cat

Grumpy Cat

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Nala has acquired a taste for human flesh. Specifically Sara’s flesh. Every opportunity she gets, she sinks some fang into the back of Sara’s feet. Sara can be just walking around, minding her own business and then out of nowhere, fang in the achilles. She sometimes attacks me, but very rarely. She’s too frightened of the kids to try it with them.

Nala is about 13 now, and I think she is getting grumpy in her old age.

It’s not just the attacking either, she has suddenly become very particular. She will no longer drink water from a bowl. For a long time she has been gradually turning her nose up at her water bowl. At first I thought it was something to do with the bowl, so I tried several different bowls and different schedules for replacing the water. She continued to drink out of it less and less until now she refuses altogether. Instead, she either drinks out of the toilet, sometimes trying to jump in as soon as you lift the lid, or out of the bathtub, sometimes while you are taking a shower. I have to admit, at first I was worried about her hydration, since she seemed so desperate to get a drink. But then I remembered that she had a big bowl of fresh water sitting there that she was refusing on principle to drink. Makes it hard to feel bad for her.

However, I think we have finally crossed the line. Nala has suddenly decided that she no longer wants to go to the bathroom in her litter box. If I clean the litter box, she will deign to give it one use, but after that she’s done, usually preferring the bathmat.

Well I’m sorry, but I’m not cleaning the litter after each use, Mrs. Queen of Sheeba.

I’m not sure what to do about this exactly. You can’t really reason with a cat. Combine all of these things with a return to meowing outside our door before 6 every morning, and I’m kind of at wit’s end. I understand that the older generation may be entitled to a little bit of persnicketiness, but this is going too far.

Why is my life just a series of showdowns with my cat?

Is this the line for the piggy-back rides?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Because sometimes it’s not as much about finding a comfortable place to sit, as it is about displaying dominance.

Grumpy Cat

/ Shane / Leave a comment

In the past month or so, our cat Nala suddenly got old.

She’s eating a lot less. She’s a lot less active, sleeping more during the day and being grumpier about moving (for example, when you want her to get out of the chair you want to sit in or when you want her out of a room so you can shut the door). She’s just grumpier in general: more likely to try to attack your ankles (well, Sara’s ankles…she knows better than to go after *my* ankles), more grumble-y about getting kicked out of a room, more likely to yowl at you, more likely to have a grumpy-looking, scowly face, etc.

Now traditionally, my relationship with Nala can be described as rocky at best. But it’s funny, but all this grumpy old lady behavior actually makes me like Nala more, not less. This may seem a bit counter-intuitive (why would I like bitey-cat more than non-bitey-cat?), but there’s really two reasons:

  1. I kind of feel bad for her, getting old and all. It seems like the least I can do is give her a scratch under the chin now and again. She deserves the same respect any old person gets, just for making it this long if nothing else.
  2. Seeing her like this reminds me of the fact that she’s going to die some day, and that’s going to be hard on the kids. For both of them, their first words all centered around Nala (I think Oliver’s was “Nala” and I think Evie’s was “Meow”, but she said “Nala” pretty quick too). I think, like many kids with pets, Nala’s demise will probably be their first real experience with death.
I think it is easy to forget that pets, like people, keep getting older. But pets, unlike people, have a limited shelf life. They just don’t last as long as you and your kids wish they would.
I think it’s going to be interesting to see if I miss Nala at all, after she’s gone. Lord knows I have contemplated getting rid of her (or actively wished her death) many times. But when it happens for real, I don’t know what my reaction will be. I’m certainly not going to miss being awakened at night, cleaning up vomit, or finding out she made a unilateral decision to move her bathroom.
One thing is for sure: if I don’t miss her, I will be the only one.

Dear Maids

/ Shane / 5 Comments

If you are going to come while we are on vacation (so that we have to stress about picking up our house while we are trying to get ready to go) and won’t be home for a week, then please make sure with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that you do not leave the door to the litter box shut. Because that would be bad. Almost like the opposite of cleaning our house.

In other news, does anybody know what about 7 days of cat urine and feces does to a treadmill?

More Search Terms

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I am endlessly fascinated by some of the things that people google which result in them landing on my blog. So here are some of the highlights. These are broken down into a few categories of amusement, 1) what the heck was that person searching for, 2) how did that search land on my blog, 3) I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!

What the heck was that person searching for?

  • ‘tactical mayonnaise’ – Lunch tactics? Or war tactics?
  • ‘resplendent start with the dead’ – I don’t know what that means, but I’ve had that one no less than 4 times!
  • ‘pull out fingernails’ – Yeesh. No thank you!
  • ‘human zombie cat’ – Yeesh! NO THANK YOU! Stitch together your sick creations on someone else’s blog thank-you-very-much. I have enough trouble with a living, non-human-hybrid cat.
  • ‘jelly fish hunting fighting boats’ – What could that even mean? It conjures images of sea battles with giant mutant jelly fish.

How did that search land on my blog?

These are usually things that I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about, but I do in fact agree with or support. So it’s like Google detected that these people think like me and led them to my blog, despite me never mentioning anything of the sort.

  • ‘are “two question” marks aggressive’ – I don’t know how they found me, but for any future searches on this topic: Yes. Yes they are.
  • ‘awesome cat’ – Okay, I had a couple of hits on this one, but I’m not sure how those found me. I have the opposite. But I did get a hit on ‘nusiance cats’, so that one I understand.
  • ‘what do zombie pirates say?’ – I really don’t know. But I kind of feel like, if anybody should know, I should know, right?
  • ‘where there be pirates’ – Was this a search by an actual pirate?!
  • ‘i grit my teeth when i pet my cat’ – My favorite, hands down. It describes my position exactly. I don’t think I ever said that on my blog though, so how did they end up here?

I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!

  • ‘big headed chiquita bananas’ – Lead to this post, in which I mention the chiquita banana lady, but not the size of her head.
  • ‘bacon evie’ – Now those are good search terms for finding me! I get a lot of ‘erith1 is this thing on?’ searches, but those are more obvious. What if ‘bacon evie’ was looking for someone else?
  • ‘litter box in bathroom curtain AND cat peed on curtains why’ – I soo feel for the desperation of the person searching for this. Now, my cat didn’t pee on my curtains, but my story did involve both cat pee and a curtain. So I wasn’t too far off.
  • ‘picklerita’ – Wow, I actually had a good post for them! There can’t be that many picklerita posts out there.
  • ‘she toot on me’ – ::sigh:: but I did get a ‘toot hole’ search, so maybe the phrase is catching on!