Kitteh TV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

(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.

I promise more tom-foolery in April

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.