Treat time!

Treat time, in the G house, is interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter last night...

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

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

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

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

Oooh, recycling!

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

La Doof Kitton found the recycling this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitteh TV

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

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

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

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

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

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)