The joys of having cats

[vilakins]

Jasmin just climbed into the open kitchen cupboard from on top of it (ignoring my "NOOOO!") and lost her balance and fell out dragging about half the stuff on the top shelf after her. Aaaugh. She broke a bottle of my hayfever "sniffy drug" but I have more than enough of that anyway. She was OK but she got a fright (and she wasn't the only one). I doubt she'll learn not to do it though.

I think she landed on her feet.

Sigh. Yesterday was one of those amazing clear sunny days you get now and then, but today's back to the crappy winter weather I just don't want to go out in. Just when I think winter could be bearable, it reminds me what a horrible season it is. Do not want.

The rain however is coming from the right direction today for the roof not to leak. This is good, but having a bucket out to catch leaks doesn't work that well anyway when a certain lion-coloured Burmese cat mentioned above knocks it over with several inches of rainwater in it, which happened a couple of weeks ago. :-P

Comments

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

I think that beats my second morning of cat sick from Quincy

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I know all about the cat sick, especially when I had Claudia and Tessa. They were champs.

One of the girls occasionally pees in the guest handbasin. They can always get out, so I think it's because Vic lies on the mat in front of the cat door and they won't go past him. Sigh.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to ask - did you hear about Graeme Swann's court appearance (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/aug/16/graeme-swann-trapped-cat-drink-driving)?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I didn't hear that. But it doesn't say whether Max is all right. Poor wee kitten.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Yes, Swann said he was OK (http://twitter.com/Swannyg66/status/11494170872). Though confusingly on Twitter he said it was Paddy rather than Max. Changing the name is probably a bad move court-wise...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That's good, and he can afford it. Wasn't there twitter proof well before that that he'd lost a kitten?

Tessa got into the neighbours' walls one day. I looked for her for ages, and went to bed very upset. Than about 1am there was a huge amount of shouting and banging, and she turned up looking very unhappy. They'd gone out leaving the grandmother to babysit the kids and she'd become very nervous when she heard something in the walls. When they came home, they realised it was Tessa as I'd been looking for her, and make a racket till she found her way out. I gather she got in through the rec room in the basement which he'd been working on.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Yes, he mentioned his distress at Paddy's disappearance the previous day and asked people living locally to check their sheds. Maybe it was Hoppsy who got the names muddled.

Thomas managed it once when we were having a gas fire replaced - he must have got into the hole while the workmen were carrying the old one out and then run under the floor when he heard them coming back, after which of course he was trapped because the new model was fixed in the wall. I got home several hours later and finally worked out why invisible miaowing was following me round downstairs but was inaudible upstairs; and fortunately, unlike Graeme Swann, I knew about a loose floorboard so was able to free him without any tools.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Poor Thomas. At least he wasn't there too long.

I used to worry about Claudia and Tessa getting into people's cars; Claudia did at least once but was let out straight away when she howled as soon as the motor started. We think that's how the family cat Sam disappeared for seven months: he was taken a long way in a removal van that was down the street. He came back on my birthday, which I heard when I rang home from Israel: best present that year. :-) He was very hungry and suffering from cat flu, but recovered very well and lived till 18. He looked very like your Thomas and this icon. :-)

And I'm off to bed. :-)

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I haven't had an incident of quite that magnitude since poor old Chomsky died. He was a sweet cat, but he had all the grace of a hippo and he did tend to break things. He once jumped on a telephone socket doubler and sheared it through at the wall. Did I mention he was also a very big cat? :-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That's impressive. Vic's a big cat but nowhere near as active as the girls these days.

Jasmin's always been a klutz. She's broken quite a few things: my two big soup bowls (both at once), a wooden Indonesian cat (glued back together), and made a good attempt on a teapot. I managed to train Claudia and Tessa not to get up on tables or benchtops, but it's never taken with Jasmin.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That is quite an impressive breakage record!

[ultrapsychobrat.livejournal.com]

Awww...aren't cats delightful?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I haven't even mentioned the bills and books and other paper she chews into bits. So far my cat hasn't eaten my homework but it's only a matter of time.

[ultrapsychobrat.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

Damn O_O I feel for ya. Thankfully Noki doesn't jump on tables, but my current kitchenette is so small that I've dropped two spice bottles already when she's been headbutting my feet (garlic and pepper!). It was a pain to hoover and mop and make sure there was no pepper left on the floor in and near her food/water bowls.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

The joys of cats, indeed! Mine are always trying to jump into cupboards and cabinets if I leave them open for half a second. They've never fallen out and knocked stuff over, as far as I remember, but I've done it myself often enough while trying to drag them out.

[kernezelda]

Oh, yeah, the joys of active, curious cats! So lovable, and so innocent-faced after the damage is done.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

She's just so clumsy. I wonder if she's short-sighted or just impetuous.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

Impetuous, I think. Seems like once a cat has an idea of doing something, they have to try it, no matterhow ill-advised.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's how they run across roads. Dogs will change their mind and go back; cats just commit.

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Oh kitties!

Well at least Jasmin is unhurt and not everything was broken.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Nothing really heavy came down either, so if anything landed on her she was all right. She came to me before bed for a lovely big cuddle. :-)

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

EEEk! Cats WILL get into stuff no matter what you do. I'm glad no one was hurt.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Just annoyed in two cases and frightened upstairs in one. :-) It took ages to pick everything up though. Luckily there wasn't anything heavy up there.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

The batch I have now doesn't really knock things down, but they have managed to reduce one side of a wooden stepladder to a giant splinter. Not to mention the sliding screen door which seems to have developed a few holes.

Re your leaking roof--join the club. Our roof slopes, so the leaks never stay in one place :( Some of us were not cut out to be householders.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Our roof and ceilings slope, but this leak is in one place. It's really hard to find on the outside because the rain goes in at some point other than where it comes out, but Greg thinks (again) that he's found it. If it's finally fixed it will be such a relief.

We lived in a new house with a flat roof when I was a kid (it was very unusual design and people used to take photos of it) and that roof leaked like crazy because the water would just collect. Mum had to run around with about 5 or 6 buckets whenever it rained, and there was even more there than here. :-P It's weird; I often dream of that house, more than any of the others I lived in as a child.

Yeah, being a householder is a pain, when with trees coming down in high winds two weeks ago (yay for the lawn guy chopping those up), leaks, and not being able to afford fixing up all the things we said we would when we moved in. :-P

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

It sounds as though it could have been a lot worse.

I think she landed on her feet.

Have you heard of the supposed experiment, where someone strapped a slice of buttered toast to the back of a cat, held it above a carpet and then dropped it? Sod's Law said that the toast had to land butter side down, but the survival law of cats said that the cat had to land on its feet. So the cat and toast never actually landed, but simply hovered in mid-air whilst spinning gently, as the two laws fought for supremacy. :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

She fell out clinging to the shelf and a lot that was on it, back down, but I'm still not sure. I have seen cats fail to land on their feet when they've fallen off a chair in mid-sleep or ecstatic writhe while being stroked.

And here's coincidence: I was just talking about the butter-toast-and-cat perpetual motion machine last night before it happened because we were watching the Mythbusters testing buttered toast with various devices including a "top-loading toast tosser". Result: toast lands either side equally--unless it is pushed off the side of a table in which case it does a 180deg flip, doubtless the source of the myth.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's quite a coincidence. And a very interesting result.

[luinielle.livejournal.com]

Poor Jasmin - I'm glad she didn't hurt herself in her fall. Oliver is definitely the klutzier of our two, although both are notorious for tumbling into baths.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Jasmin likes to get in the bath when it's empty, but often when it's wet after a shower, leaving muddy paw-prints in it and wet ones on the surrounding surfaces. :-P I have no idea what the attraction is.

My previous little Tessa used to wind around the edge of the bath and nudge me when I was having a bath (which is unusual; I prefer showers), but once I'd drawn one and gone off and the water had become so still she probably couldn't see it. I came back in time to yell "No!" as she leapt into it--and it was so funny. She hit the water, then did a four-pawed vertical take-off, landed on the floor outside it, and shot under a bed. There was water all over the walls and door, a lot more than on her, she was there for such a short time. We were laughing so much she wouldn't come out till we stopped, then I rubbed her dry and hugged her consoled her.

Jasmin had a nice big cuddle before bed last night too. :-)

My sister had a cat who used to walk through her toddlers' paddling pool which just his nose above water. :-P

[luinielle.livejournal.com]

Awww poor Tessa! Memories like that are precious, aren't they.

The kits both love to lay in the tub right after it's been drained of water - I think they like the heat. Oliver will also watch the water drain and when it's about ankle depth, he'll go in and walk around; he'll lift one paw out of the water, shake it around, put it back into the water and take a step and then lift a different paw to do the shake. It's too cute. :o) I wonder sometimes if he would swim like your sister's cat.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the heat! I hadn't thought of that.

Jasmin likes watching water drain out, but not as much as Tessa did. I used to set the tap to just dribble and she sit there for ages, intent, occasionally putting a paw under the tap.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

The grace and elegance of a cat -NOT!

K'zin also disproves that:

cat = grace+ elegance
The other cats manage to navigate obstacles without dislodging a thing. He just plows through everything, knocking things aside like a feline wrecking ball.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's nominative determinism! You named him for a fierce alien. Does he greet you with a scream and a leap? :-)

I used to love Larry Niven's work, but he's either lost the plot or he's lost his marbles and is paying a crap hack to write for him. All his recent stuff is badly written near-porn. [mourns]

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Actually he was named K'zin because as a kitten he did do the "scream and leap" as an attack.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Hee! Jasmin still does sudden but silent leaps. It scares the hell out of me when she attacks from behind.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

He has learnt to be silent. He now springs on the other cats without much warning , unless they are lucky enough to spot him "manoeuvring" his back feet ready for take off.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the old tell-tale bum wiggle.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Oh dear... maybe she'll learn to stay away from the cupboard, you never know.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. We'll have to learn to keep it properly closed. :-P

I just had to by a new plastic box with compartments that I use for my drugs so I'm not opening heaps of bottles twice a day; I only realised yesterday that she'd broken that when it came down in the avalanche. I hadn't seen straight away that the lid was split.