Mom! Look at me. I’m so cute. Pet me.
Fine. Pay attention to the glowy thing.
We’ll just get in a pile over here
Help!
My precious.
Yes, they really are that ‘helpful.’ And apparently, I am not alone.
Cat paws in a fifteenth-century manuscript (photo taken at the Dubrovnik archives by @EmirOFilipovic)
Cats have been ‘helping’ with content creation for centuries. And mice have never eaten my blog. Coincidence?
It was inevitable that they would take over the internet. It is their destiny.
Ferrule and his magical force-field
This is Ferrule and his magical force-field I know it looks remarkably like an animal print throw, but to Ferrule, it’s magical. You see, Ferrule was a feral kitten once. I rescued him from the construction at my office when he was about 5 weeks old. His mother was no where to be found, and it was clear he was on his own. So I brought the giant eared, nearly hairless, flea-ridden tiny bundle home, much to Evyl’s dismay.
I took care of the fleas, fed him KMR, and nursed him back to health. Today, nearly 7 years later, that little bundle has grown into 17 pounds of feline. Like most rescued feral cats, he’s high strung. But he loves and trusts me completely. When he’s with me, all is right with the world.
Unless the TV is on. He was once frightened by a character spraying fire suppressing foam back at the viewer. He’s been terrified of the moving pictures on the wall ever since. So this is Ferrule’s dilemma. He wants desperately to be in my lap, but his irrational fear is overwhelming.
Enter the magical force-field. It protects him from the scary moving pictures and allows him to feel safe and secure in my lap. As long as he can’t see the screen, he’s safe.
It’s kind of like this force-field
It makes him feel safe from those that wouldn’t harm him while offering no real protection from those that might. It’s a false sense of security against imagined threats. In the unlikely event that someone busted into my house to terrorize my cat, it wouldn’t be the zebra print blanket that would protect him.
But he believes he is safe under the blanket. He’s a cat. He also believes if he sings to the birds in the yard, they will be charmed into becoming his next meal. Never mind that he is also terrified of the outdoors. I don’t expect him to be rational.
People should be capable of more and yet too many allow themselves to be fooled. Don’t put your faith in magical force-fields. There is no sign and no law that will guarantee your safety. Nothing can do that. What you can do is prepare and give yourself a fighting chance.
You get a picture of cats
As previously mentioned, I’ve been having odd dreams lately. Last night was no exception.
EvylRobot and I had seen a commercial for a new food delivery place that had opened up in town. (Which is a neat trick since we don’t actually watch television.) The commercial was catchy and corny and most of all, memorable. Particularly the tag line, “A mountain lion with every order!” Said cheerfully by the grinning spokesperson.
It was just so ridiculous that we had to check this place out. Hey, it pays to be creative. So I made the phone call and placed our order. Predictably, in the same tone as you would expect the ‘would you like fries with that’ line, the operator said, “And would you like the mountain lion with that?”
“Hell yes I want my mountain lion!” *giggle* And then I hung up the phone.
“That’s got to be one of the weirder promotions out there,” commented Evyl.
“I know, right?”
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. I excitedly opened the door.
There, on my front porch, was the pimply faced delivery boy with the expected white bags and a large crate. They are really taking this gag to the limits! I handed over the money instructing the kid to keep the change. He grinned and thanked me as he handed over the food. He then popped the latch on the crate and into my entry hall walked…
A rather perturbed looking mountain lion. You’d be perturbed too if you were the promotional item for a combo meal.
“Nice kitty”
He gave me that look that only cats and teenagers can give and sauntered over to the couch where he promptly curled up in my spot. (Yes, I have a spot. No, I am not Sheldon-esque attached.) So I did the only reasonable thing I could think of, I sat down beside him and scratched him behind the ears. My giant house-cats like that, after all. He lifted his head, grunted, and laid his head in my lap. It was actually kind of cute.
Evyl came around the corner, apparently, having missed the delivery boy. “Um, honey? There’s a mountain lion on the couch.”
“Yep.”
“Well. That’s unexpected.”
“We did order him.”
“You ordered him, but I didn’t expect they would actually bring one.”
“And yet, here he is.”
After discussing what to do with our new house guest, we decided that cougars probably do not make great house cats and ushered him out the back door.
Where he promptly ate the neighbor’s kitten that had been using my flower bed as its own personal litter box. I have mixed feelings about this. No one really wants to see/hear a kitten being devoured, but it was pooping in my strawberries.
Dreams like this lead to odd morning conversations with pre-caffeinated Jen as well.
Jen: So I dreamed we had a mountain lion
ER: Huh. That’s interesting
Jen: It came with my combo meal
ER: That’s a helluva Happy Meal prize
Jen: It was delivery
ER: Did they bring it on a leash?
Jen: Crate. Which they opened on the front porch.
ER: Of course.
I think he’s getting used to the meanderings of my unconscious mind.
Don’t they look like fearsome beasts? These three are pure terror the crickets and shoe strings.
Also, they are jerks. 7 years ago, I toilet trained Emerson (the Tonkinese in the lower right). He has been consistently using it and even helped in the training of Ferrule (lower left) a year later. Ferrule has always been kind of special and required me to actually be present in the bathroom for the event, but he was pretty good about coming to get me.
Enter the giant white mess in the back. He moved in about a year ago. At last check, he weighed in at a whopping 18 pounds of pathetic critter. I’m pretty sure he’s gained weight. I don’t know because I had to get rid of my bathroom scale when it stopped working. Why did it stop working? Because Chancellor Edward Pantsington III, Esquire (Chance, for short) peed on it, and it rusted solid. Guess he got tired of me teasing him about his weight.
And he’s a jerk. A cuddly sweet jerk, but a jerk all the same.
His Lardiness just couldn’t seem to get the whole toilet training concept, but we were making slow and steady progress. (In hindsight, it may have been a lot to ask of an 18lb critter missing the ends of all of his digits. That was the work of his previous owner, not me. The other two are fully clawed.) That is, until he decided to be a PITA and chose to poop just outside my bedroom door instead.
And then Ferrule decided that was a brilliant idea and followed suit. But I am a stubborn, stubborn woman. I kept at it. I was not going to have a box of grit and poop in my house.
That is, until Emerson broke too. Poop in the utility room. Poop in the entry hall. They are lucky they are cute and cuddly and also that their thick coats pad the impact of AirSoft pellets.
They beat me. They won. There is a box of grit and poop and in my house. And I believe they are letting all the cats in the neighborhood use it. That’s the only reasonable explanation for the sheer volume of poop.
Jerks.
Tam and Roberta live with Huck. A large orange tabby.
I live with a weirdness.
Don’t let those pretty blue eyes fool you. That’s 18lbs of unadulterated weird right there. He chirps at birds. This is Ferrule. He was tiny when I rescued him as a flea ridden feral (same pronunciation as the name, which he says).
I left work early today due to my digestive system having…issues. Kitties decided it was the perfect opportunity to make sure mama napped.
But you see, Ferrule isn’t the only giant kitty in the house. We also have the Godfather.
Also known as Chancellor Edward Pantsington III Esquire. Chance for short. 18lbs at last weigh in, but I think he may have gained some. I don’t know how. The 3 felines share 2.5 cups of food daily. The little cat, Emerson at 15lbs, is the alpha male and always gets his share of the food first. He’d never survive in the wild. Even if he killed something, he’d never figure out how to get the tiny x’s out.
So they napped me. I woke up to this.
That’s my butt that the giant white kitty is using as a pillow there. What you can’t see, is Emerson snuggled in between the fat rolls of these two. He’s the dark spot there in the middle. You know, it’s hard to get up to go to the bathroom when you are covered in 51lbs of kitty.
There’s a whole world out outside of the magic internet box thingie. I’m not kidding. Seriously.
So I took a couple of days off work and spent the weekend and the first of those days not staring into the glowing screen. I saw a baby elephant.
I didn’t know they squeaked like that. So very cute. Most of what is in the video is the kids imitating it, but the first bit is the elephant.
I saw silly monkeys
I’m pretty sure I found definitive proof that OKC is conservative. Observe where we keep our elephants.
Even the RhINO gets some love
But the donkey
No love for the jackass. He lives in the petting zoo.
But I did see a real life tree-hugger
She’s my soon to be sis-in-law. Mom to Baby Girl that EvylRobot has featured here, here, here(kinda), here, and here. He’s kinda smitten. He’s a sucker for cute, dangerous beauties.
What?
She earned that pink shooting gear. She came with the sneer.
And soon, she’ll have enough shoulder for the AR too.
But alas, it was too hot for a full Shooty Monday after the Saturday Zoo trip (point of note, Saturday was the hottest day in 15 years. Car said it got up to 120.).
But I got a little trigger time before melting into a little puddle in the sand.
And today, I shared the couch with 50 pounds of cute, pathetic, snuggly kitteh while revisiting the magic box.
See what you learn when you take a day off? I’ve asked and asked for them to fold the laundry. This is what they do instead. Something must be done.
Cats fed.
House sitter arranged.
Redneck neighbor informed to watch the house.
Wearing pants.
Good to go.