Category: Cats

Unlike the lovely Velcro, who serves as today’s LOLcat model, I have plenty to keep me busy today.

I’m doing the KC TourWalk this morning wearing the awesomely ugly and expensive new purple-and-silver athletic shoes I purchased yesterday. Why do most women’s running shoes come in hideous princess-y colors these days? What’s wrong with black and white, I ask you?

I’m hoping today’s walk will get me started walking more often; I could really use the aerobic exercise. At the very least, it’ll give me some good photos to post tomorrow.

After that, I’ll come home and make dinner rolls and cranberry sauce to take to Ronald McDonald house for a Thanksgiving-themed dinner tomorrow. My Sunday will be mostly given over to volunteering at the spay/neuter clinic, so I need to plan ahead.

Enjoy your Saturday!

Your LOLcat of the week:

Produced using the LOLcat Builder from I Can Has Cheezburger.

Congratulations to winners of this week’s drawing: CountryMouse and Colleen.

Xena’s antics are our most rollicking form of entertainment these days. First she started playing fetch. Then she figured out that she could play fetch by herself by batting the ball down the basement stairs, running after it and bringing it back up. Repeat until exhausted.

She still leaps into people’s arms at the slightest provocation. My husband was closing all the blinds in the living room the other day while trying to lean away from her so she wouldn’t get any ideas. She still launched herself at him and forced him to catch her.

Her latest trick is scaring me a little: she’s started stretching up and working on the doorknobs. If there’s any cat in our household who might be able to eventually open a door, it’s Xena. We’re just glad we have an old house with doors that stick. At least that may slow her down.

I’ll leave you with a LOLcat photo that is not Xena, but could very well be.

Remember when Xena was this big?

These days she’s filling up a lot more sink:

She’s turned into a good-sized cat, except that she still has a relatively tiny head. You can’t tell from the photo, but 80% of her is gut. Our girl loves a good meal or ten.

Even though she doesn’t look like a kitten anymore, she still acts like one. The night before last, I was awakened by the sound of shattering glass. She’d jumped onto the kitchen counter and knocked a wine glass to the slate floor. It was the second glass in the set that she’d broken in as many days. Thanks for cutting back mama’s alcohol consumption, Xena!

Her latest undesirable behavior has been darting through the kitchen door to the studio every time someone tries to go up. The squirt gun has proved to be remarkably effective in curtailing that action.

Still, my husband spoils her rotten and she rewards him by jumping into his arms almost every time she sees him. Silly cat.

Yes, more cat drama. It follows me wherever I go.

As we began the process of introducing Velvet into the household, Xena shifted from hissing aggressively to withdrawing and pouting. We actually thought it was funny for a little while: "Xena’s having a snit. What a diva!"

By the time Monday night rolled around, we were starting to suspect that Xena’s problems extended beyond mere stress and jealousy. After I watched her park herself in Velvet’s cat box and lie there for a long time, my suspicions sharpened.

When I woke up this morning, Xena was a mess: stinky, covered in kitty litter, with cat puke on her chin that she hadn’t even bothered to clean off. Either she was sick or she’d spent the evening partying with Lindsay Lohan. I thought it was safe to assume the former.

My husband took her to the vet, who is probably shopping for a fine European sports car thanks to our generous contributions, and got a tentative diagnosis of urinary tract infection and a possible ear infection. Now Xena’s back on her favorite banana-flavored liquid antibiotic with some oily ear drops for good measure.

The second source of drama began when my husband got home from the vet’s office. Our cleaning lady was leaving at about the same time and once she was gone, Velvet was nowhere to be found.

I presume that ‘Velvet’ is her shelter name, which means there’s little chance that she knows it’s her name, much less that she would come when it’s called. My husband searched the house from top to bottom and then resorted to wandering down the street in case she’d gotten outside. No reply. No cat.

When he called me to tell me about it, I thought of all the paperwork I’d signed at the shelter promising to take care of Velvet for the rest of her natural life. I also remembered the part about how they reserved the right to sue me if I didn’t.

Fortunately, she turned up a short time later from some unknown hidey hole. My husband guessed that the vacuum cleaner had freaked her out, which sounds plausible. From now on, I suppose we’ll have to confine her somewhere when there’s vacuuming going on.

So Xena’s on her meds and Velvet is resting comfortably in Velcro’s cat bed. The cat drama seems to have subsided for the time being. Wish me luck that it stays that way.

When Xena came into our household in February, I really didn’t have my head wrapped around the realities of having a kitten. Three months later, the crazy kitten behavior continues and I find myself poised to make an extremely counterintuitive decision.

Xena loves to play. She has lost almost all of her many cat toys through over-vigorous batting and she now resorts to making toys for herself out of anything she can find. Her resourcefulness extends to my hair rubber bands, bottle caps, pieces of sheetrock that she finds in the basement, and, lately, a seemingly endless supply of packing peanuts from an unknown source. She also takes great joy in jumping up onto any available surface and knocking things to the floor.

This morning I awoke to find a half-dozen philodendron leaves separated from their vines and strewn all over the living room. No wonder she throws up so often.

Velcro is no help at all and who can blame her? She’s an elderly 15 years old and was recently treated for cancer. I’m sure she’d like nothing better than to spend her remaining years curled peacefully into a ball, preferably on someone’s lap. Instead, she gets attacked by a crazy-eyed warrior princess a thousand times a day. The only thing she ever says anymore is, "Grrrr…."

I’ve talked through this problem with a lot of cat people (not Demetri Martin’s idea of cat people – just people who like cats) and they all say the same thing, "Oh, you should always get two kittens at once!"

I didn’t actually choose to get a kitten (or Xena specifically), so that wasn’t in the cards at the time. I thought of it before we had her spayed, but I was worried that the two cats would just gang up on Velcro. The cat people say no – that they’d just play together and let Velcro enjoy her retirement.

Even with that advice, I’ve been on the fence. For one thing, both Velcro and Xena are scrupulous users of the cat boxes. What if I ended up with another upstairs pee-er? Then there’s the issue of another cat’s worth of vet bills.

Today my husband called me and said, "I think I know why Xena’s so destructive: she doesn’t have anyone to play with."

Okay, I get the hint. On my agenda for this evening is a trip to the local shelter to meet their kitties and see if I can find another young ‘un who loves to play. I’m not rushing into actually bringing one home, but I think it’s clear that Xena needs a playmate. What am I getting myself into?!?

Xena shows no remorse, boldly returning to the scene of the crime.

…and off she goes in search of something else to dash to the floor.

It’s amazing how much havoc a little kitten can wreak when left to her own devices. Some days, I survey the devastation and think of Ron Burgundy in Anchorman talking to his dog: "You ate a whole wheel of cheese? How’d you do that? Actually, I’m not even mad. That’s amazing."

Xena’s primary targets are in the bathroom. Her latest trick: tackling the free-standing toilet paper dispenser to the ground, then mauling the roll of TP. She’s been known to pierce the roll almost to the cardboard core. Considering how small her teeth and claws are, I’m not even sure how she does it.

This morning she ended up in trouble when she jumped onto the bathroom counter for the umpteenth time and spilled about $5 worth of Bare Escentuals loose eye shadow into the sink. It’s partly my own fault – I’ve been letting her jump up on the counter and lie in the sink while I’m getting ready because it’s cute. I knew the risks, but didn’t pay them enough heed.

Every day, Xena’s "I’m going to wrap myself around your arms and gnaw on your tender flesh" phase gets longer and longer. I am really looking forward to the day that she grows out of it.

At the same time, Velcro is looking forward to the day when her tail is no longer the best! kitteh! toy! evar! Poor Velcro, every day is filled with annoyance and aggravation for her. No amount of hissing, growing or pummeling deters Xena from wanting to jump on her and play, play, play!

Fortunately for Xena, she’s darned adorable. When she’s not being crazy, she loves to be picked up and snorgled. She targeted my husband for extra special cuddling duty, which won him over pretty much immediately.

I can see from her rapidly-lengthening tail and sizeable feet that she’ll be a turning into a cat before I know it. In the meantime, I guess I’ll learn to deal with a few tooth holes in some of my more vulnerable possessions.

Ever since my calico cat, Velcro, had her breast cancer surgery, I’ve been giving her a daily antibiotic pill. The first pills we had for her were small and not too difficult to get her to swallow. Unfortunately, they also made her lethargic and twitchy, so the vet switched her to a much larger tablet that’s about the size of a flattened pea.

Today was the eighth pill of ten and, frankly, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the last two down her gullet. Every day, the pill-administering ordeal gets worse and worse. This is measured by the number of times I have to retrieve the pill from the floor, catch the cat, and feel the pain of teeth and claws digging into tender portions of my anatomy.

By the time I got her to swallow today’s pill, Velcro was thrashing around and actually foaming at the mouth. The pill had been spit out so many times that it was half dissolved. Heck, I can’t even be completely sure that she really swallowed it, given that it probably was in no condition to make a sound even if it had hit the floor.

Somehow I drew the short straw to take her to the vet tomorrow morning for the removal of her belly staples. Amazingly enough, she’s pretty much left them alone enough to let the incision heal.

As un-fun as that whole episode might be, I’m planning on creating my own silver lining by taking the second-to-last pill with me for the vet to administer. Heck, as long as Velcro is all pissed off anyway, what’s one more poke of the hornets’ nest?