The string of boring litter box reports was broken far too soon.
Mid-morning, we found that a cat had urinated in our empty laundry baskets ~ 2 feet from the open and closed litterboxes in Emily's suite.
This afternoon, we found that a cat had dumped and barely missed the downstairs litter box. Fortunately, the cat in question no longer had diarraha, and we had put down newspaper which caught most of it.
The downstairs box was just swapped for the (topless) bottom of a covered box. I wonder if the added height (even sans top) caused the cat to not want to go into it?
Also, Katherine just got on a plane for San Francisco; I'm the 24 hour cat valet for the next five + days.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Silent Night
Another quiet night, almost too quiet.
It seems the boys,left on their own over night, accidently closed the door to my office, trapping themselves in it. Fortunately for all concerned, that's their official time-out room, with food, water, and litter box. So at least their self-imprisonment was reasonably comfortable.
It seems the boys,left on their own over night, accidently closed the door to my office, trapping themselves in it. Fortunately for all concerned, that's their official time-out room, with food, water, and litter box. So at least their self-imprisonment was reasonably comfortable.
Friday, July 9, 2004
Nap time
It's Friday! Sounds like a great excuse (as if one were needed) for a gratuitous cute kitten photo. (Click the image for a larger version.)
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[later - fixed, had a bad configuration setting in MovableType. -ahd-]
[later - fixed, had a bad configuration setting in MovableType. -ahd-]
Boring is good
Litter box duty was boring this morning. Boring is good. I'd much rather play with the cats than clean up after them.
Whitey will now let me trim his toenails without even really waking up from his nap. Billy makes a little more fuss: we're still in the trim one or two nails and call it a day stage. Emily still gets grumpy when I handle her paws. All that advice about teaching cats to tolerate handling when they're kittens is dead accurate.
Whitey will now let me trim his toenails without even really waking up from his nap. Billy makes a little more fuss: we're still in the trim one or two nails and call it a day stage. Emily still gets grumpy when I handle her paws. All that advice about teaching cats to tolerate handling when they're kittens is dead accurate.
Thursday, July 8, 2004
Useful cat terms
Frenetic Random Activity Periods (FRAP) are when otherwise normal cats become psychotic. Chasing their own tails, pouncing on bits of lint, running around the house at high speed, that sort of thing. If you're lucky, it happens when you're around to watch the show. If you're not lucky, it happens at 3 AM whether you want to watch the show or not. Kitten FRAP is distinguishable from normal kitten activity by even higher than normal energy and randomness. A normal kitten will chase a Ping Pong ball. A kitten in FRAP will chase a piece of lint that came off the cat tree.
Cat Fu is a highly developed feline martial art. Its core movement involves holding the other cat's head with your front paws while rapidly pummeling him with your back paws. All other components of cat fu -- pouncing, stalking, etc. -- are simply means to this goal.
Heisen Cats illustrate the well-known Uncertainty Principle: the act of observing changes that which is observed. For example, getting your camera (or calling your spouse) to take a picture of (or watch) something adorable that your cat is doing will cause him to stop doing it and pounce on the camera instead.
Cat Fu is a highly developed feline martial art. Its core movement involves holding the other cat's head with your front paws while rapidly pummeling him with your back paws. All other components of cat fu -- pouncing, stalking, etc. -- are simply means to this goal.
Heisen Cats illustrate the well-known Uncertainty Principle: the act of observing changes that which is observed. For example, getting your camera (or calling your spouse) to take a picture of (or watch) something adorable that your cat is doing will cause him to stop doing it and pounce on the camera instead.
For Sale: Three Cat Collars, with Bells
When we got the cats, we got collars with bells for each of them to announce his/her presence and thus avoid human/cat collisions.
(When I was ~ 11 years old, one of my sisters stepped on a beloved catten by mistake and broke its back. We were all a little traumatized, and got bells for the remaining cattens).
Not surprising, the collars were originally too big for the boys, and we set them aside.
Noticing how the kittens have grown, especially Billy, I got the collars out and put them on all three cats this morning.
All three cats freaked out, each in their own unique way.
Emily hid under the bed. She came out after a while, but was flakier than normal.
Billy tried chasing his own neck and then moved on to scratching his ringing flea for ~ 30 minutes.
Whitey tried running away from his bell (damn that cat can move), and then settled down and took the collar off. Twice. I didn't see how he did it, but I suspect he hooked a paw under it and pushed until the safety latch popped. Since he had the smallest neck and I had adjusted the collar all the way down for him (but it still had some slack), this is not a complete shock.
Seeing how unhappy they all were and how Whitey had gotten MTTF down to minutes, I relented. We now have three spare collars...
(When I was ~ 11 years old, one of my sisters stepped on a beloved catten by mistake and broke its back. We were all a little traumatized, and got bells for the remaining cattens).
Not surprising, the collars were originally too big for the boys, and we set them aside.
Noticing how the kittens have grown, especially Billy, I got the collars out and put them on all three cats this morning.
All three cats freaked out, each in their own unique way.
Emily hid under the bed. She came out after a while, but was flakier than normal.
Billy tried chasing his own neck and then moved on to scratching his ringing flea for ~ 30 minutes.
Whitey tried running away from his bell (damn that cat can move), and then settled down and took the collar off. Twice. I didn't see how he did it, but I suspect he hooked a paw under it and pushed until the safety latch popped. Since he had the smallest neck and I had adjusted the collar all the way down for him (but it still had some slack), this is not a complete shock.
Seeing how unhappy they all were and how Whitey had gotten MTTF down to minutes, I relented. We now have three spare collars...
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