LaDoofKitton

Things La Doof Kitton loves

2011-10-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

as a counterpoint to the hate for things like paper towels and mailmen, I think I need to list things La Doof Kitton loves:

-Wool. He is, at this moment, making sweet sweet love to a diaper cover. He made out with a hat of mine earlier today. He only likes 100% wool and as such, was actually given a WWII era army hat by his uncle because he adored it so much

-Tackling El Gato. She out-weighs him by, er, a lot. So he tackles her, she fights back, she wins, she struts away and he tackles again. She can win 15 times but he still wins the war because he's ready for round 16.

-Chewing on Mr G's ankles when the mailman scares him. It makes him feel ~~safer~~ better. (by 'him', I mean La Doof Kitton. Mr. G's ankles don't feel better. They look a bit red and bleedy)

-Mom's hair brush. This is good to cuddle, unlike the cat hair brush which is apparently made of owies and kitton death wish.

-The Microwave cart. This is where one can hide behind the toaster and pop out, pretending to be toast, scaring mommy half to death.

-Boots. An entire La Doof Kitton can more or less fit in mommy's cowboy boots. Not only are these a great place to hide cat toys, they're also fun to chew on (grr)

-Nylons/pantyhose. To be fair, I may be giving him credit for something that was El Gato's doing, but the first 3 pair I pulled out of my drawer this weekend had holes chewed in them. (note to self, buy a lock for the drawer)

-Buffy's failure to use a sippy-cup properly. I'm not sure Buffy is a 'favorite thing' (although her crib, when she's not in it, may be), but poorly handled sippy cups lead to delicious puddles of whole-milk scattered around and on the high chair.

-The High chair. These things were MADE for cats. There's a (somewhat) cushion-y seat. They're high up. And the tray doubles as a bed. And occasionally, they're covered with tasty bits of food/milk

mmm, cat treats.

2011-10-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

Every morning and every evening, the pets in the G household get treats.

Some people think we spoil our pets. Really, we just want to ake sure none of them have done anything incredibly stupid--giving treats is how we ~~eliminate~~ reduce the odds that one of the critters spends the night/day on a shelf locked in the linen closet, in the dryer, locked outside, trapped in the garage, etc.

For those who don't know, Buffy recently became mobile. She doesn't crawl but she does a scooting that moves her faster than her parents realise.
This makes feeding the pets in the morning extra challenging. Remember the old 'items and a boat' (The Simpsons do it best, but I suppose the traditional 'fox, goose, bag o' beans' is more classic)? It's like that. Buffy wants to steal the treats/hug/otherwise bother all the pets. Dawg wants to steal the treats of all the cats. The cats won't EAT Dawg's treats, but wll bother the bejeebes out of her. La Doof Kitton tries to steal El Gato's treats and El Gato is the world's slowest eater. You have 1 high chair and 3 pets in the living room...

Normally, I put Buff in her high chair while arranging all of this--because of the above mentioned issues. This particular day, I forgot. I put Buffy down on the kitchen floor, went in the living room where I gave El Gato her treats and, on the other end of the living room (closer to the kitchen) gave La Doof Kitton his treats. Then I gave Dawg HER treats in the hallway, after dragging her away from stealing El Gato's treats.

At that moment, I see Buffy scooting her wee butt across the living room with a look on her face that resembles a cat that ate the canary. It looks closer to 'the baby who ate the cat treat' though and I realise that La Doof Kitton looks PIIIIISSSSSED.

I pick up Buffy, take her to the kitchen were I have better lighting, and pry her mouth open. I stick a finger in (which promptly gets bitten) and 'finger sweep' until the Pounce treat, now resembling chicken-flavored-play dough, falls on the floor. El Gato appears, sniffs it...and eats it. La Doof Kitton glowers from the corner and Buffy screams that I took away 'her' treat.
I consider telling El Gato that it belongs to La Doof Kitton, but I figure that he has stolen a gazillion of El Gato's treats in the past few years, he deserves to loose this one.

I think La Doof Kitton is having to learn hard lessons about the new pecking order--and so am I. Buffy must be in the high chair when treating pets.

A new enemy awaits, lurking in shadows...

2011-07-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

(For the record, I wish I had pictures. I do not, because Mr. G, being the fastidious man he is, keeps cleaning them up before I dig out the camera. I'd complain about that but grousing about someone cleaning up is just foolishness personified.)

For the past several years, the kittehs have been oblivious to a mortal enemy that has stalked them as they enjoyed the relative peace and tranquility of their home.

This month...La Doof Kitton discovered this fiend. He has battled with this assailiant no fewer than 5 timssince midsummer's eve--maybe several other pitched battles have taken place that the household members are yet unaware of.

Now nightly, La Doof Kitton and this towering terror match wits and battle with fang and claw. Thus far, though the battles have been hard fought and fraught with danger, the Kitton has sustained only minor wounds while inflicting serious damage on the enemy.
But the enemy is clever and powerful and, disguised as a necessary part of home life, he resurrects whenever the 2 legged creatures in the home approach him. He comes back from the grave, his near demise never becomes permanent.

La Doof Kitton even took to dragging his kill out of the kitchen and into other rooms in the house to finish the job--quite a struggle when the fiend is mounted to a kitchen cabinet. But still, the demise never remains permanent--like a phoenix from the ashes, a new dastardly villain takes up residence once the humans approach.

Mr. G, foolish mortal that he is, even had the audacity to place this creature-of-darkness out of the reach of Kittehs, in the "La Doof Kitton proof box". Mr. G may have become a Thrall of the powerful enemy, hence extending his protection as he entombs the Kitton's rival away from the Kitton's teeth.

And that ^^ is why I found a roll of paper-towel in the microwave today. Apparently it's the only way we don't loose half a roll of it, nightly, to the Kitton's new found desire to shred it. He can pull it out of the holder, take it to other rooms, and dissect it very carefully. So now, at bedtime, the pets get treats, and the paper towel is removed from the holder and joins the baked goods in the microwave

Flowers for the Kitton

2011-07-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Buffy is learning how to 'fish for kittons":

You start with appropriate 'bait'. Flags are excellent

Then you wave the bait around a lot.

It helps if you do this for the 'right' kitteh. El Gato is not interested in flags when they are attached to loud, moving Buffy.

Eventually, the kitton, who has been waiting, just out of reach for ages, will be unable to resist and will come barreling out of nowhere to attack the bait.

Do you remember "Who framed Roger Rabbit"? Where they tap 'shave and a hair cut' and the poor rabbit is trying DESPERATELY not to come bursting out but eventually can't stop himself? Yep. It looks a lot like that.
Buffy LOVES it when she finally wins.

You can also fish using a flower on a stick


Lookout behind you! Lasers!

Conversations in our house..

2011-07-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

These are recent conversations in the GB house (between the 2 grown-up humans who live here):

"What happened to the paper towel?"
"La Doof Kitton"
"oh. Why?"
"because he's a *expletive deleted because we try to be PG around here*. Apparently he just plain got pissy and managed to get on the counter last night, pull the roll of toweling off of the holder, and take it to the living room. Where he shredded it"
*La Doof Kitton strolls into the room*
"what did towels ever do to YOU?"
*he looks at us, jumps onto the counter where he isn't allowed, makes a claw-swipe at the towels, and then runs to the basement*
"bastard."
^I could add names to who said what but...I think it's interchangeable for us on this one. You can assume the EXACT same conversation was repeated about what happened to the stuff in my work bag I left on the kitchen table recently.

-----
Conversation at 4 am
Me: "what's that noise?"
Mr G: "what noise?"
*rustling noise*
Me: "That noise"
*Horrible crash followed by skittering of claws/paws and baby crying from scary noises*
Me: "I got the baby, you figure out what La Doof Kitton has"
*Mr G. walks into the nursery where I'm comforting/feeding Buffy*
Mr G: "I forgot to put the cookies into the Kitton proof box. But I brought you a cookie!" *sharing cookie*
Me, to La Doof Kitton: "You know you're a bastard"
La Doof Kitton: *looks smug*
Me:

just a photo-update of the pets and their new addition....

2011-04-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

I apologize if the pictures aren't great--do you have any idea how hard it is to herd cats and Dawg and a baby into one frame? THis is what we have though:

Defeated by kitteh!

Confused by how this happened...

Even the big Kitteh loves toys! Kinda.

La Doof Kitton mostly likes the strings. And stealing toys from babies.
Baby is learning how to use strings to 'fish for kittehs'

Dawgs get in trouble for stealing toys so they just have to settle for
stealing Boppy pillows.

La Doof Kitton keeps trying to feed himself to the baby. Not quite sure why :)

They say cats aren't capable of plitting revenge......

2011-04-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

They lie.

Earlier this week, the family had a morning with some family togetherness. I was sitting in the rocking chair, feeding Buffy. Mr. G was sitting on the ottoman next to us, and the pets were busy doing their thing.

Mr. G brought me a bagel because he's a nice guy and I had a migraine. However, because I had a migraine, after a few bites, I had to move the bagel out of 'smell range' for a few; I asked him to set it on the nursery night-stand, just out of reach while we finished planning our day.

A moment later a small white and gray paw appeared over the top of the night stand. Remember those cartoons where a cat (Sylvester) is under the table and his paw walks to the food? Yep, just like that. There was a claw trying desperately to hook my bagel.

Mr. G was quick on the draw and snagged the plate o' bagel out of reach and then made several comments about winning the battle, cats not being able to take over the world because they don't have opposable thumbs, and 'HA, no bagel for you!'. And then we went back to planning our day.

Quick as thought, La Doof Kitton appeared on the night stand. The Mr. repeated a comment about "ha, see, no bagel for you; I have it here". La Doof Kitton walked across where the bagel had been, over to my rather heavy water bottle, and head butted it. Hard.

There was a slow motion sequence as the water bottle tipped, fell and spiraled downward...with the heavy part of the base landing square on the bony part of the Mr.'s bare foot.

Buffy woke up because I was laughing so hard I cried (sorry. yes, I'm a jerk). The Mr. actually fell off the ottoman in pain (Dawg promptly rushed over to help lick him off and El Gato got panicky and ran away).
La Doof Kitton spent a few moments looking smug before dropping off the night stand walking over to where the plate o' bagel was on the floor (the Mr, in his pain, had set it down/dropped it), and commencing to lick off the butter.

La Doof Kitton 1, humans 0

Another case of "HA, you can't catch me"

2011-02-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

I may have mentioned that La Doof Kitton has an uncanny knack of knowing when I can stop him from doing stuff and when I can't.
He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that when I'm nursing Buffy, he can get away with murder--I can't move and I certainly can't yell at him--either upsets the balance of nursing. La Doof Kitton enjoys it when I nurse Buffy--he chooses those moments to sit on shelves and shove things off, open drawers and grab things, and pounce on his siblings.

Earlier this week, around 3 am, I was feeding Buffy in the nursery. I was less tolerant than normal because I was feeling slightly better than death but still like I was wallowing in mucous and could drown in phlegm. Mr. G got up, got me warm tea and, per my request, put a few cough-drops within reach. (the bag of cough drops can't be left out because *someone* digs in there and hides them throughout the house)
Then, since he felt like death, the Mr. shut (but did not latch--if it's latched, it upsets Dawg and normally, only she can open it; the kittehs can't) the nursery's screen door (so Dawg and I were alone w/ Buffy in the nursery) and went back to bed.

Only, it was a night when La Doof Kitton was in rare form. After running loud laps around the rest of the house several times, he sat at the nursery door and dug his claws into the screen. When he really wants to, he can open the door this way....and this night he wanted to.
After the door was opened, he ran a few more laps, including the nursery in them--it's very necessary to include the nursery so he can run across Dawg's nose and irritate her into awake-ness. It's also important to leap the baby-gate repeatedly during this and knock it over because mom so appreciates loud noises that disturb the baby at 3 am (insert a picture of me shaking my fist here).

Finally, La Doof Kitton got quieter and I, stupidly, didn't assume he was causing trouble. I dozed in the rocking chair with Buffy and then watched as a white-tipped paw snaked it's way out from under the chair's night-stand. Said paw slid up the side and reached up over the top where it felt around. I hissed "STOP, go away". The paw froze...and then found what it was looking for...YAY, a COUGH DROP.

Next thing I know, there's a cough drop being carried across the floor in a wee kitteh mouth.

I 'whisper yell' at him to stop it.
He stops...just outside of where I could reach him/throw something at him/poke him with my foot.

He set down the cough drop, sniffed it over VERY carefully, and proceeded to bat it around for a minute.
AT this point, I consider just letting him have it and I considered letting myself fall back into dozing. La Doof Kitton noticed this and stealing things is no fun if mom doesn't react!
So he set the cough drop down again...and set to work very carefully attempting to unwrap it.
More 'whisper yelling' is ineffective...La Doof Kitton seems to enjoy watching me be agitated but unable to do anything so he decides to up the ante...he takes the cough drop in his mouth again and carries it over to just in front of Dawg's nose...where he drops it.
Then he bats Dawg's head.

Dawg wakes up, sees this neat-o 'toy/treat' and picks it up and starts to carry it away. (La Doof Kitton looks honestly perturbed by this. For as intelligent as he is, he fails to understand why Dawg doesn't play 'properly' when he shares toys. He fails to understand that Dawg's form of play = eat/destroy. I do wonder sometimes if he just thinks Dawg is the world's largest, ugliest, stupidest cat)

At this point, I don't dare let Dawg just have it; I can envision sick animals and cherry-menthol-smudges across the floor so I give up 'whisper yelling' and make noises to wake the Mr. Who then has to chase Dawg around to retrieve the cough drop (her 'give' command is best followed if I give it) and the rest of the cough drops go into my bathrobe pocket so they're out of reach.

Which would explain why they're currently melted into the bottom of my dryer...need to check those pockets.

I do believe, however, that La Doof Kitton's response would be telling me he was just saving me from the horrid cherry-menthol ickyness. And that he really only wanted the wrapper.

Things heard in the G house so far in 2011

2011-02-05T18:40:00.000-08:00

I decided that, now that we're a month in, to make a (short) list of things said to the pets (as a group) and specifically La Doof Kitton in the first month of the new year. I think this is evidence that he did not make a resolution to be well behaved. And we probably sound like mean pet parents.

It's all your fault we can't have nice things
You don't have balls, quit mounting your sister
Pick on someone your own size (Because he was picking on El Gato--nevermind she out weighs him by *cough cough* pounds)
Pick on someone your own size does NOT mean pick on Dawg
Get down from there! ('there' was a shelf, a kitchen counter, a table and a windowsill)
Your disguise needs work; no matter how still you hold, you can't pass as a pudding cup
(see above^) ...nor a saucepan.
Saying 'nobody here but us pots' does not help the disguise
Someday, your paw is going to get stuck like that. (he was trying to get into a drawer--more on that in another post another day :-P)
QUIT reaching into the microwave
You can be made into violin strings (he was trying to wake the baby)
seriously? it's a green bean. People are going to think we don't feed you if you 3 don't stop fighting over a frozen green bean
If you make the hole in the window shade bigger, I will beat knots on your pointy little skull. (see above re: not having nice things. He made the hole bigger so he could climb through and peer out)
Dude, you will SO deserve it when Dawg eats you one of these days!
(^see above. He was eventually pounced by Dawg) Nu-uh, not gonna yell at her. You were being good this time, but you deserved it for trying to eat her ear while she was sleeping last night. And stealing her bed 3 nights last week
Yes doofus, that tail is still attached to your butt. But your attempt to remove it is entertaining!
If you push that book off the shelf one more time, I will throw it at you (please note, he only shoves things off shelves when I can't reach him because I'm holding a baby. He knows this)
Cough drops are not cat toys.
(see above^) Neither are cough drop wrappers!
(see above^) Neither are pacifiers. And, ew, now I have to clean that.
Catus, all soft surfaces in the house are NOT cat beds. (followed by booting him out of the crib/off Dawg's bed/off my bathrobe/etc)

I'm sure I'll have more to add eventually, but I thought it was a pretty good start for 1 month :)

Great Birnam Chair comes to high Dunsinane dining room...

2011-01-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

Tonight they made me laugh aloud.

Tonight, I picked up a few things that Buffy will be growing into out of the basment.
Among those things were a snuggli type carrier (which we, before Buffy arrived, tested by putting La Doof Kitton in. There was blood drawn; it's probably not wise to try it again. For the record, he doesn't fit into Moby wraps well either.) and a booster seat-do-jobby- -(It is a wee tiny cheap plastic chair to strap to a larger chair)

I set the things next to the couch and went about my business--which involved trying to strap cats into the carriers (which entertained Buffy) and watching spots on the walls (cold medicine is fun!) and teaching about 'pet nice' (Both cats were very tolerant of their lessons and Dawg wandered about for several minutes (until I arrived w/ a burp cloth) with a large gob of baby-drool on her head--I swear she thought it was a badge of honor).

Then I heard a 'whump' in the kitchen.
The Mr. said 'I heard NOTHING' but by the 3rd time, we remembered that there were cookies that La Doof Kitton had tried to climb into earlier in the day (he wasn't content just stealing cookies, he climbed into the packaging and tried to pretend 'nobody here but us cookies!' was a valid form of camouflage, so continuing to say "I hear NOTHING" didn't seem wise.

I walk into the kitchen and all I see is a tail and the white of one back paw.

I wish I had a picture but let me describe it; do you remember when, as a kid, you watched a cartoon where a character hid behind a large stick and disused himself a s a tree? or when they put a cardboard box over themselves and crept about and everyone believed it was a box? But we all know that when, in real life, one tries such things, we look like kids holding large sticks (not trees) or a box with a girl under it, not a box stealthily moving past the bad-guys.

Well, apparently no one told La Doof Kitton that these disguises didn't work, he had grand visions of sneaking up on *something* and not being recognized as a cat.
A small blue booster seat with one paw and a tail sticking out, was slowly working it's way across the floor and had made it from the couch to the kitchen table.
I'm not quite sure what said booster seat was going to do once it was hiding amongst the big chairs; perhaps it was just waiting for an opportunity to observe chairs in their natural habitats.
But we need slightly bigger booster seats; ones that cover Scooter-tails and hind legs.

Dawg does not go on a trip...

2011-01-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Mr. G took Buffy with him on a short trip.
He packed the baby into her car seat and headed out to the garage...

Now, Buffy is *almost* worth coming across the 'lava' (that is, the tile) for. Some days, Dawg will brave the lava just so sneak in one more lick of the "puppy's" toes. (please note, this is always problematic because while Buffy is incentive worth braving all the way across the lava for, there's no incentive to make Dawg act brave BACK to the safety of carpet. So Dawg could spend considerable amount of time 1-trapped 2-scrambling in a panic across the floor [because the faster she moves away from the lava, the less it hurts--at least that's what she thinks. Unfortunately, the more she scrambles, the more likely she is to pop her knee back out of joint. again.] or 3-being helped across the floor either by a grown-up in the house touching her shoulder all the way back to safety (or, on occasion, carrying her) or by laying towels across the floor. #3 tends to be the most common option).

A car trip is also *almost* worth coming across the lava for. (the adults in the house are sometimes almost worth it but usually, we're chopped liver. Or more accurately we're significantly less interesting than chopped liver because Dawg is fond of chopped liver)

So when Dawg saw Mr. G headed for a car trip WITH Buffy, it was clearly worth flinging herself across the lava for...Dawg flung herself to the safety of the landing.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a Dawg-friendly trip and Dawg could not be coxed back across the kitchen (lava! and besides, that would move her AWAY from Buffy and the car--why would anyone move away from Buffy or the car, ever?) so the Mr. set Buffy down, picked up Dawg and deposited her back onto the carpet.

Dawg was not standing for this--she braved lava and everything, how dare she be cheated out of her car trip with Buffy! So she started edging herself out onto the lava again...she made it as far as sliding herself under the kitchen table (Mr. G was trying to get out the door before this
At that moment, Buffy cried.

The cry startled Dawg who jumped. The jump knocked over a chair. The chair hit the floor with a loud BANG. The bang made Buffy SCREAM (this would be an upgrade, er downgrade? from cry--the pets are bothered by scream a lot more than they are bothered by cry). The scream set la Doof Kitton (who had been stalking Dawg) into motion...his tail went puffy and his legs pulled off that scooby-doo move where the feet move frantically at a speed beyond belief...and the animal goes nowhere.
The Scooby-ing La Doof Kitton knocked over a 2nd chair.
The second chair startled Buffy out of her scream and she went quiet and alert.
And at that, La Doof Kitton got his footing and launched himself away--not quite sure where he went, but he pouted for most of the rest of the day.

Poor Dawg was utterly confused by all of this. And she was, again, carried to safety.
And didn't go on a trip.
But for some reason, I think Dawg came closer to winning than La Doof Kitton did--serves him right for stalking Melvin-the-tail-of-the-Dawg across the lava.

(and, La Doof Kitton just came over, stepped on the mouse, and closed the window I was typing this post in. Thank goodness for autosave)

How La Doof Kitton got Dawg's bed 2 nights in a row, a story in 2 parts

2010-11-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

IN the last few months, sleeping arrangements in the G house have shuffled a lot.

Initially, the screen door in the nursery was used to keep all the pets out when Buffy was sleeping but Dawg was insistent and well behaved so she gets screen-door-ed Into the nursery at night. (when we get up to check on the baby/feed/change/whatever, the door is left open. It's shut when she's sleeping or when I'm pumping because SOMEONE (La Doof Kitton), seems to think that the hoses on the pump are tiny little snakes that move on their own, make hissing noises, and need to be killed. In fact, he has figured out how to unzip the pouch that holds the hoses if I don't latch it.

But when I'm awake with the baby, the door is open and the pets come and go. We even put a blankie-bed in there for Dawg.

Thanksgiving morning, for the first time in 6 months, I woke up w/ a migraine. (the migraine is relevant for the level of "OW ness" in the story that follows. Normally annoying lights or noises are just annoying. With a migraine, they're agony)

Actually, I woke up w/ it at 3 am and asked the Mr. to let me pump and then feed the baby what I pumped so I could grab an ice-pack and go back to bed. Which I did.

At 7 am, the Mr. offered to take her but she was being quietly fussy (loud fussy = bad. quiet fussy = not to bad--didn't feel like an ice-pick-through-the-skull...baby cry + migraine=badness, obviously) and I needed to get up regardless to pump if I didn't feed her so I got up w/ the baby.

But I was in 'not see straight, OWWWW' mode. Dawg was a bit concerned and got up from her blanket in the nursery to make sure we were OK.
Once assured that no one was going to die and that the 'puppy' was eating properly, Dawg went and had to re-arrange her blanket. It was in the wrong spot, the footstool blocked her view of me nursing the baby. SO Dawg spent 15 minutes shuffling her blanket over 2 feet (she's kinda slow at these things because she isn't especially bright at how to do this. You know those doggie IQ tests where you hide the treat under a towel? in a world populated w/ towels, Dawg would starve to death.). Dawg moved the bed so she could see us. She curls up and falls into 'watchdog' sleep.

Around that time, La Doof Kitton makes his way into the nursery-- If I'm just up, he can be in w/ us. He likes to curl up w/ Dawg. He decides this would be a great time to engage Dawg in 'lazy play'. Dawg doesn't WANT to lazy play. She's been up w/ the baby all night, she's tired. Wants to sleep. So she gets up, turns 180 degrees, and lays back down--her butt toward us, her face toward the bouncer seat.

La DOof Kitton decides that this means he needs to try harder and continues pestering Dawg. (throughout all of this, I'm deciding whether or not putting on sunglasses because the nightlight in an otherwise dark house is ridiculously bright and thinking my pets breathe to loud.) Dawg stretches herself away from La Doof Kitton...and one claw manages to hook the button on the front of the bouncer seat...and turn on the damn music box.

ARRRGH. I hate the music box.

Everyone in the room jumped. The baby woke up. I grabbed my head. La Doof Kitton's eyes got big, Dawg jumped to her feet...
Once my head adjusted, it wasn't HORRIBLY painful--and I couldn't get up and turn off the damn thing w/o waking the baby (and waking the baby would lead to crying which WOULD be horribly painful) . So Buffy went back to nursing and I watched as Dawg looked at me. Looked at the baby. Looked at the bouncer making this horrid tin-ny music...and made a whine that clearly said "that thing is effing annoying", got up, and left the room.

Thanks Dawg. ANd La Doof Kitton took another look at the loud music box, looked at us...and curled up in the middle of Dawg's bed with the "HA, more giant squishy blankie bed for ME"

(luckily the Mr. got up 15 minutes later and responded to my "THANK ALL THAT"S HOLY< TURN OFF THAT DAMN THING" whisper.)

Story #2, the Friday after Thanksgiving...

I still wasn't feeling swell on Friday but, I was feeling somewhat better.
I get up and my headache and I were, at 5:30 AM, sitting in the rocker, feeding Buffy.

Dawg was on her blanket and La Doof Kitton was sitting next to the heat vent.

El Gato came in to beg for pets--she jumped up on the footstool and tried to convince me that putting down Buffy to give her attention was the way to go. I gave her a few pets but didn't have much in the way of a free hand--she did get rubbed with my foot but we all know that cats don't think that counts.

Then Dawg sneezed loudly. REALLY loudly. This caused El Gato to throw herself off the footstool and run behind the chair t hide.
This lunging by El Gato caused the footstool to throw itself back...and biff Dawg in the head.
Dawg jumped up and was utterly confused as to why she was being pelted w/ flying ottomans! (ottomen? no, ottomans, I think) and puttered around, looking upset.
El Gato came out and stared at the ottoman...she considered jumping up on it but, being round, it just rolled over and bumped Dawg's shins when she put her paws against it.

This was to much for poor El Gato who left, sad at the lack of pettings and went to sleep with Mr. G. This was also to much for Dawg--she was trying to guard the baby and instead mom was laughing at her as she was attacked by furniture. She also went to sleep in the bedroom.

At which point, La Doof Kitton, who had kept his cool through all of this, walked over to the Dawg blanket, and snuggled himself into the middle of it with a smug "AH, THIS is my bed" look on his face and slept in a giant squishy bed of bliss for the next few hours.

I am a very bad blogger, but, YAY, updates

2010-11-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

For being a lousy blogger, I am sorry.

Problem being that, recently, I've had some stories to tell but I didn't think I wanted to jump into telling them without making a 'returning/announcement' post--which I haven't had time to make (so I'm hacking it out while on a lunch break)

That and I said I'd not post until I finished writing thank-you notes. (No, I haven't finished. I happen to have a BORING meeting for work this weekend that I plan to finish them during. Sorry Aunt Gertrude, the interwebz have spoken).

So, on to the announcement.
YES, the pets have a human sibling. She was born Sept. 2 and is wonderful. Everything went well and we're thrilled. (and online, her handle remains 'Buffy')

Dawg is in love. Absolute love. This new 'puppy' is her main concern in life. I worried the first few weeks about her level of exhaustion because she was guarding the baby and if I was awake w/ the baby (which was most of the time), she was awake and watching me be awake w/ the baby.
Heck, when the baby was on the floor, Dawg made an effort to nurse her (yes, really). There is no doubt that this child will be very spoiled with dog affection--the only 'problem' we have is excessive affection ("Dawg, leave her alone, the baby is clean", etc)--the sort of problem that I know other pet owners would pay good money to have.

The cats are wary but interested and no longer scared. El Gato and the baby have 'conversations' that go like this:
Meow
coo-gurgle-eh
meow
eh ugh, grunt
meow
coo
me...I'm done.

So, the story of Buffy meeting the pets.
Once we found out I was being induced, things happened fast. We got home and Mr. G called 'Uncle D'--a friend of his who is our pet-sitter and home-looker-after-er (who all the pets adore), to ask if he could pet-sit. We got the answer of 'er, uhm. No. You see, I'll be down the hall where my sister is having her c-section. I can let them out at some point but, no, not really".
Best laid plans and all that--we got Uncle D and the grandparents to take shifts so that the pets weren't locked away for extended periods of time.
Then there was labor that looked remarkably unlike TV shows. Then there was Buffy and much rejoycing.

A nurse reminded us to send home the wee-hat-that-makes-her-look-like-a-gnome for the pets to sniff; the Mr. took it home and then realized that, since labor looks remarkably unlike TV shows, the excessive interest Dawg had in the hat was focused on the area where there was blood. ew.

But we got ready to go home and decided to spread out the attentions--I kept the pets with me whie the Mr. went into the nursery and closed the screen door (the screen door was put up to control the pet entrances/exits while we get things sorted out--we still use it because La Doof Kitton likes ot reach between crib bars and pat at the mattress and if he wakes her at 4 am, so help me Cuthulu, I will call down curses on him)...

I walked to the screened doorway to see what was happening, Buffy made a small cry...and in that instant El Gato removed herself into some sort of hiding, which is where she spent the next 24ish hours. La Doof Kitton CLIMBED the screen door to the top to try to get in and see--I turned my head and was looking, eye level, at cat-butt. Dawg tried to claw through the door and successfully made an impressive gash in the screen.

We decided keeping pets and baby separated was causing more trouble than it saved us, so I gave up and opened the door.
La Doof Kitton approached the crying bundle, sniffed and then the baby moved and La Doof Kitton lost his bravery and joined El Gato in hiding.
Dawg? well, Dawg put a paw on the side of the crib, climbed up and looked in. THen she decided to stand guard and for the next 45 minutes, it looked like this:

That's the best picture we have because Dawg's tail is an absolute BLUR in the rest of them.

So the stories of the G household will now have an extra person. And I fully expect Dawg to continue being confused about her role with the 'puppy'.
But La Doof Kitton and El Gato have gotten braver and they're willing to sniff Buffy and to be in the same room with her (La Doof Kitton will even try to get into the same lap).
ANd we can now return to regularly scheduled blogging :)

Milk ring day!

2010-06-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

You'll have to forgive the camera work--this is a new toy and I"m not real adept. And I was filming w/ one hand while getting a milk ring w/ the other. (and I was obviously in the middle of baking...and taking care of groceries because I had run out of powdered sugar while baking)

But every 3 days at our house, this is what happens...and no, I have NO IDEA where he takes the milkrings. There are 3 in the office closet right now--or, to be more accurate, 2.5-one of them was half-eaten by Dawg.

We've been building new shelves

2010-04-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

But La Doof Kitton likes to consider them cat-cozies designed so he can stair-step between them. (The picture doesn't give scale well but, do realize that the shelf he is currently on is almost 6' off the ground.)

I'd like to pretend that adding books to them has moved the cats away from the lovely stairt-step shelves. But currently? that shelf holds Lemony Snickett's books...and La Doof Kitton on top of said books.

I suppose it's an improvement over his other book obsession. For the last 3 weeks, at least every-other day, La Doof Kitton places himself on the other bookshelves (the ones that just look like bookshelves) and finds my old paperback copy of _Les Miserables_ (on the shelf about 4.5 feet high) and places one paw on top of the book...and flings the book from the shelf to the floor where it lands w/ a very loud thump.
And then he curls Scooter-the-Tail around his paws and looks pleased with himself.

I'm not sure what Victor Hugo did to my cat or if it's merely that La Doof Kitton resents Jean ValJean's transition to a model citizen but he *really* dislikes that book being on the shelf.
(while it screws with my book organization, for this week, we swapped _Les Miserables_ and _Shogun_ [since they're similar thickness] as an experiment--I'll let you know how it goes)

Recently, the G family toilet paper has looked funny.

2010-03-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

The toilet paper in the house has looked like it belongs in a cartoon where the kittehs unroll all the TP.

This, of course, is silly because for all their PITA-ness, our kittehs don't unroll the TP. Oh no, the TP is shredded because La Doof Kitton decided he wanted to go to Narnia. Now, the proper way to do this is to find a wardrobe which was carved from magical wood from the tree planted by the Magician's Nephew, but La Doof Kitton, not being literate (at least I don't *think* he is fully literate) decided that poking around in the back of the linen closet (since said linen closet has a small access panel to get to the bathroom plumbing--a kitteh who tried really hard could probably manage to make it into the basement ceiling, heaven help us) might be the best way to make it to Narnia.

Of course, he neglected to tell us that he planned to go to Narnia, so when he snuck into the linen closet, we wondered who had left the door open--and closed the door.
Now, trapped in a small dark closet with the dreaded vacuum (which was off but is still the scary sucking noisy machine of DOOM), he decided he needed to claw his way out. He could have clawed towels or vacuums or soap or a wall or a door--any one of which might have made enough noise that we would have opened the door to let him out...but he thought that digging a hole in the toilet paper was still his best bet on accessing Narnia.

Several hours later, when we realized the house was to quiet, we opened the door and La Doof Kitton sauntered out. I haven't yet decided whether or not he really found Mr. Tumnus but he did leave behind a mega-jumbo-gigantic pack of toilet paper--in which every roll has lost a battle w/ wee kitteh claws.
And I do think that he must have been successful--why else would he rush to trap himself back in the linen closet now, every time I open it?

But it is hard on the toilet paper.

Trying to get him to announce the news...

2010-02-27T19:38:00.001-08:00

So, (as promised), I decided that La Doof Kitton, as abdication of his 'baby of the family' status, would announce that he was going to be a big brother...by wearing a t-shirt. (although forwarning now--there are no wonderful announcement pictures I love. They're amusing but the fates didn't cooperate)

Yes, for anyone not already in the know, we are adding our first 2 legged child to the mix.
The pets don't quite 'get' it yet--La Doof Kitton isn't sure he wants a new kitten in the house and El Gato is holding out on giving an opinion until after she determines how much milk is in the deal for her. And Dawg is still asking if it's a new puppy or a new kitten.
They'll understand eventually.

I 'made' a t-shirt (which is putting it very generously. I barely know how to sew. But I had a t-shirt I was using bits of for something else--I turned it inside out and sewed it 'smaller' and then painted "I'm gonna be a big brother" on it), pictured here:

Well, we put La Doof Kitton in the Mr's lap and showed him 'his' new shirt and he wasn't convinced. I tried my baby-sister's trick of telling him 'it will be FUN, I promise' and he wisely gave me the 'fun for WHO?' look in response (which is the only appropriate response).

So, we attempted to put the shirt on him.
I'm still forever confused as to how the bones of a cat turn into cooked linguine when you try to make them do things. I'm also forever confused as to how 4 feet and 1 mouth manage to make EVERY side of the cat pointy when you touch it.
(so, NO, there are no pictures of us getting him into the shirt--there were not enough hands)

So with the shirt on, La Doof Kitton decided that his legs no longer worked.

After trying repeatedly to stand him up...and failing (I'd pick him up, he'd be limp. I'd set him down on his feet and he'd give me the 'but MOM, there's a SHIRT, they don't WORK' look and flop down), I went to the craft cupboard to grab a poofball...

Ah, yes, the legs they work to get poofs.

Poof in hand (er, claw. Er, accurately, mouth), La Doof Kitton stalked about the office for a few minutes as the shirt proved to fit him less and less well...and he couldn't decide what to do about this new level of stress I was causing. The poof was wonderfully fun and needed to be played with--but the shirt was still causing his legs not to work. So he carried the poof the dark cave under the desk to hide his embarrassment.

At this point, I took pity on him and went through quite a struggle to remove the shirt without having him turn all pointy again. The fact that he got multiple poofs out of this ordeal is the only reason I'm not going to be sleeping with one eye open tonight.

So I think La Doof Kitton is beginning to understand what it may be like to be a big brother. It means weird upsets to routine and being dressed up. But does result in poofs and attention too.

Although he's still not as excited about the prospects as Mr. G and I are.

Sewing with cats

2010-01-16T16:44:00.001-08:00

I should once again apologize for being lax in my posting...but that would be redundant because I do that much to often. So you'll all just have to assume I'm a jerk.

But I am a jerk who recently sewed her first-ever-project from a pattern.
And La Doof Kitton helped. (El Gato helped too but not nearly as much)
The project turned out OK, and the story isn't very entertaining (except the point where La Doof Kitton tried to get his wee paw run over by the sewing machine, I panicked in trying to rescue him, and instead, I thumped myself with the pressure foot and thought I broke a finger) but the pictures make me giggle :-)

Where's the kitteh? And where did this lump come from?

At this point, El Gato decided to pounce the lump in the pattern...of course she wasn't picking on her baby-brother, she just was pouncing the lump for me. And, of course, La Doof Kitton pounced from the other side. And left his tail [Scooter] hanging out so that Scooter could flop around angrily)

At that point, they started damaging the pattern so I took it away. La Doof Kitton instead positioned himself to be able to pounce the thread tails as soon as I started up the machine. (He did eventually get himself locked out of the room until the project was done)

The demise of the treat-dispensing-toy

2009-11-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

Fairly recently, an admirer sent La Doof Kitton and El Gato some toys (really. Apparently there are people who like my pets. Even if Dawg is still not allowed to visit the houses of some relatives after nearly destroying them). There some of these toys are still around the house (under the fridge, in the toy basket, or hiding in the basement) but the treat ball didn't make it.

The treat ball was a fairly straightforward toy--a hollow ball with a hole in it. So you put treats/catnip/etc in the ball and as they bat it about, the good-things-inside fall out of the hole. Genius I tell you!

So, I broke out this shiny new treat ball and, when it came time for the kittehs' bedtime treats, I gave them each ONE and put the other stinky little bits of tasty bad-for-kitty-ness into the treat ball and set it on the floor (on the side of the baby gate that Dawg can NOT get to--Dawg also likes kitteh treats) and I went to bed.

I heard the hubbub of kittehs trying to get to treats for a while and then I heard the *thump, thump, thump, thumppity thump thump thumppity* of a treat ball bouncing down a flight of steps. And then I heard silence. And then I went to sleep.

When I got up in the morning, the ball was lying in 2 halves at the bottom of the stairs, sans treats. While that's not ideal, it was still forcing El Gato to exercise for her treat and it was fun (Okay, *I* thought it was fun. La Doof Kitton seemed to be enjoying himself. El Gato seemed to think that I should be beaten with sticks for making it harder to get to her treats) so I was game to keep doing this.

We repeated the "treats in the ball at night" several more times before I realized that I quit hearing the sound of kittehs trying to get to treats...apparently ONE of them (or both...but my money is on one--La Doof Kitton) figured out that taking the ball to the top of the stairs and shoving it down = ball in pieces and, YAY TREATS with less work.

So, the next day, I decided that I would put catnip, rather than treats in the ball. La Doof Kitton is mostly indifferent to catnip while El Gato is all for the reefer madness. and hits that bong pretty hard. I put a large pinch of catnip in the ball and put the ball in the library (Dawg doesn't like the library--the floor is lava) and watched El Gato sniff at it. A few minutes later, I heard a noise in the living room that sounded less than promising; I forgot that, as indifferent to catnip as La Doof Kitton is, Dawg is not. I don't think Dawg gets a 'rush' from it, I think she just likes eating El Gato's toys and she associates the smell with fun-to-eat kitteh toys.

I arrived in the living room to find El Gato, perched on the back of the couch looking VERY upset while Dawg lay under the couch (that's where she goes when she's chewing on things she oughtn't be chewing on) , surrounded by flakes of catnip and purple and green plastic bits.

So the treat ball didn't make it--the kitteh's are back to just having their bits of partially-digested-animal-by-product-meal (ew) placed in front of them at bedtime. And La Doof Kitton seems disappointed that he doesn't get to push things downstairs. And El Gato is quite content with the return to the status quo--and easier access to treats.

Halloween wine foil anyone?

2009-10-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

La Doof Kitton perched in the window and investigated the trick-or-treaters...he actually tried to slither out the front door to get to them so I locked him in the office, where he watched vigilantly for the ghouls and goblins (this window looks right out onto the front door):

I heard noises in the kitchen and went to investigate...
La Doof Kitton was sitting in the middle of the floor with the cork from my bottle of Halloween wine.

I decided the possibility of staining was to great and took it away from him and came back to my computer.

I heard noises and returned to the kitchen...
La Doof Kitton was sitting in the middle of the floor with the foil top from my bottle of Halloween wine.

I decided this was more-or-less safe. So I got the camera and watched him play with this for the next several minutes--and eventually El Gato, in typical pushy older sister fashion, came and nosed in. She fiddled with it for a minute and then decided that such things were beneath her (more like she didn't want to fight her brother for it--seeing as he tends to win).

The night's favorite toy:

(wandering away with it held firmly in his teeth)

Oooh, maybe it will go down the stairs

El Gato inspecting this 'toy'

I'm not quite sure where the wine foil is now, but I gave them that as a 'treat' so I get no tricks, right?
(ETA--Initially, I had given them some plastic kid's fangs as their Halloween treat...but apparently, La Doof Kitton fed them to Dawg earlier today. So I can expect glowing green flecks in the back yard this week.)

Of yogurt lids and things

2009-10-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

(I actually started to post this tale a week ago...but our DSL modem fried itself mid-post. Literally. And it took a while to get a new one. But AT&T was pretty gracious about the entire thing and didn't charge me for this new piece of plastic attached here, so I have no room to complain)

If you didn't know, Yoplait runs a thingy where sending in lids provides donations to Breast Cancer research. Given how much yogurt this house goes through on a weekly basis (the critters eat it. I eat it. Mr. G eats it), we are saving up a pile o' lids to send in soon. Since all lids must be clean, the pets do their duty every time I open a yogurt at home by volunteering to clean the lid off for me. It works well--they clean the lid off, I run it under water to get anything they miss (HA, like that happens!) and then I stick the lid into a baggie that is attached to the very top of the fridge by a strong magnetic clip.

Well, recently, the Mr. and I left to go about our days...and came home to find yogurt lids strewn about.

APPARENTLY *someone* in the house had managed to climb to the top of the fridge, reach down inside the baggie (the baggie was still firmly magnet-ed to the fridge), and fish out lids. There was a breadcrumb trail of lids that lead from the kitchen to the office and then from the office to the living room. And the next day we found several tucked inside the blanket that's on top of the couch. And a few days later we found several inside the towel that sits on the exercise bike.

He seemed to thoroughly enjoy creating a scavenger hunt--although I believe he was disappointed that the lids lacked yogurt for him to eat (not that he eats it--he only eats it if it irritates the other pets. He likes to play with the lids and steal them from the other pets; he's indifferent to yogurt as a food--he prefers it as a plaything).

So, since it was apparent that the kitton could sit on top of the fridge and dig out yogurt lids, we moved them. We stuck the magnet smack in the middle of the fridge--it wouldn't be reachable from the top OR the floor. or at least we didn't think it would.

We came home to find 1-the baggie o' lids, with teethmarks in it, on the kitchen floor and 2-magnets and a few of the bits of magnetic poetry spread about the kitchen floor. The magnetic poetry was well chewed--I'm not sure who did that, although there was a dog-centric set as a part of the poetry that said 'treat' which is gone altogether--I can only assume Dawg ate it.
Best guess is that La Doof Kitton positioned himself on a counter/the back of a chair/the microwave cart and launched himself at the fridge--grabbing the bag and dragging it downward and scattering magnets as he slid down.

With that sort of determination at play, we gave up and the baggie o' lids is IN the fridge, on a shelf.

Just to remind us that he's boss, however, La Doof Kitton DID apparently climb up and steal the dry erase marker off the magnetic dry-erase board earlier this week. We're still not sure where that went.
(I believe the score for THIS debacle is Pets 3, humans 0)

stuck in the cupboards...

2009-10-23T10:13:00.001-07:00

I was hungry, so I opened the cupboard where pots and pans are to grab a pan. I turn back around from setting it on the stove just inside to watch a gray kitteh tail disappear into the cupboard. I grumble and attempt to lure him out.

He (shock of shocks :-P) ignores me.

I try to lure him out with scratchy noises and a wadded up piece of paper and a toy and a treat...he (shocking, I know) IGNORES me.

So I leave the cupboard open and start on my lunch and turn around when I hear strange noises I look in the cupboard and see a kitteh butt...the rest of La Doof Kitton is on top of the drawer slider. hanging into the next cupboard over...the one under the sink where all the noxious chemicals are. He apparently climbed onto the drawer slider and decided to go exploring.

So I open that cupboard and debate what to do. He climbs the rest of the way into the under-sink-cupboard and sits there. He debates climbing into the NEXT cupboard over--the one that leads to where the wine rack is--NOTHING good ever comes of that--besides, from there he can get himself (again) behind the drawers o' doom.

I try again to lure him out and he convinces me that he's STUCK--that he can't get around all the bottles and shelves and such...

I have an epiphany and lightning strikes my brain and I walk over to the microwave cart and I roll it away from the fridge. (he likes getting between appliances. And laying there. And refusing to move so we can put appliances back)

Miracle of miracles, SUDDENLY the universe shifts, the atoms align, and La Doof Kitton CAN fit around the bottles and under the small shelf.

And he appears between the microwave cart and fridge and lays down, so he can feel under the fridge for toys. And pulls out a milking and continues laying in the warmth between appliances to enjoy his victory.

Samurai X

2009-10-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

I needed the laugh tonight...

After work, we all relaxed in the living room. Dawg was under my feet, El Gato was on the back of the couch, and La Doof Kitton plopped down on the coffee table, pretending he didn't want to eat the flowers on the other end of the table (he did. and does. He was hoping we'd look away.we didn't yet. He will win and eat them eventually).

Well, he flopped down on the netflix pile...

and got the adhesive jammed onto his fur.

He stood up, confused as to what was pulling his fur...and then he wandered about, still confused. Then he realized he was being attacked by a red and white envelope and did the logical cat thing...he panicked.

So he ran around the living room, being chased by Samurai X until the adhesive gave out.

He then sat on the chair (not the coffee table--apparently it bites) and eyed the envelope warily for a while.

And we laughed. So he eyed us with the look of one who may attempt to murder us later for expressing mirth at his disgrace.

We still have the 'treat fling' as a part of the nightly ritual. and it amuses me.

2009-10-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

Every night, the pets get a 'bedtime treat'. I tell Dawg 'go to bed' and she goes to the hallway (or the bedroom) and waits for me to toss her a treat.

Usually La Doof Kitton is at the 'treat point' (next to where the treats are kept) before I even finish talking to Dawg. If not, he hears the rattle of the treat can and comes running (El Gato doesn't come running but will saunter into the right general direction. Running is to much work).

At this point, I shake out a few of the tremendously icky pounce treats (truly, they are indeed icky. Have you ever looked at the ingredients? But El Gato *refuses* to eat any w/ healthy ingredients) and I hold El Gato's in my left hand and La Doof Kitton's in my right. I set El Gato's down in front of her...and I fling La Doof Kitton's across the room in a shower of icky cat-treat rain. Why? because if I set them in front of him, he scarfs them down and steals El Gato's before she can eat them. And if I fling them? he's much more interested in the 'oooh, that treat is trying to escape' treat than he is in the "meh, that treat is just sitting there" treat.

What's scary is that the Mr and I both developed this same treat-feeding mechanism independently...and Uncle D, the cat sitter? he developed it independently as well. Apparently La Doof Kitton's spunk is predictable sometimes :-)

King of the Chair

2009-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is how this game is played...(keeping in mind, it's hard to photograph these things one handed)
Place cat in office chair (in this instance, I lured the cat into a bag first, then put the bag in the chair...usually, however, the cat puts HIMSELF into the chair)

Sneak behind chair (and by sneak, I mean, go about as nosily and obviously as you'd like...but duck down so they can't see you. They'll forget you're there within 2 seconds. )

Tap human hand on top of chair thusly:

Continue tapping on the chair until the cat responds...this takes between 2 seconds and 15 minutes, depending on the cat. (The cat's response is designed to scare you. It's like staring at the toaster and waiting for it to pop up. You KNOW it's coming. You're expecting it. But you still dump hot coffee all over yourself when it happens.)

Responding looks like this:

And then the cat gets distracted by nothing and you grab it's paw:

And then the cat says "I'm king" and lays on the back of the chair. or back in the seat, depending on what inconveniences the people most at that moment.

At which point, a very ambitious/evil person may put the cat back in the bag and play with the arms...which usually ends up with the chair spinning until everyone is dizzy

Regardless, the game always ends the same way...with a satisfied cat sitting.aying anywhere he darn well pleases.

Running up-side-down

2009-09-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

La Doof Kitton likes to run. He runs around the house a lot.

And sometimes, he runs under the couch. He climbs under the couch and rolls so his back is on the carpet and his feet are up in the air. Then he sticks out all of his claws, digs them deep into the underbelly of the couch, and runs around under there.

It's incredibly difficult to get pictures of him doing this but, I tried...(Please not El Gato enjoying the sunbeams and completely ignoring her annoying baby brother. And also note some of the blurryness caused by trying to get a picture of a wee gray perpetual motion machine):

in which La Doof Kitton feeds Dawg more things

2009-09-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

wow, I'm an incredibly negligent blogger again. Sorry.

So, twice in the last week, La Doof Kitton fed things to dog.

1-The cheese wrapper
I was having a bout of insomnia. It happens from time to time and usually results in me prowling around the house in the half-darkness and making enough noise to wake up Mr. G and I generally make a pest of myself.
Well, I got hungry while pacing and grabbed a piece of string cheese from the fridge. Because I was pacing I absent-mindedly dropped the wrapper to said piece of string-cheese in the trash can off the kitchen--the one w/o a lid.

The next morning, I realized that Dawg was acting like she had something she wasn't supposed to. I couldn't see anything and I looked and assumed she was acting 'guilty' for some other reason.
But when I went to leave the house, I realized that tiny trash can was knocked over.

I KNOW Dawg didn't go and knock over that trash can because she can't go across the tile and down the step into onto the landing. (okay, maybe she CAN but she won't. Linoleum = lava and stairs in the house = impenetrable barrier). And I know El Gato didn't do it because she actually spent the night in bed with me.
Which means...(dun dun dun)...La Doof Kitton knocked over the trash can, pulled out the cheese wrapper, and brought it somewhere for Dawg to take from him.

(and the good ending is, that made me remember that I had indeedy put a cheese wrapper in there at 4 am. And so I knew what I was looking for. And I retrieved the cheese wrapper before Dawg ingested it--which is MUCH more pleasant than retrieving it after she has ingested it.)

2-The shirt
I have quite a few of what are commonly, in this house, called 'chore coats'. You know, those lined flannel shirts that you wear out to the barn (no, we don't have a barn) to do chores? Most of mine were stolen from my dad (sorry dad) over the years and they live in the front coat closet to grab whenever you need something warmer than just a flannel but not so 'nice' as a Carhartt.

Well, at some unGodly hour like 4am (do you notice how often these things happen at 4 am? why do pets not need things more often at noon? or even 10 pm), it was my turn to take Dawg out when she decided she had an 'emergency' need to go out. I grabbed a chore coat and her leash, headed out into the pouring rain, and tossed the chore coat on the back of a kitchen chair to dry when I came back in.

The next morning, I tried to put Dawg outside and she informed me that, no, she didn't need to go out. Not only had she 'already gone' (at 4 am) but it was still raining...why would she want to go out in that? So I left the animals to their own devices --with El Gato and La Doof Kitton playing "pick in your sibling" and "you can't see me through this cloth--let me hit you while you can't see me" through the chore coat on the back of the chair--while I went about my day.

A while later, I see the coat on the floor and think nothing of it--the cats do tend to knock things over when they play the above games. I also saw Dawg considering laying on the coat--she loves napping on our clothing and while this is one of my nicest chore coats (or, one of dad's nicest chore coats--sorry dad), it wasn't something I cared if she napped on.

Even LATER, Mr. G walked into the room and said "Well Dawg, don't you look all....wait, why are you eating mom's coat?"

Remember I said these are coats you take for chores? well....walking Dawg is a chore. And so, apparently, a long LONG time ago, I filled the breast pocket of the chore coat with dog cookies (we love having pocket sized cookies around).

And...since Dawg isn't quite smart enough to get inside the pocket (the pocket was NOT buttoned. There is a 'flap' but the pocket was plenty big enough to fit a nose into...) she did the next logical thing...she ate the pocket.

So this is no longer one of my 'nicest' chore coats. It's now the one with a giant hole in the left breast. (sorry dad!).
Dawg looked so very disappointed when she realized I was going to take away her new treat-dispensing-bed...but she was thrilled that, upon me grabbing the coat and picking it up, her handiwork came to fruition--since there was no longer a bottom to the pocket, all the crumbs of doggie cookie scattered all over the floor for her to lap up.

Mr. G found this funnier than I did for some reason :-P

And more grooming...

2009-07-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

When I finished brushing El Gato, I'm always left with piles of gray kitteh fur. I rolled some of into a wee El Gato's gray kitteh fur sausage so it wouldn't blow into my computer's ventilation while I finished the brushing. La Doof Kitton thought that might be the new, coolest kitteh toy evah. He stole it, played with it, layed on it, rolled around on it and cuddled with it.

Then he tried to eat it.

(directions for making such a toy, if you want to risk the eating are here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Cat-Toys/
)
Pictures:

(and darn-it-all, the photographic evidence just got me in trouble. Because we just had a conversation that sounded something like this:

Mr. G: *looking over my shoulder* What's he got in those pictures?
Me: Uhm, a pile of El Gato hair
Mr. G: WHAT?
Me: He wanted to help with the brushing...I had rolled up El Gato's hair so it wouldn't blow away and he came and played with it
Mr. G: *reading blog-not-yet-posted* And he ate it?
Me: uhhh *desperately stalling* Look, something sparkly!
Mr. G: That only works on you.
Me: Oh, right. Well, he tried to eat it. I took most of it away when he started eating it. But he did run off with a wad of it and I couldn't find it anywhere--I guess he hid it somewhere.
Mr. G: Like in his stomach.
Me: Maybe.
Mr. G: And do you suppose that might explain why I've cleaned up puked up piles of cat hair every day for the last 3 days?
Me: Maybe.
Mr. G: You should just not tell me these things...
Me: I didn't tell you! I was keeping it secret and just putting it on the blog
Mr. G: *sounded a little incredulous* You don't think that counts as telling me?
Me: Well, both cats have refused to be brushed for the last 3 days so I'm fairly sure they're done eating and puking up hair for now
Mr. G: Well that's good. We'll just go back to the old system of them licking themselves, ingesting hair that way, and puking it up. It takes them longer that way to get a good sized pile of vomit together.

So, there you have it, rolled up bits of cat fur? not a good kitteh toy. ANd likely to lead to marital strife. I suppose that him cleaning up 3 days worth of kitteh vomit means its my turn to do the cat boxes.)

(ETA: we just found the 'toy'/furball. Or what's left of it. Hidden on a shelf in the library. I've no idea how much of it was ingested but I am officially not responsible for any future puking episodes.)

Reluctant about grooming...

2009-07-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

La Doof Kitton doesn't shed a lot--this is a good thing as it counters the fact that El Gato sheds more than any other cat I have ever known. Regardless, there are no surfaces in the house where you won't get gray cat hairs on your black suit--rest assured of that. We try to groom the kittehs but neither of them likes it much.

Earlier this week, I finished brushing and wiping down El Gato (yes, that explains the baby-wipe-thingies in the pics) when La Doof Kitton plopped himself down in front of me to demand attention so I tried to furminate him (with one hand while operating the camera with the other hand--for future refence? Cat grooming is a 3 hand job).

He was bound and determined not to be brushed--but he was also bound and determined not to be chased off from the prime laying spot--on top of all mom's stuff and in front of the computer monitor. He was also determined to chew off the rubber on the furminator handle.

Pictures and, rarity of rarities, video:

Mmm, microwave goodies

2009-07-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

I apologize, I haven't had time to post and I should have.

But, will cute pictures hold off the hordes?

mmm, what have we here?

I'll take my tilapia raw, thanks.

(please note, the toaster in front of La Doof Kitton?
that lives there because it's not as far for it to fall when he decides to push it down to get to the crumbs)

Eavesdropping

2009-07-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the living room, watching Mr. G make himself lunch today, that this is how the conversation went:

*opens microwave to zap lunch*

Huh, lookit, a cupcake. Why would a cupcake have to live in the microwave?

*gray and white paw appears as La Doof Kitton stands on his hind feet and tries to get a claw into the cupcake.*

Oh no you don't little man. Chocolate is bad for kittehs.

*Mr. G sets his lunch down on the table and gets the cupcake...in that moment, La Doof Kitton goes from the floor to the kitchen table, trying to Bogart lunch...*

HEY! Not allowed on the table!

*La Doof Kitton moves to the floor before he can be moved. Mr. G sets the cupcake on the table and puts his lunch in the microwave*

two minutes...start....

*a gray and white paw appers above the edge of the table and one claw manages to hook into the cupcake paper and start dragging it toward the edge of the table...*

HEY!
*paw disappears*

You know it is all your fault we can't have nice things. And that the cupcakes live in the microwave. and that the cookies live in the oven. And that the dog treats are locked in cupboards.

*La Doof Kitton looks up at Mr. G expectantly, sees no treats are forthcoming and walks to the cupboard below the microwave. He nudges it open and climbs inside, to nest on top of the pudding cups*

Yeah, I give up too.

(and I ate the cupcake directly afterwards to remove temptation from the microwave.)

A Dawg story thrown in for good measure.

2009-06-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, this is La Doof Kitton's blog. He shouldn't have to share it with the other pets.

But, truly, I found my write up of this Dawg story funny (yes, I'm easily amused. And yes, I laugh at my own jokes. And yes, I wrote it up already, some of you already saw it--sorry) so I figured everyone could deal. So without further ado:

Why I fired Dawg as my protector.

2 tidbits that are relevant:

1-I don't wear shoes in the summer @ home unless I'm going farther than a 10' radius around the yard. Blame my grandma who thought shoes were a torture device and that barefoot was the way to be. (and no, it doesn't hurt. Feet toughen up fast)

2-there are very few things that skeeve me out bug-wise. Exceptions = earwigs and/or things in swarms. (which makes sense--I don't care how much you love butterflies, standing in 3000 of them can give you the heebie-jeebies. Or at least it can me)

So.

Today was trash day. Last night, i was getting the trash out and Dawg was 'helping' (see Dawg's definition of helping under 'hindering'). So she followed me around the house as I gathered trash [except the basement to do cat boxes--she's still afraid of the monster that eats puppies]. Then she went with me outside and we put all the trash in the container.

Then I moved the trash cart and, as we've had a LOT of wet weather recently, I saw a whole google of earwigs scurrying around. I lost it for a moment. I didn't scream but I had a fit of heebie-jeebies right then and there.

Even Dawg, being the *least* intuitive animal in the house (El Gato is the most, oddly enough. She always knows what we're feeling. She might not *CARE* and she sure as shooting won't help, but she makes it clear she knows), knew I was freaked out. And she deduced that the freak out was directed at the garbage cart. So she placed herself between me and the cart and made funny postures in front of it in order to say "quit freaking out Mom". Unfortunately, she did this while standing on my bare feet. And her nails need to be trimmed.

So, with a few bleeding scratches on the top of my feet, I flee out of Dawggie claw range and go put on shoes--I decided I needed protection between my toes and the devilish murder of carnivorous clawed critters.

I'm warily circling the trash container, eyeing it very suspiciously. Dawg seems to get that something is still bothering me. So since I made it clear that chewing on the trash cart wasn't the preferred answer, she looked for what else might bother me. So she scurried directly though the swarm of evil earwigs and....grabbed a stray leaf. She killed that leaf but good, making it very clear to the neighboring leaves that they should not bother mom. (ignoring the earwigs, of course)

I glared at her a wee bit for not noticing the earwigs she was walking in and out of and Dawg's little doggie light bulb went off...leaves were *not* the culprit. So she looked around to see what else might be getting to me...and she looked at the trash cart, at the seething mass of earwigs and then lit on what must be scaring mom...a pine cone.

The pine cone dutifully destroyed, she ran happy laps around the yard, quite certain she had defended mom against the evils of the yard's natural enemies.

I sighed, watched most of the earwigs disperse, grabbed the cart, and fled the rest of the bugs.

Then I came back to the house to have the heebie-jeebies. And I fired Dawg as the defender against earwigs.

Apparently the cats aren't fond of peppermint cremes.

2009-06-27T18:54:00.001-07:00

I've been making things in the kitchen.

And Dawg's knee has been going in and out so she decided she couldn't lay underfoot--to risky. So the cats got to help instead.

I was kneading my peppermint creames (the ingredients in the bowl = lots of powdered sugar, egg white, peppermint extract and lemon juice) and a big poof of 'dough' and powdered sugar landed on the floor.

Dawg saw this and hobbled up onto her 3 legs and headed toward the tasty treats. La Doof Kitton and El Gato got there first.

El Gato arrived just in time for another pea-sized blob of dough to pop out of the bowl and konk her on the head. She, in typical El Gato fashion, over reacted, panicked, and fled. I'm not sure where she went because she hasn't come back out yet.

La Doof Kitton sniffed around. He wasn't interested in the sugar, which makes sense because cats can't taste sweet. But he decided that a blob of minty-sugar was worth exploring...and promptly decided that was a *tremendously* bad idea. He spit it out, stuck out his tongue several times, and sneezed repeatedly.

So Dawg DID indeed get to clean up the floor by herself. Which she enjoyed.

I bought La Doof Kitton's forgiveness only because pom-poms were on clearance in the craft asile of local store. Apparently 2 pom-poms is the going rate for laughing at a Kitton for hating mint.

I heard La Doof Kitton hiss at El Gato...

2009-06-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

which is a first.

There is a lot of cat growling and hissing in our house. But it all comes from El Gato. El Gato has the bad habit of hissing whenever La Doof Kitton annoys her. This is perfectly reasonable when La Doof Kitton is doing things to annoy her like chewing on Roscoe (her tail) or tackling her or trying to steal her treats. It's less reasonable when he is doing things to annoy her like breathing the same air, being in the same room, or walking away from her.

Regardless, the kitteh growling in our house stems from one source, El Gato. The only time La Doof Kitton has hissed involved things like tails being stepped on.

Until this week.
This week, we have had bug heaven in our house. I'm not quite sure why but moths have been sneaking their way in. Not a big problem (except some earwigs snuck in and *shudder* they give me the heebie jeebies for no good reason) and it does provide pet entertainment.

I was getting out of the shower and watched a fairly large moth land on the blinds. I asked the Mr. if he wanted to help La Doof Kitton catch a moth for me. The Mr. scooped up La Doof Kitton and showed him the moth which promptly flew out of kitton reach toward the lights above the sink. The Mr. and La Doof Kitton played a very very odd game of 'whack-a-moth' that involved the Mr., holding La Doof Kitton, moving La Doof Kitton into moth range, La Doof Kitton swiping at the moth, the moth moving a few inches and the Mr. moving La Doof Kitton.

Eventually, La Doof Kitton caught the moth between his 2 front paws. The Mr. at that point said he wasn't sure if he had done his good deed for the day or his bad deed for the day...maybe they were the same deed? He set La Doof Kitton down and the moth was not released...the moth was set down carefully, batted a few times, then, lifted into La Doof Kitton's mouth. La Doof Kitton jumped down onto the floor and spat out the moth to take a few more swipes.

At that moment, El Gato rounded the corner and was eying La Doof Kitton's moth with interest. Faster than a thought, the moth was buried beneath his paws and he was making spitting/hissing noises I had never heard before. El Gato thought about what to do for a moment--weighing double what La Doof Kitton does, she can beat him in a fight...until, of course, she lets him up. At the point when she has 'won' and tries to walk away, La Doof Kitton is like one of those obnoxious punching-bag-clowns who springs back upright and tries to tackle her. Which is why she never wins fights--there's always another rount to go (when all she wants to do is go back to napping). She decided La Doof Kitton could keep his stupid moth, she didn't want one anyhow and sauntered away.

La Doof Kitton put the moth back into his mouth and disappeared into the basement. I'm not quite sure what moth tortures went on but, La Doof Kitton did NOT come back upstairs for bedtime treats 15 minutes later (a first). I'm fairly sure things involving hoses and lotions and baskets occurred.

Two hours later, La Doof Kitton launched himself into the middle of our bed for his nightly snuggle (late). I said the pouncing was him thanking us for his 'toy'. The Mr. says that, more than likely, La Doof Kitton was testing to see if the fresh kill had given him super moth powers (he also says that La Doof Kitton will forever claim he caught the moth without human help).

No super powers. Yet. Maybe if he eats a few dozen more...

I wonder if he's now intentionally putting the box on the floor?

2009-06-13T13:12:00.001-07:00

because it's been there a lot recently...and that's new.

It was there when I got up this morning,instead of on the shelf next to the window (where it normally lives).

I didn't wake up when I heard strange sounds last night...but I am immune to strange sounds at night most of the time anymore. (I have to be--it's a defense mechanism that I need in order to SLEEP in this house)

I was trying to take my pills and get breakfast before getting distracted so I didn't pick it up right away.
La Doof Kitton was quite perturbed that anything was more important than operation box restoration. He walked to the box, sniffed it, and walked over to me, headbutted my leg and walked back to the box and set a paw on it. I ignored him and he repeated this several more times before walking to the box, sitting on it (it was upside down) and yowling. Then he walked up to me again. I put it back and he's been napping there ever since.

Except when he left to cause trouble...like stealing my bookmarks so I wouldn't know where I was in my book (apparently I pay to much attention to the book, not enough to him).

(please note that once he has it out, he no longer wants it :-P)

Toothbrush

2009-06-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

The pets in our house have obsessions.

El Gato has an inordinate fondness for (among other things) the taste of leather and and a dislike for things that lead to mom leaving the house (like work); hence the chew marks on my work shoes, briefcases, portfolios, and belts.

Dawg has taken a shine to wood; hence the bark nuggets she steals from the flower bed, the chew marks on various sticks around the house, her eating of my wood jewelry and her uncanny knack for sneaking into the garage when we're working on a carpentry project to steal scraps and hide them in the back yard (and yes, there are lots of bits of lumber in my back yard).

La Doof Kitton has several things he is fond of but he likes rubber coating. He tried to steal my new scissors with their 'comfort padded' handles. I have to keep my razor out of reach because he has, on more than one occasion, made off with it and attempted to chew off the rubbery grippy things.

I recently needed a new toothbrush and brought one with rubbery coating on part of the handle. This has made brushing my teeth interesting, as he is obsessed with my toothbrush.

So earlier this week, when he was attempting to steal my toothbrush out of my mouth, I decided I needed to document the crazy. I sat down in the office and tried to operate the camera with one hand and brush my teeth with the other...The result isn't a masterpiece of photography but it proves I'm not making this stuff up.
(please ignore the mess on my desk. Yes, he is sitting on paperwork, dilbert comics, and my calligraphy)
(and please apply the caption 'nom nom nom nom nom' to all the pictures ;-)

He may have lost another life today...

2009-06-08T20:01:00.001-07:00

We've had interesting weather today. We've gone from sunny to stormy back to sunshine again all day. While I was riding out the storm at work, Mr. G called to update me on the status of the pets.

None of the pats are especially fond of thunder--the cats dislike loud noises in general and Dawg is concerned that burglars may sneak in and not be heard over the sound of the rumbling so she scares them off before they even get a chance to get close by barking at the thunder.

The grumblings and rumblings of thunder had successfully disturbed everyone in the household but seemed to be passing on by. So Dawg curled up on her rug, El Gato curled up on the bed, and La Doof Kitton climbed into his shoebox--the one that is right next to the (open) window in the office.

After a lull long enough for all of the pets to be in nice comfortable dozes, there was a tremendous *crack* of thunder--the kind that sends you skittering to windows to make sure you are in one piece and that the trees are still standing upright. Mr. G heard this crack then a soft thump and was standing up to see if anything had been hit when he heard an odd noise. His first thought was that it was the staticky sound of something electrical shorting. Then he thought it was odd hail on the outside of the house--just on the wall. Then he looked down...

The thunder had startled La Doof Kitton into attempting some previously unattempted acrobatics without a net. The thump that followed the thunder was his box launching itself off the shelf, onto the middle of the floor. The staticky sound was the noise of all four paws desperately trying to gain purchase on the side of a smooth, vertical desk. Apparently, that moment one sees in cartoons? The one right as the character looks down and realises there is merely air below him instead of the ledge and his legs work at running up the sheer cliff face and just succeed in having everything hang there in slow motion? Yes that scene is apparently possible in real life.

Of course, the image of La Doof Kitton doing this, with his bottle brush tail and his wide eyes, resulted in much laughing at his expense. He hasn't forgiven the laughter yet.

Nor has he gotten back into his box, even though we put it back on it's shelf.

The cat is out of the bag

2009-06-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

or in the bag, as the case may be.

Around 3 this morning, I awoke to a *tremendous* crash. It was, unfortunately, my turn to investigate the cause of crashes--Mr. G having investigated the one that came about 6 yesterday morning and was the result of La Doof Kitton climbing a bookshelf.

My guard Dawg lifted her head at the crash, pondered getting up to come defend me, dragged herself up, sniffed the air, declared that it was to early for this and she was sure there were no burglars and crawled back onto her bed.

I, on the other hand, wanted to make sure that the crash wasn't the refrigerator falling over, the oven exploding, a pipe bursting, or cats dancing the tango on the remains of my plants. I groggily wandered through the office, the library, the bathroom and the living room--no signs of anything amiss.
I flipped on the light in the kitchen and found La Doof Kitton working hard to look innocent while trying to convince the hair on his back and tail to quit standing up. There were 2 kitchen chairs lying on their backs. I had left my re-usable grocery bag hanging from the back of one of those chairs when I went to bed. That bag was now a full 5 feet from where it had been left.

Apparently, attempting to jump into the bag while it dangles from a chair causes a chain reaction of chaos.
I blinked twice, decided nothing was truly broken, and went back to bed. The chairs waited until morning to stand back up and the bag somehow moved from the floor in front of the oven to the hallway near the living room before I got out of bed. Apparently he wasn't permanently scared off or scarred by his brush with gravity.

So the cat is back in the bag. At this particular moment, he is hiding in the bottom of the bag (like I said, now in the living room) waiting for either Dawg or El Gato to wander past so he can pop out and scare the living daylights out of them. I know this because he already scared me twice today. Never a dull moment :-)

Puss n' boots

2009-05-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-05-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

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)

I'm not sure when he developed opposable thumbs...

2009-04-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

but apparently he did.
How ELSE can one explain how he (repeatedly) got the lid off the container of Dawg's treats?

He would, however, like to attest to his innocence. He says he is much to mellow to bother with things like doggie cookies.

La Doof Kitton and the wall hangings

2009-04-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

The other night, La Doof Kitton came into the bedroom at some ungodly hour to mess with the hamper (yes, the same hamper in the previous post). You would think a hamper would be to mundane and large to be a kitteh toy but La Doof Kitton likes to claw at it and to play with the stringy-things that dangle from the edge of the liner. These activities are loud, which is why La Doof Kitton waits until the middle of the night to engage in them.

Well, Mr G., who is less tolerant of being awakened at ungodly hours than I am (which is saying a lot; I'm not especially tolerant) and who sleeps closer to the hamper (darn :-P), told La Doof Kitton to stop it (he didn't stop). Then he interfered with the noise-making activities (he didn't stop). Then, in a moment of frustration, Mr. G swung his pillow at La Doof Kitton and smacked La Doof Kitton with it (he stopped for a millisecond, then went back to noisy playing).

This would have just been a normal part of our night except, in swinging the pillow, Mr. G hit the wall scroll adorning that wall (it looks something like this). The scroll hangs from a nail and a wee piece of double-sided tape holds the dowel at the bottom firmly to the wall. Or it did, until a pillow hit it--then it hung by a nail and flopped around.
Flopping around isn't a big deal normally but, in an unsuccessful effort to muffle the kitteh noises, Mr. G had turned on a fan as white noise. The fan kept catching the scroll and we'd hear the 'thunk thunk....thunk thunk thunk....thunk thunk' of the dowel tapping against the wall.

We could have probably even managed to ignore the thunking noise but this was a new and exciting noise so La Doof Kitton lept from the top of the hamper and attempted to climb the wall scroll--this scroll has been there for years, he has never so much as noticed its existence. Now that the scroll was moving, it was the new bestest kitteh toy ever. La Doof Kitton stood on the bed and pawed at it to make it thunk louder. He stood on the floor and pawed at it to make it thunk. He jumped at it to climb it. He all around made a pest of himself to the point where Mr. G took the entire thing down and put it in his closet for the night. And then he, less than graciously, dumped La Doof Kitton outside the bedroom door and closed it.

The next morning, Mr. G had to re-hang the entire contraption. He adjusted and leveled and straightened everything while La Doof Kitton watched with interest. As soon as the double-sided-sticky-foam tape had affixed the scroll to the wall, he was no longer interested in the wall hanging.

That might be because in the moment where Mr. G had his hands full and set the tape on a dresser, La Doof Kitton snagged the roll and ran toward the basement. We saw it in his mouth as he headed downstairs and we didn't see it again for several days.

Once again, proof that our toys are better than their toys.

Hampers are tiger traps.

2009-03-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

(A bit of an aside, this is being written from a different computer. I may be a bit more absent from the interwebz, seeing as parts of my computer [literally] exploded and I'm waiting for new ones)

The other night, I was working on a project and, in a fit of efficiency, I locked the pets out of the office. (they had been helping but seeing as it was a sewing project and seeing as how La Doof Kitton was entranced by the thread moving from the spool to the needle--so entranced that he grabbed the thread and tried to run away with it...twice-creating a big snarl in the machine, I decided they could help when I was done.)

I got up and investigated a crash or 3 (luring us to open the office door to discover a crashed book, a knocked over glass, etc.), I decided that La Doof Kitton had cried 'Wolf' (I'd say he cried 'mess, blood, crash' but it just doesn't have the same ring to it) one to many times and that I was herby, ignoring all further crashes.

With that, decided, I ignored the sound of one cat chasing another cat and ignored the following crash. About 5 minutes later, Mr. G said that I HAD to come see this. And this is what I saw:

This is our laundry hamper. La Doof Kitton regularly lands inside the hamper as he skitters across the top and the top spins like a trash can lid and he lands inside. He is amused by this (and is able to climb out, with a great deal of effort).
El Gato, as best we can tell, is NOT amused by this (nor, do we believe, she is able to climb out. Or at lesat she isn't willing to put in the effort to try.)

The likely scenerio is that La Doof Kitton bothered El Gato the 479th time that night, until he needled her into chasing him. The chase led across the top of the hamper which worked as a giant tiger trap. Then El Gato fell into the hamper. Where she remained stuck until Mr. G and I took pity upon her and lifted her out.

(Little brothers are pesky things, creating traps like this)

kittehs and candies.

2009-03-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

(If this story seems familiar, I may have told something similar (not on the blog) a week or 2 ago. We had nearly the same thing happen two times in as many weeks. Which probably means we are slow learners)

Yesterday, Mr. G rummaged through the cupboards for something sweet and came up with a movie-theater-sized box of nerds. Since someone in the house (*cough coughMrGcough cough*) is unable to properly open a box of nerds, he dumped them into a Ziploc sandwich baggie and brought the baggie into the office to munch on while playing on the computer.

La Doof Kitton nosed around the bag a few times. Mr. G reminded La Doof Kitton that as a cat, he doesn't like sweets because, as mommy has repeatedly pointed out, kittons lack the ability to taste sweet (Really. I swear). After the three thousandth, fourth hundred and ninety seven time shoo-ing La Doof Kitton away, the Mr. reached in the bag and pulled out one extremely large blob of wee sweet candy and set it on the desk for La Doof Kitton.

La Doof Kitton sniffed it very carefully. Then he pawed at it very gingerly.
A few moments later, the candy was skittering across the floor as a kitton tongue worried at it.

La Doof Kitton ate his piece of candy, climbed onto the desk to beg for more and waited until Mr. G was distracted (One must always strike when the evil opponent is distracted). At the moment of distraction, La Doof Kitton made his move. He dove into the baggie. NOT, as one might think, into the outside of the baggie but he tried to fit both his front paws and his head (most specifically, his tongue) into the baggie.
The baggie, however, being made to hold the average peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, wasn't able to contain a lot of candy AND the front 1/3 of a cat so it did the logical baggie thing to do and ruptured its contents all over the office. I had no idea nerds could spread themselves that far; we had rainbow carpeting.

El Gato fled in the commotion, Dawg was (thank heavens) outside, and La Doof Kitton worked mightily to eat/play with/stash under the closet door the candies before they could be cleaned up (until Mr. G got out the vacuum--even brave Kittons can't stand the vacuum).

So apparently nerds are tasty goodness that even appeal to those critters who are sweet-taste-receptor deprived. To bad I don't have any more nerds because they're all inside my vacuum.

A TMI tale

2009-03-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I said I didn't have time to post yet. That was the truth, I don't. But I will anyhow because I laughed.

This morning, Mr. G and I were snuggling under the covers, in that nice, sleepy morning state.

Suddenly, I felt my hair get pounced. I realized that Mr. G had snaked his hand under my pillow and was poking his fingers out, teasing La Doof Kitton into pouncing. He did this a few dozen times before giving La Doof Kitton a small nudge and saying "whoops, you fell off the bed" (That sounds much crueler than it is. La Doof Kitton seems to like the 'whoops, you fell off the bed' game).

Mr. G and I continued snuggling and moved on to things not G rated...which is when, from the top of the dresser (which he'd climbed onto after the last round of 'whoops, you fell off the bed), La Doof Kitton pounced exactly the way Mr. G has trained him with this playing--onto the hand that is moving under the covers.

Except, it was my hand, not Mr. G's. And it wasn't where it 'usually' is.

And, La Doof Kitton *ahem* kinda sorta missed the hand by an inch.

And he landed squarely, at full tilt, on *ahem* Mr. G. Which resulted in Mr. G curling himself into the fetal position for several minutes.

And I laughed a little to hard. Which means it's only a matter of time for the universe to sic my pets at me.

I promise more tom-foolery in April

2009-03-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's not that the kittehs aren't entertaining right now it's that I don't have time to write about it for the moment. Life gets sane again in April.

So a short bit...
last night, I made cat stuff. I started by making the scratchy seen here:
http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/01/diy-project-recycled-cardboard-kitty-pad.html

Mine isn't quite that pretty but is quite adequate if I do say so myself.
Thus far, La Doof Kitton has walked up to it, smelled it, and set to work chewing on a piece that I cut unevenly and El Gato has glared at me for sprinkling 'her' catnip on it and refuses to touch it.

So I decided toys might be a better choice since I still had cardboard. I made the toys seen here:
http://www.marmaladepets.com/owners/download_ball.html

(copy paper boxes = thinner than normal cardboard = easier to cut w/ scissors but cut the slits narrower than the pattern shows. And now you know)

The cats were mostly indifferent. Then, suddenly, La Doof Kitton decided the ball one was the best ever. He made 3 laps of the house with it before skidding to a stop and dropping it in Dawg's water dish. For future reference, cardboard toys + water = broken. I'll make him another someday, right now, watching him walk up to the soggyness that I scooped out and left on the back doormat and poke it with a paw is a bit of schaudenfraud entertainment for me.

forgive me kittehs for I have annoyed the piss out of you both

2009-02-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

I was trying to get a picture of the scene that unfolds in our household dozens of times every day--that is to say, La Doof Kitton pouncing on El Gato.

So, I picked a day when they were doing a lot of this and I put batteries in the camera and followed them around for about an hour. And they did nothing.
So I decided to start something.

I waited until El Gato was napping and plunked La Doof Kitton onto the bed next to her.
Nothing:

So I grabbed the jeans La Doof Kitton was laying on and I dragged him until they were touching.
Nothing:

So I decided to make the noises of rabid squirrels under the bedspread (La Doof Kitton is convinced that scratchy noises and movement under cloth = rabid squirrel attacks) and instead of the normal reaction (El Gato = indifferent and La Doof Kitton = attack mode), La Doof Kitton acted scared and El Gato, being the loving older sister she is (HA!) attacked the blob to protect him from it as he used her as a shield:

I even tried to dangle strings over top of El Gato for La Doof Kitton to attack...which just earned me the reproach of both kittehs:

So pictures of a pounce/tackle are not forthcoming--I have to wait until I can take them in true photojournalistic, non involvement style.

things La Doof Kitton has messed with since I got home 3 hours ago

2009-02-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

(It has been a long night. And this list is hardly conclusive--it just lists the things I caught him doing.)

1-A good pen (which I still haven't found) that I left on the desk.

2-A cheap ballpoint (which I HAVE found--he only hides well the expensive ones) that I left on the desk.

3-A hershey's kiss (at least one) from my v-day stash which he stole and dragged around the house and made me chase him for. I've got an inkling there may be more hidden throughout the house.

4- a rubber spatula (which I set to close to the edge of the counter while baking...he reached up, batted it off, and spread cheesecake batter across my floor as it fell)

5-a piece of venetian glass to go with a desk set (pen-rest) that my MIL brought me back from Italy. He stole it three times tonight and I had to dive for the door to keep from having to chase him everywhere to get it. He didn't drop it but did carry it around the office very primly. (he is now locked out of the office)

6-A melon baller. I was looking for a spring form pan in the laundry-room pantry and moved a box of seldom-used utensils...he took this opportunity to steal a melon baller from the box of utensils and put it (where else) under the drying rack in the laundry room

7-A dryer-lint bison. I cleaned the dryer lint thingy and dropped the ball of blue fuzz into the trash...It's now somewhere in the basement. (And think, this means poor Linty [the lint demon who lives in my dryer vent] is going hungry tonight. I should throw him a few extra mismatched socks just so he doesn't starve. )

8-the cord to my phone charger. Although this was funny--Because I yelled at him while he was chewing on it so he tried to run away with it. But it was still plugged in.
So he got to the end of the cord and there was a *sproing* sound and he's lucky he still has all his teeth.

9-A pad of post it notes. (he didn't get far with them because he rather doesn't like the feel of sticky notes on his teeth or fur)

10-An oven mitt (which I left on the counter but somehow found under the table...)

I think I'm going to bed. That won't make him behave but it means I have 8 hours before I have to deal with his shenanigans again. (although we're averaging 3.3333 debacles per hour that I'm aware of--a lot could happen in the next 8 hours)

The Kitty house...

2009-02-07T19:15:00.001-08:00

Last Christmas, Sandy Paws got the kittehs a kittey house. It normally belongs to El Gato; La Doof Kitton tends to only get in when it will irritate another member of the house (namely, El Gato).

Recently, said kitty house moved from under one end table to under the one near the electronics in a vain attempt to protect the electronics from the pets--Dawg likes taking her bones under the table to chew on and the cats fight on and under any surface in the house. We theorized that, since animals must follow the same laws of physics we do, unable to occupy the same space as another object, the presence of the kitty house would make it impossible for Dawg to get under there to chew a bone or for both cats to fit under there at the same time. We were wrong (and I'm not sure who broke the DVD player/receiver but broken it is).

Tonight, Dawg entered the kitty house (or at least her head did) to work on her bone

And 5 minutes later, I got to take this picture (which I swear on my copy of James Herriot's 'All Creatures Great and Small' that I did not, in any way, set up--they did this all on their own)
He looks quite content with his bone. And he will probably now kill me in my sleep for mocking him on the interwebz.

Collars

2009-02-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

Recently, I decided that the kitteh's collars (especially El Gato's) were looking rather grungy. I decided to try to fix that but, money being a wee bit tight right now, combined with me trying to learn to sew, I decided to DIY this.

I started with El Gato's. First it got a good washing (and let me say...ew. It looked so very much better after just a washing that I'm rather grossed out that I didn't try that before--no idea how 2 indoor cats generate that amount of filth); the clean collar looked like this:.
(You will notice, of course, that La Doof Kitton 'helped' at every step of this sewing project.)

I adjusted the collar as big as it could go, removed the tags, and pinned on a piece of ribbion like this, then sewed it on (three times, since one time I screwed up and had to rip all the stitches out)--notice the paws in the picture:

I'm holding it up high in this picture to keep it out of La Doof Kitton's paws--he has an unnatural affinity for ribbon.
(and I also must confess that the bow is only in place because, I am my grandmother's protogee. I kinda ripped the ribbon w/ my seam ripper so, of course, I added a bow to cover said rip)

El Gato would like to model for you:
.

During all of this, La Doof Kitton was helping by stealing the ribbon and sliding it under the door to my closet, as seen here:

SO, since my first attempt was moderately successful, I decided to do the same to La Doof Kitton's collar the next day....

Since both kittehs have breakaway collars, I figured it would be easy to remove the collar--after all, every time we try to grab La Doof Kitton, his collar melts away and I am left with a handful of collar while La Doof Kitton enjoys his furry freedom, sans the opressive symbol of his subjugation by furless apes. So, since La Doof Kitton decided he didn't want me to remove his collar properly, I just grabbed a bit of the collar and tugged...and it didn't break away.

You know that moment when you 'have a tiger by the tail...'? Having an angry cat (apparently and understandably angered by collar tugs) by the non-breaking-away-breakaway-collar ain't no picnic either. I eventually got the collar, bandaged up my wounds, and washed the collar. I left it to dry on my sewing table and wandered off to make my apologies to La Doof Kitton by way of a bit of leftover ribbon and make me dinner.

While I was distracted elsewhere in the house ("ooh, shiny!") I heard Mr. G say the words I hear 1000 times a day..."Hey, stop that!" I assumed that La Doof Kitton was into something he shouldn't be into until I heard it "HEY, cats, both of you..." and ran to see what happened (La Doof Kitton raises cain on days that end in 'y'. El Gato raises cain on the 12th of never) and how El Gato was involved.

I had apparently left the door to my sewing project ajar. La Doof Kitton was borrowing spools of thread and hiding them in various spots around the house. El Gato had wandered in, found La Doof Kitton's collar in progress and was attempting to destroy it. She was standing there, the collar hanging from her mouth, shaking it violently and attempting to rip it into small pieces of ribbon and collar. I'm not sure if she thought "I don't want my brother to have a collar like my new pretty one" or if she thought "ick, this smells like the other cat...KILL" or "hey, this tells people where to return him to...If I destroy it, then mail him to Abu Dhabi without return address..." but regardless, it was amusing.
(If you've no idea why El Gato might wish to be rid of La Doof Kitton, I should point out that she seems to miss being an only pet and she has [although I haven't been able to get pictures of it] been pounced by La Doof Kitton 3 times in the time it took for me to type this out)

And it obviously didn't work, seeing as La Doof Kitton is here to model his new collar (note this blog entry in the background :-P):

So, yes, they match, as seen here...but they may not be thrilled about that (but I'm amazed, a picture of them...TOGETHER! Huzzah!)

La Doof Kitton learned about 'pushing' this week

2009-01-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

No, he's not pushing the 'nip (although if he realized how much control he could exert over El Gato by becoming her pusher, he might); he has just learned a bit more about the physics of moving furniture.

This started with the hamper.
Between our bed and the wall, there is just room to place a wicker clothes hamper. This serves 2 purposes; it holds dirty clothes and it blocks the access to 'the cubbyhole of doom'.
('The cubbyhole of doom' is a small, cat sized cave between the bed frames and the wall. No matter what we do, there is always a gap and the cats go in it and we live in fear that they'll get stuck or squished when something moves. The cats go in there and refuse to come out just to freak us out)

Well, La Doof Kitton, in a moment of clumsiness, stepped on the lid only when climbing onto the hamper. The lid wedged down and he rode his elevator of the hamper lid down to the floor as he and the lid shoved the hamper away from the wall.
He was thrilled--he not only got behind the hamper, he opened the door to 'the cubbyhole of doom'. He explored this new skill and learned that if he squished himself against the wall, he could fit between the wall and the hamper, slither down to the floor, then shove with all his might, moving the hamper.
He now repeats shoving the hamper away from the wall at least once a night.

The next day, as we were, once again, doing the dance of "chase the kittehs out of the laundry room", La Doof Kitton, as usual, climbed under the drying rack to avoid capture. He decided to see what happened if he used his new-found 'pushing' skills. He immediately discovered that mom is lousy at figuring out what to do when the entire drying rack of clothes moves itself around the laundry room. He was to squirmy and quick to grab w/o dumping my clean laundry onto the floor. The rack itself tends to collapse when you grab one it (leading to the same problem--clean laundry on the floor (and heaven knows that if there is one speck of dirt on my laundry room floor, a clean, white article of clothing will land on it)).
I had to, one at a time, pick up each article of damp clothing, lay it on the dryer, then pick up the drying rack, extricate the kitton, deposit him under a laundry basket for a few minutes (I'd have simply dumped him on the wrong side of the door but then he'd just weasel in when I left), re-hang my clothes, and then take kitton, laundry basket and myself upstairs.

I believe a knowledge of physics simply makes him dangerous--heaven knows he'll use it for evil.

More monsters..

2009-01-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

This morning, the humans in the house slept late because we've got a touch of something unpleasant.
La Doof Kitton, being himself, decided to make sure that we were grumpy immediately when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed.

I woke up, took down the baby gate to release the hound, and stumbled to the kitchen to turn on the teakettle. I suddenly realized that the contents of 3 bookshelves wasn't supposed to be lying in the living room floor; the 'basket of odds and ends' (which contains hair clips and car keys and brushes and pet toenail clippers and is 4 shelves up to be as close to out of reach as possible) was upside down and odds and ends littered the floor, books were on their sides and all around the room, nick-knacks and toys were strewn across the carpet. All in all, it looked like a small, Tasmanian devil sized tornado had hit or that a mischievous kitten had spent half the night pushing things off the shelves and watching them bounce across the floor. I'm guessing Taz didn't do it.

(Let me interrupt myself here to mention that, since I've become a responsible grown-up (ha! funny) my toys have gotten more and more expensive. And more and more breakable. So my 'action figures' have been replaced by miniatures; my glass bits have been replaced with wee antiques; my thrift-store paperbacks have been supplemented with (er, not replaced :-) with lovely leather bound editions, etc. This increases my irritation when my belongings are attacked. Everyone knows this, which is why no one messes w/ the thrift store paperbacks and everyone messes with the first edition antiques)

I decide that the fewer pets who are around to 'help' when I'm picking this up, the better. So I go to the door to let Dawg out but stop when I realize that she is begging to go outside to play with a toy. It's not her toy; actually, it's not even my toy. It's a miniature of a monster that Mr. G has taken the job of painting for a friend. Nothing like thinking the dog has a hair clip and realizing that it's something closer to this--and that for extra fun, someone has already put a lot of time and effort into it and it doesn't belong to us:

(No, it wasn't this. This is one we photographed at games day a few years ago painted by someone w/ a lot of talent. I'm an almost adequate painter. Mr. G is a very good painter. The guy who painted that was stupendous)

I immediately switched into "talk them off the ledge" mode; I convinced Dawg to, very gently, lay the wee squid-looking miniature critter into my hand in exchange for a dog biscut. Then I shoved her outside with said biscut as I inspected the miniature. It had not been crushed in the "Jaws of Doom"--small miracle. And the paint was, for the most part, unchipped. Which lead me to wonder where on earth Dawg had found this treasured little monster

Dawg is a destructive force of nature but she doesn't act on her own; the monsters had been secured out of La Doof Kitton's reach in the kitchen...or actually, NOT out of his reach in the kitchen, although we thought they were. Mr. G and I spent the next 40 minutes looking for the other missing miniatures and finding them, eventually, in one piece under the couch. These have now been secured in a locking case in the basement (in the boarded up room).

Everything is back on the respective shelves, and I told La Doof Kitton that finding the pet nailclippers in the middle of the floor is what reminded me that he needed his claws trimmed--here's hoping that he won't choose to remind me of them again this way.

La Doof Kitton, the monster slayer

2009-01-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

The kind folks at perpetual kid (again, not getting kickbacks but I wouldn't object to getting them in the future... ;-) included things just for La Doof Kitton.
A family member got me a lovely scarf from the site for Christmas and it came with a wee, orange, rubbery monster finger puppet. I had it perched on my computer but *someone* stole it and now I can't find it.

It was last seen being conquered by La Doof Kitton. He would probably like to thank them for the lovely toy but being as he hid it extremely well and has forgotten where, I won't push it.

Things La Doof Kitton has done so far in 2009

2009-01-12T21:00:00.000-08:00

(I didn't include anything involving the Christmas tree...I count that as all 2008)

I told La Doof Kitton he should make a New Year's resolution to better himself.

He glared at me.

I told him that I'd already helped El Gato make one to loose weight (she glared at me for that. I'm fairly certain she plans to murder me in my sleep) and Dawg one to not eat random crap, not to track things in and to not jump up on humans (she didn't glare, she's much to happy in her Dawggie-ness to glare. She just grabbed a leaf she had tracked in and ate it. That might actually be progress--she's cleaning up after herself when she tracks in)

La Doof Kitton glared some more. So I told him I expected him, if he was to get gifts from Sandy Paws next Catsmas, to not be in trouble more than an average of once per day. And that I'd keep track here. I've been tracking since the 2nd (the first is a holiday, it's a 'gimme' :-)
Today is Jan 12th, this is the list of things he's done in the first 12 days of 2009:

Stole the cover from Mr. G's razor
The toaster incident
Stole the cap to the caulk
Chewed off the dangly bits on his Christmas present and fed them to Dawg. Twice. (the toy is now staying broken, I refuse to fix it again)
Knocked over my sewing machine
Pushed a stack of books off the table
Attacked my head at an 'inopportune' time for no reason(twice if I count falling on me* [see footnote])
Tried to feed my hair clips to the dog (we're up to 4 on this)
Fished around in my purse for keys (so I didn't have them at work)
Tried to break laws of physics--those that say that 2 objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. (Said space was, of course, on top of my face while I was trying to sleep. I decided not to call it attempted murder though; he was fairly obliging when I shoved him off the bed at 3 am)
Stole (and hid, obviously) the kitty toenail clippers (after being difficult about having toenails trimmed)
Fished kleenex out of the nightstand (they can't be ON the nightstand because someone steals them) and shredded them. In Dawg's bed in order to frame her
Knocked over the hamper (twice)
Stole breath-spray out of my purse
Knocked off the counter and tried to open the kitteh treats at 2 am (twice)
Hid in inaccessible parts of the furnace room (gnawing on rat poison and rolling in spiderwebs for all I know) and made me chase him around in order to remove him from the forbidden room of dangers and return him to the house
Climbed up the exercise bike and left gaping claw marks in the 'upholstered seat' (I'll get pics of this eventually)
Attacked/annoyed his pet sister(s) --this remains steady at 'to many times for me to count

I'm guessing this is way of saying "Go to Hell, Michigan and do something unspeakable to a large cactus" to my resolution.

*Footnote:
the story of falling on me:
I was riding the previously mentioned reclining exercise bike. Since exercising is warm work, I opened the window. La Doof Kitton sat in said window until he got bored and moved from there to the bookcase above my head. He was weaving his way among the books and knickknacks and forgot how to walk...and fell. Directly onto my head.

In this situation, he did what any self-respecting cat would do...he stuck all his claws into my scalp and back.

I did what any self-respecting person would do...I panicked.

Panicking = moving.
Moving = kitteh falling further...
I eventually extricated him from my back and shoulder (he had the moxie to look miffed that I slightly squirshled his tail in the process) and only needed a few band aids. I'm assuming it was an accident but I can't *quite* be sure.

Nightime sweet nothings

2009-01-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was in bed when Mr. G came to bed and La Doof Kitton decided to 'sleep' with him (La Doof Kitton's definition of sleep varying greatly from our definition of sleep.

I heard a conversation (I'm afraid I couldn't hear La Doof Kitton's side, you'll have to settle for just Mr G's) that went rather like this:

"Awww, you want to snuggle. What a sweet kitteh catus.
*
It's very adorable and cute that you want to sleep with your face on my cheek but my lungs object to you completey coverin both my nose and my mouth.
*
I showered today, you do not need to lick my face and hands until the bleed.
*
Quit hogging the pillow. You are 1/50th my size, you don't need 90% of it.
*
If you continue licking my scalp, you will give me a receeding hairline.
*
GAH, put those claws in when you try to poke me.
*
[At this point, EL Gato joined them and much growling ensued--from El Gato]
And dangit, quit picking on you sister (El Gato). I'm gonna be clawed to pieces.
Picking on your sister's tail still counts as picking on your sister. Knock it off
..."

At this point, I drifted off to sleep (happy that, for once, La Doof Kitton slept w/ Mr. G instead of me) and didn't wake back up again until morning; whereupon I found the door closed and the cats on the other side of it. Apparently they were eventually not allowed to 'sleep' with us.

A non-video

2009-01-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

La Doof Kitton is fascinated by the bathroom sink. Whenever we enter the bathroom, he rushes in to sit on the counter and wait for the sink to be turned on.

Friday night, when I was taking a shower, La Doof Kitton came and waited by the sink. Very patiently. For 1/2 an hour. (he did, occasionally, attack his tail [his tail is named Scooter. La Doof Kitton isn't convinced that, on occasion, Scooter is merely a giant worm attacking La Doof Kitton's butt and living as a gray, fuzzy parasite], this kept him from dying of kitteh boredom).

At the end of the 1/2 hour, I grabbed the camera and turned on the faucet so I could record his amusing water activities and share them with the world. Or at least with all 4 readers of this blog.
I turned on the camera, turned on the faucet and...
Nothing.
ABSOLUTELY Nothing.
I even dripped water on his head (what can I say, sometimes I'm mean) and...basically nothing

So I'm uploading the nothing so you can see the nothing that proves how contrary kittehs can be. (there is no sound, don't adjust your volume)

click below to go to the video (sorry, I couldn't make it upload here):

Video Link
(And, OMG, the file is HUGE. This still has problems. I'm working on fixing it, don't know if I can. Apologizes all around.)
(aaaaannnnd, now it's working. Although it's still huge, sorry.)

Undecorating

2009-01-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

The pets helping us un-decorate...

First helping dad take down the garland.

Then helping mom take down the nativity set and put it in boxes.

And then helping take the tree apart.

The Christmas Tree...

2009-01-10T14:21:00.000-08:00

Everything is packed away.
For your edification, the Christmas tree, 48 hours after decorating (Essentially, the 'before' pic. Although you'll notice there is already a 'gap' at the bottom where ornaments have been removed):

(El Gato clearly approves)

After much of La Doof Kitton's climbing about in and around the Christmas tree (like this):

The pictures of the final tree are...not actually that bad. (you can't really see it in the pictures but the bottom 4 layers of branches [it's an artificial tree] aren't actually *attached* to the tree in the back anymore. They're just resting on the branches below them or the floor. I'm not sure how he managed that. And please notice the lack of ...well, everything on the bottom 1/2 of the tree)
AFTER:

(and please note that the plant behind the tree? that's new. Because La Doof Kitton plucked every. single. leaf off the coleus that was there in the first picture. It's in plant heaven.)
Also note the prominently placed water-bottle to squirt misbehaving kittons who are un-decorating the tree.

So, generally, the tree survived. I'll upload the pets helping us pack up Christmas momentarily.

Once again, the forbidden objects are more interesting than the toys...

2009-01-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

There are OODLES of cat toys in my house. Cat toys that are largely ignored in favor of non-toy items.

So, this morning, at 3:04 AM, when I was yanked from my blissful sleepyheadedness into the dary and tired world of "WTF time is it and why am I awake?" by a crash-thump-thump, I assumed that someone was playing with non-toys. Since Dawg was asleep by the bed and El Gato was curled up on the nightstand, the guilty party had to be La Doof Kitton.

This crash was too loud to be ignored (yes, sometimes, 3 am crashes are ignored because the damage is already done--I can put the books back on the shelf tomorrow and not have to leave the confines of my warm bed) so we headed in the general direction of the cacophony. I veered through the living room and Mr. G headed through the kitchen and we met next to the microwave cart (on which rest a blender, a toaster, and cat treats) which marks the line between kitchen and living room.

As I looked at La Doof Kitton sitting with a look of pure innocence on the coffee table (the more intensely disinterested and innocent he looks the greater his measure of guilt and destruction) I burst in to the sort of hysterical laughter that one is only capable of when grumpily awakened at 3 am as I asked "WHY is there a toaster in the middle of my living room floor?"

Being unable to answer that question, we returned the toaster to it's home, ignored the toast crumbs spread across the floor (we were hoping Dawg would get them in the morning but I believe vacuuming is in order. But not at 3 am), and dragged our sorry selves back to bed.

(Once in bed, La Doof Kitton came to snuggle. Mr. G suggested we pretend he was a toaster and nudge him off the edge and see if toast crumbs fell out...)

The best toys in the world are the ones we don't let him have...

2009-01-01T15:56:00.001-08:00

The pets got Christmas gifts.

Dawg is chewing on new bones; La Doof Kitton got oodles of various toys--he's been busy playing with the packaging (he'll get to the toys once I toss the packaging). He and El Gato have both been playing with El Gato's favorite, her pawbreakers.

(I have to interrupt myself for a minute to say how wonderful pawbreakers are. And no, they're not paying me to say this, although if someone from the company wants to pay me to say this again and/or send me a box of pawbreakers, I'd not complain *waving to people who wish to send me cash and toys*.
Pawbreakers are large gumball sized balls of pressed catnip. They are the ONLY 'toy' that can almost always convince El Gato to get off her plump behind and play. They are a 3-in-1 bit of kitteh heaven; 1 part catnip, 1 part treat [edible catnip, yay! And for the record, yes, Dawg eats these too, which gives her catnip-py fresh breath], 1 part toy [ball = toy]. They don't make the kittehs sick after eating (like cat grass does), they aren't insanely expensive when Dawg eats them ($3.50 a pop), and they don't stain the carpet. )

But, as always, La Doof Kitton's favorite toys remain those that he's not allowed to have.
When we got home, we found that a bit of the bathtub needed to be caulked. La Doof Kitton wished to help--which would be splendid if his idea of helping didn't involve putting a paw in wet caulk and otherwise making fur fly. La Doof Kitton was locked out of the bathroom while Mr. G caulked...and all was well until the job was finished and Mr. G said "obscenity obscenity La Doof Kitton!"

I immediately started looking for La Doof Kitton and eventually found him under the couch, where he was busy trying to put the lid from the caulk under the nearby bookcase. Apparently 30,00,000 toys don't suffice, he'd much rather have the caulk lid.

A few hours later, we gave him the ring from the milk carton. He played happily (again, much more valuable to him than the toys we BUY for him.) until he was done playing. At which point, he decided to booby trap his daddy's shoes. Apparently La Doof Kitton likes hearing "obscenity obscenity La Doof Kitton!" as Mr. G puts on his shoes and finds sharp plasticky bits poking into the bottom of the foot.

(I can plainly see the "huh, what do you mean I can't leave it here? I worked so hard to get it here! It'll be FUNNY" expression.)

We've just gotten home from Christmas...

2008-12-31T12:50:00.001-08:00

I've been negligent in posting because I've been out-of-town for the holidays--without internet access. And without pet access.

La Doof Kitton, El Gato the Splendiferious and Dawg stayed at home with a pet sitter while we traipsed about with family on the other side of the country (we had fun but it was an exhausting few weeks and we're glad to be home). I think we've all been forgiven for leaving them...El Gato may hold a grudge for a few more days.
(Dawg let us know how happy she was to have us home by throwing up at 3 am so we could have the joy of cleaning up after her)

The pet sitter claims (and I've no reason to doubt the claims) that La Doof Kitton has developed the ability to climb the Christmas tree. This would explain why, in spite of everyone replacing ornaments, the bottom 1/3 of the tree has gone from 'sparsely decorated w/ unbreakable ornaments' to 'naked'.

But we did learn that he made it onto Sandy Paws' list of "naughty kittehs" by trying, once again, to steal Dawg's biscuits.
We left an unopened bag of treats and made sure to tell the pet sitter that once they were opened, they had to be left out of kitteh reach--but we assumed (I know, I know. I always assume incorrectly) they'd be fine until the bag was opened.
When we got home, this is what I found locked outside of kitteh reach in the laundry room:

If you hide your toys TO well, you don't get them for a year...

2008-12-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

Last year, for Christmas, the kittehs got home-made catnip toys (a felt mouse I sewed and filled with catnip and cotton).

Being kittehs, they took their toys and put them in inaccessible places...El Gato usually puts hers underneath a rug and lays on top of the rug pretending she doesn't know how to get to it. La Doof Kitton prefers to put his in boxes or bags and lay outside them, reaching one arm all the way in to tease the toy.

Apparently, last Christmas, La Doof Kitton put his toy in one of the gift bags I had out to transport gifts from here to there...because when I went to fill it this year, I found his catnip mouse, a pom pom and part of a ribbon. They've been packed up for the last year--maybe he won't hide them quite as well THIS year.
(he's off playing with them right now)

The bugger can (kinda) open drawers.

2008-12-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

Since I've had some health issues in the last year, I keep some handy-dandy personal items in the nightstand drawer--info that I input onto my various spreadsheets to track my health (I might not be healthy but I'm a nerdy sort of not healthy), hair clips , a book, etc.

For each of the last 3 nights, I have gone into the bedroom to look up my info, closed the drawer *most* of the way, and come in to the office to enter my data.

For each of the last 3 nights, I have been interrupted in my data entry by odd noises; upon investigation the noises turn out to be hair clips in the jaws of La Doof Kitton.

For each of the last 3 nights, I chase him around the house, retrieve my items, and return to the bedroom to find the drawer standing open.

Apparently, a wee paw can fit in there and push it open farther so he can get to the buried treasure of small plastic choking hazards (which have the added benefit of blending into the carpet and causing great amounts of pain and swearing and hopping on one foot when the humans of the house find them, barefoot, at 2 am)

Since he's smart, the first time he tried to play with the clip in the bedroom--close enough I heard it immediately. The second time, he took it farther away, into the hallway--farther away and harder to hear. This time, he took it into the living room and I probably wouldn't have heard it if Dawg hadn't been busily trying to steal this new choking hazard toy from La Doof Kitton (Dawg lacks an understanding of subtlty; I think her quietest form of communication is "loud stage whisper)--La Doof Kitton would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for that meddling mutt!

To busy to post mcuh, but holiday decorating pics

2008-12-13T06:46:00.001-08:00

Yes, he is covered w/ bits of Styrofoam from the boxes and his own static-attraction. (And yes, the plant behind him has tinfoil over the soil so he'd quit digging it up)
He was fairly tolerant of the jingle-Christmas collar..he figured out how to move quietly in spite of all 5 bells; although the first 20 minutes he spent trying to pinpoint where the noise came from was hilarious.

"Hmm? NO, didn't steal this from the tree--musta been the dog. And I have nothing to do with the 4 feet of garland that were removed from the tree and spread across the kitchen floor this morning."
(Our ornaments are migrating upward. We no longer have any on the bottom 3 feet of the tree. Same with the garland. Before we take the tree down I'll post before and after pictures :-)

Reason # 51 to use reusable shopping bags...

2008-12-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when I forget and have to use a grocery bag (which I threw away):

There is a knocked over trash can, escaping trash, and a suffocation risk.

This is what happens when I use a re-usable bag:

I get to make puns about letting the cat out of the bag (what can I say, I'm my father's daughter) and I get to carry around a cat in the bag until he decides that it interferes with his stalking.

I mentioned how much El Gato loves being under the Christmas tree, right?

2008-12-07T20:45:00.001-08:00

Just to illustrate her great love for being under the tree, I present...The 'taking down the Christmas tree' yearly tradition. With last year's tree-take-down phots

1) Remove ornaments and lights

2) Remove tree bits, starting from the top

3) Get 95% done and take pity on El Gato's clinging to her last vestige of tree-loving-ness and leave the stump up for a few hours for her to enjoy:

4) Take down tree and deal with El Gato's ire.

5) Vacuum the fur/dust bison off the tree skirt in order to further create kitteh ire.

6)repeat next year.

And more like Christmas...now the tree is decorated

2008-12-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

I *was* able to recover some of the file; this was what was to be posted at 8 AM today and I'm finally finishing now...

Being as it's Saturday morning, the only reason I'm out of bed right now is that I have a work meeting to leave for in 15 minutes. Actually, that's a fib, I'd still be in bed groaning about having to get up on a weekend (after working more than 40 hours this week) if the pets weren't being collectively obnoxious.

Dawg, as I've said, is trapped with us at night by a baby gate. If she, for some reason, wants to go out, she "knocks" loudly on the baby-gate. This fine early Saturday, as I was snoozing the alarm clock, this knocking pulled me out of bed to investigate. (I do usually ignore this but she was *very* insistent in a way that usually means she needs to go outside.)

I take down the baby gate and rub the sleep from my eyes and...then move to grab Dawg as she heads past a pile of cat-puke-stained plastic fake pine needles (these are a gift from La Doof Kitton; I know this because El Gato only throws up on a designated puke rug. Yes, there are reasons she's the "good kid"--she makes cleanup easy. Of course she also has bad personal hygiene, it's a trade of).

Dawg moves past the pile of ickyness without stopping to eat it.
I start to stretch and conclude my wake up routine again...and I dive for Dawg as she heads past a slew of Christmas tree ornaments that are littering the floor (these are also a gift from La Doof Kitton; Dawg didn't have access to the tree and El Gato doesn't have enough ambition to remove ornaments. Our decorations are, very gradually, being moved higher and higher up the tree; I'm guessing that, eventually it's going to not be decorated at all).

Dawg moves past the ornaments without signs of eating them and hurries to the side of the refrigerator.
There, on the floor, is a pile of Dawg biscuits--next to my blender, some more ornaments, and a slightly chewed bag.
Apparently La Doof Kitton was only very temporarily foiled by moving the biscuits to the top of the fridge and making sure th bag was sealed. I can only guess how this process happened...La Doof Kitton would have had to move from the kitchen chairs to the kitchen table, from the kitchen table to the top of the microwave (which is covered w/ mixers, blender, a toaster, etc--in part to make it a bad landing place for kittehs)--in the process knocking the blender to the floor (which I apparently slept through), and from the top of the microwave to the top of the fridge.

From there, it was easy--shove bag over the edge, chew hole in bag, remove biscuits, tease Dawg all night.

I shoved biscuits into the bag as quickly as I could; Dawg shoved biscuits into her mouth as quickly as SHE could. I won (she got 4 or 5 biscuits--quite enough for 8 am, TYVM) and I'm now looking for a cat-proof Dawg biscuit container--right now they're in tupperware.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2008-12-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

which is why the adventures of the pets revolve around Christmas trees and dog biscuits (I have no idea why the dog biscuits have recently become fascinating. I have stories that occurred several days apart but La Doof Kitton turned off the computer (really) and lost them so I'm finally getting around to re-typing them.

To start with, the weekend after Thanksgiving, we put up the Christmas tree but did NOT decorate it. Last year, the tree (artificial) was up before we brought La Doof Kitton home and, since he lived for the first week in a separate room (PSA: slow introductions are key in cats co-existing), he had limited access to the tree (although he did have some access...see the included picture in which one can barely see La Doof Kitton)
La Doof Kitton had especially limited access since under the Christmas Tree is El Gato's favorite place to be...

We wanted to see if a tree would remain standing before we tested it farther to see if a tree covered with brekable shiny bits that operated as a giant toy dispenser would remain standing.) El Gato and La Doof Kitton fought over who got to lay on the tree skirt before we even finished putting the tree together and it nearly tumbled over, but it was up and we all survived. (Although Dawg needed to be reminded that she can't still fit under the tree...she could when she was 4 months old and sometimes fails to realize that 50 lb doesn't fit in the same space.)

The next morning, I looked and was thrilled the tree was still standing. I let Dawg out past the baby gate (Dawg, as you may know, is trapped with us at night by a baby gate. This is because if she can see out the back door-wall at night, she barks at imaginary creatures of the darkness that are invading her yard--they have glowing eyes and dripping fangs and are all around bad. A baby gate gives her the run of the bedroom and hallways and office, a view of the living room and no view of the kitchen/door-wall--and if she cant' see the creatures of darkness, she doesn't feel the need to shoot a magic missle into the darknes. *ahem* I mean bark at them). Dawg had been asking to be allowed out past the gate for quite some time--I usually ignore these requests because they are usually for frivolous reasons like "I can see a stuffed squirrel that I need to eat" or "La Doof Kitton gets to go there, why don't I?" or "Because it's a barrier, therefore, I need to be on the other side of it."

That morning, Dawg had, for the first time in ages, a good reason to beg to get out...I moved the gate and she made a bee-line for the tree. Upon reaching the tree, (please listen to the music in your head, it should be playing the "Mission Impossible" theme song by now) she shoved her head under as far as it would go and whimpered. I assumed for a moment that she was trying to tease La Doof Kitton or El Gato until I saw that the kittehs were sitting on cushions (yes, they have their own cushions) waiting for their morning treats. I looked under the tree and saw a dog biscuit shoved under the *exact* center of the tree stand. Where Dawg's nose/tongue couldn't quite reach it and a paw wouldn't fit.

I got it out, gave it to Dawg and assumed that, when giving bedtime treats, we had thrown one poorly and it had gone there and Dawg had been pining for her treat all night.
I, of course, ASSumed wrong. Over the next several hours, no fewer than FIVE times that I witnessed, Dawg went to the tree, stuck her head underneath, and made the distinctive crunching sound of a Dawg who has found a biscuit/kibble--always preceded by a La Doof Kitton going under the tree.
I know those weren't treats misplaced by the humans of the house and I was forced to concede that, once again, La Doof Kitton was smarter than me--and using his powers for evil as he teased Dawg with nearly-inaccessible biscuits. Somewhere, in the house, he has access to treats/kibble. I thought it was possibly a super secret stash until, several days later, I witnessed him manage to get into the 'not quite sealed' bag of treats on top of the microwave, get out a biscuit, and take it out of Dawggie reach to play with it.

Poor Dawg. I have no idea how long this has been going on (and, yes, I gave her the biscuit/toy that La Doof Kitton had). We've made a concerted effort to ensure the treat container is sealed and we've moved it to the top of the fridge...time will tell; as soon as we make something La Doof Kitton proof, someone makes a better La Doof Kitton brain synapse.

La Doof Kitton the mouser

2008-11-30T14:35:00.000-08:00

(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

2008-11-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-24T17:22:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-11-23T16:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-07T21:19:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-01T17:27:00.001-07:00

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...
)

by popular request...the 'lazy play video'

2008-10-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

I just had to get my voice (in, of course, the 'talking to the pets baby talk voice') off of it.
So...no sound.
And I'm not smart enough to make the file not huge. sorry.

but here ya go (please note the smug "I won" look on La Doof Kitton's face at the end):

The magical scary box of water

2008-10-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

Our house has a magical scary box of water. Yours probably does too.

La Doof Kitton is concerned about this scary box of water and why mom subjects herself to it...so he involves himself in it's filling. (And then, since he has made it a habit to consider falling in, he gets kicked out of the bathroom while mom takes her soak. (because as we all know, a cat falling into an occupied bathtub leaves one with legs that look like they lost an epic battle with a blender.)

There is a slow progression...from side-of tub sitter...
to "stalking the razor" kitteh

to "balancing precariously kitteh". He is quite talented at balancing (there are zero feet on the sides of the tub in this one):

And it tends to end with "ooh, lookit, I just dumped in more bubble bath for ya ma!"
(and this would be the point at which he is escourted out of the bathroom and the door is closed.)

Things La Doof Kitton has messed with/destroyed in the last week:

2008-10-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

(this list only includes things I"m reasonably sure were his fault and that he can't frame the other pets for)

-1 jewelry box (that he pushed off a dresser and broke)
-the jewelry in said jewelry box (that he stole)
-1 vase of flowers that he knocked over from the kitchen table (he ate 2 flowers and doused the chair cushions with water)
-1 vase of flowers that he knocked off the fridge and shredded 2 flowers
-my hair (it is not for climbing)
-my hair ties
-1 stack of important papers that he shoved off my desk 3 separate times
-1 bag of chips that he tried to eat through
-1 bunch box he stole things out of
-1 printer that he decided to kill the pages coming out of as it printed (he killed about 3 before I kicked him out)
-2 trash cans containing paper
-1 partial roll of toilet paper
-1 picture/sign that he knocked over, clawed the plastic off of, and knocked over again
-1 shoelace (I know have a very very SHORT shoelace in that shoe)
-1 house plant (which is now missing many leaves and has a pile of dirt ground into the carpet next to it)
-1 pile of dishes that he knocked over
-1 clock radio
-1 laundry hamper (that he climbed, knocked over, and then sat upon)
-1 bed that he managed to squeeze behind, play w/ all of the cords that plug in, and generally make a PITA out of himself over

I can't prove he did anything else. Or else I haven't found the mess/problem yet.

'tis the season for...Candy Corn.

2008-10-22T19:02:00.001-07:00

I think the pictures (with captions) speak for themselves...

Huh, what, who, me? Stealing?

So, uh, now what do I do with it?

What do you mean you EAT this stuff?

At which point, El Gato got frustrated with his stupidity...

And took matters into her own hands. Er, paws. Er, mouth.

Which caused us to have a great deal of pity for the starving La Doof Kitton...so we gave him another piece. He guarded this one much more carefully.

Lazy Fighting

2008-10-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

<---THIS is rather normal at our house.

Both the dog and the kitten were exhausted from playing--we'd just finished a game of fetch with Dawg and La Doof Kitton had been busy attempting to destroy the hamper for about an hour. (he failed at destroying the hamper but did actually succeed in moving it a few feet...impressive when it weighs so much more then him. And moving it created a small cave wehre he could lie in wait and pounce people/other pets/imaginary squirrels/specks of dust/lint demons, etc.)

When they're both exhausted, Dawg flops herself down to take a nap. And La Doof Kitton comes over and strats grooming her ... until which point he gets bored (about 45 seconds). When La Doof Kitton gets bored, he quits grooming and just hauls off and bites her ears. Which results in a vulnerable Dawg (who, of course, falls for the 'lay there and I'll groom you nicely' trick EVERY time) having to defend herself--without loosing the prime blankie spot. So it results in 15 minutes or so of the animals lying, to lazy to get up, while play fighting. Hilarious.

(I do actually have video but...I made the mistake of talking while recording it and I refuse to upload video w/ my voice on it--I'm not feeling smart enough to figure out how to get my voice OFF it.)

Cats really don't have much of a sense of humor.

2008-10-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

La Doof Kitton was facing off with El Gato in the middle of the living room floor.
There was darkness and fury and growling and laying back of ears as they circled each other...

And then Mr. G flung himself dramatically from the couch where he had been sitting between the two kitties and yelled "OOOH, I wanna wrestle too!" and bowled them both over...one with his left hand, one with his right.

The cats picked themselves up and were so shocked they both just sat there as he bowled them over again.
At which point, El Gato scrabbled to her feet and fled to the bedroom where she has been hiding ever since. (When I went to talk her out of the corner she laid her ears back and purred as I pet her--quite clearly saying "I like you, WHY did you marry such a dofus? he needs to learn some manners." I reminded her that Mr. G is the one who fills the food dishes and she allowed one ear to come forward. Almost.) La Doof Kitton pounced on Mr G's hand, bit it hard, and then climbed to the top of the bookshelves, preparing to fling himself down in a blaze of nomming glory...

And then there was a random bit of imagined movement from the catnip mouse in the corner and La Doof Kitton forgot that he was stalking Mr. G and prepared to hunt down and destroy the catnip mouse.

La Doof Kitton is NOT helpful when I'm baking.

2008-10-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like carefully pouring the batter from the bowl into the cake pan when, suddenly, my head jerks toward the floor because La Doof waited until THAT MOMENT to try to climb my ponytail. He was hanging from it, trying to climb, Rapunzel-esque, to the tasty batter. OW.

I chased him off, popped the pumpkin roll into the oven, and set about making a sugared surface for it to cool on...meaning a towel well sprinkled w/ powdered sugar.

Good thing this one isn't for guests and we'll be eating it in house--because I finished sprinkling the towel, turned my back long enough to put the sifter in the sink and turn back around...there are kitty pawprints all across the sugar. (and a ghostly white trail of white footprints led from the sugar-coated towel across the kitchen table, onto the BLACK chair and across the kitchen floor)

I chased him away again, take the cake out of the oven and have it cooling...

There was NO PLACE I can leave this cake to cool that is out of reach, and after trying 4 separate places, I've given up. I spent the better part of the next hour carrying a wire-rack w/ a cooling roll of cake on it with me...it's sitting next to me on the desk, because then I can keep him from eating it.

Drying racks don't hold kitties very well.

2008-10-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

Drying racks are generally handy household objects. They're excellent inventions for those of us who would otherwise leave articles of clothing hanging from the ceiling fan or wadded up on a corner of the laundry room floor (a method which, I must confess, doesn't work well) to dry. They're also objects that are made to be easily collapsible for storage reasons. (which is odd considering I can't remember the last time I collapsed and stored mine...)

By virtue of this last quality, they are NOT kitton safe. Kittons who attempt to climb these objects will find themselves lying in the middle of the floor, trapped under a drying rack and a heap of damp clothing.

(and, while a normal cat would have fled in terror from the loud, noisy, startling, flinging-of-damp clothing object that fell on top of it, La Doof Kitton waited for me to remove all the clothing from burying him...and then promptly attempted to re-climb the drying rack as I attepted to set it back up)

Gotta love computer cords

2008-10-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

I just heard a cry of "La Doof Kitton, Let GO of the *expletive* mouse cord"

Yes, the wrong thing to do when daddy is playing WOW is to sneak under the computer desk, find the mouse cord, and pull while wrapping it around yourself.
This makes daddy's character DIE.
And leads to many swears.

But it is dang funny.
(although he lost interest and is, instead, now playing with the door stops. So this is being typed with a background of *twang. Twaaaang. Twang. *)

Mmmm, chips

2008-09-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves potato chips. And you can't eat just one...

Which is why, apparently, La Doof Kitton chewed a hole in a second bag of potato chips after chewing a hole in the first bag.
Holes which I discovered when taking care of groceries, I picked up the existing bags of chips, and watched rather stupidly as chips and crumbs poured out of the bottom of 2 bags into a ginormous mess in the middle of the floor.

(Apparently though, he doesn't like eating chips. He just THINKS he likes chips until he manages to get the bag opened, licks off a few, and then moves on to something else.)

And now we have to find a new home for the chips.

Ooooh, jewelry!

2008-09-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

I came home from work today and wondered why La Doof Kitton kept attacking the bedspread; that's not his normal style.

And then I saw it...my sapphire bracelet was on the bed.
I gaped, I swore, I threatened to beat knots on his wee gray skull and I took it away and went to put it back in the bracelet drawer of my jewelry box, which is when I noticed that he has figured out those drawers.
(Initially, I figured I had left things out where they were accessible, not that he was this much smarter than me. I should know by now that he's smarter than me.)

The bracelet drawer was pulled out and I have steadily been hunting down my shiny bits; the sapphires from the bed, the blue glass beads from inside the hamper (I have no idea how either--like I said, he's smarter than me), the garnets from the edge of a closet, etc.

SOMEWHERE in the house a small plain gold chain bracelet is hiding, I have no idea where. I think La Doof Kitton is hoping to keep his spoils of war as a necklace and I"m still at a loss for how better to store my baubles.

How La Doof Kitton became a felon...

2008-09-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

There were some nice police officers at our house recently (some people know that story, others don't. Suffice to say, everyone is FINE; it was routine, they were nice people doing their job. And Dawg DID have a license so we didn't have to pay that fine. Like we did last time officials visited with us.)

AENYHOO, Dawg was shut into a room because, well, she's Dawg. Which was fine except during their checking, the nice officer didn't realize she was there and kinda startled him by ramming herself head first into the door and making "Hi, Let me out to pounce you!!!" noises when he opened it to make sure there weren't cat burglars in that room.
(and then we put her outside. Where she promptly trekked through 6 inch deep mud then, when coming inside, wiped her paws off ALL by herself...on the officer's pants. Yeah, her training kinda went out the window...)

During all of this, El Gato the Splendiferous was nowhere to be found.
And La Doof Kitton, by virtue of being La Doof Kitton, planted himself in the middle of the coffee table in the living room (center of attention) and stood on his hind feet to make himself seen.
So when asked we said "oh yes, he loves everybody"

SO the nice officer reached out to pet the adorable kitty...and the adorable kitty put out all his claws, grabbed the officer's hand between those nice white paws, and pulled the officer's hand firmly into his mouth.
La Doof Kitton didn't bite down hard (easy for me to say, my hand wasn't being gnawed on), he just held that hand very very firmly while evaluating whether or not police officers taste like chicken. ANd whether or not they deserve biting. And see if he would jerk away.

Apparently the officer passed muster because La Doof Kitton, after a moment, let go. At which point the officer took back his hand with a grin, grabbed for his gun and called the kitty some names that would make me have to put a "not safe for work" disclaimer on the story.
BAD KITTY!

I'm fairly sure assaulting an officer in the line of duty is a felony even for kitties; I also think La Doof Kitton just likes bothering people in authority. And would be amused to know he is a felon.

I was just picking out your jewelry for today

2008-09-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Somewhere, I have a poster where Charlie Brown complains that, knowing the alarm goes off at 7 am, 6:58 is the worst time of day.

La Doof Kitton decided, this morning, to spare us the agony of awaking to the alarm at 6 am. Instead, he climbed up on my dresser (he never gets on my dresser!) and started exploring jewelry. And at precisely 5:58, he started pushing things off the dresser ... twas the sound of bits of metal tinkling and spreading across the floor as a jewlery box and an earring holder and another jewlery thing hit the floor that awoke me.

There is no snooze button for that.

After about 20 minutes, we found my wedding bands. I'll start matching up earrings this evening to make sure they haven't disappeared into the depths of the cat's hiding places.

The Dog did it

2008-09-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

"No mom, you've got it ALL wrong.

I was minding my own business when I heard Dawg making those weird growly noises she sometimes makes.

So I came in here and caught her playing in the torturous box of water machine.

I told her to stop but she wouldn't.

So I jumped in to stop her.
So...yeah, she did this.

What do you mean she's outside? Oh, uhm, right, I forgot.
Yeah, did I say Dawg did it?

I meant El Gato did it. Yeah.
And she SAID she was going to frame me and...look, she did!

I told her you were to smart to fall for that ..."

(El Gato was not amused with the accusation.)

Pic, just for fun

2008-09-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

I think this is what La Doof Kitton sees sometimes; forbidden items glow with an impossible allure ...

Why we have no plants....

2008-09-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Walked into the kitchen this morning to a reminder that apparently the top of the bookcase is NOT out of La Doof Kitton's reach.

He tried to pretend he was much to innocent to have stolen the flower but just seconds later he succumbed to it's siren call as it convinced him, even though mom was standing RIGHT THERE with a camera to prove he was playing with it, to bat at the forbidden non-toy.

And now that all is said and done, the (few--mostly missing bits for some reason...) fake plants we have in the house are now on top of a curio cabinet without nearby jumping surfaces. We shall see if that's beyond the might paw of La Doof Kitton.

Why we boarded up a room...

2008-09-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

There is an accordion door in our basement, blocking one large room off from the rest of the basement (well, it's supposed to block...)

This had to be installed after La Doof Kitton stole paintbrushes and little lead miniatures and bits of important things (repeatedly), in spite of attempts to put them up out of Kitty reach. (We have determined that the only place out of kitty reach is stapled to the ceiling, at least 4 feet from any jumping surface and dangling less than 2 feet from the celing).

La Doof Kitton proved quite adept at opening the magnetic closure on the accordion door. There is a knack to this, one merely beats on the edges of the door until the door sighs audibly, stares at the kitty in frustration and leaves itself agape for a moment. In that moment when the door is barely agape, one must merely get one retractable claw (must have retractable claws for this, that's why it doesn't work for humans trying to open locked doors) in the wee opening. Then the tail becomes the "lever long enough..." and it will eventually pry open.

The Mr. decided that he must better protect his hobby objects (especially since I recently retired a very lovely, poofy, powder brush for him to use (in something involving words like "drybrushing" and "flock" and "terrain") which La Doof Kitton wishes to have an illicit affair with) so he installed a hook-and-eye style latch on the door, about 4 feet off the ground.
Obviously, since mounted on a door, this device does *NOT* meet the standards to keep it out of kitty reach...

Last night, as in all the previous nights, we made sure the hook was firmly hooked and the eye was firmly screwed into the frame, fastened the magnetic latches and went to bed. And we awoke to a door open precisely the width of one kitty. So we gave up and resorted to drastic measures.

Currently, there is a sheet of plywood lightly tacked over the opening to the large opening into the basement. To enter the lair of the hobby supplies, one needs only to grab a claw hammer, pry up one nail, swing the plywood out of the way, and one can enter.
La Doof Kitton hasn't yet figured out how to substitute a retractable claw for a claw hammer but he is working on it.

I sometimes wonder how much the cats swear at each other.

2008-09-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

This morning the cats were swearing a lot.

I was in the laundry room, shooing cats off of clean clothes and trying to head out the door. The Mr. translated the conversation the cats had from "hiss, grumble, growl" into something resembling English...

La Doof Kitton: You're fat and mom loves me more
El Gato: *obscenity removed, obscenity removed* you, you *obscenity removed-ing, obscenity removed, obscenity removed-er*
La Doof Kitton: PBBBBBBBbbbbbth
El Gato: *obscenity removed* off and die.
La Doof Kitton: yeah, well...you're fat.
El Gato: Die a slow death. In a fire. Surrounded by dogs.
La Doof Kitton: You'll still be fat.
El Gato: And you'll be dead. And I will eat your food. And possibly your body.

At this point, La Doof Kitton retreated. Sometimes, it's wise to know when you can't win--especially when your opponent is double your weight and irritable before breakfast.

La Doof Kitton caught a cold virus. Kinda

2008-09-05T11:51:00.001-07:00

I got up this morning and found this.

Yes, that's the plushy cold virus one finds at lovely stores like thinkgeek. This one lives on a shelf in my office.

Do you realize what this means? It means the LAST
safe place I had to stash things in the office is falling victim to his attacks.

He's awfully lucky that I only have plush bookworms and common colds, not rabies.