Cat Tweets: the recent cat saga (Part One)

About a month ago, followers on twitter and friends on facebook were treated to rants, whines and frustration surrounding the naranek cat...

For example:

... that's right: the cat was having major pee issues again ... before I left for my 3-week trip to Malaysia/Singapore, she had already been having issues, but due to the small volume of pee per 'accident' we figured it was a UTI... brought her to the vet who took our word for it because they couldn't extract anything from her bladder to test! We had trouble getting her to consume the liver-flavored antibiotic pills, so we decided to halve her dry food and see if she would then eat the 'spiked' canned food.

Combine the food deprivation with the upside-down schedule due to Dr Kosh's vampiric hours and resulting lack of attention given to the cat, and the medical condition transformed into a behavioral one. By the time I got back, she was peeing in the bathroom (but not in her box) on a regular basis. Like, daily.

Then she expanded her horizons to the kitchen: right by the kitchen/back door... and...

... yes, she peed IN one of her food bowls (we had a few interim bowls lying around, because one of the fixes suggested is to put her food where she tends to pee... ummmm, didn't *quite* work for her!!). ... and then, horror of horrors...

(fyi a month later and I *still* haven't found a replacement!!)

Limiting the cat to just the bathroom -- and allowing her out only if she was with one of us / under supervision -- would limit the damage she could inflict on us .... but hubby wasn't keen on 'punishing' the cat... then...


Kosh and I were mega stressed-out by all this... and this didn't help either:



... have things gone back to normal now? Stay tuned, I'll tell you more in Part Two!

Cat Tales: I cheated on her!

Today I cheated on our cat.

It was maybe 6:15am, and she had started up another round of hissy fits - looking out, I saw that it wasn't the scrappy ginger tom with flappy ears that was bothering her -- it was another ginger cat, this one belonging to our neighbors.


The neighbor's cat in better days

I suspect our neighbors recently decided to make the cat an outdoor one. About two weeks ago, all of a sudden, the cat's carrier and litterbox appeared on their back porch. With a green collar with a bell, and a white flea collar, it's easy to differentiate this one from the scrappy tomcat that also hangs out here. For a while, the both of them together would be harassing our poor cat!

This morning, I felt sorry for the cat outside, it had given a meek meow at me as I shooed it off the window sill... so with our psycho kitty hissing and yowling away, I carefully made my way outside, careful not to let either cat in/out... shut the screen door behind me, and beckoned at the ginger... ... in the past it hasn't dared approach, too wary or whatever, but today it trotted up and proceeded to batter itself against me. Poor thing seemed starved for attention (I ~hope~ it's not also starved for food!!), and was going around in circles rubbing against me.

So I finally managed to study this feline up close. ... now, in my limited experience, I noticed that ginger cats were (almost) always male, and I assumed the neighbor's cat was also male. However, its face wasn't "flared" the way toms' usually are. Also, I didn't see any dangling scrotum at its nether regions - sure, it could mean it's been neutered, but don't neutered cats put on weight? This one's nice and slim. I didn't look closely enough at its behind to determine if it had female parts. But I have a feeling this ginger's female.

One of these days, when I next see the neighbor on the porch, I'll try to ask sans accusation about why their cat is now living outside. ... the weather's turning cold, I don't think it's wise to turn your cat out now, right?

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Cat Tales: hissy fit update

If you recall, the other day I typed at y'all about our cat's hissy fits in relation to visiting outside cats ... so guess what sight greeted me this morning as I was about to leave to meet some Springfield Tweeters and Bloggers?!



Yes, there she is, on her favourite perch, totally unfazed that Cat#2 is lounging around on our back porch!

OMG, cat... You decided you like visitors now? Or does the closed window "solve" the batting and scent problems?

"Why u clutching at your eyes, mommy?"

... because I rolled my eyes at you so hard they hurt!

Cat Tales: hissy fits

This morning, the cat had a huge case of the hissy fits.

This had happened once before, and it had been really disconcerting for me to be jolted out of bed by loud thudding in the back room. Kosh had been closer by when it happened, and reported he'd heard hissing too. The cat was totally freaked out, tail all poofed up and all. Based on the sound, we wondered if the cat had trapped herself in one of the many boxes and freaked herself as she struggled to get out.

A few days later, we found out the real reason:

During another hissy fit, Kosh caught sight of a cat batting at our cat through the window screen! That was the thudding sound we had heard ... well that and the noise made by our cat freaking out on the window sill, batting back and retreating.

I'll have to check with Kosh about the outside cat's coloring, because now I'm not sure which of today's two visitors that one was.

That's right.

This morning, this orange tom came a-visiting, stalking up almost to the window as our cat hissed up a storm, scaring the bejeesus out of me as I sat nearby.

The sight of me halted the tom before he reached the window; after engaging me in a staring contest (he won, of course), he then retreated to the stairs where he proceeded to ignore me, back turned, while our poor cat sniffed and sniffed the air coming in through the window for his scent, hissing every once in a while, and overall acting quite put out.

But then Mr Orange Tom left, so the cat and I settled back to our preferred locations - she on the window sill, and me at the computer 2 feet away from her.

The next thing I know there are loud yowls and thudding screens and our radio tumbles down as the cat scrambles away from yet another visitor, this time a darker striped cat.

Not sure if it was male, this one - it didn't immediately strike me as male, anyway. Silly me, I tend to observe the shape of the face and hips, instead looking for the telltale balls!

So with this visitor, our cat was extremely frazzled. In the end, she stalked off to the front of the apartment. Don't blame her at all, heck ~i~ had a case of major heart thumpage going on just from having been closeby when it all went down!

Figuring the poor thing could do with some attention -- once she'd calmed down, that is! -- I ended up giving her about 30mins of lap time accompanied by major purrage (her, not me!) while I watched some tv.

She's not come back to the window sill yet, though.

Poor thing.

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that'll teach the pussy to eat hair...

... the last time we visited the in-laws, among the random conversation topics was how, when very young, Kosh's sister needed a suppository, I forget for what reason, and his dad went on about how it wouldn't stay so the doc told them to "hold her butt cheeks together" for 15 minutes or something, and how he had to do it because my MiL just didn't have the heart to do that to a screaming child.

why, you may ask, do I bring this up?

because I had a similar, rather traumatic experience this weekend, involving a "child" and its butt!

... so once in a while the psycho kitty has trouble getting her poop all the way out, and ends up scooting across the floor, leaving sine waves of poop smears as she struggles to remove the turd by friction.

... so over the weekend Kosh heard her behaving funny as she emerged from the litter box, went to check and then I hear "What are you doing??? What are you doing???? Hey Lynne? She's making sine waves again!!" He the proceeds to lift her up off of the couch where she'd just fled to under his scrutiny. Ummm... now what? Since he was doing the holding, I, fun fun, I had the honor of taking a piece of tissue and pulling the turd out of the cat's butt! ... And oh my, she was SCREAMING at me as I tried to get a hold of the thing, not even pulling yet!! Seemed to take forever but it was probably over in just a minute - slowly pulled the turd out... only to see that it seemed to be attached to her by a long strand of hair. We assume that's the culprit.

I have ONE bit of advice for you, cat: DON'T EAT MY HAIR!!

Happy Earth Day

Here's how Earth Day started today.

it's 5.30-ish in the morning, and I'm pulled out of my sleep by the glorious sounds of a puking cat. As I get more awake, I hear her jump down, and so closeby too: it takes just a moment for it to register, then Kosh mumbles "I think she just puked on the bed!"

Yup.

If nothing else, she chose the edge of the bed, on *his* side, LoL!

So Kosh cleans it up as best he can in his zombir [sic] state, then stubbornly climbs back into bed to steal as much shuteye as he still can before getting up for real (due in the hospital at 6.30am).

Oh, and during the cleanup, he checks the alarm clock, and it seems it had already been snoozed once - to his surprise. Heh. If nothing else I suppose the cat helped make sure he didn't over-snooze this time?

So I've been awake since 5.30 or so this morning. Darned cat!

pussy whipped?

The cat is one spoilt pussy!

So last month, despite the pee-at-the-front-door behaviour, or perhaps because of it, Kosh and I got her two "toys:

1. those "doggy steps" you might have seen on TV: she's got a perch she needs to jump to get to, and of course jump down onto hardwood floors, so we figured with her increasing old age her joints could do with NOT hitting the floor all the time. Of course, the cast sniffs at the contraption leading to her perch, and refuses to have anything to do with it. If nothing else, we've improved her launching skills because she now seems to make a more powerful jump to her perch to avoid the steps.

2. a cat play lounger thingamajig, which is essentially a half-circle high enough for the cat to play under, and wide enough for her to lounge on, covered with three different textures so she can sharpen her non-existent claws, sleep, etc etc - an alternative, lower perch for her, you might say. Well, putting it together was simple and yet difficult because it was *such* a cheap plastic product it didn't even stand level! We've had to wedge it in between other things to keep it in one place. Oh and of course the cat doesn't "get" it at all, and so now it's draped with her toys in the hopes of enticing her to at least play within its vicinity.

*sigh*

Now, based on her last few vet check-ups, she's doing fine, perhaps slightly dehydrated and a bit overweight. To counter the dehydration, we just need to get her to drink more, but of course ideally she prefers drinking running water from a faucet, not stagnant water from a bowl. And for the weight, we need to portion her food instead of just filling her bowl full every three days.

And so...

1. Cat water fountain: with a "free-falling stream that is closest to a faucet" feature, dropped a few tens on this accessory. Pretty simple set-up, and the sound of falling water is rather pleasant too. The cat took to it within an hour of it running. I've twice found junk in its bowl, perhaps she drank immediately after eating and still had food crumbs on her face/whiskers, or she pawed at the water with dirty paws, who knows, but disassembling it for cleaning is a bit of a bother, but still easy enough to do. Overall, a good investment.

2. Automatic pet feeder: I'd figured out the cat's daily consumption of food, then tried to consistently feed her a touch below that amount at a consistent time during the day. Wasn't happening. And most vets recommend twice-daily feeding. Waaay too much hassle! So it was either say screw it and let the cat be fat, or look to an automatic cat feeder. So we got ourselves the latter. The cat seems to not be freaked out by the rotating food dish, and has helped herself to the food without any problems.

But. Some days she seems to finish the food fast, some days not. One factor could be her getting locked up while we're out, so sometimes she'd locked up for 6 hours, perhaps that affects her appetite? But certainly another factor is the consistency of food portioned out to her. I kinda eyeball the kibble doled out in a smaller bowl, but it's not really a good system. And the portion is small enough that I'd need to do some hunting for a scoop or whatever that might be of the correct volume.

So instead.

Okay so ostensibly we've been looking for a kitchen food scale for a while now, for our own portion control efforts. But the first thing it's going to be used for: doling out the cat's food, LoL!

So yeah... in the span of one month, we've amassed waaay too much *stuff* *just* for the cat.

Sometimes I feel that all too soon we'll be in the situation of this cartoon which I took a photo of so it's dreadfully unclear, but it shows the dog in bed with its owners at the foot of the bed.
"IT'S COME TO THIS"

LoL!

of sine waves, rearing heads and dictionary wars

... so today, I'm at the computer, playing scramble on facebook (an online version of boggle) when I hear the cat pawing at the floor. You know, pawing/scratching on the floor, like what you'd expect her to do if she were covering up her "business" with kitty litter. Except that she was pawing at the floor. NOT a good sign!

So I peeked around the corner and whaddaya know, there was a piece of turd, along with what I call "sine waves" : sinusoidal marks on the floor left by butt-dragging. Do YOUR cats have this problem? Once in a while our crazy kitty can't quite completely squeeze one out, so she'll clamber out of the litter box with a turd tangling out her butt, which she then removes by dragging her butt across the floor.

*sigh*

... if nothing else, at least it was a relatively easy and hassle-free clean-up.


= = = = = =

and what I expected to happen has finally started! I was in French class and found myself wanting to add "también" to the end of my sentence to indicate "also", LoL! I'm still having the stray Italian word / number / rhythm emerging during Spanish class, it was just a matter of time before Spanish started rearing its head in French! I'm not complaining at all, though, don't get me wrong! I'd love to be able to just switch from one language to another without hardly any hesitation or conscious effort... long time to go before I can do that tho :p

= = = = = =

... so recently I've been online playing Scrabulous (a Scrabble rip-off), Scramble (a Boggle rip-off) and Text Twister on Facebook as well as playing Scrabble on the PC itself. And I've been getting more and more irritated by the different dictionaries used by different games and applications. The worst offender is Text Twirl - after training myself to spot words what would otherwise look like nonsense (aas, ais, dee, cee, ...), it's like running into a brick wall when these words are rejected.

Then there's my PC game, an official Scrabble product, that doesn't accept "qi" yet it's fine in Scrabulous which uses the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary as reference.

... and if you look at all the possible words from one Boggle/Scramble game, well, lets just say I question the validity of SO MANY of them!!

but at the end of the day, I suppose one just needs to keep track of which words are accepted by which games and play accordingly, or, be like me and don't get too hung up about it: at least Boggle/Scramble/Text Twirl don't penalize you for guesses/wrong words. So type away in those games, and just play it safe in Scrabble.

Ciao!

the cat is like Britney Spears...

... because she did it again.

pee.

this time, ON MY BAG!

ruining my Spanish workbooks,

and of course I'm not going to try to salvage the bag,
which now reeks of pee.

It's not even a separation anxiety thing, it's more of an "ooh, here's a different surface to pee on, let's do that!" thing.

I guess that'll teach me to not leave my bag on the floor, close to but not by the front door???!!

aarrrggghhhhhh!

... and now I need to find a replacement bag.

I've been half-tempted by this, but wonder if they have a more "messenger bag" style, and less ugly, LoL!

catching up and cat tales

It was a particularly horrendously cold weekend that just went by, and it's still cold!! The word to to the wise was to not go out, and instead just spend the time indoors in front of your fireplace or something. Well, we did that, kinda, except that we drove 2 hrs to get to a fireplace at Kosh's folks' place, and of course drove back again yesterday, LoL! We were marking his birthday lah, already planned well in advance of Mother Nature's shenanigans... otherwise you wouldn't have seen even our batang hidung (noses) this weekend!

... and the weekend before that, on the Friday, I jokingly pointed out to Kosh that "Hey, it's BBQ Beef Ribs day!" (for those not in the know, we used to live in Urbana-Champaign, and there was this bbq place that has the most awesome bbq sauce, and daily specials, the Friday one being the most totally addictive and delicious half-slab of beef ribs I've ever found!)... and whaddaya know, he managed to escape from work really early, and off we went for an overnight trip to Urbana, buying FOUR order of ribs, two consumed there and then, and the other two transported back to Chicago to be eaten sparingly over the next three days... yummmmmm!!!

so yeah, any healthy eating plan has been totally disrupted over the last week or so. Back on the wagon... tomorrow? :-)


... ... but, with all these trips out of town, we've been forced to leave the cat alone for long periods of time. Prior to August 2007, it wouldn't have been a problem. But, ever since Kosh left the kitty cat alone in the apartment for 5 days (with ample food, water and toilet facilities!) to join me in Switzerland, I think she's developed separation anxiety or something. Remember the pee-saturated rug I'd mentioned that greeted us? Well, we threw out that rug, cleaned the spot well, making sure the best we could that there was no pee aroma to encourage a repeat offense, and all seemed okay... but then, ,, we'd leave her alone for 10 minutes and whaddaya know, she'd peed there again. Kosh would be showering in the morning and whaddaya know, she'd pee in that same spot. She'd get antsy in the middle of the afternoon for daddy to get back while I'd be at home but not paying her much attention (I was in the Sim City fever at that time), and whaddaya know, Kosh would get back to pee by the front door.

Cleaning up liquid pee from your entranceway is NOT a fun thing to do at any time, let alone getting to do it so often! There was no way we were gong to be able to leave her alone anymore,,,, but what about my classes??? My French, Spanish, pottery...??!!!

Kosh came up with a solution. So, now, whenever she is to be left alone during the day, we put her in her little carrier, what is usually used to transport her to the vet and back. Very small and cramped quarters, but, I can't find pity for her anymore,,, I decided to not crate her that one time and, hey, whaddaya know, I came back to pee by the front door. Ugh!! By now, she seems to have surrendered herself to the trial of being locked up almost every day, for hours at a time. So far so good, she hasn't "gone" in the carrier, and she's not peed by the front door, or anywhere other than her litter box, in retaliation for being locked up.

BUT.. crating is not an option for long/overnight absences.

So, on the past two weekends, the cat was confined to the bathroom. To avoid cleaning up kitty pee, we instead clear out the contents of our (tiny) bathroom, and install her litter box, her carrier, food & water, and some toys, and shut her in for the duration of our absence. So far so good, no non-box peeing! Of course, the cleaning up of the bathroom takes up lots of time too, what with the litter sand scattered all over,,, but hey, it's SO much better to clean up than pee! Besides, it provides an opportunity/excuse/impetus to actually clean the bathroom properly once in a while (not that the bathroom *never* gets cleaned, it just probably isn't cleaned as often as it should!)

... and today? Today she has a puking incident, then runs into the bedroom, and seeks refuge in, of all places, the laundry basket.

... silly kitty!!


UPDATE @ 1:40pm... the cat toppled the basket to the floor as she finally decided to leave the laundry for a spot on the couch instead.



No, she's not trapped underneath. But thanks for having me clean up another of your messes, cat!!

silly kitty indeed!

just can't win!

So about a month ago, Kosh and I started getting sloppy on the whole keeping the cat's litter box cleaned out every 3 days or so. I would keep meaning to, but would remember only once I was in the shower, and I just didn't feel like "dirtying" myself afterwards with kitty litter dust and aroma, y'know? So I'd postpone it to the next day, forget again, postpone it, forget again... At one point, I was about 3 days overdue, meaning that her box hadn't been cleaned for almost a week!

Around that time, the cat made her irritation known:

• She peed on the threadbare handtowel left on the bathroom floor as a temporary rug while the real rug air-dried along with the other apartment rugs after a particularly comprehensive laundry session.
• She peed on Kosh's scrubs he'd left on the floor.
• She peed against the closet door which trickled onto a nearby mat.

The thing is, every time she did that, she had been rewarded with an immediately cleaned litterbox [and curses, let's not forget the curses!!], and these occurred within a few days of each other, so it's not like the box was no longer up to her standards... afraid that she was regressing, we decided to limit her exposure: keep both bedroom and bathroom doors closed.

Of course, this is the bathroom where the air vent is something we can't control, it's a centralized thing that has been NOT working more than working for the 1 year + that we've been here. Right now it's technically working, but not by much. So to avoid the worst of mold formation, we need to keep the bathroom door open, for circulation.

But we can't have anything on the floor. So the rug gets "stored" over the curtain rail when we're not in the bathroom. Oh, and other bits of stuff on the floor, like the kitchen rug and the little placemats that are mini-rugs within the kitchen? All collected and stored in the bedroom for the moment. All to reduce the opportunity for the cat to decide something else was going to be her pee spot [did I mention we went through TWO cat beds before deciding it wasn't worth it because she'd use them for a while then one day we'd realize it was now full of pee?]

So right now we're in this whole keeping-an-eye-on-the-pee-crazy cat. About the only positive outcome is that Kosh doesn't leave his clothes willy-nilly around the apartment anymore, whoohooo! :-) It's no fun without rugs on the floor especially in the kitchen. Having the bedroom door closed sucks. Seeing the bathroom floor nekkid is just plain weird.

And then, yesterday, it happened. The rolling of eyes, the exasperation at the cat reached a new level. Because we'd forgotten about another little quirk of hers. With the bathroom door open to air out the post-shower humidity, she is now free to hang out on the bathroom sink, waiting for a drink from the faucet, which is well and fine.... but while she's there, perhaps also to express her annoyance at having to wait for water, perhaps just because she's a cat, she loves to mess with the toilet paper.

Yes, this cat likes to claw at the toilet paper, which is attached just by the edge of the sink/cabinet. Still don't understand how and why she does it: her claws rip deep into the roll PLUS the process of clawing at the roll usually unrolls the thing, ruining over half the roll at one go... and it's only her HIND legs that have claws. You figure out how she needs to perch with her butt over the edge in order to achieve this feat.

I'm just glad she's not decided to pee on the couch - I think that would drive Kosh mega mad!