I have two scaredy and shy cats. What can I say? They’re cowards. Every stranger coming into the house is met with panic and the run away, run awayyyy of the hero’s.
My brother came back from a long stay in Ireland and after careful sniffing and putting out paws, to see if he didn’t move frightingly, my girl cat decided to share the couch with him.
My brother talked about Ireland and how he met an old man who could sing well, but LOUD. He told us how a friend of his actually jumped when the old geezer started to sing. My brother: "And Paddy went: AAAAAAYYY LOOO …
I once had two cats who were also afraid of strangers. They were friendly with each other, but spent little time together. One day as I was sitting in the living room, the doorbell rang. As usual, the cats galloped off in search of hiding places. Once the visitor left, I began searching for the cats. I looked all over and couldn’t figure out where they’d gone. Making one last pass through the bathroom, I absent mindedly pushed a 6" wide bottom drawer shut with my foot. It wouldn’t close. I tried again – still wouldn’t close. I pulled the drawer out to see what was wrong. There were my two kitties, huddled together in that tiny space.
The drawer may have been ajar. In any case, they were able to climb into the drawer, then over the back of it, which was lower than the front. there was more room back there than you’d think because the drawer was about 6" deep and its bottom was about 5" inches off the floor. I subsequently put a child proof latch on the drawer to prevent repeats.
My cats had an unhealthy fascination with open dresser drawers for a while. I accidentally shut my black girl cat into the lower drawer right before I went to bed, and didn’t notice for an hour or so that she was missing. I was trying to sleep and wondering why she wasn’t trying to sleep on my chest as usual, and why I kept hearing very faint mews. I finally got up and searched the entire house for her, then finally remembered shutting the drawer. When I pulled it open, Newt popped up and gave a very affronted, “MEE!” and ran off. I felt so bad I cried, while my husband was busy crying with laughter.
Forgot to add this story… I have a friend who has a cat that weighs about 30 pounds. His name is Aries, and he looks like a furry black watermelon on legs. It is utterly bizarre to see this lumbering thing which resembles a mobile ottoman come up to you and utter a tiny little mew. A few months back, I got an unintentionally hilarious email from his “mom” detailing her very bad day which culminated in a minor freak-out because she thought Aries had crawled under her easy chair and died. She said, “I went to move the chair off him because I thought maybe he’d crawled under the chair and gotten stuck again, but then he didn’t move.” She went on to explain that he was just sleeping very hard and she had to nudge him a few times with her foot to get him awake and moving. I was falling out of my own chair laughing. I think it was the “gotten stuck again” that set me off. This cat is so obese that he gets stuck under furniture, and it’s happened more than once. I still crack up thinking about it.
Way back when, my girlfriend (now Mrs. Lacha) & myself moved in together, and decided to get a cat. A friend had a litter in her basement, and we picked up a feisty little female, un-named. She didn’t seem to like milk, and definitely not water, but she had a great appetite for drinking stout out of a bottle-cap. We were going to call her Guinness, but decided that it wasn’t feminine enough, so Beamish became her moniker.
We moved out to the woods, were she became an indoor-outdoor cat. Especially funny was how she would be moseying around in the underbrush as it started to rain. PLOP would go a nearby raindrop, and Beamish would freeze in her tracks. PLOP - and she would whip around, trying to get a bead on it. PLOP - and she would coil up and jump on her prey, except PLOP now it was right behind her so she’d wheel around and PLOP now to her right and PLOP to her left and PLOP right on her head…
5 minutes later, she was soaked and tired out from jumping all over hell’s half-acre and on the porch, bellowing to be let in.
And when she saw snow for the first time…
My orange-and-white nutcase, Max, will often sit in the bedroom closet and proceed to yowl his head off. He’s quite the hunter, so when I first got him I assumed he was tracking a bug or mouse in there, but he’ll stop as soon as I come in and look in at him. I’m assuming he wants me to come in there and play, but the closet isn’t big enough for both of us.
This is more of a silly human story, but around two or three a.m. one day I woke up because Max was prodding me with his sharp claws. I rolled over in an attempt to dislodge him, but the prodding continued, so I sat up and saw something small and dark on the bed. Aha! He’s brought a toy mouse up here, and he’ll happily chase it if I chuck it off the bed. So I put my hand down and the “toy mouse” wriggled and squeaked. :eek:
After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I turned on the light and flung back the covers, trying to catch the furry beastie. Max was thrilled that I was joining him in the hunt, but somehow we lost track of the mouse. After I gave up and tried to go back to sleep, he sat and mrowled at me for losing his mouse. He was clearly annoyed with me for being so idiotic as to let his prey get away from him.
I have two sibling cats – Daniel and Juliet, both of which have wide Maine Coon streaks. Daniel’s a thumping thirteen pounds at six months, while Juliet is a dainty seven pounds. This is important information, as you’ll see in a bit…
Now that the weather’s turned for the warmer and I can finally open the windows again, I found out, much to my chagrin, that they’re both terrified of fresh air. :eek: :rolleyes:
Open window.
Cats crouch down and give the window a gimlet stare.
Cats skid into the bathroom and hide behind the toilet. This is particularly silly when you’ve got two cats that size trying to squeeze into the same wee space and get away from the evil fresh air demons.
Cats fight. “No! YOU get thrown to the fresh air demons!” “No, YOU do!”
One cat winds up huddling in the litterbox. “Mmm, stinky box’s better than them fresh air demons.”
Human snickers at them, at least until human figures out that they think they’re for the vet. (I suspect they fear the vet will climb in through a fifth floor window to POUNCE on them and jab 'em in the butt.) Then human just sighs and thinks they’re stupid.
lizardling, your story made me laugh out loud. Maybe you could try putting some catnip in the windows, so that the smell wafts through the apartment, and they begin to think maybe this “fresh air” is ok?
He was upset with you because you didn’t learn the lesson he was attempting to teach. He thinks you’re going to starve, if you don’t start hunting for yourself!
(A tidbit from The Secret Life of Cats…a dead (insert tiny beasty ID) means your cat is feeding/caring for you. A live beasty, he/she is teaching you to hunt.)
It’s summer, 1962. Mama Doug is driving cross-country in a Karmann Ghia with only her Siamese kitty, Rascha, for company. Rascha is a very well-brought-up kitty (or so they thought!) and mama sprinkles water on her to keep her cool during the long hot days of driving. Kitty even has a “signal” for a pit stop: crawl onto mama’s lap and leave an eeensy pee drop.
Anyway. Mama and kitty are crossing Nebraska when it gets to be fuel-up time. Mama picks a suitably spiffy-looking gas station and pulls in. Now this being 1961, they squeegee you windshield, check your oil, ask about the air in your tires, etc., etc…Anyway, in all the hullabaloo, mama drives off and realizes there’s no kitty in the car. :eek:
Back to the station. “I left my cat here!” “You sure miss?” "I’m positive! Help me find her!" Through her unusual force of personality (which I can personally attest to), Mama Doug compels these courteous corn-fed gas monkeys to move every inch of the oil cans, fan belts, huge racks of tires (this really was a full-service station)…but kitty is nowhere to be found.
Things look pretty black for little Rascha until Mama Doug has a hunch. Anybody know how Karmann Ghias have a little compartment behind the rear seat? Uh huh. Mrrrrooooowww.
(Yes, I know I made a mistake about the date. Anybody who’s spent much time in western Nebraska can tell you that it was probably still 1961 when the rest of the world was halfway through 1962.)
One of the things I do with my cat, Sam, is hold him upside-down for a few seconds. One day, I decided to hold Sam upside-down over my mother as she sat on the couch. She’s complaining about the cat when all of a sudden she starts yelling and puts a hand over her eye. I’m worried that Sam might have scratched her eye or something, I ask her if she’s okay.
I feel obligated to throw in a reference to the adventures of Ebenezer and Snooch at Two Lumps .
Back in the late 80s, I had a cat that I trained to chase the end of a piece of flexible piping. It was his toy and woe unto the other cat if she messed with it. Anyway, one day I was playing with him and ran the tube up the wall. He followed it and hit the lightswitch and turned the lights out. Cool.
However, he remembered that. And every once in a while, he would turn the lights out, whether we were in the room or not.
