Snooze-a-thon

Middle of the kitchen floor:



Wish I could be so comfortable!!

Meet Garfield

Meet Garfield, my newest kitty.

When losing Cissy stopped hurting quite so much, I realized that I wanted to get another cat. I looked into the local shelter and their costs but something told me to wait. I guess I thought that if I was meant to have another cat, one would come to me, a stray would show up at work or at home, looking for a home or something.

Well, ‘something’ happened.

A co-worker of mine had moved and her new apartment didn’t allow pets. She was going to try and sneak in her cat but they were too observant for that and demanded that she get rid of him.

Someone here at work told her I was a “cat-person” so she came to me to see if I wanted him. He seemed perfect.

He’s 8 years old, neutered and declawed and has all his shots. And also the first orange cat I’ve had.

And he is BRIGHT orange. He practically glows! He has such a sweet face, too. He’s very affectionate and likes to sleep next to the fridge or next to my pillow at night. I weighed him last Saturday. He’s 14lbs. Cookie is 13lbs and Klein is 16lbs, the fatty.

He is younger and more muscular than my 2 very fat kitties and is able to get into much more mischief than they. I used my tuna squeezer one Saturday and it has mysteriously disappeared! I’ll probably find it under the couch or the dining room hutch when I do my spring cleaning.

He’s also able to get on the kitchen counter! My other 2 are way too fat to jump so high. Cookie could probably manage it but she’s too lazy. I could claim she knows better but I know better! :-) Klein can barely manage to jump onto the bed. The counter might as well be on the moon, as far as he’s concerned.

My daughter has a house-full of young cats that like to get into places they're not supposed to. To combat this, they’ve found a product that I plan to acquire myself: Ssscat: www.ssscat.com/

What a cool concept!!

He's a real sweetie, for all his mischievous ways. He loves to give "kisses", something my other two won't do. He'll let me hold him but hasn't figured out that a baby-cradle is a good way to get some intensive mommy-attention.

He helps me get ready for work every morning, following me through my routine, mostly because the last thing I do before heading out is to feed them. Hey, dogs have masters, cats have staff. My primary reason for existence is to feed them. Just ask 'em!

That and scritches. Gotta have lots of scritches, too! :-)

Of course, if all this bothered me, I'd have a dog. But you don't have to walk cats, bath cats, police your yard or go through the dominance games dogs play. Litter boxes are nasty but at least all the nasty stuff is in one place. Plus, I have a wonderful product called a Litter Robot that takes most of the nasty out of it. I just change the bag in the bottom once a week, add more litter and I'm done! If you don't like scooping your litter box, check out that website! I'm on my second robot. I killed the first one by washing the base. Yeah, I'm an idiot. They were nice enough to give me a nice discount, though. Took some of the sting out.

And I don't have to walk around my neighborhood carrying a bag of poop!!

Cats

My cats think I’m crazy!

They’re probably right. After all, who gets up at the crack of dawn to go sit in an office all day to earn money for cat food (and other things!) and who gets to stay home and sleep all day?? If life were fair, it would be the other way around!

But, who said life was fair? I don’t even like that word. It’s the ultimate whine from spoiled children who aren’t getting their way; “No fair!” I always asked them to explain their frame of reference, not letting them get away with simply stating that they wanted their way in something. Why was their way better than mine? Explain yourself!! Who says?

Anyway, back to the cats…

Cookie and Klein (named by children, is case you couldn’t tell!), get a can of cat food every night before I go to bed. As a result, Cookie won’t let me out of her sight unless and until they are fed. I’ve gone to bed early a couple of time without feeding them and she’s never forgotten it, nor forgiven me. So, if I leave the kitchen, she follows me. If I go upstairs, she follows me and gives me that “Mommy doesn’t love me anymore” look until I go back downstairs. Or she panics and tries to block me from going up the stairs. Of course, I’m probably just going to get something and step right over her. A 12 lb. cat just isn’t capable of physically blocking my path to any great degree. Or I step on her, resulting in much yelling and hurt looks and apologies from me, even though it was her that got in my way.

So, any place I go in my house in the evenings after dinner requires a 2 cat entourage, just to make sure that I don’t get away without feeding them their treat. They also can’t figure out why I don’t feed them earlier. I do, sometimes. My SO hate the smell of the food (we call it “Stinky Stuff”!) so he has to have gone down to the Family Room for the remainder of the evening after dinner before they get fed. So, they follow me around, giving me the ‘evil eye’ and meowing because I haven’t fed them, yet. So, they think I’m crazy because I do things other than feed them.

Cookie has a fairly accurate clock in her tummy; although it tends to run faster the closer it gets to feeding time. They get fed at 10:00PM, more or less, so I call it her 10:00 Tummy. She has also been known to wake me up in the morning if I should fall back asleep after the alarm goes off. She gets up on the bed and meows in my face to wake me up.

Wonderful way to start the day! A face-full of cat-breath! But my “4-footed alarm clock” has come in handy a few times! Some days, I can sleep through anything! Except a 12 lb. cat standing on me, yelling in my face. That usually gets my attention!! And then I’m only a few minutes late for work instead of the hours that it would be if it were up to me. Not a good way to stay employed! Bosses like you there when they want you there.

In addition, I think my cats think I spend all day in the garage. Well, after all, I go into that room in the morning and come out of it in the evenings. They never really try to get out there. I suspect it smells nasty to them: I park my car in my garage. Cars smell nasty to me; I can’t imagine they smell nice to cats: gasoline, oil, various fluids and all that plastic. Plus, when I had to have my very old and very sick put to sleep this summer, Cissy went into the garage and never came back out! I think they noticed. Klein seems almost afraid of it!

This is all to the good, as far an I’m concerned. The last thing I need to do when I’m on my way to work is play Chase-the-Kitty out in the garage! Cissy did that once and I had to wash her feet as she got into some oil leaked onto the floor by an old car I used to have. She didn’t like that one little bit!! Gave me that hurt look for days!

I used to trim her nails when they got too sharp. She was a very good sport about it and never fought me. Although, she would often leave to go and wash her feet to make sure she still had all her toes, carefully licking them one at a time. You could imagine the monolog in her head: Onnnnnne… Yep, this one’s still here. Twooooooooo…..Yup, the next one’s here, too. Threeeeee……….Yup, this one’s OK as well.

Well, if cats could think in English, that is!!