La Doof Kitton the mouser

(I don't yet have formulated Christmas tree stories, rest assured I'm sure the hellion will create some.)

But I was just playing on the computer and pondering whether or not La Doof Kitton had done anything blog-worthy in the recent days...I was mousing through the interwebz and thinking "he has been pretty good recently" when suddenly my mouse jerked out of my hand. I grabbed my mouse back and a wee white paw with all the claws out pinned my hand down. No fingers are safe when La Doof Kitton is on the prowl.

I'm not quite sure how he manages to fit up there without me noticing...but he was in for a surprise when he tried to climb down; El Gato had set up an ambush.

He extorts my silence...or at least my lack of pictures

Last night, I was taking a shower and watched as Dawg came into the bathroom and curled up on the bathmat to guard me from evil hallway gremlins.

La Doof Kitton promptly came in and started washing Dawg's face and curled up next to her. I made a cooing noise and told La Doof Kitton that I should get a picture as proof that they did love each other. La Doof Kitton sat up and shot me a look that said, quit clearly, "how dare you threaten to jeopardize my position with the cat guild? I am merely using the canine mortal for my own ends--to assist at stealing cookies"

And here is where I made a mistake, I asked "what are you gonna do about it?"
He jumped up onto the bathroom counter, sat erect with his tail curled around his feet, looked straight at me, and shoved my hairbrush and glasses off the edge. He eyed the ceramic soap container and drinking glass until I promised no doggie-cuddle-pictures (although I may have had my fingers crossed).

P.S.
I'm quite aware that it sounds like La Doof Kitton could take over the world....but he can't.

He can't because although he is "the Brain" he is also his very own "Pinky". Moments after extorting the promise from me, he had both of his front paws in the kleenex box because it was super interesting and there might be a mouse made of kleenex in there!. And a few moments after that he watched, utterly entranced, as this gray snakey thing named "Scooter" wiggled in the sink...he paused and pounced and remembered, once again, that it was useless to attack because, being his tail, it was still firmly attached to his butt.

If there is ever a Napolecat, we can bring about his Waterloo with a defending army of vacuum cleaners armed with sparkle-laden pompoms.

La Doof Kitton deserves treats for not helping.

Remember reading the story of "The Little Red Hen"?
In the story, the hen asked "who wants to help me plant seed/grind grain/bake bread?" and the gray cat said "not I". Then the hen asked "who wants to eat some delicious bread?" and the gray cat said "oooh, me!", to which the hen replies "Suck it Trebek!"(Ok, not really. The hen says "Ha, I'm going to eat this tasty bread in front of you and not share, nah nah nah nah nah PBBBBBBbbbbbbbbbth")

Well, yesterday, I was baking. And I gave La Doof Kitton treats and locked him in the library. Because I did not take the hen's lesson to heart; I will glady share the bounty in order to NOT have La Doof Kitton help me.

Because he "helped" me make cookies for 3 hours on Saturday. (Just an FYI, hershey kisses while they're being unwrapped to put on top of 100 Peanut Butter cookies? They are a triumvirate of kitty attraction--they are forbidden chocolate, they make lovely krinkly noises when you take off the wrapper, and they are sparkley (and the wee paper flag on them that can be used as a handle to grab them by helps)

The whole debacle looked something like this--except I couldn't quite manage to get a picture when his paw reached up over the edge of the counter to grab the chocolatey goodness.

Apparently there are two ways to herd cats...

or another way to send them into hiding in order to keep them out of your hair :)

La Doof Kitton doesn't like having his toenails trimmed. Apparently he spends quite a bit of time making his feet into razor sharp implements of furry destruction and he is hostile to having his daggers of doom taken away from him; he squirms and bites and claws and wriggles and mews pitifully and claims that we are blugoning him to death with pickles and that will shall burn in the hot fires of kitty hell when he rules the world and that we, with our puny non-retractable claws must be jealous of his stately sharpened sabers.

Earlier today, Mr. G and I trimmed his toenails here in the office (and I've yet to take care of the clippers). Just now, he made efforts (again) to steal cookies, chew through the phone charger, and all around make a pest of himself. So I grabbed a paw that I hadn't trimmed especially well and moved toward it with the clippers; he promptly squirmed away.

I now haven't seen La Doof Kitton for nearly 20 minutes, apparently I bought myself an hour of peace and quiet

You can herd cats.

Really, they can be herded.
Kinda.

As discovered by Mr. G, if, one goes into the laundry room (for, you know, laundry) and La Doof Kitton happens to sneak in (no kittehs in the laundry room. It's for everyone's sanity and happiness--because happiness is, not having to say "does my sweater smell like cat butt?" [and yes, the person I asked this of, assured me that, my sweater did INDEED smell like cat butt. It has since been re-washed]), it is nigh impossible to get him back out again. He will climb the drying rack, crawl under the sweater rack, clamber into piles of clothes, clatter up hampers and all around make himself into one of those "Water Wigglie" toys (minus the water, plus claws and teeth)

Well, if one wishes to leave the laundry room, 'tis best not to leave La Doof Kitton in the room. (and if we manage to defeat all odds and grab him by the collar, that's when I'm reminded that it's very unfortunate that I care for kitteh safety and the collars are breakaway--great for holding on the dog's tags, useless for everything else.) Which means he must be herded out of the room. Cats, not prone to being herd animals, are resistant to traditional herding practices. But if one, in a moment of desperation (because one slept through the alarm because the kitten knocked over the clock radio and moved the volume knob from "Eleven" to 1), grabs a can of Lysol (designed to remove cat butt from sweaters) and sprays it, not at the kitten, but in the kitten's general area, they move amazingly fast.

He was halfway up the stairs before we realized it worked. And dashed out, slamming the laundry room door closed. And re-opening it and repeating the practice when, in the excitement, I realized I forgot my sweater in the laundry room.

If I have to get at 2 am to deal w/ a sick Dawg, I'll know why

Mr. G and I went grocery shopping today. As we were carrying in groceries, he asked, "Why is there a small pile of dog biscuits on the stairs?" This is a good question...why WERE there dog biscuits on the stairs? Especially when Dawg doesn't go near the stairs (During puppyhood, we told her there was a monster in the basement that ate puppies. She still believes it kinda. Regardless, she doesn't do stairs.). La Doof Kitton was playing with the biscuits though.

Well...La Doof Kitton really really really wants more treats on a daily basis. Apparently he isn't getting enough partially-digested sprayed-on meat byproduct meal in his life.
He watched very VERY carefully today as he got his morning treats then the treat jar was sealed and placed on top of the fridge. I'm quite certain he tucked this away for later. And then made Pinky and the Brain-esque blueprint plans for how to re-access the jar.

Apparently he acted out such plans while we were grocery shopping.
Here, he was thwarted. he had clearly been on top of the cabinet where the treats are kept--we know this because 2 *sealed* containers of cat treats, 1 container of Dawg's pills, 1 squirt bottle of pet medicine and one container of dog biscuts lay in the middle of the floor when we got home.

The problem was that the bag of dog bisciuts wasn't sealed.
No one ate what was in the bag but...I'm pretty sure the bag was MUCH more full when I left the house than when I came back. So apparently, Dawg and La Doof Kitton took care of the biscuits that landed on the floor--with Dawg eating hers and La Doof Kitton (in a fit of mean-ness, after beint thwarted in getting *his* treats) putting his in a pile at the top of the stairs--where Dawg could see them but couldn't/wouldn't be able to steal them back.

I will say, I'm not sure how many biscuits a Dawg must eat before she gets ill...here's hoping it's less than what she ate!
(and I did steal the rest of the biscuits back from La Doof Kitton and put them back in the bag. Which is now sealed. And out of reach. Maybe.)

Mmmm, evaporated milk.

I was just making a pumpkin pie-type thingy. This calls for evaporated milk. My recipe was messing w/ my head re: can size, so I ducked into the office for a quick second to double check my metric conversions.
I came back out to find the 2 tsp. of margarine laying on the counter (and La Doof Kitton trying to look innocent from the sink--where he's not allowed)--this is impressive because when I left the kitchen, the margarine was in a bowl with flour and sugar...

La Doof Kitton watched closely as I opened the can of pumpkin and walked over to the bowl to add it. He watched closely as I opened the can of evaporated milk and walked over to the bowl to add it--and waited until I was looking at the bowl, not at him to dash between my legs.
And it worked a little. I didn't drop the can but a big splash of evaporated milk landed on the floor for him to eat.

At least this time there weren't paw prints in the flour. yet.

Crazy Circle

Once upon a time, someone gave the cats a "crazy circle toy". Unlike the blue, plastic versions of this you find in pet stores nowadays, the one we inherited doubles as a pet bed--same general idea (plastic track filled with balls) but containing a cushion and covered with a fabric that was likely stolen from the 'davenport' (not couch, couches are much more sedate) in great-grandma Gertrude's 'Florida room'.
Exhibit A (Please ignore the cat fur in the chair. What can I say, we obviously have cats):


Generally, since the cats shun this 'bed' in favor of more comfortable/better places to lay (like our bed, on top of the German WWII vintage hat, in shoe boxes, on piles of lumpy, sharp rocks, on the exercise bike, etc--you know, the places that are clearly better than a cushioned cat bed), we use the crazy circle (which lives on a chair in the library) as a kitty toy box.

Exhibit B (please note, the kitties have WAAAAay more toys than this...it's just that recently they fed several to Dawg. And that someone keeps hiding them in strange places like the basement/under the fridge/etc. And that I got lazy and left the other 1/2 the pile in the middle of the floor when tidying up.) :


So...how is it that *someone* developed opposable thumbs and not only moved the toy but took it apart? WITHOUT spilling the toys?

(and just for good measure, he followed this up by managing to pull the balls out of it...which made a lovely racket, rolling across hardwood at 2 am. And made a lovely mess when La Doof Kitton tried to feed them to Dawg. [I intervened--choking hazard]

(and I did get it all back together, see:

)

If I have to get at 2 am to deal w/ a sick kitten, I'll know why

Tonight was sloppy joe night.

Since we slept until...well, never mind, just trust that it was relatively late (although we have excuses. Mr. G worked until nearly 3 am and I have had 2 weeks worth of insomnia, culminating with my current bout of plague [Ny Quil, the "where am I and how did I get here, why is the room spinning like this, that's why it comes with a SHOT GLASS" medicine...WHEEEEeee. ugh]), we didn't get out the ground turkey until noon.

Getting out the turkey at noon means that kitchen safety rules be damned, the stuff was thawing on the counter instead of in the fridge (Yes, I know. Even in my drug-addled state I'm aware most of the people reading this are smarter than I am and know where this is going). We aren't COMPLETELY stupid...we make sure anything left on the counter is in it's factory sealed state. But we are kinda stupid because, well, we forgot that La Doof Kitton has figured out that if it smells like a pound of ground turkey but tastes like a chunk of plastic, keep chewing.

So he kept chewing until he got to the chewy center. And then he went to work eating that.

I'm not sure how long he'd been at it when I busted him--couldn't have been that long. But I must say, there is nothing like walking into the kitchen to realize that there is now 3/4 of a pound of ground turkey in the 1 pound package and that packe is sitting in the middle of a 2 foot pool of blood. In the middle of the kitchen floor.
(Thank all that is holy that Dawg was outside during the entire debacle)

(And, yes, like most pet owners, I believe I am immune to my pet's germs. So, yes, we cooked up the remainder.)

(And, NO, he didn't get his mischief out of his system. He tried to steal the LAST Reese's cup from my hand and I had to chase him to get it back [what kind of kitty steals Halloween candy from a sick woman?]. And then he took the wrapper out of the trash and ran about with that. And when I took that from him and stuck it in the empty candy bag in the trash, he got the entire thing out of the trash and tried to suffocate himself with a plastic bag.
They're now in the trash can in the cupboard.

Although, at the moment, he's looking awfully innocent. Rather like this, that I just took...
)