My husband’s cat loves the smell of feet and shoes, and likes to lick wet hair. She gets up on his head and digs in with her claws and goes to town. My cat likes to lick plastic bags in a zen-like trance. She also demands that we turn the water tap on for her to drink and play with every time we go near a bathroom (we don’t - we’ve forgotten the water on too many times). She also loves rubsies in the tub (those apparently are the best kind). My cat also likes to be carried around in an empty laundry basket. She particularly likes it if we give her roller coaster rides in it.
When our kitty Dutchess was just a wee thing still, she loved getting into everything, as kitties are wont to do.
One fateful and sunny afternoon she was sniffing around a plastic bag, trying to get into it. She failed at that, but did succeed in crawling through one of the handles. Well, her head, anyway; it caught up at the shoulders. The following is an account of what I believe went through her head:
“Well that didn’t work. Now I’ve got this thing around my neck. I’ll just get out and try again. Just … crawl … through, and – wait. I’m not going through. Why am I not going through? Am I not svelte and lithe? I should just be through. There must be something behind me that’s holding in plaAAAAAAAH! WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS THAT? OH GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE! Run! Runrunrunrunrun AAAAH! IT’S MAKING THIS TERRIBLE CRINKLY NOISE AND IT’S STILL RIGHT BEHIND ME! Gotta switch directions, throw it off course – aaaaaaand YOINK! Ha! Follow me now you crinkly demon from CRAP IT’S STILL ON MY TAIL! HOW THE HELL DOES IT DO THAT? AAAAAH! Runrunrunrunrunrun ZIG! Runrunrunrun ZAG! MOTHER OF CATKIND HOW DOES IT KEEP UP? HALP! HAAAAAAALP! Runrunrunrunrun ZIG! ZAG! DEEK! REVERSE! RunrunrunrunrunFLIP! Runrunrunrun FLING! Oh! Oh. Oh God. Oh man. I finally lost it. Holy. I can’t believe how scary that thing is. CURSE YOU, FOUL SACK! I’m going to go hide under the couch, now.”
To this day, the sound of a plastic bag crinkling sends her bolting.
He likely likes the scent of your scalp. When I had cats, I quickly found that the bathroom waste basket absolutely had to be a covered one, if you get my drift. They would also pull the unmentionables out of the laundry hamper when I wasn’t there.
Max fetches. He has a Tigger finger puppet, a rabbit fur mousy, and a pink, foam soccer ball. He hides them when he’s not in the mood to play. When he is, he brings them to me, laying one at my feet. He looks, soulfully into my eyes and trills. If I don’t respond right away, he’ll pick up the selected toy and throw it into the air, chase it a bit, then place it at me feet and trill. Rinse repeat, until I “learn” to play right. When he’s done, on the last throw he simply lies down on the toy until I’m not looking, then he takes it back to its hiding place. If I happen to find one of them and throw it to him, when he isn’t interested, he’ll just take it to a new hidey hole.
He’s also very clumsy. Once, he tried to jump from the bed to the window sill, missed, slamming his jaw on the edge of the sill. His head shot back, flipping him over landing on his back. I was horrified! I thought he’d broken his neck. He just got up and ran into the living room. When I got to him, he was bathing, peacefully, like nothing untoward had happened. He doesn’t try that jump any more.
I promised pics, but I can’t find the cable for my digital camera. So instead you get another silly story.
Ever since she was a tiny baby, my cat C.C. has been a piglet. One of the ways her gluttony manifests itself is that she is compelled to stick her head inside very single drink glass she sees to find out if the contents are yummy for cats. If it’s water or milk, she’ll drink up. If not, she would move on.
I always discouraged her from doing this. Then we lived with my parents for a short while. They thought this behavior was extremely cute and encouraged it. She became really brazen about it, and if there was even the smallest amount of liquid left in a glass, she would stick her head way down inside to get it.
One day, I was watching TV, and C.C. came prowling around. I had been drinking water out of a 16 oz plastic mug, about 6 inches tall. It was empty, but C.C. had seen me drinking from it, so she stuck her head way, way down inside to see if she could get a drink…
And the mug got stuck on her head. Suddenly, a frantic, mug-headed kitty was running around the room, trying to shake the thing off her head. After I managed to stop laughing, I caught her and removed the mug.
Now, when C.C. wants a drink, she just tips the glass over to spill the contents. :mad:
I actually think that’s an embarrassment reaction. Cookie does that everytime she screws something up - trips over or falls off a chair or whatever. “OMG I fell over. How mortifying. I know, I’ll distract people’s attention from my stupidity by cleaning the shame off!”
The late CJ loved, loved, loved the rolled-up wrappers from Pearson’s mint patties (like York patties for Minnesotans). Sigh. I miss that cat. (Lost the pictures, unfortunately. If I find any, y’all will be the first to know.)
I always think of it as more of a “Did you see how cool that looked?”, intended to fool the humans in the room into thinking that the cat “meant to do that”. Never seems to work, though. It’s kind of like how I would envision Miles Davis posturing after hitting the wrong note. (BTW, is it just me, or is Miles Davis probably a cat now?)
We’ve always been dog people, but recently the animal rescue organization I volunteer for needed a foster parent for a pregnant cat, so we took her in, and now it seems like we get a new cat every week or so. Isis’s kittens were really fun (we still have one of them, and her.) They were obsessed with my husband’s golf bag, and loved to sleep on top of it. All of them at once.
Then we were walking our dogs and found a three week old kitten (Bean) , who we’ve been nursing through an eye infection. Then, two days after we found Bean we were walking in the same place, again with the dogs (three of them, bigish, on extendable leashes) and another kitten (about ten weeks old this time) pops out of the woods and starts meowing at us. Since we really didn’t have the space or time for another cat, I checked him out and he looked like he was going to be OK, so I said “bye” and we walked on. And so did the cat. He followed us 2 miles home, running amongst the dogs cheerfully, happy as can be. So of course we kept him. This is Inu and Mirabel, the day after he followed us home. He’s the coolest cat ever, and wrestles with the dogs with a total lack of fear.
My kitty once decided that she was going to kill the ceiling fan. She crouched in the middle of the living room and glared at it, waiting for it to make a false move, until she finally lost her patience and jumped into the air. Finding that the crafty ceiling fan hovered out of her reach, she continued to watch it until she fell over backwards. Enraged that the fan had made a fool out of her, she meowed fiercely at it, jumping up and down on her hind legs in a vain attempt to reach it. Then abruptly she decided she wasn’t interested anymore and started licking her butt.
The cat/dog rivalry and the cat/mouse dynamic are played up a lot more, but cats and ceiling fans are natural enemies, too. Ceiling fans sit there, whirring perfectly and laughing at the cats below, while the cats plot their revenge. Cats being as smart as they are, I’m sure they’ll win someday. For now, though, nothing to do but to lie in wait and clean their anuses.
Oh my Chloe was DEATHLY afraid of ceiling fans when she first came home with me–and I never even used them, so they weren’t even on. She would crouch down and skirt the edges of the room, staring up at the fan and generally acting as though she were in mortal danger.
Of course she’s afraid of most things anyway, but that was still the strangest thing I’ve ever seen–I used to think maybe she feared the fan would swoop down and carry her off.
Ariel likes to “drown” her toys, especially the mice. Every so often I’ll come home and find one floating in her drinking fountain… or on the rare occasion, bobbing in the toilet bowl like a fluffy turd.
As for Morgan , she tries to talk to birds. It’s the strangest thing… she’ll sit on the windowsill and make chittering sounds at any bird she sees. Her accent must be terrible, though, because the birds always end up running away rather than sitting around for a nice chat.
This is silly in hindsight - at the time it was a “I’m going to kill some cats” story.
Lt. Dax, the 5-toed chair sloth, does not like Magic. DOES NOT LIKE. Actively hates is closer to the truth. The other night, Dax was on her usual perch, having climbed up the back of the chair without my noticing. Magic decided to jump on the chair seat behind me. Dax let out a scream remincient of small children being murdered with industrial leaf blowers. My head tried to leave my neck, anticipating a catfight directly behind it.
This reminds me of a silly cat story about several cats (none of which were mine, so I don’t have any pictures).
Their owner went away for a long weekend. She had (at the time) 6 or 7 cats, IIRC. When she got home, all of the cats were just sort of lying around. A couple of them apparently tried to stand up, but kind of fell over, and they all looked a bit dazed.
Panicked, she called her vet, who advised her to check the food & water bowls to make sure they hadn’t been poisoned or something. When she got to one of the water bowls, the water in it was BLACK.
In the process of dumping it into a sealable container (to take to the vet for testing), a catnip-stuffed mouse fell out.
It appeared that the cats had been drinking catnip tea for a couple of days, and were stoned out of their little feline heads…
Thanks for the complements, everyone. I love my little home-zoo.
Bean’s doing well. When we found her on the road her eyes were crusted shut with gunk, and the left one still has some scarring. It’s getting better slowly, but it may always look kind of hazy. She’s on two different eye drops, one twice a day and the other 5 times a day (this is a pain, and she hates it). We’ll be done with the drops next weekend. She’s extremely active and brave, and loves the dogs. She also already has an adoptive family who will be getting her next week, so that’s great. Right now she’s sleeping in my lap and purring loudly.
(Lost the pictures, unfortunately. If I find any, y’all will be the first to know.)
