He may have lost another life today...

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

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

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

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

Hmm, what is this?




Now with a kitteh surprise inside!


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

Tied up with a bow

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

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

Treat time!

Treat time, in the G house, is interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter last night...

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

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

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

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

Oooh, recycling!

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

La Doof Kitton found the recycling this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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