I know what you want!
May. 7th, 2010 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gozerPeople on my flist and reading list have been posting "What would you like me to post about?" posts, but I don't have to... because I know what you want! KITTY STORIES! Oh, flist/rlisters, you are so predictable.
While I was away, ComicbookMan was home to feed and otherwise babysit our kitties. Currently, the kitty-roster includes Scully, Wee Zackie, Vala, and Gaius, who is a large, bloated tick of a cat, as he vacuums up the food the others leave behind. ComicbookMan is a hard man when it comes to the cats; he feeds them twice a day and that is IT, except for maybe a little bit of crunchy-bestowal at the end of the day once the cats are inside for good. They beg, they plead, they meow, and Gaius *gows* (as opposed to meow, he says, "Gooow!"), but to no avail. I've been something of a soft touch and have allowed the cats to maneuver and manipulate me into bad habits. I tend to bestow crunchies when they squeaky-wheel me, just to shut them up. I also tend to pick up their bowls so that Gaius doesn't vacuum up all the food, and I'll put the bowls down again when the other kitties decide they'd like to have a little more, so they haven't been cleaning their bowls like they're supposed to. But five days of austerity under ComicbookMan has gifted us with brighter, more chipper cats on the road to losing some of the weight they've put on since I lost my job and became a cat-oriented major-domo around here.
Many years ago when we lived in another city, we lived directly across the street from a large 3-story house that had pigeons nesting in the roof. There were quite a number of birds: you could hear them cooing at all hours, plus they often pooped on our car parked out on the street in front of our apartment. One soft summer evening, I wandered out onto my front porch, just idly looking around to see what the cats might be up to, and I heard a soft little peeping and meeping coming from above that did not sound pigeon-like. Looking up at the sound, I saw that my fat little Calico, Scully, was rolling around in the dust on the slanted roof of a cupola on the front of that 3-story house across the street. I'm guessing she was lured up there by the sounds of the pigeons, but couldn't quite climb high enough to get to where the nests where, which were inside a higher roof.
To put it mildly, I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. There was my least-adventurous, least trouble-making cat, rolling around on a rooflet sticking out about 3/4 of the way up the house, showing her tubby white tummy and kicking her little white feet up in the air while grinding her back sensually into the roof tiles, looking like she was really enjoying herself. I wanted to kill her but was afraid she'd do that job herself. I called out to her and she mocked me from on high.
I ran across the street and rang the bell a few times but no one answered: there was a window in the door and I could SEE people inside, peering at me from around an inside door frame, but they apparently did not want to talk to me (okay, this was our first tip-off that the house across the street was full of illegal aliens, but that's a story for another day. Seriously, they had about 200 cars parked and double-parked around the house and were up all hours, but we had just assumed they were a big, boisterous family.) I pounded on the door and called out that my cat was on the roof, (pointing upwards extravagantly because they could *obviously* see me,) could they please maybe let me come in and try to get her to come in a window? Or, you know, go see? DO SOMETHING?! But they refused to even come to the door. It was more than a little unnerving, even more than Scully rolling around on the roof. I left the door to cross the street so that I could continue to (impotently) monitor Scully.
This state of affairs persisted for a good five looong minutes until someone either inside or at the back of the house slammed a door (I could hear it), which caused a change in air pressure so that the glass in the window above Scully rattled sharply. This spooked her and she ran around to the back of the house. I could hear her descending even though I couldn't get into the yard to see what she was doing. I'm going to assume she descended a drainpipe, because that's what it sounded like.
Ignoring me, she dashed across the street and threw herself down onto the concrete of our front porch to continue rolling and meeping in the dust there, as if she'd never been on the roof at all. I said to ComicbookMan that the human equivalent of what she'd done would be if I told someone I'd meet them on the 30th floor of the John Hancock tower, but that I was going to get there by scaling up the outside wall using just my fingers and toes to climb. Scully's body-shape was and is rather round, she does not have a "feline" shape! She's more... well, hamster-shaped. Or like a guinea pig! Tubby, with short little legs and not much of a tail!
I caught her going up on that roof a couple more times in the next month, but after that, construction started on a bizarre second-floor room (it was ON STILTS and did not match the color or style of the rest of the house! I have no idea how they got permission to build that thing!), which blocked off the route Scully was taking to get to her cupola roof.
How does this relate to ComicbookMan starving our kitties into health? Well, five short days of austerity feeding had enlivened Scully to the point where, instead of impersonating a pillow on the bed 24-7, she's CLIMBING OUR DOORWAYS. An illustration:
Man, she even makes that dreadful, clattering noise. Like the climbing monkey-on-a-stick, Scully has been waking me up every morning since I got back by pitoning herself up and down the door frame of the bedroom. I've never seen this with glasses on, but I know who that white blob going up and down the door frame is. I wish I could be fast enough to catch the look on her face when she does it. I bet it's all kinds of intent.
While I was away, ComicbookMan was home to feed and otherwise babysit our kitties. Currently, the kitty-roster includes Scully, Wee Zackie, Vala, and Gaius, who is a large, bloated tick of a cat, as he vacuums up the food the others leave behind. ComicbookMan is a hard man when it comes to the cats; he feeds them twice a day and that is IT, except for maybe a little bit of crunchy-bestowal at the end of the day once the cats are inside for good. They beg, they plead, they meow, and Gaius *gows* (as opposed to meow, he says, "Gooow!"), but to no avail. I've been something of a soft touch and have allowed the cats to maneuver and manipulate me into bad habits. I tend to bestow crunchies when they squeaky-wheel me, just to shut them up. I also tend to pick up their bowls so that Gaius doesn't vacuum up all the food, and I'll put the bowls down again when the other kitties decide they'd like to have a little more, so they haven't been cleaning their bowls like they're supposed to. But five days of austerity under ComicbookMan has gifted us with brighter, more chipper cats on the road to losing some of the weight they've put on since I lost my job and became a cat-oriented major-domo around here.
Many years ago when we lived in another city, we lived directly across the street from a large 3-story house that had pigeons nesting in the roof. There were quite a number of birds: you could hear them cooing at all hours, plus they often pooped on our car parked out on the street in front of our apartment. One soft summer evening, I wandered out onto my front porch, just idly looking around to see what the cats might be up to, and I heard a soft little peeping and meeping coming from above that did not sound pigeon-like. Looking up at the sound, I saw that my fat little Calico, Scully, was rolling around in the dust on the slanted roof of a cupola on the front of that 3-story house across the street. I'm guessing she was lured up there by the sounds of the pigeons, but couldn't quite climb high enough to get to where the nests where, which were inside a higher roof.
To put it mildly, I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. There was my least-adventurous, least trouble-making cat, rolling around on a rooflet sticking out about 3/4 of the way up the house, showing her tubby white tummy and kicking her little white feet up in the air while grinding her back sensually into the roof tiles, looking like she was really enjoying herself. I wanted to kill her but was afraid she'd do that job herself. I called out to her and she mocked me from on high.
I ran across the street and rang the bell a few times but no one answered: there was a window in the door and I could SEE people inside, peering at me from around an inside door frame, but they apparently did not want to talk to me (okay, this was our first tip-off that the house across the street was full of illegal aliens, but that's a story for another day. Seriously, they had about 200 cars parked and double-parked around the house and were up all hours, but we had just assumed they were a big, boisterous family.) I pounded on the door and called out that my cat was on the roof, (pointing upwards extravagantly because they could *obviously* see me,) could they please maybe let me come in and try to get her to come in a window? Or, you know, go see? DO SOMETHING?! But they refused to even come to the door. It was more than a little unnerving, even more than Scully rolling around on the roof. I left the door to cross the street so that I could continue to (impotently) monitor Scully.
This state of affairs persisted for a good five looong minutes until someone either inside or at the back of the house slammed a door (I could hear it), which caused a change in air pressure so that the glass in the window above Scully rattled sharply. This spooked her and she ran around to the back of the house. I could hear her descending even though I couldn't get into the yard to see what she was doing. I'm going to assume she descended a drainpipe, because that's what it sounded like.
Ignoring me, she dashed across the street and threw herself down onto the concrete of our front porch to continue rolling and meeping in the dust there, as if she'd never been on the roof at all. I said to ComicbookMan that the human equivalent of what she'd done would be if I told someone I'd meet them on the 30th floor of the John Hancock tower, but that I was going to get there by scaling up the outside wall using just my fingers and toes to climb. Scully's body-shape was and is rather round, she does not have a "feline" shape! She's more... well, hamster-shaped. Or like a guinea pig! Tubby, with short little legs and not much of a tail!
I caught her going up on that roof a couple more times in the next month, but after that, construction started on a bizarre second-floor room (it was ON STILTS and did not match the color or style of the rest of the house! I have no idea how they got permission to build that thing!), which blocked off the route Scully was taking to get to her cupola roof.
How does this relate to ComicbookMan starving our kitties into health? Well, five short days of austerity feeding had enlivened Scully to the point where, instead of impersonating a pillow on the bed 24-7, she's CLIMBING OUR DOORWAYS. An illustration:
Man, she even makes that dreadful, clattering noise. Like the climbing monkey-on-a-stick, Scully has been waking me up every morning since I got back by pitoning herself up and down the door frame of the bedroom. I've never seen this with glasses on, but I know who that white blob going up and down the door frame is. I wish I could be fast enough to catch the look on her face when she does it. I bet it's all kinds of intent.
