I work from a home office, so my two extremely sociable cats are always around.
Both cats like to use my desk as a jumping off point for the file cabinet. More precisely, they like to use the exact spot on the desk where the phone sits. I can’t count the number of times the phone has gone clattering to the floor due to a cat leap. It is a miracle the phone still works.
One cat likes to sit on top of the printer. Since she has no interest in moving when it starts up, she has caused numerous paper jams when the page being printed cannot be ejected because it is blocked by her sweet little cat butt. It is a miracle the printer still works.
One cat likes to sit on the keyboard. This causes assorted interesting things to happen. Last night I got 17 dialogue boxes asking if I would like to reconfigure Outlook. Just now some completely unfamiliar website was on screen. It is a miracle the computer still works.
Enjoy them while they’re still young enough to do these things. Mine just turned 19, and with a little effort he can still get up on the bed, where he sleeps. I don’t remember the last time he jumped up on anything higher. And he talks to himself incessantly.
Hestia is excited by the printer. Any time she hears it going she comes running so she can watch the paper emerging. She looks at it and sometimes reaches in with her paw. Then she’ll go around the back to see where it’s coming from.
Lucky disconnected the cables behind the entertainment system last night, looking for one of her cat toys. Angel sits on my son’s books to keep him from doing his homework. Angel also begs for treats, which he’ll just throw up later. Hobbes just taps me on the shoulder all during my dinner begging for table scraps.
There are days when I’ve regretted never learning even one way to skin a cat.
They will learn your desk is off limits when you’re around. They will still use the desk when they can get away with it. That’s the lesson our cats learned about the kitchen counter.
Of course, in the case of the desk, it may not be as interesting with Mommy not around so they may not get up on it as much. With our furbabies, and the kitchen counter, there was some appeal (prospect of food, and definite ability to look out the window) even when we were gone.
Cats can step on a keyboard in such a way that a game you are playing suddenly changes in a way that you thought impossible. They hit keys when you are typing and change it all . You can spend a lot of time trying to recover data and make it back like it was.
It is not an accident. Cats know this and love to do it.
The great trick of the squirt gun technique is to make it so the cat doesn’t know where it’s coming from, and especially not associate it with you. I tried it with my cats, but made a poor choice of weapons. After sitting for a while, my squirt gun required a pump or two before it would squirt. The cats learned they were safe until they heard the warning pumps. Of course on hearing these preparatory noises, they would look and see that it was me.
Sigh I had a nice post all written up, with pictures and everything, and it disappeared. I’ll try it again.
My cats tried to trick me on Monday when I was home for lunch. We have four cats. Buggy was pawing at the basement door and crying. A guy was supposed to come to fix our water softener so I thought one of the other cats had gotten locked down there. I opened the door and tried to prevent Buggy from running down, but he got past me. None of the other cats were down there, either. Later, I opened the door to try to see if he’d come out and Mama sprinted past me into the basement. Nice. Before I left to go back to work, I decided to make one last attempt to get Buggy and Mama out of the basement. Guess what? No cats came up, but Fuzzy went down! Grrr. There was only one left, and I wasn’t about to open the door again to see if he’d run down. So Poopy got the house to himself all afternoon. He did get locked in the basement by himself yesterday afternoon, though, when the water softener guy had to come back. Here is another kitty picture and a dog just for good measure.
You just be careful. One minute you’re hitting the delete key to clear what they wrote, the next you’re a blue skinned superhero, running around in your underwear.
Just like my Trudy when I’m doing the dishes. She sits on the window sill above the sink, and when I drain the water, it’s as if there’s food in the sink - she stares at the lowering water level, getting closer as it gets lower, eventually ALMOST touching the soap bubbles as it goes down the drain. She just wants to know what’s going on, to be in the middle of all the action…
