Archive for the ‘Cat’ Category
Barney was a LARGE black and white cat. He was not fat just big boned. For being as big as he was you would think that he would not be afraid of anything. That was almost true but he did have one big fear: snakes.
Barney would freak out with any long thin item. There could be a shoe lace still attached to the shoe and he would take a wide birth around it. Paul could have a tie lying on the bed and Barney would jump up on the bed then turn inside out getting back off the bed when he saw that tie lying there. Barney did not care for playing with strings or yarn like most cats. He hated electrical cords. Anything that was long and narrow would send him into a panic.
During this time we had some rental property. One of our tenants moved out and left half of their stuff behind. Paul and I went in to clean it up and put their belongings in our cattle trailer until they could come get them. One of the items they left behind was their pet Boa Constrictor. So we had to bring the snake and its large aquarium home with us. We were living in a small mobile home at the time and had little room for this large item so we set it on the floor in the living room in front of the book shelves.
Have you heard of the term ‘your worst fears realized’? This was Barney’s worst fears realized. He could not believe we had brought a snake into the house! He would walk as far around it as possible. The other cats pretty much ignored the snake, even lying next to the aquarium.
We had that snake for two months. The tenants never did come and get their stuff and we had to sell everything. The snake was the hardest to get rid of.
This whole episode is very typical of life, where we do tend to attract our worst fears just as Job did in the Bible and Barney did with the snake. We attract our fear because we put a lot of energy toward that fear and so it materializes, this is the ‘law of attraction’ at work. What is your main fear? Do you want to avoid it? The use of EFT can be beneficial in removing the emotional hooks that keep that fear in your mind. Set up an appointment with me at www.naturallyresilient.com and start living a fear free life.
When we lived on 68 acres, we were always losing cats. It may have been the coyotes or it may have been the mountain lion or it could have been the Owls or Falcons that surveyed the area.
We had recently lost a friendly Siamese named Mouser. I was suspicious that she might have taken a ride with some one; jumping in the back of one of the construction trucks that were constantly going in and out of our property. I was looking through the ads in the local paper to see if anyone had found a lost cat fitting her description. I saw an ad stating “Found, Female Siamese”. I called the number and a woman answered. The description she gave did not really sound much like Mouser but I thought I better check it out. She explained that she did not have the cat because her apartment would not allow animals but she always saw the cat when she and her friend went walking. She explained that the cat was always seen back behind a bank building and she usually brought it food as it was so skinny. I agreed to meet her behind the bank building the next afternoon.
The next afternoon Paul, Jesse and I showed up at the bank after banking hours. Wow! There must have been at least a 100 cats running around back there! Almost all of the cats were feral. Before too long the woman showed up. She pointed out a particular cat to me and with a little coaxing and some tempting food the cat came up. It was not Mouser.
The woman was so concerned about this cat and was so insistent that I take it so I could at least take it to the pound the next day. She would have done that but she never saw the cat except at night and she could not keep the cat overnight at her apartment and risk getting thrown out. I was just amazed that she had zeroed in on this one cat when there were a hundred running around us out there!
We took the cat but I had no intention of taking it to the pound, I just don’t work that way. The next morning we took it to our vet to get shots and to be spayed. I asked them to board her over the weekend as we had a camping trip planned and I would pick her up Monday morning.
Monday morning I brought Misty home. I opened the cat carrier and she came out. Harry had to come up and investigate and Misty promptly hissed at Harry. For the rest of the day Harry went around the house hissing. He hissed at anyone walking across the floor, he hissed at the vacuum cleaner, he hissed at anything that was out of place. He had learned a new word and had to try it out. Unfortunately this also set the tone for their relationship, they have never been good friends and are barely on speaking terms.
When you live in the country there is a good chance you will see mice. When you live in a mobile home in the country, there is a better chance you will see mice. When you live in a mobile home in the country with cats that have easy access to their own door chances are the mice are scarce around the house unless they bring them in for later entertainment.
On this 68 acres we had to mow every once in a while to keep the weeds down and give the eatable grasses a chance to grow. We had a tractor and a large 15 foot bat wing mower, the kind the highway department use to mow the sides of the road. One early evening my husband was mowing and noticed a large colony of mice close to the house. We decided to give the cats a surprise. I grabbed Daneel and the plan was that Paul would drive the tractor with the mower, cutting a large swath and the mice would run for cover toward the higher grass closer to the house. I would point the mice out to Daneel and he would take off after them.
It was probably my choice of cats, but when Paul started the mower up, Daneel did not want any part of the effort. Daneel clawed and panicked and I had to let go. Barney had come out to see what was going on and he started to run just because Daneel was running. But Barney did not have the panic that Daneel had. I caught Barney and we decided to do the exercise again.
Paul started the mower again and made another swath. Barney was not too sure about the whole deal, especially when I started to run with him toward the tractor. But then he saw the mice. It was ‘lock on target’ and he sprang out of my arms and was off. I am not too sure of what or how many he may have caught, but as soon as he had seen the mice it clicked as to what we were trying to do. Daneel never did catch on.
Here is another example of how fear prevents manifestation. Daneel was so caught up in fear and getting away, he missed a great opportunity.
Callie was a very clever calico but she had one main downfall; she liked a good fight. There was very little that scared her. I could vacuum and she would stay sleeping and only be annoyed when I had to move her out of the way. I was vacuuming my drapes at the head of my bed once with her sleeping close to the pillow and the drapery attachment kept falling off. Finally Callie got up and moved, giving me a dirty look. There was only one time I ever saw her scared.
A number of years ago when we had Callie and about 6 other cats we bought 68 acres and a small mobile home. There was a lot to do before we moved onto the land. One Friday evening before setting out to work on the mobile home for the weekend we decided to bring a cat with us to check the place out and maybe this cat would tell the other cats about it. We decided Callie was the best choice.
At the worksite we did not have the electricity connected yet and decided to trust Callie out of the hot house to roam the grounds while we were outside working. That evening I had some trouble getting her to come in but luckily I had brought a can of cat food and a can opener. I took it outside so she could see what I was up to. I opened the can and she decided to come over, she had not eaten all afternoon and was hungry. Then I grabbed her and took her inside with us.
Since we did not have electricity, we did not have any air-conditioning. We opened the front door and closed the screen door and opened the windows that had screens for the evening. There was no front porch built yet and the bottom of the front door was more than three feet off the ground.
We had seen a gray long-haired cat hanging around the area when we had come before and figured we had moved into its territory but did not think much of it. That night the gray long-haired decided to check out Callie.
Paul and I were in the bedroom and Callie was in the dark living room by the front door. This wild cat started throwing himself at the screen door making all kinds of racket. This was some jump as he was hitting the door about four feet off the ground. Callie stood her ground for a short while but the wild cat was persistent and I guess Callie decided discretion was the better part of valor and we saw her run from the front door through the bedroom and into the bathroom where she reached her paw under the vanity door, pulled it open and went inside, closing the door behind her!
That was the only time I ever saw Callie run from a fight.
When you live in the country on 68 acres there are bound to be field mice. We preferred the mice to stay out side however the cats thought otherwise. At least one of them did.
LC was a young, energetic part Siamese who constantly talked, which is why she was named LC which stands for Loud Cat. You would think with all that chatter going on she would not be able to sneak up on anything let alone surprise a mouse enough to catch it. But she was a great little mouser. However she had one little quirk that made her mousing not real popular around the house, she would bring the mouse inside and had discovered if she put it in the bathtub she could play with it without it being able to escape. I would hear noises coming from the bathroom and see LC in there playing with a mouse. When she saw I was about to take her mouse away she would grab it and I would grab LC and carry her outside with her mouse where she would either lose it or finish it off.
Sometimes the mouse was not in so good a shape. I spied on her once in the tub with a partially eaten mouse batting it around. She would bat at it and it would go sailing into the drain hole. She would then dig it out and bat it around some more. I guess the drain held the excitement of a mouse hole for her. But that explained why I would sometimes find the hind quarter of a mouse in the drain screen. I never did tell overnight guests what went on in that bathtub. I always cleaned it thoroughly and shut the door against LC when expecting a guest.
Many years ago, we lost our BIG black and white cat Barney. I don’t know if it was coyotes or the local mountain lion, but the last time I saw him was when we came home late (midnight) and I invited him to come in with us but he declined.
I searched all over the field for the next week but never saw a sign of him. I was very upset as Barney was a very sweet, personable cat that everyone loved and he loved everyone. We decided to replace Barney and a friend said that his sister in Georgetown had discovered three kittens in their neighbors back yard, they did not even have their eyes open yet! Some local boys had found them and stuck them under a milk crate in the back yard. The woman rescued the kittens and bottle raised them.
One of the kittens was a black and white who looked a lot like Barney. We said we would take that one. At 5 weeks old we took possession. Harry showed up one afternoon and our female cat Mouser took one look at this kitten, hissed and ran off. Since this kitten had shown up in the afternoon and Paul usually came home in the afternoon, she associated Paul with having brought this kitten in the house. Mouser accepted the kitten within a week but stayed mad at Paul for two weeks!
Harry was an adventurous kitten who loved the outdoors. We closed the cat door at night with the cats in the house least we lose another one in the middle of the night. When ever we tried to go outside after dark, Harry would make an effort to escape.
We had a huge pile of dirt in the backyard of our home which came from digging the septic field. One night Paul opened the back door and out ran Harry. Paul and I took off after him. Harry thought it was great fun to run around the base of the dirt pile. Paul and I were running different directions around the dirt trying to catch him. A kitten can be a slippery thing to catch.
Harry was having a great time evading us in the dark and who shows up but an owl screeching overhead. Harry did not understand the great danger he was in. That owl was upset with me and Paul keeping him from a great little snack. Our efforts to catch Harry escalated. Only after we had caught Harry and started heading back to the house, did the Owl finally give up.
Cats like having a human wait on them, this includes opening doors. To counter this behavior we installed cat doors. The standard size for a cat door is 4”x4” which is very small for our large 12 to 18 pound cats. We install the larger “small dog” doors for our cats and even then it was a squeeze for our largest cat.
One house we lived in had a small dog door installed in the wall leading between the utility room and the garage, and another one installed in the garage door. This way the cats could ‘wipe’ their feet on the way to the inner-sanctum for the house.
One day we had been doing some work in the garage with the garage door open. That evening we closed the garage door and went to bed. About 2:00 AM we awoke to a scratching sound in the living room. Paul got up to see what the cats were up to. The cat was scratching at the carpet where the door to the study was. In the dark, Paul leaned down to push the cat away from the door. His first clue was that he felt he had to reach down farther than he should for one of our cats. That is when he decided to turn on a light.
As Paul’s eyes became adjusted to the light, he saw that the creature was not our black and white cat but a black and white skunk. Paul swung the door to the study open to let the skunk check that out because it was insistent in clawing its way into the study. The window was open creating a draft under the door that the skunk was feeling.
After making its way around the room and realizing there was no way out, it meandered back out. In the mean time, Paul had opened the front door which was very close to the study door. As the skunk came out, it sensed the bigger draft from the front door and started that direction. However one of our cats, Brenda, had seen the open door and thought that was a novelty in the middle of the night and ran over and sat in the doorway.
The skunk saw the cat and raised his tail. Paul grabbed a jacket from the coat rack and holding it behind the skunk said soothingly “Its OK, you don’t have to spray”, then, out of the corner of his mouth he hissed to the cat in the doorway, “Brenda, get out of the way”. Finally, Brenda took the hint and moved out of the doorway. The skunk then meandered out of the door.
Luckily it never sprayed and it was then that we determined that juvenile skunks that have never sprayed don’t smell (or that would have been a bigger clue that it was a skunk in the living room). The only damage was to the carpet by the study door. We think the skunk may have been closed in the garage that night and the first cat door he came to was into the house.
One day my husband and I went to a crafts fair on the square in Georgetown Texas where we lived. The local animal shelter was there and we fell for a sweet Siamese that they had named Lily. We decided to take her home and soon renamed her L.C. which stands for Loud Cat or Lousy Cat or Lazy Cat or whatever for the mood we were in.
Being a Siamese she was a talker, almost constantly vocalizing. I was on the phone once with a vet friend and L.C. was talking away in the background. My friend asked what was wrong with the cat as she could hear her constant yowling. I told her that was L.C. our Siamese and she being a vet understood. Siamese can be very talkative.
We had another cat, Barney, whom L.C. fell in love with right away. L.C. was a light weight, probable the smallest cat I have ever raised. She weighed in at about 7 pounds where Barney was the biggest cat I ever had and came in at 18 pounds and that was all bone and muscle not fat. This was a Mutt and Jeff relationship.
Barney was a big brother to L.C. Barney would be asleep in a corner and L.C. would come in and curl up on top of him and fall asleep! Barney would wake up and look at me like “what do I do now?” L.C. loved following Barney and our other cat Daneel around, yowling the whole time. I could just imagine her saying; “what are you doing? Where are you going? Can I help?” I am surprised that the other two never tried running her off when they went hunting and she came along. I know that her constant chatter alerted any prey to their whereabouts.
L.C. knew how to work Barney. I never quit understood the dynamics going on between Barney and Daneel until L.C. entered the picture. Daneel loved to be petted. He would get ecstatic and besides himself when being petted and Barney would come over and whack him. It was like Barney was saying “Get a grip on yourself”. Well L.C. loved to be petted too and would get all excited and ecstatic also but she did something Daneel didn’t, every once in a while she would jump up and run over to Barney and lick him on the head a few times then run back for more petting. Barney never came and whacked her like he did to Daneel. That was when I decided it was a jealousy thing with Barney; he did not like being ignored!
Cats and other pets are funny creatures that can give a lot of insight to our own human nature.
I heard that a friend’s dog got sprayed by a skunk this week. That brought up memories of LC.
When we lived in the mobile home we adopted a cat from the shelter. We named her LC which stands for ‘Loud Lat’ as she was part Siamese and vocalized a lot. My husband said that LC could also stand for ‘lazy cat’, ‘little cat’ ‘lousy cat’ or ‘lap cat’ depending on the situation.
This mobile home had skirting around the bottom with a gap in it. One spring, LC would disappear for a while and we would hear bumping under the house. We would joke that LC was playing with baby skunks under the house. We were suspicious that a skunk family was living under the house as we would catch a whiff every once-in-a-while when we were outside.
Well sure enough one day LC came in from bumping under the house and stank horribly. Her fur on her chest was green! I shoved her outside and call the vet. He said to pour tomato juice on her and let her lick it off. I had to drive to the store to get a big can of tomato juice. When I got home I easily sniffed out LC, who was pretty upset about not being able to get away from the smell herself. To add insult to injury, I poured the tomato juice all over her and she took off. I didn’t see her for three days! When she showed up again, she still smelled but not as bad and the tomato juice was all gone.
I gave her the hand test. I petted her chest and could smell the skunk on my hand. If the smell would come off on my hand it would come off on the furniture. So, much to LC’s chagrin, I made her stay out for another 2 to 3 weeks until my hand would come away with no smell. Her fur still smelled for several more weeks but at least it did not rub off on anything else. LC never did go back to play with the skunk kits under the house.
I had a friend, Becky, who was the complete opposite of me. She was the artist, very right brain; I was the analytical engineer, very left brain. She hated cats, I had four cats. The tie that we had in common was that we each had a child of about the same age. But even that was different. She had a girl and I had a boy (and they did not get along very well). But we were young mothers looking for adult conversation so we found each other.
Since this is animal Wednesday, this is an animal story. I know children can be animals sometimes but this is not about the children. This is about my friend’s cats.
You are right; I said she did not like cats. She thought they looked sneaky. I told her “you would be sneaky too if you had to be leery of dogs trying to kill you and big birds carrying you off.” This is about all her neighbor’s cats who thought of her back deck as a meeting ground or convention area or maybe the local spa.
Becky had mentioned to her sister that the cats congregated on her back deck and she really wished they would stay away. Her sister told her of a product to buy that would keep them away. This item was a frog garden statue. However this was a special statue, it had a motion sensor. When it sensed motion, the frog would croak!
Becky had to try it. She placed the frog on her back deck and waited. Before too long, one of the local cats showed up for its afternoon sunbathing on the deck. The frog croaked and the cat was startled, however it did not run off.
Becky and her sister failed to consider a major character trait of cats, curiosity. The cat sat for a while watching the frog but when the frog failed to move or react again, the cat moved to find a sunbeam. The frog croaked again. Now the cat knew something was up. It moved closer to the croaking frog. The cat then started calling, and another cat jumped over the fence, then another. Soon there were several cats sitting around this croaking frog. It was like they were daring each other. One finally got up the nerve and ran up and batted it with its paw. The frog just sat there croaking. Another batted the frog, then another. They all had their turn and, bored with the game, they ignored it and each found their sunny spot and laid down for the day.
To say the least, Becky was exasperated but I was amused.