I now have two cats and they woke me up

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, it may not have been entirely them, to be honest, since I’ve had trouble sleeping past 5:30 lately.
But these two belonged to a friend. She’s getting married and it turns out that her fiance is allergic to cats. These two have always been inside cats and they are declawed, so they couldn’t be outside cats once she moves to the farm. The third cat is about 6 months old and has not been declawed, so she is keeping him.

Their names are Jake and Scout (I admit to not knowing exactly which is which…I need to ask her when I see her in class Wednesday night). One is solid black, the other is what I think is called a tuxedo cat - black except for a white chest, whiskers and back paws. I think the black one is Jake and the other one is Scout.

They are about two years old, and spent most of the day yesterday hanging out under the bed. The all black one was a little more willing to explore. Every once in a while, the other one would join him, but if I made any sudden moves she(?) would dash back under the bed. When I crawled into bed last night, that changed though. They explored the bedroom, they explored the living room, the kitchen…

Then, around 5:15 they decided they were bored and wanted some attention. So they sat by the bed and looked at me - I woke up to two cats staring at me. A little unsettling for someone who’s never had pets. So I got up - the swinging of my legs over the side of the bed made the black and white one run back under the bed for about two seconds, but a little attention to the all black one brought it out to demand some attention as well.

As I type this (after petting the kitties, giving them fresh water, petting them some more, drinking my coffee, cleaning out the litterbox…) the black one keeps deciding that the laptop is not the best thing to receive my attention and walking between my knees and the coffee table so that I am forced to pet it.

They’re very cute and loving, although I admit that it’s a little overwhelming to suddenly have two cats for someone who’s never had a pet before. I just want to see how they react when I shower in a few minutes.

I’ll have pictures eventually - I don’t have a digital camera, so I have to take them with regular film and then get them developed. But as soon as I do, I’ll share them. :slight_smile:

2

Cool! It was nice of you to take on her cats.

It appearts as if they like you, they just need time to get used to you and the new environment.

I’ve had one of my cats for 7 years, and she still stares at me (I think she’s in love with me). The other one doesn’t stare, he just looks at me with an expression of dumbfounded innocence. Which clearly means he is full of conniving guilt.

Have fun with them.

3

I got up at 04:00 so I could do the laundry. After coughing and sputtering (I sleep under a fan since it’s so hot here), I opened the door at about 04:10 and turned to get the clothes that I had sorted and bundled last night.

Holstein was waiting outside. She is an adorable little moggie who apparently got her name because of her resemblance to a Gateway box. I have never seen an animal that craved so much attention. I don’t think she’s ever walked away while I was petting her unless there was someone else nearby to pet her. This morning she followed me around, from my door to the laundry room and back again. (Yes, I did pet her for a few minutes; but I had to leave her because I needed my coffee!)

4

… And there she was, sitting on my doormat when I went to put the clothes in the dryer.

5

Lsura, you’re lucky. They’re affectionate and interested. Come winter, they’ll be living in your lap, and sleeping against your tushy while you snore. Who could ask for more??

Dobby is about 16 weeks old. He’s a gray and white tabby with a single TINY dot of pure white just at the very tip of his tail. He is endowed with the most enormous ears I’ve ever seen on a DSH, hence his name.

He’s taken to me. He’s supposedly my daughter’s cat, but he bonded with me for a week when the rest of them were out of town. He lays in my arm, against my chest up high under my face. He is madly in love, with his eyes half close and his paws slowly kneading my chest. ( yeah, I know what he’s doing in his mind. ) The purr machine is turned up to 11 and all is so very good in the valley of the goddess Isis.

It’s just…REALLY hard to be on the computer AND have Dobby loving me. If I let him slide down so I can use both hands to type, he climbs back up near my shoulder and starts to try to settle down against me again. Apparently the basic laws of gravity haven’t really set in yet in his adorably tiny brain, and so when he gets comfy and sits down, I am required to have a hand or arm there for him to set against.

All in all, a blissful arrangement.

6

They sound just like my cats. I have an all-black female and one that is sort of a Tuxedo cat. He’s got too much white to be a true Tuxedo, though. His chest and belly and the insides of his legs are white, and also half of his face and one ear are white, and the very tip of his tail. The rest of him is black.

You say they’re waking you up at an ungodly hour? They get between you and the laptop?
Their job is done. :smiley:

7

No, not fully. There’s also the look they gave me when I walked back in this morning - I went to campus to buy my books.

The look I got was along the lines of “Where have you been? You know you exist only to pet us, feed us and change the kitty litter. How dare you think you can get away with leaving?”

Plus, they’ve learned a new game (or are teaching me their old game). It’s called: “She’s sitting on the toilet. That means she wants to pet us, immediately. Why else would she sit down?”

They also manage to look at me like it’s my fault that they get so excited to be petted that they actually walk away from my hand. At least I found a toy that they seem to like. The stuffed mice made no impression, the one with catnip even less. But the little plastic balls with bells in them? They love them.

:slight_smile:

8

I have two cats and they wake me up every night when they’re ready to go out. Unfortunately, they’re not on the same schedule. One of them likes to go out about 3 AM. One of them hops up on the bed, sits on his hauches with his tail curled around his feet and looks at me like “Well, what are you waiting for?”

The other likes to go out at about 5 AM. She wakes me up by making noise, usually by batting around some toy or scratching something. When she sees me awake, she then goes racing to the door, tail swishing.

9

One word of warning – don’t feed the cats when they wake you up at 4:30 in the morning. Once you’ve established a precedent, you’ll be up at 4:30 AM on a continual basis. Even petting them might be a bad precedent to set.

10

Finagle, the feeding at 4:30 isn’t an issue - they were raised with dry food continually available (and according to secondhand vet info (they just went about a month ago) are not overweight), so I’m continuing that.

I’m usually up by about 6 anyway, so 5:15 this morning wasn’t much worse, but my intention is not to allow them to get into the habit of waking me up just because they want attention.

11

Hey Lsura! Glad to hear you got some companions. They certainly sound sweet can’t wait to see the pictures.

12

And in CatWorld, doing it once sets the precedent. Forever.

13

Awww…how cute. I have a cat named Scout, too (but she’s a tortoiseshell) as well as a gray and white tuxedo kitty. I cat-sat when my friends went on their honeymoon, so I had four cats for a week. Once I was looking in the mirror on my dining room wall, and I turned around to find all four cats evenly spaced at intervals in a wide circle around me, staring. It was like they were communicating telepathically, planning on the best time to attack and eat me. Very creepy. And I was the only one who saw it…

14

Congrats, Lsura! You are now owned for life! :slight_smile:

When the ex and I split up, I kept his cat. Lovely feline- pure white with sky blue eyes. Her favorite sleeping position? On my head. I often find myself falling asleep with her purring in my ear, paws kneading my hair. Sometimes she likes to gnaw on my hair, and when I raise up and look at her, she give me the “What?” look. :slight_smile:

My other cat sleeps on my rump. If I do not sleep on my stomach, she paws at my hip until I turn over so she can “hop on” (so to say). Even though I bought a continuous water dish, she must take her drinks from the bathroom faucet. Heaven forfend I don’t jump up at whatever time to turn on the faucet. She will paw at my arm and meow and meow and meow and meow… you get the idea. The cat is a massive chatterbox.

15

Heh!

Right now, before you forget, count those little plastic balls with bells in them.

Before you go to bed tonight, round each one of them up and shut them in a nice heavy drawer or lock them in a file cabinet… or your new owners will probably use them to pre-empt your alarm clock again. :wink:

16

i have an all-black cat and 2 tuxedos. they all have dry food out at all times, i was not going to be lured into wet food time schedules. also they understand that sat. and sun. we get out of bed later than mon. through fri. i think they enjoy the sleep in when i sleep late, sometimes all three will have found a place in bed.

they know when sunday arrives, that is wet food day, the can will pop at 9am.

i enjoy the “greet” when arriving home. if they consider me too late, they will delay the greet a bit.

enjoy your new furry friends. you are in for quite a ride.

17

If you like reading in bed, don’t let the cats see you. If they’re anything like my cat, Sebastian, they will situate themselves between you and your book at every possible oppurtunity or, even more maddeningly, decide that you will not read under any circumstances and try everything in their power to force you to lay it down.

18

The newest additions to my moggie family, Betty, Mawson and Yeager, wake me up at 4 am every morning. They walk all over my head, lick my nose and eat my eyelashes until I wake up.

19

Ha, Aesiron, I know what you mean. What is it about cats and paper? Whenever my cats see me read a book or newspaper, they’re all over it.

20

Important: do NOT give in to cats while they are new. Or they will come to expect it.

Our cats have worked out the waking up thing. We do NOT pat them if they wander in mewing at 5.00am. We ignore them and feign sleep. It still happens once in a while, but it’s now rare, and is just 30 seconds meowing before they wander down to sleep at the foot of the bed. If the alarm has gone off, patting is OK. I don’t know if they recognise the sound of the radio but they’re usually in there purring like mad once it goes off. Gorgeous little guys.

Also, we do NOT get up and feed them when they appear in the morning. We get up when we want. Sure, take one step outside the bedroom, and they are bolting down the corridor to the food dish, but they have to wait for us and they know it. They have dry food always available so they don’t really need to be fed. They just want to be.