Daylight savings time highly upset these kittehs. Time zones drive them crazy. Sei feels quite put upon because it’s 4:10 and he thought food should arrive on Oklahoma time. Hey, he visited there for a week last year. Doesn’t that count?
Ah, 4pm…and my cat thinks it is now time to fling my necklace off the bureau…
by CJ | Feb 20, 2014 | Journal | 11 comments
11 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Or perhaps he’s expressing his tastes in personal adornment? Perhaps not, it’s quite likely a pretty necklace.
Or maybe he wants that voyage-earring after all, for the Great Expulsion of the Snowblower Thief. It seems a possibility.
My two will not keep a collar on. Not a flea collar, which I don’t use, but a collar for tags, and as an indicator, if they should ever be lost, that they belong to someone, me. Both dislike collars and will tug until they get out of them. Sigh. I haven’t had a collar on them in a long time. I may try again.
Hah, they’ll do nearly anything for attention. “Hey, you’re not paying enough attention to ME!” Or, “Feed me! Let me out! Pet me!” I generally do what they want (or I want) before they ask, but once in a while, they have a difference of opinion on these matters, and inform me.
The funny thing is, there is nearly always a reason, a point they want to get across. The question isn’t so much whether they’re smart enough, as whether I’m smart enough to figure out what the cat, who can’t speak English, is trying to get across. “Meow!” Often, guessing that is hard. Sometimes, it’s easy. I do know their styles and personalities and general wants.
Hah, right now, the twosome are playing tag with each other, back and forth. I napped earlier, so they’re due supper, moist food. OK, guys, I get it. They’re having fun besides, and they don’t mind double-teaming the human. They found out it really works.
Never dull with cats, that’s sure.
Microchipping might not be thought-of in a “stray” cat, but a tatoo on the tummy was used before that, and is fairly obvious. Yes, I know, 4 year olds can get quite indignant too, but we still don’t allow them to dictate.
Paul’s comment got me thinking somehow of little kids with tattoos on their tummies, etc., which was one of those writerly moments, I suppose.
It wasn’t until just now, putting clothes in the washer and dryer, that I thought further.
One, Shu’s virtual cousin, “My Middle Name Is Trouble,” tried again to get into the dryer. Thankfully, again, I know his tricks, and so avoided a cat in a spinning gravity well…. (Not a good thing, I’m sure. Hope never to find out….)
The thoughts all collided, and what came out were a philosophical question. Namely:
When would I trust a cat over a four year old, and vice versa?
Then when I sat here to write it out, the bit about tattooed tummies reminded me of Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, the ones with stars on their bellies and the ones without.
Smokey, aka, Trouble, did narrowly avoid taking the dryer for a spin. He doesn’t know how lucky he is. If he thinks that’s astro-cat training, well, Eet probably did it first. No, kitten, you’re not trying it.
Hot stove! We always tell children that, but empiricists that many of them are, it’s certain that many if not most will have to verify that for themselves. The reason to do it though, besides saving the believers, is that it makes the empiricists just that little bit wary, so they are circumspect just enough to avoid serious self-injury. Thus they learn the truth. Perhaps you should let Smokey get in after a full load is dry, and take him for one spin with full padding. He may learn for himself it’s not just a source for warm cuddlies, but fearsomeness as well.
My dog has a very good time sense, and the changes at fall and spring for daylight savings confuses the heck out of him. He goes a little nuts for a couple of weeks while he adjusts – which means even more barking than usual. Sigh. I never saw a Maltese who was such a barker!
Most vets and shelters do a microchip scan as routine these days. We first began it when we moved, when our kitties were unused to car travel and we had to fear them getting out en route. This proved a non-issue: they rapidly decided ‘out there’ didn’t smell as homey as ‘in here’ and they set themselves to guard the car in our brief absences…
But we decided that the practice was a good one, so their successors have chips. I also regularly get notification from the chip company that there’s a lost chipped (usually) dog lost in my area, so I do file that mentally and keep on the lookout.
Barking—I don’t handle noise well: I am sooooo happy that cats don’t. Every evening Shu gives us a concert aria, the title of which may be ‘Where oh were is my supper now?’ —and occasionally the ‘Overflowing Catbox Blues’ but outside of that, the crash of objects once on shelves is the only noise from kittehs… Your drapes may be casualties of ‘There’s a srange cat on the lawn!” but they will never chew your couch cushions and strew the room with cotton fluff. Curiously enough, (and because we provide scratching posts and never buy a piece of furniture with a large rough weave or plaid or tweed pattern: we stick to leather, velvet and microfiber) we have no trouble at all with scratching the furniture and never have had.
My brother had a wonderful little Peke named Gurion…I was very fond of that little fellow. But bark! oh, my! ‘there’s a jogger a mile off and he’s coming this way…’ I understand their function in origin in China was to employ that remarkable Peke hearing to wake the lazy mastiffs… “Uh, Ming, old boy, uh, I think Snacksize, there, has a target. Let’s go eat him.”
I suppose it’s not a stretch that a neighbor who might adopt would figure that any cat that would allow a tummy-tat to be inspected is someone’s pet and not feral.
Off topic…
I found your interview with Amazing Stories through a post on SF Signal.
Very interesting!
Mitha (and CJ) that interview was very helpful and interesting.
I like the Foreigner series. I’d love to see other new titles too, or continuations in some other series.
So it was very good to hear there might be a couple of books you, CJ, are thinking of, as well as the novel after Peacemaker. It’s exciting when there’s a new book forthcoming. It’s also like seeing an old friend back, when a backlist book gets into ebook format (or maybe reprinted) from DAW/Penguin or from Closed Circle.
When I’ve looked at ebooks lately from other authors, I’ve noticed there are a lot more variables, and a lot more that seem like new writers, self-published, or more occasionally, it turns out they’re professionally published, but there too, the distinction can be hard to make out. For me, a book may sound interesting or not, and it’s frustrating when I’m not sure and would like to read a sample or get some better idea if I’d like it. On the other hand, it’s encouraging to see more new stuff out there.
My last few times in a major bookstore have been frustrating, in that the smaller stores have gone by the wayside (unfortunate) and the big one (a library-warehouse unto itself) … even so, finding a book in all that can be difficult … even for a popular current author. They don’t keep many copies out on the shelves, and some titles, not at all, you’d have to order in. This only encourages buying ebooks online, IMHO.
Oddly enough, I miss those smaller stores. They had, in some ways, a better handle on stocking books, new or established authors, a variety of subjects. Or so it seems, from my recent impressions. Maybe it’s just my take on things.
Thanks for the link, mitha, and the interview, CJ.
A recurring theme seems to be the established order (trying to be non-spoilerish here) getting out of touch with people out there, wherever that might be. Any parallels you’d like to note?
Mitha, thank you for that link. The info about upcoming possibilities is really encouraging. I’d really like a new Morgaine book or a Finisterre (Rider) book in addition to my love of Foreigner series and Alliance-Union. A story set in our Solar System? WOOT