he did voluntarily go and get a drink of water while wearing it, and walked around, and so forth. Wearing it does not actually seem to be a big deal. It's putting it on.

When I took it off he "helped" by pulling out of it, and then wanted to look at it once it was off--but he only took a cursory glance and left for better things (something made a noise outside of the window so he went to look at it).

I left it on for about 45 minutes. We shall see how he does next time. I'm hoping less biting. My arms feel flayed.

Laser pointers!

Max had never played with kitty toys before he met me.

I'd never played with laser pointers with kitties before Max. Pippin wasn't allowed to play with them because first, he had partial cataracts from the time he was born, and second, he was too blasted smart and never followed the dot--he followed the invisible line of the dot back up to my hand and looked into the laser. Which you're not supposed to do because it can cause eye damage--and he didn't need any help making his eyes worse!

So today I finally got out the laser pointer. One of my instruments at work metaphorically exploded and I had to stay and fix it, so I got home late. I was too tired to play much at the toss-toy game, and Max was very dissatisfied with me. To the point that he was doing his best to get me to play kitten with him. I'm too big and clumsy to play rough kitten games (involving pouncing, a great deal of teeth, and the occasional paw-bat).

It took Max a minute to see the red dot. This laser pointer has several interchangeable filters for the light to go through, so you can have different patterns. The pattern I was using has a "solar flare" around the light. It looks like a picture of a sun that a kid would draw, with the rays around it.

But once he saw that dot, oh boy oh boy. It was on. I led him on a merry chase from the comfort of my chair, all through the living room and behind other chairs and under the desk and round and round (although since I know kitties can actually get dizzy, I alternated the circle direction).

I tried to end it on a toy, so he could "capture" the dot, but he was not fooled. He investigated the toy thoroughly, but no dot was to be found. So he started sniffing the carpet around the toy, trying to discover a back-trace to find the dot again. At this point he was so tired he was panting open-mouthed, and I didn't want him to hurt himself, so I didn't send the dot out again.

It took him probably ten minutes to satisfy himself that he wasn't going to find the dot, and he settled down in the middle of the living room (the exact center, mind you, which is one of his favorite places to be, despite being in the middle of three carpet edges). He seems quite worn out. I must remember to play laser pointer with him more often. This is very peaceful now!

Max attempts to cope with my insane schedule

Well, he thinks it's insane, anyway. I mean, I get up, leave the house for an hour. (I'm walking.) I come back for about twenty minutes, change clothes, and leave the house again. And then I don't come back for simply ages. (Going to work.) And then when I do come back, I'm no fun for playing with. I barely manage five or ten minutes of toy tossing before I quit (because I'm exhausted) and then I end up going to sleep a couple hours later (8 pm).

It's very frustrating for poor Max. He has tried a number of strategies to get me to stay home in the morning after the walk. (He knows the first time I leave, I come back shortly afterwards; it's the second time that it's critical to stop me.) He's tried ignoring me by going into another room. After all, it makes him stop his behavior when I go into another room and ignore him. He can't figure out why it doesn't stop mine.

He's tried being playful and kitten cute. He's tried being cuddly and sweet. Unbeknownst to him, this one is actually the one that has the most chance of success. I can't let him know that though, because without the job there is no house for us to live in, so I steel my heart and go to work anyway.

This morning, he decided to try to physically make me stay. When I came in from my walk, on my way across the kitchen, he latched on to my ankle with both front paws and started nomming on my ankle and working his way down to my foot. This does have the effect of making me stop walking. That's what I do when he plays rough and I don't want him to; I try to stop giving him positive feedback about it, which is keeping on moving in this case.

And I started whining at him. He doesn't like it if you yell at him, (even a stern "no"), so instead I've been trying whining.  "Ow, Max, ow, that hurts, Max, why are you hurting me, ow, that hurts" and so on and so forth, all in a very hurt-sounding whine.

Max seemed astonished. I could almost see the thoughts run through his head. "Oh dear, I must have sunk my teeth in further than I meant to! I should let go immediately." Which he did, and I told him he was a good boy and paused to do ear scritches.  He loves those.

But unfortunately for his ultimate plan, I still went to work.

He actually rotates these strategies, trying a random one each morning. I feel so bad for him. I really am not home enough to satisfy him. I wish I could be, but as I'm not going to win the lottery any time soon, and he's not making me any money, I'm afraid I have to go to work. Sigh.

A picture of Guardian Pizza

Hey, despite my lackadaisical attitude towards scanning in previous years' photos, I now have a digitized picture of Pizza, thanks to my darling sister. The photo is from 1987 or 1988.

Which one is larger, baby or kitty cat?

You see, that's me. Not the baby, the other one. The baby is Shawn, my sister's foster son at the time (my sister is enough older than me that she could have a foster baby and me still be the age you see in the photo). I was trying to see if the baby was bigger or if Pizza was bigger, so I coaxed Pizza into lying down next to Shawn (who was totally uninterested in the cat) in order to measure properly. I think, if you don't count the tail (which you shouldn't, because Shawn doesn't have a tail so it's not fair to count Pizza's in the total length) that they are the same size.

Pizza put up with an awful lot from me. Somewhere I have a picture of him on his back in a dolly shopping cart (the kind of kid-sized toy that you could pretend you were shopping). I will have to see if I can find it one of these days. But don't hold your breath, dear readers. It'll happen eventually, but it might be a while.

Litterbox odor: this is not the complaint you're thinking about

Can we take a moment from cat stories to complain about cat litter? I have tried two new litter types in the past few weeks, not because I was really unhappy with my current litter, but I was lured in by promises of better clumping and less tracking for one of the new ones, and less weight for the other one.

Now I have scrutinized the outside of each box. Nowhere does it state that the litter is perfumed. Yet for both, the minute I poured out some, a noxious heavy perfume rose from the stream of litter. Seriously? Litterbox complaints are the number one reason for owner surrenders of cats to shelters. In other words, litterbox problems are the main reason people give up their cats to almost certain death.

Cats have very sensitive noses. A litter which may smell lightly perfumed to you is overwhelming to them. Would you want to go in a bathroom where someone had just spilled a highly scented cologne everywhere? A perfumed litter is just asking for litter box troubles with your cat.

So why are two major brands in litter both using boxes that do not, anywhere, state if they are perfumed or not? I'd rather non-perfumed be the default (it would say "scented" on the box somewhere) but I'd settle for simply being able to find out before I bought it. Are litter companies trying to reduce the number of cats in American households? What is possibly the marketing sense behind this effort?

GRRRR.

At least one of the two is not as heavily scented as the other one, and mainly gives off its scent when disturbed, so if mixed with a non-scented litter, I can use it. I'm going to have to take the other one back; it's intolerable. And I know that I'm sensitive to perfumes, but really, you can't imagine that I'm as sensitive as a cat. So if I find it intolerable, I wonder how bad Max thinks it is.

Okay, litter rant over.

This means war ... well, probably not.

OOOOHHH that cat! I swear, why can't he just behave??

Okay, here's what happened. I get home after work, to be greeted by a purring, enthusiastic Max as per usual. He lets me turn the alarm off, but then he wants his ears scratched and will put his paws up on my leg to facilitate the petting. It's so cute. He misses me so much.

Yeah, he missed me. Can't play with all his toys and cat trees. No, this time he dodged all the set mousetraps in paperbags on the counter, ripped the aloevera plant up by the roots, and carried it onto the floor. (I suspect carry in his mouth rather than shove simply because that's what he does with everything; carries it around in his mouth like a frustrated mommy kitty.)

I only found it because there were green particles mixed in with the blue fuzzies scratched off one of his cat trees (the blue fuzzies annoy me, but they are allowable because he's supposed to play with the cat trees).

Big sigh. It's beautiful outside, but I'm exhausted after a long day at work. So instead of getting to sit down and rest, oh no, I have to get the vacuum cleaner out and vacuum up the shredded greenery and the blue fuzzies (bonus there; told you they annoy me). And I hate vacuuming because it's so loud. He hates it too. Maybe he'll put two and two together? (Plant on floor = vacuuming later.)

Of course, the silver lining is that he didn't completely destroy the plant. Most of it was still intact once I found it (sitting in plain sight on the kitchen floor four feet horizontally from its original location. I did have my glasses on. Possibly I need my eyesight checked anyway). So I dug a new hole in the dirt of the planter, put the aloe vera back in, and I am hoping for the best. Aloe plants are relatively sturdy and resist a lot of abuse (guess why little miss black thumb has one). Hopefully it'll re-root and grow. It wasn't doing well anyway so a little repotting can't hurt.

And the other silver lining was I don't think he ate any of it. I believe I would have seen evidence of tummy upset had he done so (granted, I missed an entire plant on the floor and the plant is like six inches in diameter, roughly). But he's not acting different.

Well, a little different. I was mad at him and expressed it by ignoring him with my body language while ranting (without increased volume, because that only scares him) at him with my voice. This always confuses him no end and he went up on the very top of the tallest cat tree and stayed there for a while. And then he wanted to play.

He may be big, and he may lack the inherent cuteness of a kitten that gets you to forgive anything, but I couldn't maintain my mad much longer than it took to clean up the mess.

I am a wimp.

Max discovers what happens to his drinking water

My tub faucet is leaking, very slowly. I have a bucket under it to catch the leaks. It took me months to figure out that, duh, I can use that water to refill the toilet tank when I flush it, but never mind that. 

Max does not appreciate being interrupted with a camera when he's trying to drink out of the bucket

Anyway, Max loves to drink out of the bucket (he is less pleased when I use it to fill the toilet tank because then the level gets out of his reach, and believe me, he will go to great lengths to extend that reach. I'm afraid he'll fall in one of these days!). But he's never seen me actually do that.

The giraffe holder

Today (Jan 30, 2014) he happened to still be in the bathroom when I used the bucket to fill the tank. This involves taking the toilet paper holder (a metal giraffe) off the back of the tank and putting it on the floor, taking the tank lid off and putting it across the toilet lid, and then flushing the toilet and pouring the bucket contents in.

This was absolutely fascinating. Not so much the bucket part. He got that. But he didn't know the toilet came apart like that! I'm beginning to be able to read him, and I could tell he wanted me to undo it and let him take a longer look. So I did.

First off came the giraffe. He jumped up on the toilet lid and sniffed the giraffe's tiny head. (It has to be tiny for the toilet paper roll to slide over it.) But his attention quickly turned to the lid of the tank. Which I helpfully removed, making a big deal of how heavy it was. I don't want him trying to remove it himself (which he probably will try, but hopefully he'll give up faster). 

He put his front paws on the edge of the tank, his back paws still on the toilet lid, and proceeded to investigate very closely. Including putting one paw down into the water. He has no fear of water, even standing water, and finds it lovely to play with. He tasted the edge of the tank (where the metals deposit so I think it's like a salt lick to cattle). He patted the bit that makes the lever work on the inside part of the tank. 

He took forever, and me there holding the heavy tank lid waiting for him to satisfy his curiosity! Finally he seemed to allow that there was nothing more to be seen or tasted or touched, and got his head out of the way to let me put the tank lid back on. But once the lid was on, he had to get on it, and see about investigating the bottom of the wall cupboard above the tank. This proved far less interesting and was quickly abandoned. 

When he got down onto the toilet lid again, I slowly picked up the giraffe (so he could see what I was doing) and put it back on the tank lid. I told him "and that's the way things are supposed to be." Cats are big on things being the way they are supposed to be, so I'm hoping that he got some idea of what I was talking about. He sniffed the giraffe and then lost interest, so I left the bathroom and he followed shortly after.

I try very hard not to laugh out loud at my cats ever since I embarrassed Pizza by laughing at him. I was hard put not to laugh out loud when Max has his shoulder fuzzy "wings" sticking up and his head disappeared into the depths of the tank!

I have discovered one of the keys to dealing with Max is to allow him to satisfy his curiosity. He rarely has to satisfy it again on the same object, so giving him that little bit of time initially saves a lot of trouble later.

Introduction to My Blog

A friend recently told me I should blog the stories I tell about my cats. So here it is. I'm planning to post stories recent and old about the cats in my life. Most of the stories will be about the cats I've belonged to, but some cats who my friends belong to might sneak in as well.

Things have changed since I wrote the original post (which you will find at the bottom of this rambling section). The blog is still about my cats, but it's also about my autism and how that, the cats, and my life all intersect and become complicated. And about the various mental issues I have developed that stem from being autistic in a rigid, neurotypical world.

(original post) The title of my blog is about my cats. First there came Pizza. He was a black and brown tabby. He lived with me from my preteen years into my twenties. He took care of me emotionally and watched over me during some tough times. Thus he is my Guardian. I don't have his photos uploaded to my computer. He only got pictures taken with an actual film camera.

Pippin went everywhere with me.

Pippin was a red tabby Maine Coon. He was my best friend. That probably says something uncomplementary about my relationships with other humans, but it isn't meant to. Pippin really was my best friend. He was autistic (yes, cats can be autistic too) and very unusual. He passed away Sept 27, 2013, and I miss him so very much.

Max sleeping like a kitten

Yet the house was lonely, and so I went to a shelter and adopted Curiosity Max. Max is a gray Norwegian Forest mix, and boy is he ever. He is a little over a year old, and quite the polar opposite from Pippin. He's been a handful to get used to. He is oddly colored. Despite the photo that clearly shows he's tabby underneath, he's a solid gray on top. 

Enough introduction. On to the stories!