Cats

No doubt anyone reading this will get tired of hearing stories about my cats, or as I call them, my cat-kids. They're pretty spoiled rotten, so it's lucky I don't have human kids. I'm not so sure I'd have made a great parent. Above you see another example of how they spend their days, busily mattress testing.

Zoe likes to think of herself as a great outdoors type cat. Here you see her flattened out, pretending to be a pancake of some sort. Both she and Addy were interested in this same spot by the patio the other day. I thought they were eating grass there. Like all good cats, they periodically eat grass and then thoughtfully come inside to throw it up. Anyway, when I saw Zoe laying here eating something from the same spot as Addy had been earlier, I went to investigate. There are ants there! Surely my cats are not eating ants. I wonder what I'm missing in their diet that they feel the need to eat ants?

Here's the birdbath I've mentioned before. As you can see, it's a low birdbath, a concrete one that sits on my patio. Zoe thinks it's her own personal water dish, and she attempts to protect it from marauding birds. Mostly the birds just ignore her and use it anyway, even if she's only a few feet away on the patio. I've seen as many as 18 little sparrows vying for baths in it at one time, or at least there were more than 12. It's difficult to count them when they keep switching places into and out of the water and into and out of the peach tree.

Addy likes the outdoors too, but as she's gotten older she's become more of a home-body. She wants to be underfoot or wherever I am, especially after I've been gone on a trip. This is Addy in her element, right in the big middle of everything. She lays on papers, on keyboards ... in this pic she's about to knock my ipod off the table. She likes knocking things off as an attention getting mechanism.

Addy is particularly good at getting attention. She tries something and if it's not irritating enough to draw attention, she ups the ante until she finds something irritating enough. A good example is her weekend ritual for getting me up. She'll start out with the direct approach, hook a claw into available skin and draw it slowly toward herself. It's true. I have many scars on my arms to prove it. When I retreat under the covers, she'll try a couple of times to dig me out with claws into available places. Then she goes to back-up plan B, which involves pawing at the venetian blinds, followed by pawing at the pictures that she can reach on the walls to make them swing and scratch back and forth. Plan C, which is her final back-up plan involves going into the bathroom and beginning to knock everything off the bathroom counter, one piece at a time. Now, I've learned to sleep through claws in my arms, and I'm pretty good at ignoring swinging pictures and venetian blinds, but when bottles and things start hitting the floor, it's time to get up and severely reprimand a cat. But since getting me up was her sole purpose, she's quite happy to sit there and look contrite(ly happy).

Addy is way too smart for a cat. I hung a bell on my back door one Christmas and it's still there. When she wants out, she rings the bell. I can here it anywhere in the house.

Zoe is the complete opposite of Addy. Zoe is not all that bright, but she's so sweet. She has a phobia of having her feet leave the ground. She doesn't jump up on things, she climbs. And if you pick her up, she totally freaks out and you're going to end up scarred for life. Razor sharp claws. If I need to get her into the house from outside, all I have to do is walk toward her and act as though I'm going to pick her up. She RUNS for the door. Luckily that's true because she's a pretty hefty cat.

Both cats are good about coming in when I call them, unless Addy is in the middle of hunting a small lizard. They bring in lizards, small snakes, katy-dids, grasshoppers, an occasional preying mantis. Insects that find their way into the house don't live long. Lizards, snakes and preying mantis I'll rescue and let go, Grasshoppers and the like the cats can have. I could wish that they wouldn't let them go inside the house though, especially things that fly or leap at you. Addy once let a hummingbird moth go inside the house that I then had to catch and release. Interestingly, once I've taken a lizard or some other small animal away from them, they lose interest. They never seem to be mad at me for taking their toys. It's as if they just want me to acknowledge the catch, although they will continue to play with whatever they've caught until it no longer moves.

I guess that's all. Just sharing some cat pictures.