the cats sleep

China Chickens - LongJi
Originally uploaded by daveterry.

Since our cats didn't grow up together they are always fighting. I don't understand it. We have enough food for the both of them. There is plenty of space in the house for the two of them. Both of them we cuddle. We even have separate dishes for them, in separate places, by separate doors. But none of that seems to matter.

They hiss through dagger teeth and slap with razor claws and finally fall asleep exhausted within three yards of each other. So far, no blood has been spilled but there are some claw marks in my leather ottoman where one of them missed a slice through the air. Stupid cats.

And now they are just as cute as kittens, Snickers has one paw over his eyes and Chips is curled in a ball next to the door, breathing deeply.

Why can't they just get along?

Next time I'm going to get chickens.

...dave
Do not put statements in the negative form.

Snicker's eye pillow

Snickers using light block
Originally uploaded by daveterry.

What do cats do all day? Sleep.

Snickers uses our ottoman to sleep 98% of the day. The only time he leaves this position is to eat and use the litter box.

He doesn't like to be picked up. It may be bacause of his weight. He's now 24 lbs.

And he now begs at the dinner table. We've always fed him dry cat food, never the fancy sutff. He's fine with that. But one time I fed him a piece of bacon during breakfast and now he'll stare up at me while I eat. If I ignore him he'll gently paw my thigh. I can't resist that. I give him a piece of meet. He'll brush this way and that while I hold it out for him. Then he'll lick it. Then finally he gently takes it from my fingers and chews it.

Snickers doesn't even catch mice. He doesn't like to go outside. Although on a nice 65ish day we'll put him out anyway. But then he's soon at the back door staring in at us.

Since he sleeps on this ottoman near the back door, I guess the light gets to him. Yesterday he slept in this position for an hour trying to block the sun. I think I should get him one of those eye pillows. If I got him one of those butterfly designs maybe he'd dream of catching bugs or something. You know, earn his keep.

The only other place he sleeps is on my chest. He'll usually come around when I'm watching TV. He jumps up on my chest, all 24 lbs of him, and after leaving puncture marks, settles down with a loud purr. If I'm trying to read a book, he'll stand on the other side and rub the edges of the book with the side of his snout. Then he'll peek over the top. If I continue to ignore him, he steps around the book and settles down in the one foot space between my nose and the pages.

But it has to be his idea. I can't walk over to the ottoman, pick him up, and put him on my chest. Well I can but he wont stay long. He'll act like he's all comfortable then without warning he'll catapult off my chest and on to the floor.

If I try to pick him up and hold him like a baby his eyes get all wide. His fur gets all bristly and his claws come out. If I persist in carrying him around, he'll make a low growling sound. He's not happy.

He never comes when I call him. Rarely anyway. Maybe he'll just turn and look my way. Most times he'll just cock his ears back in my direction and continue sleeping. He doesn't like to move much. He's 24 lbs.

...dave
When I played in the sandbox the cat kept covering me up. -- Rodney Dangerfield

Illegal Alien Caught

Since the border has been closed we've had no trouble with illegal aliens coming across our cat door border. However, this doesn't solve the problem of resident illegal aliens.

After Taco dropped the chipmunk and it scampered away, he's taken up residence in our house. He usually travels from room to room so it's hard to track him. Even if we could find out where he was, how do we catch him? We don't have 6,000 troops in Humvees to deploy. We are on a very limited budget.

Every so often I'd see a brown blur out of the corner of my eye but by the time I turned, he was gone. He's fast. Finally I decided to go on the hunt and track him down, no matter how long it took. I started by closing the bedroom door and chasing him around the corners of the room. Sometimes he'd hide in the most unusual places. For example, he hid behind the pillows of our upstairs couch. It's very hard to locate him.

It took me an hour to track him down and corner him in our bathroom. I finally tossed him out into the backyard using a bucket.

Now I can rest easy.

...dave
Every exit is an entrance somewhere else. -Tom Stoppard

The Border is Closed

We have problems with illegal aliens . . . in our home. They are carried across the border against their will by our cat, Taco.

Yesterday we found a chipmunk hopping around our kitchen. He dashed behind our fridge. We heard his tail rattle against the fan blade. Ouch!

We've told Taco to keep his friends outside but he likes to bring them in to show us anyway. He won't listen. Sometimes he'll mournfully meow at the foot of the basement stairs to let us know he has a new friend. Other times he'll carry it upstairs and set it down at our feet in the living room. That's what happened yesterday. Trouble was, the terrified furry ball was playing dead so that Taco would drop him. When Taco did, he was gone in a flash of brown blur.

"That's it. I'm closing the border!" We had made a little door downstairs so that the cats could come and go as they pleased. But ever since we opened the border, all kinds of illegal aliens are crossing into our basement. Sometimes they don't make it past the cat guards we have downstairs, other times they do. I find some of them dead near my table saw or under the ping pong table. I guess their passports weren't up to date.

In any case, I just can't stand the thought of sleeping with these mice and chipmunks. (I saw a mouse scamper across our master bedroom floor several months ago.)

I believe that any animals in the house must carry their own weight. At least the cats catch mice and flies. But we can't provide free access to our house for rodents that don't work for themselves. They'll just eat up my food and drink my water. Then what will I eat and drink?

So I marched down to the cellar and ripped out the plastic door separating our house from the backyard. I yanked the door and the supports right out of the window and locked it shut.

The border is closed.

...dave
You can not look at a sleeping cat and feel tense. -Jane Pauley

A Tale of Two Cats

I've finally figured out why our cats are so different -- Snickers and Taco.

Snickers is the kind of cat that wants to be near you but doesn't want to be touched. He must not have had many hugs when he was young.

Taco, on the other hand, wants to be touched. Often he jumps on our bed and winds himself up between Ruth and I so that his chin is resting on my typing arm (often I blog from bed) and his tail is touching Ruth's arm. He's just the kind of guy that likes the human touch.

But here's the strange thing, we raised Snickers. We always put him on our chest at night and could feel him purring. Taco was chased out of the house next store by three nasty cats that nearly killed him.

Now, Taco spends more time at our house then he does at our next door neighbors. I don't know what we are going to do when we move. Should we ask them if we can keep him? He's never over there so I don't really think it could matter.

Taco is a cool cat. He lets me pet his paw pads. Snickers will draw his paws inward if I try that. Taco will drape himself over just about anything, me, the chair, the edge of the bed. Snickers will curl himself in a ball on something high so that he can see whats going on. He doesn't trust anyone.

Sometimes Snickers will lay right in our office doorway, like he's garding the entry. He'll swack (swich + whack) his tail while he watchs us type on our computers. Nothing goes unmonitored with him. Taco? He's usually draped in our lap, paw and leg extended and chin hanging over the edge of the chair.

Today I caught Taco draped on our kitchen bar stool absorbing the morning's sunbeam. I grabbed this photo sliding around on our wood floor while Ruth made breakfast.

He's absolutely content.

...dave
You can't own a cat. The best you can do is be partners. - Sir Harry Swanson

Taco

A neighborhood cat has adopted us.

At first we ignored him, then chased him off our porch, but in the end we gave in and started feeding him. He just kept coming back and no one claimed him. My wife thought he had such a good personality, which isn't saying much compared to the cat we already have.

We call him Taco but we really don't know what his name is. We've placed a collar around his neck to show some ownership I guess. We've even plugged in a heating pad and placed it on the lounge outside so that he can keep warm in some of these 40-degree nights. Fact is, I've kind of grown attached to him, whatever attachment a human can have to a cat. I've heard it said that humans don't own cats, cats own humans. It's crazy I know but it's really true. Humans can own dogs but not cats.

Cats and dogs are such opposites. A dog's wagging tail says that it's happy, but a wagging tail on a cat says it's mad. Ears pulled back on a dog shows it's submissive, but on a cat it means it's angry. A growl from a dog says it's mad, but the cat's growl or purr says it's content.

Anyway, back to Taco. We've started this ritual of feeding this animal inside. At first I told my wife to keep it outside because we don't know where it's been. I was quickly overruled when we heard the food bowl scooting across the back porch one night. We saw the outline of what we thought was a new cat voraciously eating the remaining cat food. When we flicked on the porch light we discovered the large "cat" had a hairless tail, ah, that is, it was an opossum! This thing was fearless. When I opened the door to chase him away he peered up at me and then looked at my feet. I slammed the door, afraid he was going to scamper in to take a look around the inside of our house. We tried fixing the back fence but he kept coming back. It wasn't until we started bringing the food indoors that he stopped coming by.

So Taco comes in to eat now but lounges on the back porch, on the lounge of course. This morning I poured his food, he only like it dry, opened the back door, and he waltzed right in.

Now, after eating, he meows. He wants to go out. And his meow is not a soft, gentle sort of cry, but it's loud and ugly. When I peeked around the corner to see what was up, Snickers, our other cat, is pestering him. This was causing his plea for the exit. I heard from another neighbor that someone else tried to adopt Taco. When then invited him in for a meal their other four cats attacked him. So I guess he'd rather dine and dash than hang around for a beating from the resident cat.

Truth is, Snickers doesn't attack him. Snickers just sits there looking while Taco eats, a kind of subtle intimidation tactic. Snickers stands about two and a half feet away and stares at him. Then he'll sit and wrap his tail around his paws, his eyes are big, and just stare him down. All the while Taco goes on eating, with an occasional glance up at the Snickers cat.

This morning I saw Snickers try a different tack. He was stretched out on his side, just two and a half feet away, end of tail slapping the wood floor. After Taco ate he settled down some, on his haunches. He hunched down and wrapped his tail around his body and just kept staring at the back door casing, the crack where some breeze comes through. Then Snickers got up and sniffed around the plants to the back of Taco, just about two feet away. Taco watched him. Snickers knows he has no business by the plants but he just uses it as an excuse to roam behind Taco. I know just what he's doing and say: "Snickers" in a warning tone. He backs off.

But he's already spooked Taco and now Taco starts his moaning meow. It's such a piercing sound, like fingernails on a blackboard, that I have to let him out.

He returns to his lounge out back to wait for the next hunger pang.

I think of one of the first poems I heard by Ogden Nash and realize this kind of thing has probably been going on some time:

The Cat - Ogden Nash

You get a wife, you get a house,
Eventually you get a mouse.
You get some words regarding mice,
You get a kitty in a trice.
By two a.m. or thereabouts,
The mouse is in, the cat is out.
It dawns upon you, in your cot,
The mouse is silent, the cat is not.
Instead of kitty, says your spouse,
You should have got another mouse.

...dave
Never try to baptize a cat. - Laura, Age 13

Emily

That's the name of my folk's cat. She's black and white and a real cutie.

When we arrived she was sitting atop some boxes in the garage. As the car pulled in she didn't scamper off, she calmly rose and watched the front end of the car approach the end of the garage.

I kind of forgot about her but the next time I saw her she was curled on the guest bed on Eric's jacket. We gave her a stroke down her back. She is silky smooth. By contrast, when we attempt to pet Snickers, our cat, he just pulls away; because if it's not HIS idea he doesn't want any part of it. Hmmm, kinda like some of the people I work with. But I digress.

Snickers is also black and white but there the similarity ends. We've always used food names for our animals but don't ask me Why. We've had Snickers, Oreo, Ginger, and even Potatoe Chip (the mouse), but that's another story.

Anyway, back to Emily. She stayed right there on the bed (I assume waiting for us) until we climbed in for sleep at 3:30 am. She didn't move all night because when I woke up in the morning, she was in the same place her paws tucked in under her.

I reached over and picked her up (she must be 10 lbs lighter than Snickers) and she settled down on my chest, gave her paw a lick, and rested her head on my ribs.

If I swap cats, you think the folks will notice?

...dave
The trouble with a kitty is that, eventually it becomes a cat. -Ogden
Nash