Puss n' boots

I own a pair or 2 of nice, rather tall boots. These live in my closet, which is off limits to kittehs, because El Gato has decided she likes the taste of leather.
(really. She also dislikes that I go to work. When, after a bout of unemployment, I took my current job, a pair of shoes that had been sitting in the open, a nice leather binder that had been on a desk, and a leather briefcase/bag that had been in the corner started going to work with me daily. These things, which until then she had completely ignored, earned her ire--it was obviously THEIR fault that mom was gone 8+ hours a day now. And all of these items now have teeth-marks in them. Hence her not being allowed in the closet)

Recently, I wore these boots and tossed them on the floor at the end of the day as I was taking off the clothes (yes, please ignore the rest of the clothing strewn about. I can't believe I'm allowing the interwebz to know about my undergarments. I was also wrapping a gift at the time, obviously--and this did successfully distract him from 'helping' me tie bows on it.) I had no idea how entertaining boots could be.

Hmm, what is this?




Now with a kitteh surprise inside!


I have conquered it. Now I shall sleep on/in it.

Tied up with a bow

Today, I tried to take pictures of ribbon for someone to choose which I should use for a craft project. La Doof Kitton was utterly convinced I was trying to get a picture of him.

He was wrong...but he's still cute. I eventually sent on the pictures I had with a disclaimer that obviously La Doof Kitton chooses the blue w/ white dots but that was probably because it was the only one that was open. That or because it maches his collar.

Treat time!

Treat time, in the G house, is interesting.

There are 2 treat-times per day--first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

They are always interesting moments because each pet in the house would rather have the treats belonging to the OTHER pets than his or her own treats.

The morning treats started when someone (no idea who) needed medication in the morning--'spoonful of sugar' (or in our house, a bit of dog biscuit or a piece of pounce [yes, pounce is nasty stuff.  Reading the ingredients make me gag.  But we've yet to find a treat that they will eat that isn't nasty]) and all that.  And apparently we are quite guilty of over-anthropomorphising our animals, so we can't give one a treat without giving treats to the other two.  Morning treats are a pretty easy; put Dawg outside, give cats treats (to be expanded upon re: nighttime), give Dawg a treat when she comes back in.

Evening treats started as a way to convince Dawg into her crate at bedtime (she has since graduated but knows the command "bedtime!" means she should find her bed and be behind the baby gate) and is a bit more challenging.  I say "bedtime" and the cats head toward the kitchen for their treats and Dawg heads toward the bedroom.  I throw Dawg a biscuit and 90% of the time, that's where it ends.  The other 10% of the time, La Doof Kitton decides that he would much rather have Dawg's biscuit than wait for his treat and throws himself between Dawg and her biscuit--a rather dangerous place to be when the rightful owner of the biscuit weighs 5 times more than the kitton.  

On those nights, La Doof Kitton gets bowled over and there is much chasing and havoc before Dawg finishes her biscut--the nights following, Dawg is MUCH more alert and proactive.  (and you would think I could stop this by giving La Doof Kitton his treat before Dawg gets hers but that simply results in Dawg eating all the kitteh treats AND her cookie--that pesky 'weighs 5 x' bit comes in handy for her on occasion)

La Doof Kitton wolfs down his treat every night and then tries to eat El Gato's treat.  You wouldn't know it to look at El Gato and her *ahem* Rubenesque figure, but El Gato is a picky eater--she must sniff fully and ensure that something passes her inspection before she can eat it (her weight problems are likely caused by the fact that, in spite of inspecting carefully, I've almost never seen a particle of food fail her inspection.  After 10 minutes of sniffing, she eats it,  regardless of what it is).  The obvious solution to this would seem to be to give El Gato her treat first so she can finish inspecting and have it eaten before La Doof Kitton gets to it...but that fails--La Doof Kitton is to speedy.  

The solution is to stand in the kitchen and get out two cat treats every night--then to take one treat and hurl it somewhere as far away and as inconveniently accessed as possible.  This thrown treat is La Doof Kitton's treat.  It never occurs to him to wait for the 'easy access' treat to be put down in front of him, he can't resist the chance to stalk the treat into an out-of-the-way location.

So while La Doof Kitton retrieves his treat from behind the couch/on top of the TV stand/tumbling down the basement stairs/under the door to the hall closet, El Gato watches him run off, and sits, with her tail patiently wrapped around her feet.  And I set the second treat in front of El Gato.  She inspects (her inspections *have* gotten shorter since we added the kitton) it and eats it; usually finishing it before La Doof Kitton returns victorious from his hunt.

Enter last night...

when we opened the kitteh treat container to see ONE lonely kitteh treat.

We considered our options and, watching La Doof Kitton do his darnedest to steal Dawg's biscuit, decided that was the easiest.  We gave Dawg her biscuit.  We gave El Gato that last kitteh treat.  And we handed another Dawg biscuit to La Doof Kitton.

He sniffed it carefully.  He looked at us.  He sniffed the biscuit again.  He looked a bit offended.  He sniffed the biscuit again.  He looked at us  with the look of "is this a trick?  I'm not allowed these, they're Dawg's" showing through...which is when it occurred to him that he wasn't allowed to have these.  Suddenly, the value of this 'forbidden' treat dawned on him.  He snatched it away and disappeared into the basement and I could almost hear the evil cackle as he gloated over Dawg's biscuit being his.

I hope he ate it but I have a sneaking suspicion he hid it to tease Dawg with it tomorrow.

Oooh, recycling!

First, I do apologize again for the lack of posting. Things in the G household have been going something like: 'family emergency, death in the family and funeral, G feeling like death warmed over, family emergency, doctors appointments, hospital visits, family emergency, work chaos, ...now breathe'.
I'm hoping this nice respite for breathing lasts a wee bit so I can get back into a normal swing.

La Doof Kitton found the recycling this week.

It's the best picture I could get of the chaos caused by pop cans rolling about the kitchen. It got more chaotic as La Doof Kitton and Dawg helped me clean it up. (El Gato disappeared while these pictures were being taken...to much loudness)

I'm not quite sure how he got the lid off the trashcan, it sticks good.

But Dawg did lick most of the stickyness off the kitchen floor, which saved me having to mop it.

(and for those of you who know that Dawg is terrified to step on linolium, that she thinks it's lava or the like, yoiu may be surprised that she's there watching.
The 'rules' to the 'linolium is lava' game in Dawg's mind are *very* complicated...but if she is touching, with her side or a leg, a large piece of furniture, then the floor isn't lava. If mom is touching her neck, the floor isn't lava. If she is between mom's legs, the floor isn't lava. If she can touch the wall with her nose, the floor isn't lava. The rest of the time? That's when hard floors are lava.
And all rules are subject to change without notice.)

(PS, this is why the brilliant suggestion of 'pennies in a can' to use as a puppy training tool didn't work for Dawg. We tried it...she tried to eat the can--wheee toy!)

I'll poo in your shoes for that...

(this one, obviously, might contain a wee bit of TMI)

This morning, the Mr. noticed both cats confronting each other (wrestling on top of his shoes--the shoes live on the landing) than sitting on the landing at the top of the stairs, glaring at each other, while he was preparing to leave the house.

This is unusual; they usually glare from farther away than that. He was determining what the glaring was all about, (whether El Gato was plotting something devious and La Doof Kitton was 'helping' or whether La Doof Kitton was plotting something devious and El Gato was thwarting it, or of La Doof Kitton was just preventing El Gato from going to the basement to use her litter box--this can be an ongoing problem, not helped by the fact that El Gato has tummy/digestive tract issues) as he reached for his shoes.

Both cats watched him with interest and looked very disappointed that he noticed the bit of cat poo BEFORE he touched it/put his shoes on/stepped in it.

We're not sure which of them did it--El Gato is the one with issues that relate to poo but La Doof Kitton is more likely to pick up a piece of poo and plant it in a shoe. It might have been a joint effort.
Regardless, I'm taking this to mean that they have NOT yet forgiven us for leaving them with a pet sitter and that I should sleep with one eye open and check my shoes before work.

Kitteh TV

In our house, Kitteh TV is whatever is right outside the window. (We had Kitteh DVR when we had gerbils but once one gerbil ate the other, that hit to close to 'survivor' for us...after one to many close calls, the last gerbil standing went to a [very nice!] home where he was not going to be devoured.)

With the lovely spring weather upon us and the birds nesting in the yard and the bunnies wandering in and out of sight, open windows = kitteh TV with smell-o-=vision.

To this end, nearly all the windows in our house are cat accessible. The windows in the living room and the office and the kitchen are accessible. The windows in the bedroom and library aren't supposed to be accessible but it can be arranged. The only room in the house which has a completely inaccessible window is the bathroom.

Which explains why, last week, when I went into the bathroom, I nearly had a heart attack.
The shade moved funny, I went to adjust it, and my hand landed on something soft and gray and fuzzy...thinking I had grabbed a mouse, I panicked. It obviously wasn't a mouse. Apparently,in spite of never being accessible before, that bathroom if La Doof Kitton tries really hard.

He was kind enough to pose for pictures after I quit panicking.
(he was licking his lips at the tasty looking birds in the 3rd picture. He looks drunk in the 2nd one which is why I posted it--I'm that sort of mean kitteh momma)