Cat Lovers of the World Unite!!!

[Frozen]

This came up in another thread, so I've turned it into a thread of its very own - tell us about your cats!!!

My wife and I, personally, love cats - that's why we have eight of the little critters running 'round right now (but three are kittens, so we only have them for a few more days before they go to their new homes). Before I started living with my wife, I never had cats, so I just used to think they were like, well, just cats. It wasn't until I started living with some that I realised there is no such thing as 'just a cat' - they're like little people, but in cat bodies - and every cat owner knows that cats can talk, in their own special way!

I'll be getting round to posting some cute photos of our cats shortly, but, in the meantime, let's hear about yours!!!

<pauses>

Dang, there goes my cool, 'ice man' image...

[BourgeoisBuffoon]

...You're still cool, Frozen. :cool:

...Um...bad time to say this, I guess, but two weeks ago one of my cats died, dropping the count to 4 from 5. It's very sad to have to dig a grave for your own pet...he also felt very stiff when I touched him...:(

I have a new kitten two months old, and it does NOT mind clawing you-though it considers that a friendly gesture. It also chases all my other cats...:rolleyes:

Great, now I'm one of those freaky pet story-tellers. Still, more stories to come soon, then! :p

[Singin' Stray Cat]

Sorry one of your cats died, Buffoon...:( I had a cat die from feline leukemia several years ago, but he was a tough lil' guy - lived to be 10 years old. Still, it's hard...

On a brighter note, I have one cat now - and he's enough ;) He's got a lot of funny habits, for example, at the beginning of the week he'll pick a spot to lie down in the house - the middle of the hallway, on top of a couch, in my sister's laundry basket :p - and whenever he wants to sleep, he'll go right back to that same spot every time!

But if you ever want to see something really entertaining - watching our golden retriever try to play with the cat is loads of fun. :D

[Joe Tully]

Gee, I'd never have thought that SSC would have a cat ;)

There are 2 at my parents' house, so I haven't seen them so much now that I'm off at school, but I do like them a lot. Problem is, my allergies against them seem to be getting worse with age, so I need to try to keep from getting too much hair on me. We've had the oldest one for almost 10 years I think, the younger one is maybe 4 or 5. The old one is fat and lazy while the young one is thin and hyper, so they make an interesting comedy duo.

[DR. BELCH]

Joe Tully:
The old [cat] is fat and lazy while the young one is thin and hyper, so they make an interesting comedy duo.
"Heeeeeeeey, Babbott!"
Sorry...couldn't resist.http://www.theunholytrinity.org/cracks_smileys/contrib/owen/PBgrin1.gif
My mother's a cat lover and has had many throughout the years...but the latest was Tiger Lily, who resembled Rita (but with stripes) and was the only cat I ever knew who was actually in love with a dog! Her boyfriend was Pierre, Mom's poodle, and frequently I saw her trying to make out with him (often while he was asleep). Once, after a bath and a haircut, she actually hissed at him because she didn't recognize him--his smell and appearace had completely changed. It was days before she finally took him back!
One notable Tiger Lily story is the time I left three powdered doughnuts on a plate in my room on the desk. She got up there and ate two. Imagine a kitten racing about the house hopped up on a sugar buzz, if you will.... http://www.freakygamers.com/smilies/s/contrib/blackeye/evil_laughter.gif

[Joe Tully]

Warning: I am going off on a tangent again.

Cat lovers may be interested in the art of Louis Wain. He has two different styles, one is more cutesy and the other more psychedelic. Many think that the change may have been due to mental problems. For a few good examples of both kinds of his art, go to

http://www.epub.org.br/cm/gallery/gall_leonardo/fig1-a.htm

I prefer the more psychedelic stuff, myself. I read about this guy in my Abnormal Psych. book.

[Calhoun07]

AAAAGHHH! Discrimination! Dog thread will be posted shortly!

[optimal321]

I once baby-sat (kitten-sat?:D) five or six kittens when my neighbors went on a vacation. But my mom hates animals, so i've never had a pet of my own.

[BourgeoisBuffoon]

My oldest cat is ten, too-and a cat can live from 10-15 years, usually.

More stories...(evil laughter)

All my cats eat weird things-one eats tomatos, one eats cereal, one eats asparagus, and nearly all drink out of the toilet and eat garbage. NO, I do not have dogs. ;)

Um...one also drinks from the sink and nothing else...we gotta leave the water on when we past by it...

...and admit it: does you cat wake you up early in the morning or in the middle of the night?! One o' mine woke me up at three just to be stroked...:mad:

[The Mad Hatter]

I don't have a cat myself... I tend to think that most cats act like the one on Earthworm Jim (you know, Evil the Cat?).

But I do have a cat story. I was sleeping at a friend's place before an early-morning start to a road trip, when his cute little kitten jumps on my chest. I'm still mostly asleep, so I ignore it. He walks up and starts sniffing my slightly parted lips. Again, I ignore it and sleep. Five seconds later, I awake with a mouthful of cat. I have no idea what he was looking for in my mouth, but he rammed his head in there up to his shoulders.

[Batgirl_2005]

OOOOHHH!!!! A KITTY THREAD!!!! ehem... sorry...

anyway.. I only have "1" cat... although... it's large enough that it could be counted as two cats. I'm serious!! he weighs, like, 40 pounds!!!

I'm allergic to cats (and yet they're my favourite animal... is that irony?) and my american long hair sleeps, EVERY NIGHT without fail, on or next to my pillow. And my first hour teacher wonders why I can never breathe...

Boots, my cat, also has a tendency to scrath on my door when it's closed. I sleep one night w/ my door closed and he kept my parents up ALL NIGHT scratching on it... I ended up blocking it out ^.^;

I love my cat. He's seven and a half years old, so he'll be around for a while longer (won't he?) and I'm glad for that...

[Frozen]

BourgeoisBuffoon wrote

...and admit it: does you cat wake you up early in the morning or in the middle of the night?! One o' mine woke me up at three just to be stroked...:mad:

Ahhh, the whole 'It's five in the morning, and I want strokes!" thing. Yep, one of our cats, Bogey, without fail, wakes my wife up every morning at five by ever so gently clawing her neck and purring in her ear - just so she can be stroked. Needless to say, it gets a bit annoying!

[Trent Lane]

We've got eight cats, and I love them all. They're all different breeds, too- two MaineCoons(sp?), Russian Blue, Norwiegen Forrest Cat(I kid you not), Manx, a Tabico, and two American short hairs. Three of them are under a year old, so needless to say the house is full of noise 24-7...

[TuffyCatt]

Yeah!! Cat thread!!! I LOVE cats! :D

Okay, I have two cats, Tuffy and Topaz. Tuffy belongs to me (I belong to Tuffy...) and its kinda special because he doesn't really like anyone else. He's a Himalayan Seal Lynx point, but he doesn't have the ugly smashed face like most long-haired cats. I've had Tuffy since I was in the second grade, and he's about seven now. As I've gotten older, we both have gotten closer, because I think when I was little I'd bother him a lot by constantly picking him up and stuff. Tuffy and I can also talk to each other...I'll stare at him (we have to make eye contact, or it doesn't work) and meow at him, and in a couple seconds he'll meow back. This is one of the few times he'll actually make noise, he's a very quiet cat. Anyway, I know I'm kinda crazy, but I really love my cat...:D

We got Topaz about two years ago...he was a stray orange tabbie that someone brought into my parents' animal hospital. We think that he had been hit by a car. I remember the first time I saw him the tag on his cage said "broken butt", because both of his back legs had been badly broken. We later found out that one of his front legs was also slightly fractured. I fell in love with him, and convinced my parents to let us keep him. I named him Topaz because of his beautiful Topaz colored eyes. He's a lot better now and can walk and run just fine. However, he has trouble jumping vertically, so he has to climb up things. He also has a very scrawny butt and still limps and drags his back legs across the floor sometimes. He has the funniest meow...he squeaks and sometimes when he opens his mouth to meow, nothing comes out! :p

Sorry for my extremely long ramble...I can talk for very long periods of time about my cats! :D

[Singin' Stray Cat]

Aww :) Your cats sound very cute, TuffyCatt! Everyone's does - and I can certainly empathize with those of you whose cats wake you up at odd hours in the morning.

Dusty (my cat) has almost mastered the art of waking someone up - he jumps on the bed, then walks across the body of whoever he's trying to get up (me or mom, usually), then jumps off before we can do anything to him! :D He usually gets away with it too - he's almost solid black, which is hard to see in the dark.

Dusty's a long-haired mix of some kind, but thankfully he doesn't have a snub nose either. (I don't like those, their faces look like they've been struck repeatedly with something blunt and heavy, something I don't like to envision :( ) He's not an overly "cuddly" cat, but can be very affectionate sometimes, especially when he's in the mood for a nice warm lap to sleep in ;)

[Trent Lane]

Yeah, I've fallen victim to the midnight cat attacks also. The slightest movment of your foot under the blankets and my Manx Bob flies thru the air and starts wrestling your foot. That'll mess with you if you're really good asleep...

[TuffyCatt]

Tuffy will occasionally wake me me up in the middle of the night. It seems like he especially enjoys it when I need the sleep! ;) He will sometimes jump up on my bed and promptly curl up on my face (and with the huge amount of fur on my cat, I get my eyes and mouth filled with a lot of Himalayan fur), or he likes to jump on me and knead my stomach, while purring very loudly. It can be a very interesting way to be woken up at 3 A.M.

[Frozen]

One of our cats, Chyna, has just been to the cats to be newtured (and no, I have no idea how to spell that!), and she's fine, running around, no wobbliness or anything, which I find wierd because when we had one of the other girl-cats, Harley Quinn, done, she was really wobbly and woozy for a full day afterwards... Anyway, getting back to the point, so the vet has done Chyna, and said she's fine etc - but she has to stay in FOR A WHOLE TWO WEEKS!!! Jeez - don't vets know the first thing about cats!? WE can't keep Chyna in for TWO HOURS, never mind two weeks!!! :rolleyes: :D

[TuffyCatt]

Originally posted by Frozen
One of our cats, Chyna, has just been to the cats to be newtured (and no, I have no idea how to spell that!), and she's fine, running around, no wobbliness or anything, which I find wierd because when we had one of the other girl-cats, Harley Quinn, done, she was really wobbly and woozy for a full day afterwards... Anyway, getting back to the point, so the vet has done Chyna, and said she's fine etc - but she has to stay in FOR A WHOLE TWO WEEKS!!! Jeez - don't vets know the first thing about cats!? WE can't keep Chyna in for TWO HOURS, never mind two weeks!!!:rolleyes: :D

Yeah, I know its tough, but that's the best way to let her heal. If you let her out w/out supervision, she might do something to the stitches and it would take a whole lot longer to heal.

As for her being up and about so quickly, it just depends on the cat. Some get over the anesthesia faster than others.

Oh, just to clarify, females get spayed and males get neutered. Hope I'm not sounding like a know it all, I wouldn't know any of this if my parents weren't vets... :cool::p

[Rae]

Originally posted by TuffyCat
Oh, just to clarify, females get spayed and males get neutered. Hope I'm not sounding like a know it all, I wouldn't know any of this if my parents weren't vets...

Hey, if you hadn't said it I would.:p :D And I know how hard it is to keep a cat indoors. My little cat Gus just got back from the vet's today after being neutered and declawed and he's been trying to make an escape out the front door when anybody comes in. I feel so bad for him, though. He's still a little groggy and is favoring his right front paw. Poor guy...:(

[Jimmy Kustes]

Originally posted by batchik


Boots, my cat, also has a tendency to scrath on my door when it's closed. I sleep one night w/ my door closed and he kept my parents up ALL NIGHT scratching on it... I ended up blocking it out ^.^;



I have a cat that opens doors by leaning into them! I guess it got tired of waiting for me to open them!

Does everyone's cats chase lights and computer cursers? Also my cat finds the most oppertune times to walk across the keyboard. :)

[Joe Tully]

Originally posted by TuffyCatt
He will sometimes jump up on my bed and promptly curl up on my face (and with the huge amount of fur on my cat, I get my eyes and mouth filled with a lot of Himalayan fur

Sounds like Injun Joe from Catch-22. :)


Originally posted by duncanzitsDoes everyone's cats chase lights and computer cursers? Also my cat finds the most oppertune times to walk across the keyboard.

Yeah, I think that's pretty common. They aren't very bright. :D One of my cats only occasionally walks on the keyboard because she is trying to get someone's attention while they are typing.


Originally posted by batchikBoots, my cat, also has a tendency to scrath on my door when it's closed. I sleep one night w/ my door closed and he kept my parents up ALL NIGHT scratching on it... I ended up blocking it out ^.^;


My parents just let our little cat sleep on their bed. If they don't, she'll try to open the door by hitting the knob with her paw. She knows that the knob is key to opening the door. Hitting the knob makes a sound that wakes up my parents. My mom claims that, even if we put the cat in the cellar, she can hear the cat banging on the knob to the cellar door and that keeps her up. Sure thing, Mom. Maybe you're being a little hypersensitive, hmm?

[Batgirl_2005]

My parents just let our little cat sleep on their bed. If they don't, she'll try to open the door by hitting the knob with her paw. She knows that the knob is key to opening the door. Hitting the knob makes a sound that wakes up my parents. My mom claims that, even if we put the cat in the cellar, she can hear the cat banging on the knob to the cellar door and that keeps her up. Sure thing, Mom. Maybe you're being a little hypersensitive, hmm?

Doesn't work w/ my cat. my dad kicks it off every time it sets foot on his bed. Usually Boots doesn't stay up there for longer than three minutes.

[Matthew Hunter]

I have had 3 cats in my lifetime, 2 of which I have now. The first one my parents had before I was born, her name was Tigger and she was eighteen when she died about 3 or 4 years ago. Tigger was the most unusual cat you'd ever seen...ugly, very ugly, but very pleasant. She seemed to tolerate a kid running around the house chasing her (c'mon, you all chased the cat when you were little too!). Tigger was also very persistant in life...she had heart trouble toward the end of her life, but she kept bouncing back. We'd be on the verge of just saying goodbye and putting her to sleep, and then she'd get better. She died a natural death one night on my parent's bed, just 2 days before Christmas.
Several years ago, 2 cats just showed up in our yard one day, one a grown cat, (perhaps a year old)and one a kitten, the kitten was quite wild, didn't like people at all. We started feeding them and soon they got used to us, the oldest one we called "Ranger" because he is red and white, (like the Texas baseball team). The kitten we called "Bugsy", after the gangster, and we didn't come up with that name until we found out how smart he is. We got them neutered and brought them in, and yes, cats do have personalities. Bugsy is extremely smart, he can open doorknobs, and oonce he even climbed to the very top of the christmas tree. Ranger, on the other had, is so dumb he is perfectly content to stare at the wall all day. They are sort of a George and Lennie team. I don't know what they will do when I go off to college next year, they get upset when any member of the family is gone for any length of time, they don't like change. So much so, in fact, that they start demonstrating their displeasure, like when my 80-year-old grandmother came to visit once and stepped in something in thee shower. THAT was funny.
-Matthew

[Frozen]

Anybody elses cats drink out of the bath when they're in it? I don't mind at all, but I'm not over keen on the "Aaargh - I've fallen in the water! Must claw human flesh to shreds as I frantically escape!!!" bit...

[TuffyCatt]

Originally posted by Frozen
Anybody elses cats drink out of the bath when they're in it? I don't mind at all, but I'm not over keen on the "Aaargh - I've fallen in the water! Must claw human flesh to shreds as I frantically escape!!!" bit...

My dog does. It's kinda gross, but I don't mind too much because she doesn't do it too often. My cats are too scared to get too close to the water while I'm taking a bath. The closest they'll get is when they put their front paws on the edge so they can look down at the water.

[Frozen]

Here's a little something to amuse you cat lovers... See if you can do it, read each line aloud:

This is this cat
This is is cat
This is how cat
This is to cat
This is keep cat
This is a cat
This is cat cat
This is lover cat
This is busy cat
This is for cat
This is forty cat
This is seconds cat

Now go back and read the THIRD word in each line from the top...

[TuffyCatt]

Originally posted by Frozen

Here's a little something to amuse you cat lovers... See if you can do it, read each line aloud:

This is this cat
This is is cat
This is how cat
This is to cat
This is keep cat
This is a cat
This is cat cat
This is lover cat
This is busy cat
This is for cat
This is forty cat
This is seconds cat

Now go back and read the THIRD word in each line from the top...



Yep, that kept me busy for about forty seconds! :)

My poor cats yesterday...we had company over for Thanksgiving. My cats are scared to death of people they don't know very well, even though they've seen my grandma and my aunt several times. They almost spent the whole day hiding underneath my bed and wouldn't even come out when I offered them turkey. :(

[Ruffian]

I have a cat named Spunky. She's a black and white critter and the first cat I've ever had the pleasure of growing up with. She was a darling little thing as a kitten, afraid of purple shoelaces and curious about how buttons on the washing machine worked. She would also wash her face at the sink with me every morning when I got ready for school. When she got a little older, the teenage cat years, she was a bit of a rebel and a snob. Now she's got a few years on her and she's definitely more mature in personality. She has the cat behavior you'd expect, nose up in the air and everything, but she really does love the family. Sometimes I'll find her asleep on my bed with me in the morning or she'll come into my room purring trying to get me out of bed. She also knows who's the mom in the family and kisses up to her. She treats my sisters and I like we're her sisters, and she picks on the youngest. We also have a big white german shepherd in the family and Spunky gets along with her just fine. They're good friends and play with each other whenever they get the chance. One time my mom found them racing each other in the house. :)

[The Dork Knight]

I have a all-black cat named Willow. He is a little cutie. He is so soft, but he hates my guts. You should have seen all the scratches he gave me two years ago. We's been fixed and de-clawed. I still love my kitty.