mmm, cat treats.

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.

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

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 :-)

Hampers are tiger traps.

(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.

(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

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.

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

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.