Sunday, October 31, 2004

Natural Habitat

We previously posted a picture of Emily's habitat, namely hanging out in the bedroom. She's actually not in there as much any more, as Katherine's office provides a place with more petting and less Billy.

Of course, Emily knows top priority is being petted when she's in the office with Katherine. (And yes, that is real work Katherine is trying to do.)

Emily-Habitat-2004-10.jpg

A Lonely Meow?

The boys, especially Whitey, seem pretty vocal lately, especially when left alone. If we check on the mystery meower, he is just sitting there, alone in a room.

I wouldn't call it crying wolf, but it is a distraction, especially at 3 AM.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Billy Loves Emily

Billy and Emily seem at war again.

The particular item I'm thinking of is as Emily was leaping up into a living room chair today, Billy tried to pounce on her butt. Lucky for all concerned, he didn't succeed.

However, Billy has also been staking out the water hole (the cat fountain) and generally being rude.

For her part, Emily is not a feline Miss Manners.

*sigh*

Friday, October 29, 2004

Who turned on the lights?

Whitey likes to burrow under blankets. We wish he wouldn't, especially when humans are asleep in bed. Unfortunately, he's so cute that we are completely lax about enforcing the rule. (Click image for larger version.)

Whitey-2004-10-15-thumb.jpg

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Shower Attendant

Whitey is adding shower attendant to his resume.

He's decided the shower makes really interesting noises, and so each morning he tries to check on things. The bathroom door helps him in this, as it doesn't always latch securely. Thus, for half the days of the past week, I'll hear *click* and then look out and find Whitey standing on the sink counter next to the shower curtain.

Since the shower makes him his most inquisitive, he looks pretty cute, standing there with his ears perked up.

If he could only learn to close the door so I don't get a draft ...

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Midnight Marauders

After a long period of relatively quiet nights, the boys were in fine 1 AM Cat Fu form this morning.

All was quiet from when I went to bed early (and closed the bedroom door), until Katherine came to bed and put the door back to its normal open state.

The cats made up for lost time.

We had 1 AM Cat Fu.

We had the office window shade as clanking cat toy.

We had laps up and down the stairs in the Summerhill 500.

We had cats burrowing under the covers.

As my sister Cat noted last week, it's a good thing chipping the cats did not include a performance upgrade, the thought of Bionic Cat Fu makes us all shudder...

Sunday, October 17, 2004

The Occasional Stench

Emily had another close solid miss after dinner today. She seems to do that more or less once a week now, just to remind us she can.

This was found during evening litterboxes, a task delayed by watching the (first) Red Sox-Yankees Marathon game. I finally tore myself away between innings.

Friday, October 15, 2004

The Fast and the Furryous

With modern cars, some of the best performance upgrades don't involve hardware changes per se (or even replacing the driver). Rather, a software upgrade replaces or at least reprograms the microchip controlling engine performance. This is especially useful on cars with turbos, because the factory chip is generally programmed conservatively to avoid abusing the turbo.

The boys were quite excited to hear that they and Emily were being microchipped yesterday. I didn't have the heart to tell them that their procedure identifies them with a microchip implanted just under the skin in the scruff of the neck. No performance improvement at all.

However, if our indoor cats ever get out and lost in the great wide world, we now have a better chance of getting them back.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Wipe Your Feet

Like most litterboxes, the ones at the kitten farm get their share of litter tracked, spilled, or tossed out of the box. When I was in PetCo yesterday getting a cat carrier (more on that later), I saw a litterbox mat, and I bought it.

The mat is basically a rug of fake plastic grass about twice the floor space area of a litterbox. It's reasonably soft surface, but weird enough feel that it got field testing in a neutral area.

The field test, set up in the doorway between the living room and dining, has utterly failed. The boys don't want to step on the mat. To avoid it, they use their agile four paw drive to leap, twist, squeeze and otherwise avoid stepping on it.

I served dinner on it, thus showing a way to make Billy eat less. He snacked and bolted; we relented and moved the dishes back to their usual location.

I think the mat is going back, we don't need a new reason for litterbox rejection.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Monthly weigh-in

Since last month's weigh-in was also late, it actually has been about 30 days.

Billy comes in at 12 pounds, up two from last month.
Whitey weighs 9 pounds, up one from last month.
Emily remains stable at 7 pounds.

Lake Emily

Our run of neat litter boxes usage is over (even ignoring the Big Dig, which was not so much usage as an active effort to empty a litter box).

There was a minor solid near miss in an upstairs box over the weekend which was so minor I forgot about it even though I cleaned it up.

Less minor this evening was a lake soaked up by the newspapers in Emily's closet -- no doubt by her Emilyness.

*sigh*

Stowaway

Billy is a smart cat. He figures if he climbs into my briefcase, then he can go to all the exciting Outside the House places my briefcase does. Plus he can be with me! Awwwww.....

Billy-2004-10-11-thumb.jpg

Kittens and more kittens

We haven't been keeping up with the photo gallery, and in fact there are pictures languishing in the camera waiting to be posted. We're sorry.... In the interim, the Flickr kitten gallery has all the photos you could possibly want.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

The Hallway Big Dig

So Katherine and I are in my office discussing Rock'n'Roll songs that all sound vaguely alike, and we hear this digging out in the hall. This sound is not a shock per se, since there is a litterbox out there, and even the sound of litter hitting the newspaper surrounding the box is not of major interest.

But sound of the litter furiously hitting the newspaper puts Katherine in motion, and she was wise to check -- the boys had gotten over a cup of kitty litter out of the box and were going strong landscaping it on the newspaper.

All we can figure is something smelled from a previous litterbox visit. The boys decided the smell was coming from the front page of the Boston Globe -- and promptly went to work to bury it.

I didn't think the Edwards Cheney debate stank that much ...

Thursday, October 7, 2004

Raiding the Kitchen

We finished phasing out lunch for the cats yesterday, they now get fed twice a day. (I'm glad I'm not around to hear them mew about the last time they remember being fed was a week before we adopted them in June.)

In any case, I barreled home from working late to get dinner on the table (on the floor, actually) for them. Knowing they had no lunch, I got the boys' dry food bowls down with the left overs from lunch, and all three cats attacked it with gusto.

(Yes, Emily was shoulder to shoulder with the boys, and we had peace in our time as everyone had food on the brain. I had to pry to her loose to get to eat her own food when I got it down.)

While they got started on the dry food, I put their wet food (1/8 can each) in the bowls on the fly. The attention this got reminded me why I normally fill the bowls well out of reach of the cats. I was missing a cat food can lid, so I tucked the spare open can out of the way in the sink, and took Emily's food up to her suite.

I then collapsed and watched an inning of baseball playoffs, or most of one. I was interrupted by the boys being up on the counter in the kitchen; when I looked they were attacking the spoon I left in the sink after I served them dinner with it.

Oh wait. I also left the open kitten food can in the sink, and a full scale buffet raid was in progress. I gently booted them to the floor and gave them kitty treats for dessert, because they are so good at training their human...

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Admin note

Due to excessive comment spam (which never gets seen because we purge it before approval), we have further secured comments.

If you try to post, will you be get an additional prompt before your post will be accepted. Sorry.

Baker House Revisited

Katherine went downstairs for a drink of water and found Whitey asleep on the dining room table.

I hope he was comfortable.

Monday, October 4, 2004

Kitten Jousts: Spider-Cat vs. Catzilla

Cat Fu is mostly wrestling, but sometimes the maneuvering for position via the stalk and pounce is far more interesting to watch.

Yesterday during Cat Fu, the boys split up into separate rooms. When they found each other again, they both charged and leaped in a manner to make a Klingon proud, resulting in two vertical cats suspended in midair.

Both cats had apparently realized the midair pending collision wasn't going to offer any advantage, and had put on the brakes enough that they didn't actually collide. Unfortunately, Spider-cat let his hind paws get too far forward, and ... well, he came back to earth by landing on more or less flat on his back.

So much for cats always landing on their feet.