Generally speaking, I like winter. I enjoy the absence of bugs, the fireplace, my flannel duvet cover and heated mattress pad. Fuzzy trees and the sun on fresh snow is beautiful and the squelching sound I make when walking on snow is almost delightful. And having lived in the far north where it doesn’t get dark at night in the summer, I have a good appreciation for the coziness of night.
However, there is one part of winter I absolutely hate! Indoor cats! Sweet Geezus, they are driving me batty already and it’s only November. It snowed yesterday which means wet cat feet which means wet cat prints on every horizontal surface, including all my paperwork and my boobs.
The Viking installed a Cat Door this summer to save me literal hours each day opening and closing doors. Yesterday, I watched alternating Cat’s Asses for most of the day as Izzie and Teddy took turns poking their nose out the cat door to see if I had fixed the weather yet. I hadn’t and they were both more than just a little disappointed in my abilities.
So now there is the necessity of learning to play/get along with each other during the long hours of self-enforced detention. As you might guess, Teddy has superior playing skills while Izzie can’t quite understand the concept. She’s confused about the difference between ‘playing’ and ‘killing’. Every attempt at play is a colossal failure. Teddy invites her to ‘play’ chase him and Izzie ‘kill’ chases him. He objects to the claw treatment and the huge tufts of his hair stuck between her toes. She screams like the hounds of hell are on her tail even though he doesn’t actually touch her.
During summer, they rarely spend time together. One is usually out while the other is in, so territory disputes are few and far between. Now that snow has arrived though, every fucking thing is a dispute!
Teddy walked too close to Izzie’s bowl of water – flurries of slapping and cursing.
Teddy was sitting in the front window – a rear assault that Alexander the Great would approve.
Once Izzie gets the window seat, Teddy retreats to my lap with a smug expression. And just so Izzie gets the message, he wanders over to The Viking’s lap as well, never breaking eye contact with her.
Teddy plays with a toy Izzie has never, ever, ever touched and suddenly he’s committed the crime of the century deserving 3 smacks and creative name-calling.
Teddy claims the top perch on the cat tree where Izzie usually sleeps, and she is on the internet looking up how to make a bomb.
Teddy runs into the bedroom when I’m heading to bed and takes up a position between my legs, facing the doorway so he can ‘Cheshire Cat’ Izzie when she wanders by.
Teddy sees Izzie and says ‘Bitch’ and she sees him and says ‘Asshole’ and The Viking and I are just innocents in the middle of an epic battle, just trying to survive.
Between cat fights and paw prints, my vocabulary has devolved to unending soliloquies of swearing and cursing. And apologizing to customers for the puckered paw prints decorating their invoices.
The most horrific of behaviors belongs to Izzie. Of course it does. She’s been going outside to get her feet wet, then runs in the house to the litter box, stomps around to get as much litter on her feet as possible and then dances around the house. There is fucking litter EVERYWHERE!! And while I’m shouting that she doesn’t need to piss or shit nearly this much and waving my arms for emphasis she just sits there, not even looking at me, obviously without even one fuck to give! Teddy, at least, has the good grace to look apologetic when he does something awful, like plopping a half-eaten mouse with its guts hanging out on the kitchen floor where I stepped on it in the dark.
Sometimes The Viking and I wonder what our lives would be like if we only had Teddy. He’s a cuddlebug who never gets into trouble. He doesn’t get on the counters, he’s stopped playing with the bathroom tissue, he doesn’t claw me in the middle of the night because I moved a bit, he doesn’t shout abuse so loud the neighbours can hear it, he doesn’t bite or claw-slap customers, he doesn’t hijack people’s vehicles when they accidentally leave a window down, he hasn’t broken into a single house and held the owner hostage, he doesn’t bully the neighbour’s dogs, he doesn’t pick fights with Ravens who bring back their entire family and turn the yard into an Alfred Hitchcock movie, but…….most importantly…..HE DOESN’T GET HIS FEET WET, DIP THEM IN LITTER AND SPREAD IT ALL OVER THE HOUSE!
I’m going to stop imaging such a wonderous thing because it’s just leading to homicidal thoughts. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to sweep up litter for the 7th time today.
I am giggling hysterically because this all sounds so familiar. No mouse on the kitchen floor, but dead rabbits on the deck, and once, a live bird to play with, inside.
I have found that the silica crystal cat litter by President’s Choice controls the ‘cat litter everywhere’ situation. Things smell less, and the bits of silica are larger so they don’t stick as much to cat paws.
Hope this helps!
So, I’m not alone! 😂 Not that I wish more people had spiteful cats but it’s nice to know there are others out there with paw prints on their boobs.
A rabbit?! That’s impressive! I think I’ll tell Izzie that she needs to up her game – I’d like to see her take on the 20-pound behemoth rabbits around here. 😃
I’ve never thought of silica crystals. I’ll give that a try. We have all those litter capture mats surrounding the litter box but somehow she manages to avoid all of them. We were considering just replacing all the flooring with the stuff.
Thanks for the visit, Karen. I appreciate it. 😘
20lb rabbits might be beyond Lily; she’s never managed more than 7½, including harness and tags, at the vet. She’d be game though! She is quite firm with the neighbourhood tom’s and they are pretty large. Girl power!
Izzie is about the same size and she definitely believes in girl power. 🙂 Or rather, Izzie Power, because she is just as happy slapping girls as guys, human, cat or dog. Indiscriminately.
LOL, this had me rolling on the floor. We have 5, yes 5 cats, of which 2 have never seen snow before. The Deva, our ruling Queen of the house, can’t step foot out of the house if it’s 1. wet, 2. windy, 3. cold, so needless to say her winter has begun. The 4 boys, after nearly a year, are still struggling to figure out who likes who, who plays with who, what is “play” anyway, is it fair game to pounce on the Queen as she never plays with ANY other cat, only people- and of course, even though we have 7 litter boxes around the house, how about we shit on the basement floor? Thanks for the morning laugh. And thank goodness that when a mouse is caught, it is eaten up pretty quickly by the competitive males!
Holy Moly! You’ve got your hands full! 😂 Cats are so complicated, aren’t they? And female cats are more complicated still. It’s like their default mood is stabby. Izzie lays beside me in bed and she’s fast asleep when I have to move a little bit for comfort and her first instinct is to stab. Last night she sunk 3 claws into my arm that blasted me from sleep. There was an immediate and spontaneous eruption of curses and lethal arm swinging that scared the shit out of The Viking but didn’t manage to land on the cat. Sigh. 😺
Thanks for stopping by Cat. I appreciate it. 😘
Izzie is quite the bitch.
Moondust used to be such a bitch to Fluffy but now that he is no longer with us she just lords it over the house. She waltzes into my room, plops down on Zeke’s bed and dares him to consider taking it back. Of course I kick her out. She can go sleep with her master, Iain.
You kill me with these, SFAM
Oh, if only I were making them up. I’ve apologized for Izzie’s behavior more than I’ve ever had to apologize for myself, my kids and The Viking. Combined! Her father was feral so at first I was making excuses for her, but we’ve gone far beyond that by now. 🙄
It sounds like Fluffy is a Diva rather than an Assassin. Would you consider an exchange program?
Having had just the one cat in his lifetime, Per has become smitten, I dare say, with felines! He’s fascinated by the ragdoll breed, as its ability to go limp at the touch of a human, alongside its seeming eagerness to do its slow blink with him. Thus far, Per has had only one meeting with a ragdoll breeder — it was his first long test-drive of his new Tesla, which I couldn’t accompany him on because of my f#cking MS — but he came home to tell me that there were several cats he’d have happily brought home. Too soon for me yet, he knows, but it will eventually come to pass.
Now, I realise that neither of yours is ragdoll! But, hey, if only there could be such a thing as a breed change or behaviour change in cats, hm? >^.^<
Losing a pet is awful! You have my sympathies.
Funny you should mention Ragdolls. We found Teddy at a shelter. I was looking for a sweet, chill guy that could help keep Izzie’s worst tendencies under control and when I read about him on the SPCA website, The Viking and I immediately went to meet him. HE IS AMAZING!! We fell in love instantly. He comes over to me and collapses onto my shoulder – almost bonelessly – and purrs while I give him some love. He bumps his forehead with me and those ‘Love Eyes’ are crazy sweet. I’m fairly certain he isn’t a pure-bred Ragdoll, but I do believe he has a good dose of it. So, I’m with Per. Go Ragdoll! If Teddy is any indication, they are the best! 😘
Thank you. I’m certain that there will be a cat with us in future, but I need a bit more time before I can go down that road to find whatever cat. Moxie and I had our own forehead-bumping exercise, and just writing about it here is bringing tears to my eye.
But, ah, yes, the boneless Ragdoll! I can so understand their appeal, and we might have had one ‘follow’ us home had I been along with Per on that trip, which isn’t to say that such a trip won’t be taken again.
I never understood people who cried when they lost a pet. “It’s just a cat/dog/budgey!” And then I got Maggie. I bought her for the kids; they fed her and cleaned the litter box and played with her. She was supposed to be THEIR cat, but somehow Maggie ended up MY cat, completely ignoring the plan. She didn’t care for people much, preferring to disappear when someone came to my place. But then I met The Viking. Maggie walked right over to him and rubbed all over his legs. When he sat down, she was in his lap. I was astonished – she had never done that before. The Viking had never owned a cat – was a dog person really – but he loved her right back. She was 11 years old when she developed a particularly aggressive kidney disease. We ended up having to put her down to end her suffering, but the vet screwed up and didn’t give the appropriate amount of drugs and it turned into a horrific torture event that lasted for over 45 minutes. It suddenly didn’t feel like a loving act to end the pain. It felt like murder. I cried for months. Even talking about it now makes me sad. So, I totally understand the pain of losing a pet. ‘Pet’ is actually the wrong word – it’s actually ‘person’.
I hope your grief becomes easier to bear soon, Gale. 💖
Oh, gosh, thank you for sharing that, and I’m so sorry for that vet mishap, but … ugh. I’m so sorry for your loss, too.
Yeah, all that about Maggie and The Viking, that points to the best way of picking out who to love, live with and / or marry, because cats know which people are most trustworthy, so those are the people who have been okayed. Not only did Moxie trust Per implicitly, but all the cats from my folks’ place came to adore him when we went there.
So, thank you for responding with your tale and getting a smile to spread across my face!