I had washed and left out one of the parrot dishes. It is a cheap plastic dish with 2 wires to hook it on the cage. I rarely let the birds have it because they lift it off the cage and hurl it. It is small, as befits a parrot-sized dish. I left it in the kitchen. Hedwig Monkeybutt discovered it, and apparently noticed it is made of the same cheap plastic as the litterboxes. With great care and aim, he filled it with cat pee.
He is either an idiot for trying to use a doll-house sized commode or a genius for recognizing the correct shape and material implies the same function as the normal sized litterbox. I don’t think the birds will want that dish anymore.
Camberwell gets scared by the weirdest things. There is a theme, see through plastic in an unfamiliar form. She’s done that creeping and backing away thing, most recently from a pen in a case and most notably from a box of dates.
All of my cats, including the three current ones, have always been insane. I’ve had a couple that enjoyed staring at a spot on the wall. One of them, a very dim female, talked to a mark on a wall for hours. She was also the cat who was notorious for demanding the bottom shelf of every bookshelf. If we dared to put books or other items on these shelves, she’d glare at us, and then pull everything down and out of those shelves. One of the current cats has decided that every one of our trash cans is his personal toybox, and we humans put things in there for him to discover and fish out. We’ve had to put weights in the cans so that he won’t be able to tip them over and scatter the trash all over the house every couple of hours.
Also, every cat in the world seems to need to Zoom every once in a while. Some cats do this on a daily basis, or even more often, especially kittens. Some cats do it less frequently, but still find that they need to do it now and then. There never seems to be a reason for the onset of the Zoom, it just starts at random.
Also, cats enjoy baking themselves. They will put their flat furry heads under a lightshade, so that their miniscule brains will bake. They will lie in the window, so that they can get their body temp very high. And if there is a floor heating vent, they will find it and lie on it so that everyone else freezes but THEY are toasty warm.
Still, I’d rather have cats in my life than try to do without them. There’s nothing quite like having a cat snuggle up on me to make me feel loved. Even if they only do it because I’m soft and warm.
Well, we’ve nicknamed one of the cats Fluffington McScreamalot, because she’s fluffy, and she screams a lot. Well, meows, but at the top of her lungs, in front of the dining room door, for hours, but only once we’ve turned off the lights and gone to bed. We don’t let her in there unless we’re there because she at one point decided that a bench I have is a suitable place for doing her claws, but for some reason, as soon as we’re in bed, she wants in to the dining room.
The other cat… well, she’s a Scaredy-Cat. She runs and hides from pretty much anything, and most of my friends and family have never actually seen her, to the point where one friend accused me of taking pictures off the internet and not actually having a second cat! This same friend has twice taken care of the cats for us while we were on vacation, so she’s seen little poops in the litter box (our two cats are of very different sizes!), but that’s about it. When it’s just my husband and I, though, this cat is the most affectionate one I’ve ever had (but then, we’ve had some decidedly bitchy cats over the years). She’s currently curled up by my feet. She was from a litter of barn cats; my sister says that explains it, “She was raised in a barn, she has no social skills!”
Oh, and Fluffington votes NDP. We think it’s Jack Layton’s mustache. If he’s on TV, she’s staring at it, but otherwise she ignores the big flashy noisy box!
My Wally loves all trash cans. Thisisn’t a good picture (took it with my phone) but its typical of what he does.
In addition to lamps, Wally loves the dryer. I think he would live in it if I’d let him.
Jojo occasionally gets in a wrestling match with an empty shoe. She loves asparagus, and when given a spear will play with it before chewing off the tip. She likes to pull towels off the towel rack. She likes the smell of Old Spice shaving cream and will rub her head all over anything that comes into contact with it (like a wet/dry electric razor). If presented with a bowl of Rice Crispies without milk she will dig in it with her front feet (don’t ask me how I know this).
We got a new refrigerator several months ago. Jojo decided to get on top of the old fridge as the delivery men were trying to take it out the door. The door was big enough for a fridge by itself, but not for a fridge with a cat sitting on top of it. Jojo then showed she was bilingual - she was able to ignore people yelling at her in both English and Spanish. Finally, we told the workers to go ahead and push the fridge through the door - we thought she would be forced to jump down. Instead, she ducked under the door and came out on the other side.
I have the clumsiest cat alive. Poor Charlie can’t ever keep his balance on anything. He walks around with his claws slightly out, like a dog. I thought it was because he needs them trimmed, but really it’s because he’ll fall off of whatever he’s walking on. Many times he’s tried jumping up into the windows, and will almost make it. Usually he just slips a little. Oh and then today he was up in a window and decided he had to turn around. Did he do like what any normal cat would do and lift up onto his hind legs and flip around? oh no! HE had to jump his back legs OVER HIS HEAD like a somersault to turn around. He amazingly didn’t fall though.
The vet says he’s OK so I dunno, I think he’s just a klutz.
Then Jasmine besides being a pathetic attention whore will randomly attack clothes laying on the floor. Like fullon ‘lay down bite and kick the evil towel’ kind of attack.
My cat likes to try and cram herself into tiny boxes. She also will stare at the wall, and pounce on it every once and a while. I can’t even have her in the same room as me when I change the sheets on my bed. When they are on the bed, she wants nothing to do with the bed. As soon as they are off, she thinks its a game to see if she can make it under the sheets as I’m putting them on the bed.
My elderly mother had a cat called Pilgrim, who was quite insane. Anyway, Pilgrim had to have a cancer cut off his nose.
I had to ring up and ask “How’s Pilgrims Progress?”
Aside from that Badger (she is black and white so an inspirational name don’t you think?) is the size of a small horse but is gentle as a lamb. Unless you wake her up. Then she will find enjoyment swinging from computer monitors.
When she was younger, I could never understand why my Old Mans beard (a grey fern) was constantly on the ground instead of hanging off the trees. Then I found her one day jumping up, hanging onto it and sort of surfing it to the ground.
When we go to bed at night, Callie will sit in the hall outside of our bedroom and cry until we call her in. We leave the bedroom door open, so there’s no reason she can’t just come right in, but for some reason she thinks she needs to “ask” to be invited.
Molly is insane in a calico sort of way. She is the only one of my cats who still plays with toys (at almost 9 years old.) She is a freak for catnip. She will tolerate her littermate, Punky, but will have (almost) nothing to do with the young brat, Rio–I can’t blame her, because he picks on her like a little brother would. She would be perfectly content to be an only cat, and she’s also perfectly content to spend most of her time alone in our bedroom. But when she wants petting, YOU BETTER COMPLY.
Punky is an orange tabby, fat, neutered male. He is not crazy. He is probably the only sane cat I’ve ever had. He’s a big old lazy couch potato, who loves to be loved, and doesn’t do anything weird that I can think of–not even normal cat-weird.
Rio is four, going on 5, and he’s a brown tabby. He is crazy in normal cat ways. The strangest thing about him is that he doesn’t talk. Like, almost never. The others will let you know when they want something, but he has to be almost driven to a frenzy to even open his mouth and let out a pitiful kitten-sounding mew. And yes, his hearing is normal.
Photos of all the brats are here.
At Raven’s last Veterinarian appt. I was petting her to keep her calm while we waited for the Vet to come in to examine her. She was upset by the car ride and being in the pet taxi. After awhile the Vet came in and started the exam. When the Vet tried to listen to her breathing she couldn’t hear it well because Raven was purring too loud. The Vet said, “I know, I’ll take her temperature, that will stop her purring.” So the vet put the vaseline on the rectal thermometer and slipped it in, but did Raven stop purring? Nope. She purred louder.
We have two family cats, Blue, a black and white shorthair, and his brother, Nemo, an orange and white shorthair, Blue’s relatively normal, but Nemo has a strange fixation with his water dish (actually his “bukkit”) a small childs pail
He only likes it when the bucket is full to the brim with water, any lower and he won’t drink from it, however, he also likes to paw at the water, splashing it all over the linoleum floor of the bathroom, I beat him at his own game though, I put his bucket in the tub and he drinks from it there, he can splash and play in the water all he wants and it won’t get the floor wet…
My daughter’s cat - Miss Kitty Bella - is very quiet. She will only say Goodmorning (or hello) to me once per day. And it’s a pittiful kitten mew. Miss Bella also likes to stand on her hind legs - like a Meerkat. For no reason.
Sparty… the SO’s cat… I call him ‘my chubby hubby’. Anyways, he wokeme up one gawd-early morning at 330am TO BE HELD like a little baby! He also thiniks he’s being sneaky when taking something he wants. And he talks ALOT. What else? He doesnt mind being put on a leash to go for walks through PetSmart. He doesnt seem to mind the car rides either. Methinks he’s part dog.
Oh yeah, and Chubby hubby is so determined to get his catfood when he wants that the Alpha Male (aka SO) had to tape down the lid on the plastic container.
We had the world’s most evil cat. Actually my wife had, I don’t like cats. A Persian/Siamese mix this little bastiche decided to stalk me one night. As I’m going downstairs it comes from out of nowhere and bites me on the ankle I almost died falling down the stairs.
It also wasn’t very bright. Once our son was walking out on the balcony the cat zooms by him and leaps over the railing. I guess he forgot he was on the second floor. It just lay there mewling until my wife went and got him.
Good times.
We have two cats, Dana and Maria. Here’s a pic (Dana is the black one)
http://home.comcast.net/~sokosfamily/dana_and_maria.jpg
Maria’s nickname is psycho kitty.
Maria knocks things over in the middle of the night, goes from perfectly calm to racing through the house for no reason, and even stole a battery one day (why, I don’t know… we never did find it). She drags the water bowl across the floor and then sits in it if it is empty. She throws her food bowl off of the counter if it is empty. If we don’t watch her, she will pounce into the middle of our scrabble board while we are playing. She officially earned her nickname when she was just a tiny kitten and pounced on my head (claws extended) in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.
Maria thinks she’s a dog. Both cats will only drink out of the dog’s water bowl, so we gave up giving them their own water bowl. Maria sits on top of the couch and stares out the window, and growls at passing people like she’s a guard dog. She plays with Scooby, our 100 lb dog, as if she’s his equal.
The only strange thing Dana does (besides refusing to drink out of anything except the dog’s bowl) is that if you try to put a collar on her, it is guaranteed to end up in her litter box in a very short amount of time.
One of my cats is afraid of everything. Ironically she is quite the lover, so we get plenty of scratches when we do something wild like move. This picture characterizes her well. (I’ve posted it before, but so what it’s good.)
The other cat is a much more confident. He’s a little too confident if you ask me. I think This Picture deserves one of those posters with a comic caption.
I have to use this. It describes it perfectly.
The reason is that it’s 3am and that’s when the Zoom happens. Duh. Silly human! 
Púca does the Zoom-with-Wail. Zoom! “Yow!” Zoom! “Yow!” I swear he’s loud enough to rattle the windows.
My cat Lucky just passed away the other day. He had developed a brain tumor, and for the last 3 months was not his usual self. I miss him, but reading these anecdotes has reminded me of the good times, and not the pitiful thing he was at the last.
Lucky was a scaredy cat. I was also accused of fibbing about the # of cats I cared for, as many people visited my house without ever seeing him. After my beloved Mao passed away, tho, he was my little buddy, sole occupier of the waterbed, and constant talker. He would come to the side of my chair, put his front paws on it, and then pat my arm with one paw to try and draw my hand down to his head for petting. If he was awake, he was prolly talking.
Mao was the best tho. Full of quirks, and the best damn cat I’ve ever known. I wrote about her when she passed away. (Warning: kind of a tear jerker.) Remembering her quirks makes me smile, tho. Only cat I’ve ever known that liked mushrooms.
Your cat’s not a vampire by any chance, is she?