Spotted Cat Designs

Jennifur spent a lot of time curled up with me today, all soft and furry and stuff. So I was very happy.

Later on, I was working on my computer and today was cool enough again that she jumped up onto her monitor shelf and slept there while I worked (and people ask me why I don’t “upgrade” to a flat panel…hah!).

So even though I had to leave a while later, I snuck out so I wouldn’t wake her. I always love to have her with me, but I thought it was more important for her to have uninterrupted rest.

That’s true love.

Today we received the new Harry Potter book from Amazon, and Steven immediately shut himself in his room to read it.

So far, so good. The only “gotcha” is that we’ve been trying to capture a feral cat in the backyard, and Steven has been bringing the trap inside at around 5 PM so we wouldn’t get any skunks by mistake. Late this afternoon, I saw some activity in the cage (which we covered with towels so it wouldn’t look like a cage to the cat), and called Steven to calm the cat down and give it some water. About 45 seconds later, I see him in the back with the towels off the cage and staring at a very surprised baby skunk! Sure enough, it was around 7 PM and he had gotten so engrossed in Harry Potter that he had forgotten about the cage.

You can see what happened next on YouTube.

Hairballs are a nuisance. Uncomfortable for our cats and messy for us to clean up. These are some products we have used successfully.

Oral solutions:
Petromalt or Laxatone: Some cats will actually lick the paste from the tube. Not ours. So we have to restrain a cat and rub into the fur about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of paste onto a front leg. Then release cat. She or he runs away with a look of ruffled dignity and begins frantically grooming the icky stuff off their fur. Both Petromalt and Laxatone promote the passage of fur out into the litter box. We have also used Lactulose (a prescription medicine available from veterinarians) which is a stool softener, although it has other medicinal functions as well.

Brushes and combs:
All of these work well. Listed in order of how much loose undercoat you get off in the least amount of grooming time, longest time to shortest. Just have your vacuum cleaner handy for use right after brushing or combing your cats. Otherwise, the loose fur will fly everywhere!

Flea combs do just what they say, comb out live or dead fleas. Our veterinarian told us that after each short run through the fur with the comb, dip the comb in a prepared bowl of slightly soapy water. The soap prevents live fleas from jumping off the water’s surface tension. Then use a damp cloth to wipe off any soapy residue from your cat. BTW, the reddish cast to the water is your cat’s blood that the now dead fleas ingested.

Brushes come in many styles such as wire, pins and bristles. Long hair cats usually do better with the first two types, although you can use all three on short hair cats.

Bamboo Ruffle the fur against the way it grows, then use this comb in 3 to 4 inch strokes.

Furminator I use this primarily for brushing the backs and sides of our densely furred cats. Usually I comb about half the length of the body with each stroke. Be very careful if you go near the belly, legs or tail. You could scrape their skin with this tool. It is amazing in how much fur you can get off in just 3-5 minutes.

It helps tremendously when we use both a paste and brushing for each cat. Whatever you use, do so consistently, at least once a week.

Each day when I come home from work, various members of our household greet me. Entering from the garage, I encounter cats coming out of the family room or kitchen, followed by various human voices. Charger is usually one of the first cats on the scene. He will often lead me to the bedroom where I change my clothes and wait patiently at the feeding area for a treat, or jump up to my sink for some fresh running water. We then have a purring session accompanied by much verbal praise, meowing, and face rubbing and back scratching.

What a wonderful way to make the transition from work to home life!

Damn system crash…

Sorry, just grousing about losing some time to technical nonsense when it’s so much nicer just to talk about cats.

Especially Jennifur.

Especially Jennifur when she sits down in Sphinx pose between our pillows (that’s Susan’s pillow and my pillow, just to keep things straight) so I can feel so much love while watching them both (that’s Susan and Jennifur).

Or especially Jennifur when she sits next to me in bed with her long beautiful tail curled up around the top of her hind leg in that particularly fetching way that some cats have.

Or even Jennifur when she sits behind me on my desk chair like she’s doing now, making sure I don’t go anywhere without her knowing about it first.

Sigh…such perfect love is hard to find.

Who needs an iPhone when you can have a Cat Phone?

Very silly but lots of fun.

Thanks to David Hampton for sending me this link.

A new shinkansen (bullet train) is being tested in Japan that aims to be not only the world’s fastest, but the first with cat ears, according to The Japan Times.

At 360 km/hour (sounds faster than 222 mph), the new Fastech train will be 20% faster than current shinkansen and the French TGV. And the cat ears aren’t just for good looks, but they pop out to act as air brakes to slow the train down quickly and safely.

Any fan of My Neighbor Totoro will understand the real reason, though: they wanted to outdo the cat bus!

P.S. Thanks to the Self Help for Cats blog for alerting us to this.

Today Yang was lounging on a chair when Jennifur sauntered by. He lazily stuck his paw out and managed to pet Jennifur while she passed underneath. Luckily, she didn’t notice because she doesn’t like Yang much anyway and she would have started a fight, so it ended up just one of those magic moments that us humans can only share with other humans.

Agile was trapped by us last summer when he was about 5 months old. His parents were feral cats that people had dumped in our area. We fed them in the hope of taming these two, but it never happened. So when White Paws (as we named her) came with two kittens, we decided to try catching them with a humane trap we bought from Harbor Freight. Several days later we caught Agile. His sibling vanished soon afterwards.

Agile is over a year old now. Every morning when I walk into the kitchen, he immediately approaches, loudly meowing for attention. He is not satisfied until I follow him into the living room where he lies down to be rubbed, petted and scratched.

First I scratch his rump, then rub his ears and cheeks. If he is really calm, he will roll on his side and purr happily while I rub his belly and chest. His eyes half-close in delight. All the while I praise him and say how handsome and wonderful he is and how grateful we are that he came to live with us.

By the way, if you want to know the whole story of his early life with us, you can read Birds, Mice and Apple Pie.

I brought home crickets to feed my lizards. As usual, all the cats wanted to paw at the bag, and then watch me release them into the lizard homes. More than once I have “accidentally” let a cricket loose on the floor. Naturally, a crowd appears, tails waving and whiskers smiling. They almost never eat the cricket, mostly watch it hop around. I later recapture the wayward cricket.

My friend’s cats like to eat the crickets she releases. Yin ate one once, but then he threw up so now he just watches.

Jennifur and Aurum are both transfixed by the lizards hunting inside their cages. Occasionally, Jennifur likes to “help” the geckos by batting at the crickets inside the terrarium. The lizards respond by running and hiding.

I just realized that all of our pets are predators…