The Enigma and the Dweeb

[wackyjacky1]

As I sit here reading these posts (and LOL-ing ) my little Erin-Aquanetta (yes, she's hyphenated ) is playing with a small stuffed hamster-looking thing and making those creepy "I've caught a mouse" noises. Better that she does it now, though, and not in the middle of the night when those strange meows give me the heebie-jeebies, forcing me to turn the light on and confirm it's just a stuffed mouse she's playing with.

Just for chuckles, here is a short video of Erin last year with a ping-pong ball and a box (I only videoed a few seconds, but this went on for 20 minutes non-stop until she finally conked out):


BTW ping-pong balls make great cat toys.

[short cut sally]

I never thought of ping pong balls!. my cat has a collection of unbreakable xmas ornaments that he plays with. which of course, i found after taking care of all the xmas goodies and they were under all the large furniture. it was too much of a bother to take care of the ornaments so he has extra toys. and yes, last night, at about 9pm, little boy gets in the carrier and comes back out, meows, gets back in the carrier. broke my heart, i didn't take him out for his ride. should've thought about it before it was my bed time. my kitty came with a taj-mahal of cat carriers. i think maybe its more for a dog than cat. my mom's cat carriers are much smaller than mine. she did get a larger carrier finally for her 25# boy, more like mine. all you saw of her boy in the cat carrier was all the fur sticking out of the air holes and his head by the door, he could hardly move in that thing.

[mimitabby]

I have two former feral cats and they are very food motivated. I can get them to do ANYTHING I want. Enza used to jump up on the bed to wake me up.
I taught her to jump on the dresser. so now she sits there waiting for a kibble as time for me to get up approaches.
Then i go into the bathroom, and she will shut the door for me. Too bad if i'm in the way the door will hit me in the back. If that isn't good enough, she'll open the door and go out and come in again.
Then we get to the kitchen and Aggie jumps on top of the garbage can. what she wants is for me to throw kibbles, so i do; and now all 3 cats are scrambling for the few kibbles i throw.
next i hide kibbles all over the place, windowsill, chair, cat scratching post.
If Enza is on her game, she manages to follow me and find most of them.
She will give me a kiss, spin, sit, lay down all on command for a kibble.

they keep me entertained too.

[roadie gal]

A friend of mine had a theory about why cats stare at invisible things or talk to the air... They're visitors from another planet. They're FELIONS, sent here to spy on humanity and report back to the mother ship.

Houston, our male cat, is a spring with fur. That boy has a 4 foot vertical leap... up or down. In our house we have a cat condo that stand about 4 feet tall. It sits downstairs in the living room, with the loft above and slightly past it. The floor of the loft stands about 6 feet above the condo. One of Houston's favorite things is to leap off of the loft onto the condo. You'll be standing there and suddenly you'll hear a "THUMP" and Houston will magically appear, from nowhere, on top of the condo.

One day we had a dogsitter coming to walk the dogs while we were at work. Apparently Houston did his flying cat trick for the dogsitter. It about scared her pants off. She had no idea what the loud noise was and suddenly there was this cat staring at her at eye level.

Riley, the girl cat, knows that my time at the computer is her time to be petted. In the morning when I'm at the computer she sits on the desk and meows and pats me on the shoulder until I pet her. If I quit before she's ready she screeches and pats me again.

[lph]

aaawwww, cats are just the most elegant and fascinating creatures on earth.

Our dearly beloved wild huntress Raptus would chase any other animal, cat or dog or bird, out of her garden, the neighbour's gardens and finally she took over the entire block. Poor shy next-door neighbour cat never knew what hit him

I'll never forget the time I glanced out the back and saw her launch herself in a massive running leap at a large magpie flying straight towards the kitchen window. The magpie flew up, cat hit the kitchen window with mad eyes and a THUNK and disappeared outta sight...

She'd also lie down right smack in the middle of the football field right below our house, calmly ignoring 15 kids trying to play football and begging her to get out of the way. And she'd hog the bathroom sink as a bed whenever she could sneak in. And she'd spend ages "hairdressing" my son's longish hair. And she could easily jump several feet straight up as a kitten, hunting a suction dart stuck to a window. Gotta find some photos

My favourite childhood cat Vanja would climb into the upper kitchen cupboard whenever he could and lie down on the warm shelf over the light bulb. Rather disconcerting to open the cupboard and see a large mass of black and white fur at eye level staring at you with a big fat smile instead of plates.

If we didn't let him in fast enough in winter (ie immediately on command) he'd climb up the slats across the window and hang there from his front paws, belly against the glass, miaowing piteously at us.

Another cat we had when I was a child used to hang from the top of an oldfashioned hot-water radiator from her front paws, so that her belly would get warm...

We had kittens once who would climb anything - straight up a brick wall, to the top of any bookcase, or up my jeans-clad legs. Once they ran way into the gap between the wall and our then water bed, got freaked out, couldn't turn around, didn't think of backing up, and stayed there meeping until we emptied the entire water bed and dragged it away from the wall.

I could talk about cats all day

[mimitabby]

then i had a cat who i trained to catch bugs off the wall. I'd lift the cat and point him and he'd do the work. like a mini-cat-vac. He was fast and never missed. Of course he caught bugs without my help too, but sometimes I'd see one and he'd be asleep or something.

[GLC1968]

These stories are great!

Our cat is a bug-hunter, too. In fact, both our cat and one of our dogs are very much into chasing and catching bugs. It's hilarious to watch them both tearing around the house and leaping against walls after the same bug! We place wagers on which one will catch it first and it's never a sure bet!

(they both also go crazy for the laser pointer)

[LoriO]

My 15 year old cat loves to torment the dogs, especially my corgi since he knows what a wimp he is. Over the winter Smokey had decided that HE wanted to be the one to sleep on my lap and come hell or high water he was going to do that...even if the corgi was in the way.



Please note the very contented look on the cats face and the Someone save me look on the corgi

[katluvr]

First I have to admit I am a TE forum addict. However, I did nto visit yesterday at all (toooo busy at work) and today this is my first visit.

Loved the cat pictures. I am a single parent for the week, so I am dealing w/ the 2 older cats, the 2 "boys" and the 2 kittens (aka "the girls"). Yes if you can do hight math that is 6!

Whew, there is just not enough of me to share w/ them all! (Oh yeah adn the 2 birds that hate me except when I feed them peanuts!).

This experience is one reason to never leave S.O. and to be very forgiving of the not-so-nice moods S.O. has been in lately. Single parenting AND taking care of house AND working is HARD!

Miss my kittens!