Hi everyone,
Please find below a guest post by Alanna Sinclair
Oh sweet. So cute. So……SNEAKY!
My cats have a secret life. Or did, until a few months ago. I was just a regular person working a regular eight-to-five job, leaving early in the morning and coming home many many hours later. Sometimes I would come home to find items out of place, cat toys in strange spots, and errrrr….messy situations (I’m sure you can relate!). I just assumed it was because of random play and fun around the house while I was gone. Boy, was I wrong! The truth, as always, is far stranger…
Here are just a few of the things that FINALLY made sense – though not in the way I thought they would – after I started my own business and began working from home. Proceed with caution. Your current ideas about the cat universe are about to be shaken!
The Translocational Bathmat
I would come home every once in a while to find the bathmat in a strange location. One day it would be crumpled on the floor of the bathroom, and the next it would be rolled up and deposited behind the dining table. I assumed it was just fun to tote around and dump. What I failed to realize, however, is that once a cat is rolled in the bathmat, it becomes a translocational device that allows cats to propel themselves along hardwood floors at incredible speeds! Especially when chased by a grumpy girl-cat who did NOT want her face licked…(much hissing ensued once the bathmatted Frapples ran out of runway).
Advanced Toy Rotation
Toys seem very simple. Small. Fun to play with. Smell like catnip. But also a tool of advanced feline communication! Now that I’m home all the time, I’ve found that Callie and Frapples bring me one toy when I’m behaving (their catnip pillow), and another when I’m not giving them due credit for their glorious existence (the mouse, or worse, none! *gasp*!). Sometimes, when I was at my old job, they would even bring me their stuffed Fish at night. I now recognize how sorely I misjudged this act – I didn’t even say “Thank You”! The Fish, you see, is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a human person. Forget the Nobel Prize. I can now live a happy, full life knowing that I have earned midnight delivery of The Fish.
Dynamic Poop Relocation
When I used to find small poop speckles on the wall near the litterbox, I assumed someone was just being messy or had a litter mishap. That’s because I wasn’t home to see/hear Frapples use the litterbox. It’s an ecclesiastical event! First, there are many ministrations as he tries to convince me to let him outside to do the deed. Then he realizes that’s not happening and actually uses the litterbox. After a short silence and much shoveling he EJECTS himself from the box (and I say EJECTS because he’s like a test dummy being launched from a cockpit), completes two galloping laps of the house, and finishes with a gallant benediction. So that’s where the flying poop comes from! Hallelujah. I has been churched.
Our cats are incredible, complex creatures. Being at home with mine every day has only given me more evidence of this. Each day brings new interactions and surprises and, whether messy or memorable, I feel blessed to experience them all. I wish the very same for you and your furry family – may your road be ever strange and filled with Fish!
What strange habits/happenings go on at YOUR house? Comment below to let us know!
About the author:
Alanna Sinclair owns PawHaven Home and Pet Sitting in Houston, Texas. She lives with her two rescue kitties, Callie and Frapples, and likes to spend her free time reading, watching independent films, and finding as many ways as possible to earn The Fish. You can find out more about Alanna and read her blog on pet health and happiness at www.mypawhaven.com
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I don’t know if it’s a strange, secret habit. But the little one likes to lick everything’s ass.
I wish more people had the chance to see their pets living their everyday lives ~ eyes would be opened to how deeply inventive and thoroughly unique each furry being is. I’m super blessed to be with my four-legged friends every day! 🙂
Parker
Diesel is Frapples in the litter box, except a pee makes him run around the apartment taking loudly in happiness. I’d love to know what my boys got up to like Frapples and Callie when I’m out. When I’m in they sleep, when I leave, they get up and mooch around! Frapples and Callie sound like great cats to hang out with!
His behavior *might* indicate pain, as in a urinary tract or bladder issue. Hopefully not of course, just something you might want to check out?
Otherwise, what a funny and silly boy. 🙂
Parker
Thank you for your concern! The vet’s aware, but never finds anything. I never see him showing pain on the toilet and he never licks there afterwards. He had bladder crystals when he was younger and both drink a lot which the vets is also monitoring. He mostly goes pee silly when I get it in the evenings (and occasionally like Mr Frapples with poop). The rest of his toilet business he’s quite calm! I’ll definitely bring it up again with my vet at our next visit as his brother’s the one with tummy maybe kidney probs!
Obviously you are on top of this! Working with animals has shown me that most owners don’t realize what their pet’s behavior really means, so I guess I’ve gotten into the habit of putting in my 2 cents, 😀
Parker
No worries! I put my 2 cents in yesterday with a cat and felt like I was intruding! I’ve learnt to listen to vets (fortunately, I have a great vet just for cats) and the cats normally let me know if somethings not right 🙂
I really feel like adding a permanent forum section to the blog haha
🙂 I’ll be a little quieter, but a forum sounds a great idea?!
Don’t be quieter haha. It’s good to have this. :). I’ll see what I can do about a forum. ^^
It’s always good to give tips to each other! You never know what we may miss ourselves.
Time to install a camera haha
I was giggling as I was reading this post.. There are so many things mentioned, which I identified with.
I too, used to be a 9 to 5 office worker, until about a year ago. Working at home helps me to understand my cat better too.. Yes, I has been churched too. 🙂
Fantastic post, great job!
🙂
I work from home and one of the things all my cats do is go bananas once a day. Arwen will be sitting on the floor, perfectly peachy, then suddenly start jumping around, chasing imaginary things, licking her fur like mad and scratching. Then something imaginary will touch her hind leg, which then gets jerked around, making her jump all over the room.
Faith, my close to feral cat, will jump around, race and roll like a crazy kitten (and jump all over Falcor, my big white tom), once a day, on the terrace.
And this is when I’m awake. Ive been woken up more than once to observe what we refer to as ‘kitten hour’ in our house, at 6 am in the morning. This is when the kitten train starts to race from one side of the apartment to the other side (with 4 cats storming after one another).
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Ivan the (recently) Terrible has been training me while I, also, have become a stay-at-home cat-minder. When he’s decided I’ve been on the computer long enough, he comes up and gives me love-bites until I put down the laptop. Occasionally these bites coincide with breakfast time. Actually, they ALWAYS coincide with breakfast time.
Hehe. 🙂 sounds a lot like Oliver who also nibbles on me at items.
I thought I retired but in fact I’ve been promoted to waitstaff. I can now open the Cat Diner anytime and they try to trick me into believing it’s 5 o’clock (well, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!). As for hijinks, just when I think I know who the instigator is, they change roles. I have learned to let them be. When there is screeching, I yell their names and it stops….sometimes. Can’t imagine a day without all this commotion. Would be boring.
Ah yes at times our two have their weird moments as well XD
One day I found poop on all three of my guest beds upstairs. I was so confused! I screamed “What the…?” My husband, Danny, told me that Yodi, one of two cats at the time, didn’t like the new litter box. How he figured out that it was Yodi I don’t know but I had just changed out my litter box to two Breeze litter boxes. As you may or may not know, they use clay pellets for litter. Through a conversation with his previous owner, my daughter, two and two were put together and came up with 4. Yodi had never been outdoors until he came to live with my husband and I so his paws were sensitive to the clay litter. Amazing to me that he devised this method of communication. He is now an only cat and has a large, clear plastic tote with Nature’s Miracle litter. Because the plastic tote has high sides, litter doesn’t get tracked all over the house. Even though he prefers the outdoors as his litter box, the indoor litter box stays.?
I’ve been working at home from January of this year, and will back you up on your observances Cats are indeed mischievous day laborers!
As a loyal servant, guardian and best friend. Would be lost without my smokey.
Just got the cavalry passing along …
You never know what the cats are doing when unsupervised (until you install a secret camera!). My two sometimes surprise me when I come home and they lie peacefully close to each other. My female rearranges blankets. She taught the tom how to hide on the blanket that covers the couch …
The places they hide in or on sometimes… LOL
I ws watching Elvis Catstello this morning as he totally tore up my bathroom counter. He started with some q tips and progressed to bobby pins and the started pushing everything he could move into the sink. When I yelled for him to stop, he just gave me a look, “What did I do?”
XD. Typical cats haha
OMG. That was hysterical!! Great article. Thanks for sharing! Cheryl
🙂
Love all the antics. My cat, Lady seems calm by comparison. But maybe there’s something I don’t know. I am sure she has a secret life.
I like that you referred to the use of the litterbox as an ecclesiastical event. That’s brilliant, and spot-on! When my two cats first came to my home we first put them in the littlerbox, i.e., THIS IS YOURS… Juok started to cautiously sniff the litter. Kapoa sniffed as well. He then had a spasm of — recognition? — and began to wildly gyrate in said box, knocking Juok off his feet! It was amazing. We immediately got a few more litterboxes, and tuck that moment away in our memory treasure chest.
That was definitely an ecclesiastical moment for Kapoa! Thanks for reminding me of a truly FUNNY moment! 🙂
XD cats can be so funny
It’s learning a new language. 🙂
I wish I had a video camera on the kitties when I am not home.
The fish! If Tess brought our one surviving fish up to any of us, we’d be screaming our heads off and trying to put it back in the tank!
Poor fishy XD
Reblogged this on MoéGrrL.
My Daisy used to carry the puppy’s potty pads all around the house. One night she actually cleaned the bath tub drain one and we found hair all around the bathroom. We decided she obviously was lacking stimulation and bought her some new toys.