over the cliff, onto the rocks.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

funny pictures of cats with captions

10 comments:

Unknown said...: Yep. Alex taught me that several years ago!; Sunday, June 21, 2009 11:29:00 PM
Bryan said...: Mine are on the tops of the refrigerator, the bookcases, and in the case of Ringo, the roof of my house, so I'm used to it.; Monday, June 22, 2009 3:52:00 PM
hipparchia said...: hi, nick!

well, as y'all can see, mine haven't topped ringo and her rooftop, but they cleared out the cabinet above the refrigerator for their personal use.

they haven't got 'posable thumbs' though, so i still wield some power around here.; Monday, June 22, 2009 11:53:00 PM
Steve Bates said...: "[A]bove you" is not a place you want to find Tabitha these days!

Actually, she's more likely to react adversely to being called on the carpet, or throw rug, or bath towel, or whatever other absorbent surface is handy. Yes, I'm convinced she knows exactly what she's doing: reprimand her, however gently, and she'll make you pay for it. At 20, she's entered a sort of second kittenhood, reacting wetly (and worse) to any imagined offense or neglect by either of us.

Sigh.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:10:00 AM
hipparchia said...: it's generally non-helpful to think that our pets are doing things to spite us, or to get back at us, or for any other anthropomorphic motive. humans are bad enough at guessing the motives of other humans, likely we're off base whenever we guess at the motives of other, alien species.

at 20, maybe senility is setting in. didn't the vet decide she'd had a stroke a while back? maybe she's having the kitty version of transient ischemic attacks. or, iirc, isn't she on various medications? if so, maybe they need adjusting. and if she's being treated for kidney problems, she's jut plain not going to have the bladder control she used to [and possibly not enough advance warning either, if it's anything like some medications i've been on, one minute you're fine, the next you're in dire straits]. maybe she just needs more litter boxes, so she doesn't have to travel so far to get to one in time.

as for the surface, once they develop an aversion for a particular surface [read: type of kitty litter], it's almost impossible to convince them to go back to it. if they experience any kind of pain while using the litter box, they're not stupid, they'll stay away from something that hurts them -- and they have no way of knowing that the 'hurt' wasn't the fault of the box if they have, for instance, a urinary tract infection, or kidney stones, or whatever. change the type of litter [new texture, new smell, no smell, sand, dirt, whatever you haven't used before]. maybe even try the puppy training pads or oops pads.

srsly, reprimanding just does not help with toilet issues.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:39:00 PM
Unknown said...: Alex is still surprising me after 6 years of owning me. Yesterday he leaped from the floor onto the kitchen counter. I didn't know that he could leap that high. Alex, however, did know exactly where his package of catnip was on the counter and, to give me a hint as to what he wanted, nudged the catnip package off the counter and onto the floor.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:47:00 PM
hipparchia said...: i've been keeping the catnip package in one of the kitchen drawers.

recently somebody figured out how to open that drawer, and now there are new toothmarks in the catnip package and little green specks all over the sdlverware.

i'm not sure if whichever cat it was didn't want to share with the others or was just impatient and rather than take the extra step of tossing the bag onto the floor, maybe it was just easier to scatter the catnip around inside the drawer.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:58:00 PM
hipparchia said...: and i have cats helping me with my blogging, that mystery word in the comment above was supposed to be silverware.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:00:00 PM
Unknown said...: Yep. Aren't cats amazing? I sure than they can sniff out and get to whatever they want when they really want. Catnip, however, seems to be a special treasure for them to get into.

Alex just came in from about 5 hours of catting around outside. He informed me (1) I should give him his treats before he finished his dinner so he could be sure I'd not forget and (2) after dinner we are both to retire for the night. I think I lost much of my free will when Alex came into my life.; Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:11:00 PM
Steve Bates said...: You're right about one thing: I shouldn't pretend to guess a cat's motivation for anything. I do want to correct a misimpression that I may be responsible for: it's not that we reprimand Tabitha for turning loose in the wrong place (though of course we're not happy about it), but rather that sometimes she does that in response to being reprimanded for something else (e.g., getting in a spat with Samantha, or jumping for our plates while we eat). No, when Tabitha thinks outside the box (so to speak), I pick her up gently, perch her on my shoulder cheek-to-cheek with me (she usually purrs in response), talk softly to her, carry her to the box and set her there. Her response at that point is usually something which I imagine to be "why are you putting me here? I've already relieved myself!"

If Tabitha is not responding to human actions, she is probably marking for the benefit of a cat who long ago lived in this house. (The A/C filter still had a lot of cat hair in it, said the technician.) I doubt there's anything we can really do about it. Incontinence was not a problem before she moved here, so it is unlikely to be a primarily medical problem.; Wednesday, June 24, 2009 9:56:00 AM