"Altho I have a brain the size of a pecan, you WILL do my bidding!"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s snowed here all week. Miserably so. Annoyingly so. Some new snowfall is on the ground every morning, including this one. Trip the household cat has NO affection for snow. The following exchange has been occurring repeatedly, in the same way, every morning since Monday morning’s alarm rang:

Trip the Cat: Hey! Get your ass outta bed! I need to go out, you KNOW this, get a move on!

Becka: Alright, alright already. (Opens the front door, prominently displaying the snow-laden front porch steps.)

Trip the Cat: Dayyym! (Shakes front paws off, even tho he hasn’t yet actually touched the evil stuff with any body part, nor stepped across the threshold at all). Nope, I ain’t going out in THAT. What’s wrong with you, anyway? You KNOW I have no affection for snow!

Becka: Thought so. I’ll start the coffee, now that you have me up.

Four minutes pass.

Trip the Cat: Hey, didn’t I already tell you once to let me out??? You think I can hold this bladder all flippin’ day, wench?

Becka: You’re not gonna want to go out, I’m tellin’ ya. Don’t you remember 4 minutes ago? (Sighs, but opens the front door, prominently displaying the snow-laden front porch steps.)

Trip the Cat: What is SERIOUSLY wrong with you, chickwa? (Shakes paws again, well inside the door, at just the THOUGHT of snow on his precious pads). You think I’d go out in this amazingly inclemete weather? You tryin’ to KILL me? Quick, shut the door before any of it blows in on me!

Becka: Shower it is, for me then.

Three minutes pass, water is running, Becka has disrobed.

Trip the Cat: I dunno why I put up with you people. Shall I pee in your tub and really make this a morning to remember for you?

Becka: You’re actually going to make me open that front door, naked now, just so you can tell me I’m stupid for forcing you into an icy-wet world? (Goes to door naked, opens it upon the icy-wet world).

Trip the Cat: Whuhhhh…?! (Is choked off in mid-sentence by bare foot of Becka, booting him out the door into hated snow.)

What kills me is it takes me until the 3rd door opening, every time, to boot Trip out, and yet he continues to look at me like I’m the raging lunatic in the house. I hate it when the cat’s right.

What’s so great about owning a cat, again?

2

[Samuel L Jackson]

Check the big brain on Trip!

[/Samuel L Jackson]

3

Well, you know the routine by now - boot his butt on the first opening and get it over with. :stuck_out_tongue:
Or keep a box of sand indoors for snowy days.

4

Rebecca-- you need to read the opening chapter to Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer. You’ve got it easy.

That said, our cats are indoors cats. About three years ago, giant snowstorm hits on President’s Day. Husband and I are busy stomping in and out of the front door with boots, snow shovels, grabbing an extra scarf, when the Boss Cat himself, Muldoon, makes a break for freedom. He does a sharp right turn off the front porch, thinking he’ll do his classic behind-the-shrubbery getaway and finds himself up to his little cat butt in 17 inches of fresh snow.

The look of shock on his face was funny enough, but the floundering return to the porch and the pathetic attempt at nonchalance as he sauntered back inside were priceless. And he hates it when we laugh at him.

5

Our cats always look at me like it’s MY fault for dumping all that white crap in the back yard. Spook will go out in it for 30 seconds, before he remembers he doesn’t like getting wet!

6

If kitty brain is the size of a pecan, how come kitty head has to be the side of an apple? What’s in that head?

7

Really big eyeballs.

8

Gives you material for amusing threads?

GT

9

I always found the purring thing to be irresistible. Besides, it’s FUNNY to watch them. Especially when they try to convince the whole wide world that they MEANT to fall off the TV.

10

Bill the Cat is rather plump and falls off of things so much we have a household term for it: “gravity testing”.

The scenario goes like this:

plop. wash foot - I meant to do that.

SCL: “Tonight’s scheduled gravity testing has now been completed.”

Mr. SCL: “I told him I paid the gravity bill.”

11

Ah, YOU’RE the one I got it from, then. Ever since I read your posts about it, I’ve been asking the cats if they’re testing the gravity again. Usually they don’t dignify my mocking question with a reply.

12

see its like this,
when the cat wants out and meows at the door to be let out they really do want out. when you open the door and the cat doesnt move out it means “help I’m overcome with paralisis and cant make it out the door on my own, quick give me a kick in the ass to get me over the threshold”
I treat my cats like dogs

13

Y’all keep assuming the cat’s purpose in getting you to open the door is to actually go outside.

Getting you to open the door on command is an end in itself.

My Dad’s cat Oreo likes to miaow to come in the front door, walk the 20 yards to back door and immediately miaow to be let out the back door. Oreo knows quite well that it’s all the same outdoors: if people are not forthcoming in response to front-door miaow he circles to the back door (and kitchen window if absolutlely necessary) and miaows there instead, to be let in the back door so as to tromp the 20 yards to the front door and immediately miaows to be let out the front door from whence he started.

14

That game is known as “offside” - the entire point of the game is that no matter what side of the door you’re on (you being the cat), it is the wrong side and you should be let through it immediately.

See here for more details.

15

Trip needs plenty of room in his big, Sylvesterish head to roll his huge, luminous green eyes back as far as he can, in response to my “antics”. So I gotta think the eyes have it, as bluethree says.

Now that we have had 3 days of nicer weather (no horrifying wetness to encounter), Trip has turned to making fun of my attempts to feed him. Either I fill his dish too full, in which case he “paws” a load of kibbles out of the bowl onto the floor, until the dish reaches his satisfactory level, or the dish isn’t full enough, in which case he noshes exactly 5 kibbles and then whines at me piteously while also sucking in his whiskery cheeks & belly so it appears I am starving him, to the un-cat-trained initiate. I have two teenage sons who are smart-asses enough. Can’t ONE member of the family be on my side?

And the “pawed”-out kibbles? Dirty now. You can’t expect a decent cat to eat them once they have been “on the actual floor”, can you? In spite of the fact that no molecule of chicken or tuna salad ever stays on the same floor for long if Trip sees it fall.

I guess that’s different.

LOVE your stories!

16

Tilly, one of our cats, has a game she loves to play when we’re in the bedroom. It’s similar to “offsides,” but more frustrating, because it does like this:

  1. Tilly sees that I am lying down. (The wife can be there or not, she only does this to me)
  2. Tilly will approach the closed bedroom door and begin scratching to be let out.
  3. I will get up out of bed.
  4. As soon as I approach the door to open it in order to let her out, she will walk in the opposite direction – staying out of my reach – and go sit under a night table.
  5. I’ll open the door anyway and call her to go out like she asked to be. This is generally met with Tilly tacitly saying, “What? You opened the door, you go out. I’m comfortable right here.”
  6. I grump, close the door, and get back into bed.
  7. Repeat from step 1.

Yes, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t actually want to go out, she just doesn’t like closed doors. (Closed doors are an affront to catdom)

17

Heh, cracks me right up when they do this… embarrasing acts that immediately transition into full blown, hyper-attentive grooming.

18

And a highly developed olfactory system, not as good as a dog’s, but way better than a human’s.

19

This whole thread is like an argument in favor of indoors-only cats, but then there are other tradeoffs, obviously.

20

It can’t be anywhere near as good as a dog’s. If I drop food on the floor for the kitties and they don’t watch to see where it lands, they can’t seem to figure out how to find it. They definitely don’t follow their noses.