Either my cat is weird, or my kitchen is infested with quantum 4th dimensional fluxes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or maybe I just need to mop.

Last couple few weeks at least, my cat has been acting strange. He’s always been pretty mellow. He just casually strolls into, and around the house.

Now, he leaps into the house. Then leaps over the couch into the living room. Or, if he’s headed to the kitchen he hops (like a bunny) across the carpet, avoiding most of it, then hops or leaps or bounds into the kitchen. He won’t step on certain parts of the floor. When he walks around the kitchen, he sort of zig-zags carefully not stepping on certain parts. It’s like there’s something invisible infesting my house and my cat is freaked out by it. “Uh-uh, not stepping there. That’s a dimensional rift!” Then he jumps over that section of the floor.

Is my cat crazy? Did the possum which snuck into the house leave a weird smell here & there? Am I crazy?

2

Are you the Keymaster?

3

Most likely fleas, which like to live in carpets and upholstery.

“Cats see things we don’t”
– Kliban

4

He’s okay with the upholstery (he’ll nap on the couch), and he’s fine on most of the carpet, except the area right in front of the front door. He does not want to walk on that. It’s as if in his world, that area is now covered in spikes & broken glass.

5

Sounds like the latter to me.
Shoshana, who has lived with more than 100 different cats thus far.

6

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
He’s okay with the upholstery (he’ll nap on the couch), and he’s fine on most of the carpet, except the area right in front of the front door. He does not want to walk on that. It’s as if in his world, that area is now covered in spikes & broken glass.
[/QUOTE]

Ah. Deerlike bounds? Random bouncing and sprinting?

Have you had any of those Bugs Bunny moments, you know, with air brakes? Where you can actually hear the “scrreeeooooooorrrrccchhhhh” of the cat body screeching to a halt a foot above the floor and somehow changing direction?

I’m afraid your cat may have Albert-itis, or be otherwise related to Albert , the stupidest cat in the world.

7

He is doing his job in life, which is “messin with the Moma”.

jsgoddess, I am so in love with that cat. He has the perfect “Albert to Mothership” expression.

8

[QUOTE=Shoshana]
Sounds like the latter to me.
Shoshana, who has lived with more than 100 different cats thus far.
[/QUOTE]

:eek: really? I’ve had cats my entire life, even multiples at a time, and at 41 years old I’ll say I’ve lived with ~15 cats, tops. Are you a crazy cat lady, or what?

9

My cats both get what we’ve come to call the “icky flickies”, but only when they go on top of the tall bookcases. They twitch, spin around to escape themselves, bound away. The vet suggested sensitivity to dust.

10

[QUOTE=Levdrakon]
Is my cat crazy? Did the possum which snuck into the house leave a weird smell here & there? Am I crazy?
[/QUOTE]

In order - Aren’t they all?, most likely, and one can only surmise. :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, if the part about the opossum is true and not hyperbole, that may be exactly what has made your cat jumpy. He smells it in the house and is absolutely certain it is going to leap out from behind the sofa and attack him at any moment. There’s a chance he may have met a few opossums in his travels and is justifiably wary of them.

The problem should abate as the smell wears off, but a really good cleaning or three might speed the recovery process.

11

Yes. Yes, I am.

Actually, I tend to live in households that have 3-4 cats at any given time, but back when I was a young thing and times were simpler, we’d have several pregnant cats in any given year. We often kept a kitten or two from a litter for a while, in addition to the grownup cats. Plus I’ve lived with a lot of cats for around 3-4 months at a pop in different peripatetic housing situations. 100 is likely an underestimate. 20 primary, long-term cats, though.

12

My cats are unnerving the hell out of me today too. They have been staring at this spot on the wall in the hallway. Standing in a semi-circle around this spot (there are 5 of them), they are standing vigil over this wall panel with a small gap under it. Shadow, Maceo, and Tansy are camped out there, just staring intently; Dolphie doesn’t care that much, and Harley is intermittently interested.

This has been going on 24 hours now. I’m sure there’s just a terrified mouse in there whose head will be left on the bathroom rug per tradition, but it is freaking me out. I just want them to get it over with already.

13

[QUOTE=Rhubarb]
In order - Aren’t they all?, most likely, and one can only surmise. :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, if the part about the opossum is true and not hyperbole, that may be exactly what has made your cat jumpy. He smells it in the house and is absolutely certain it is going to leap out from behind the sofa and attack him at any moment. There’s a chance he may have met a few opossums in his travels and is justifiably wary of them.

The problem should abate as the smell wears off, but a really good cleaning or three might speed the recovery process.
[/QUOTE]

No, it’s true. I have a possum problem. The larger adult won’t come in, the young small one will scamper right in. About a week ago, he was stuck in here for three or four days, hiding under the stove and coming out and night. Gah! I don’t even want to think about the possum poop that’s probably under the stove, but I can’t move it.

Thing is, the cat’s been acting weird for a few weeks longer than when the possum got in. Also, the cat doesn’t react to possums. At all. See, this little young possum that snuck in? Well, it sure likes cat food, and snuck back in the night before last. I guess it was Friday night. It likes to sneak in the front door, then run around the living room, hiding behind furniture I can’t move. But this time I grabbed a piece of cardboard and wedged it between the TV stand & the book case, cutting off its escape route. Grabbed it by the tail and started towards the door to throw it out.

My cat was sitting in the kitchen sitting calmly on his haunches, watching dad bull-in-a-china-closet his way around the living room after this thing. I already knew the cat doesn’t react to possums, but I was pissed off. So I dangled the possum right in front of the cat’s face and said, “see, you’re supposed to chase these things!” Nothing. The cat just sat there calmly and politely pretending to not notice the plump, juicy squirming little possum I was holding three inches in front of his face. He kept looking around at the walls, ceiling. “La, la, la. Dum-duh-dee-dum-dum. Don’t see anything!”

It’s like there’s some ancient, sacred ancestral pact between cats & possums. Cats are somehow forbidden to react to or interfere with them. Grr.

I mean, if it were a mouse, well boy howdy. He’d be all over that. He’d torture it for hours.

14

Yes.

Or it could be ghosts.

Seriously, cats like to mess with humans. They know what they’re doing. I bet his plan is to get you to start avoiding those areas yourself for fear of the dimensional fluzes, then he will point and laugh.

My cats really got me once, despite my usual fear of horror movies my boyfriend talked into watching Juon. He said if we watched it during the day it wouldn’t be so scary. Then he went home that night. Later in the evening I see one of my gray cats staring at a kitchen cabinet. One of those intense, “there’s something wrong here” stares. I scolded the cat nervously and said “I know what you’re doing, you’re just trying to freak me out, heh heh.” I walked over to the cabinet and as I opened it I said to the cat “There’s nothing in there GASP!”. There was a wide-eyed black cat sitting in the cabinet just staring. Now if you’ve seen Juon or The Grudge, you know why that was freaky. Of course it was my own black cat and it took me a few seconds to realize it and catch my breath. Some of my other cats like to sit in the cabinets but I have never caught the black one in the cabinets before, so why did he decide to do it that night? Short of stuffing a creepy, ghostly Japanese boy in my cabinets, there was nothing worse they could have chosen to do on that particular night. I’m pretty sure I heard them snickering afterwards.
They know what they’re doing.

15

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
My cats are unnerving the hell out of me today too. They have been staring at this spot on the wall in the hallway. Standing in a semi-circle around this spot (there are 5 of them), they are standing vigil over this wall panel with a small gap under it. Shadow, Maceo, and Tansy are camped out there, just staring intently; Dolphie doesn’t care that much, and Harley is intermittently interested.

This has been going on 24 hours now. I’m sure there’s just a terrified mouse in there whose head will be left on the bathroom rug per tradition, but it is freaking me out. I just want them to get it over with already.
[/QUOTE]

At our house we call this “Purrinoia”. They’re doing something, and you don’t want to know what, but figure you’re going to find out eventually.

16

I get them staring intently and crying at parts of the wall. An art history major couldn’t stare at a Matisse more intently than that cat stares at Sear’s Latex white. I chalk it up to ‘stupid cat syndrome’, although sometimes I’ll ask my wife if she told the cat that he was bad and that he had to sit in the corner. :smiley:

17

[QUOTE=Runestar]
At our house we call this “Purrinoia”. They’re doing something, and you don’t want to know what, but figure you’re going to find out eventually.
[/QUOTE]

Excellent term! I’m going to use that.

18

[QUOTE=SnakesCatLady]
jsgoddess, I am so in love with that cat. He has the perfect “Albert to Mothership” expression.
[/QUOTE]

Oh god. Don’t ever imply that there are more of him. :smiley:

He is actually both the dumbest and the sweetest cat in the world. I love him, but the stupid. Oh, the stupid.

You know how an alligator will lurk in water with just its eyes above the surface? Albert lurks on the stairs with just his eyes (and the top of his head) above the step. And then he makes maaawooowowoowoooo noises at Irving. He’ll do this for hours.

19

Mine hate closed doors. Emmy the Wonder Cat[sup]tm[/sup] is convinced that we’re hiding things from her if the closet door is shut, and she will make it her duty to stand outside of it and HOWL until we open it to prove to her that there’s nothing in there. Oscar the Wonder Cat[sup]tm[/sup] will let out a cry that makes you think his mother has just been murdered if the door to the nursery or the guest bedroom is closed.

And now Emmy’s decided that the bathtub is hiding something from her. There are seams on the outer wall where the faucet side of the bathtub is, I guess from where the previous owners installed the bathtub, and it kind of looks like a little door. She’s been pawing at it, and sticking her claws in the seams to try to pull it open lately. Obviously, we’re hiding something HUGE from her in there, and it’s NOT FAIR that she can’t get into it!

They make me think we have ghosts sometimes. Why else would they want to get into everything in the house?

E.

20

I’m so glad my cat doesn’t do the staring at the wall/closed door thing, freaking me out about what’s there I can’t see. Although he will stare at the front door waiting for it to magically open. But that’s pretty typical stupid cat behavior.

Nope, my cat likes to jump over and dodge invisible things in the middle of the floor. It’s an invisible minefield!