Playing Cat and Mouse Florida Rules

Joy of joys, Pixie caught a lizard yesterday, who had the unfortunate privilege of getting into the catio. There is a big enough crack under the screen door that small lizards can get in and small lizards do things like that. I grew up with jalousie windows, which are also known in Florida as lizard graveyards. They get in while they're small then never escape. As a kid, whenever I'd go around the house washing windows for extra money, I'd have to sweep out the lizard skeletons first. There would usually be three or four dried up skeletons to discard from the whole house. I was happy when I could just wash the windows and screens and not also have to remove skeletons. Anyway, Pixie came in the kitty door from the catio with a live one in her mouth yesterday. Don't you know that made her entire week to catch a lizard out there? It has given her a new lease on life! She quickly drew the attention of at least half of the cat population in the house. She played cat and lizard with it for a while until Little Grey got in there somehow and ran off with the lizard in his mouth. He played with it for a while and then all was quiet again. I think it got away again, but then some time in the night was discovered again. 

When I got up this morning, the now dead lizard was tangled up in one of da kitz' drawstrings (from shorts or sweat pants). The meeps were taking turns flicking the string with the lizard accessory around the room. Finally, Chi separated lizard and string and carried it off to put in a box. Only the box wouldn't cooperate, so she carried it down the hallway, meeping all the way. She ended up in her mommy's bedroom with her treasure. Her mother graciously acknowledged the gift, but gave her permission to keep playing with it, so Chi came back out to the living room with it. I've sort of lost track of it now. I'm keeping a leery eye on my bed just in case one of them decides it's my turn to play with it. Ack! I don't mind so much allowing them to run around the house with it, but I'd like to keep it out of my bed, even now that I know that it is merely a dead lizard. Before I confirmed that it was indeed a lizard and not a small frog, Pixie managed to fling the still live prey in my direction. I am embarrassed to admit that I screamed like a little girl when it flew in my direction. I don't mind lizards, but I've never been overly fond of frogs. Things calmed down again when the dreaded second leap never materialized, much to my relief. 

The day has come to an end and I haven't had a glimpse of the expired lizard for many hours. The last time I saw it, Chi had knocked it under one of the recliners. It will probably remain there now until one of the cats gets under there and discovers it again or the chair is moved and cleaned under. My money is on the cats finding it again and resuming their cat and lizard game. I have to say that Chi is a really talented lizardball player. She uses both paws alternately and runs down the hall as though she is Mia Hamm about to score a goal. Very talented and ambidextrous little girl. She never ceases to amaze me with her intelligence and skill. 

The Lizard Game

Apparently I'm now living in the live lizard game zone. Pixie has taken to escaping when my housemate opens the back door. Only instead of going out to play or roll around in the dust on the driveway, she goes from the back door to the front door, because for some reason, lizards congregate on the front porch step. So when I open the front door to let Pixie in, there's usually a lizard right there on the stoop, ready to run into the house as a delivery or for Pixie to grab on her way through the drive-thru as she runs back inside. Now I'm in no way encouraging this, but neither do I have a way to stop it. The little brown lizards (fairly recent immigrants from Cuba) are fast. They dart into the house heedless of my screams and attempts to shut the door to bar their entrance. Please note that I am not afraid of lizards. My screams are simply intended to keep other katz from escaping as well as discouraging the lizard from entering the house. It is a frantically jumbled message at a high decibel and too rapid cadence. I have to assume this is why my screams go unheeded and/or misunderstood. They are tricky little buggers too. While they seem harmless enough, they overran the chameleon population that used to be here when I was growing up, but I digress.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and you find Florida well stocked with brown Cuban lizards and cats love them apparently. I'm not sure about the eating, but they make great gifts for their humans, or so our feline population thinks if the carcass-strewn carport is any indication. So once again this morning, Pixie got out and managed to procure a fresh lizard to set loose in the house. Presently Chi, one of the seven-month old kittens, is running through the house, "meeping," with a dead or semi-dead lizard in her mouth. Apparently they were playing a game of keep away and once Pixie lost it, Chi found it. I'm not sure when possession changed, but I'm pretty sure I know where it must have happened. If I were playing the Clue game, I'd have to conclude that Chi did it in the living room with kitten teeth and paws. Anyone else care to try your hand at deduction? In the meantime, kitties are still wandering around the house looking for the lizard, so I'm not positive it didn't escape. Go, lizard, go! Of course, even if it did get away, it stands little chance of ever getting out alive again. In that way, this place resembles the "Hotel California" of Eagles fame. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

The game is officially over when I find the carcass somewhere in the house and dispose of it. I'd be happy to help it escape, but they are not fond of being caught, as I mentioned, which means that I have never caught one yet. The most I've gotten is a tail, which they detach the instant you grab it. I'm merely the lizard body disposal department with no authorization whatsoever to bar entrance or assist in deportation of live lizards. It's good to know your lot in life and that is part of my job description in this house with this herd of katz.

Do not be deceived by Pixie's relaxed demeanor. She is the worlds' fastest lizard hunter.

Hormones Ignite!

Thank goodness Chi goes in to get spayed today! We tried to get her in last week, but they had too many surgeries so we had to wait another week. Argh! Chi is officially in heat and has been making Bootsy nuts. None of our boys can do anything about getting her pregnant, but it doesn't mean that she can't stir them up with all the pheromones. Bootsy is trying his best to leave her alone because I keep fussing at him for trying to act on the situation. She keeps wrapping her tail around him and luring him in, and I keep calling him off her because he weighs like four times her weight. I'm concerned about her getting flattened under him and hurt.

Plus if you juxtapose this behavior with her nursing on a blanket every day, and it's enough to give you extreme cognitive dissonance. I know she doesn't really know what's going on with her body, but the siren-like behavior is too much. It makes me understand teenage humans better though. Why is it that this vet won't do the surgery until the kittens are six months old, but I adopt rescues at two months who have already been spayed and neutered? I'm glad Anjolie never had to go through this because I adopted her from a shelter that had already taken care of neutering and shots, etc. Little too. Pixie had to go through this a little bit too because she has the same vet, and she still goes through interesting simulation bouts with Bootsy where she calls him over and he humps her hip or something, but doesn't actually copulate with her because he was neutered at under two months old as well. Neither Little Grey nor Anjolie have to deal with this. I'm thinking that earlier neutering is better for them since there are plenty of kitties already being born into the world. Why risk it?

Not all owners would be as diligent, but I am making sure that I don't open the door to the outside world today so Chi can't escape. The neighborhood tom is out there just waiting to get her. He was here when Tai started in too. We got her done a month ago when she started acting hormonal, even though she wasn't quite six months old. Now Chi has hit and passed the 6 months mark and needed to be done last week! It's pretty funny that Bootsy is still quite the Casa Nova even though he was neutered when he was small. Sweet Eyes, Pixie, and Chi all love him. Tai did love him before she was spayed but now she seems to like Little, who is not very interested in anyone, although he's coming in from the patio more today to sniff around Chi. He generally seems to like Anjolie, but she's not interested in anyone!

I for one will be very happy to reduce the hormone levels in this kat house today. Chi goes in this afternoon to stay overnight and get fixed tomorrow. I'll miss her, but I know this has to be done and yesterday would have been better. She must have gone into heat last night. It was interesting in here with all the cat calls back and forth. Mating calls of the young and neutered are less intense, but still taxing and not at all conducive to sleep.

Kleaning the Kitchen with Chi

I had a fun morning yesterday cleaning the kitchen with Chi. Chi is a little OCD, as was Zuki, her previous incarnation. However, OCD in a kitten versus a 15 year-old-cat translates quite differently. With an older cat, you can pass it off as being "set in her ways." Chi is a kitten. How can she be "set in her ways?" She's like six months old. Anyway, OCD in a kitten has a different energy level to it too. She has vigor to add to her OCD in a way Zuki would never have bothered. Plus she can jump up to places Zuki wouldn't have been able to reach, since Zuki was a Munchkin kitty and thus very short. She usually weighed in around six pounds and had to have stairs or at least stages in order to reach high places. Forget about jumping from the floor to the countertop. While Chi is unlikely to get as tall as anyone else in this house, except for maybe Sweet Eyes, our most petite adult cat, she is probably already nearly as tall as Zuki, although I doubt she weighs more than five pounds yet. She's still growing up too fast to fill out much.

My housemate and I had both already noticed Chi's affinity for the kitchen sink, a place Zuki probably never got to see because of her stature. Chi, on the other hand, is pretty well obsessed with it right now. She must have it totally cleared of dishes and silverware. There's a drainer rack in the right side though, so we can rinse their bowls after breakfast and leave them to drain until dinner and vice versa. Now never mind that the cats aren't allowed on the counter. That's a rule that doesn't stand up to adorable kittens with keen intellects. Chi's way of moving through the world involves being cuter than mere mortals can bear and smarter than most kittens ever considered being.

She beat me to the morning dishes yesterday and started moving silverware around in the sink. The telltale clank and scrape of metal on enamel is my signal to get busy clearing the sink. Never mind that breakfast generally occurs by 5.30 am on days when my housemate has to work. She's out the door by 6.30 am, so life in the Kat House starts early most days until summer rolls around and school gets out. Then we can all sleep in a couple of hours once the katz gets used to the new schedule. If we're lucky that means getting them to sleep in until 7 am, maybe eight by the time school starts again.

I'm not always up by 5 am on the early days, but about half the time I am, so I hear the scrape and clank up close. If I'm still in bed, I can only hope my housemate can get things in the sink tamed enough that I don't have to get up and do the morning dishes before I can resume my night of sleep. I'm hoping Chi and I can move past this kitchen sink obsession soon, but if we don't, I have hope that my housemate will get faster at taming the early morning snarl of cat bowls. Chi has already managed to train both of us to get all nine bowls off the floor pronto after meals and at least  stacked and filled with hot water. Now we seem to be moving on to getting them rinsed in super hot water and set to drain so they're ready for when dinner time arrives as close to 5 pm as possible. If you think cats don't have watches, then you've never lived with one. They know what time it is at least twice a day in this house. They really only care about breakfast and dinner anyway, so that's all that is actually written on the faces of their kitty kat wristwatches. It simplifies their schedule. That way the rest of their days are open for sleeping and playing.

Then there's Chi, who also has to schedule kitchen cleanup time like no other cat I've ever met. While she's less concerned about dinner dishes, doing the breakfast dishes is a very important part of her day so the rest of her morning centers around that task until it is finished. If my housemate and I are prompt, we are free to do the frivolous things humans are apt to do, such as writing and going to work. As far as the katz are concerned, the only thing we do with our day that is important--other than feeding them or playing with them--is shopping for cat food, treats, and toys. Everything else falls under the heading of frivolous frittering, futzing, and fretting, as far as they are concerned.

So back to Chi and our morning routine. Once she'd gotten my attention yesterday with all the scraping and clanking, I rushed into the kitchen to rescue kitten and dishes only to find said kitten in the sink with the dishes. I very gently turned the water on just enough to warn her that it was well past time to get out of the sink. She got the message and leaped out far enough to get her paws out of wetting danger, but not so far as to let me off the cleaning hook. No, she sat down next to the sink and stared at the dishes until they were magically rinsed clean with steaming hot water and set to drain in the righthand sink. She cared only that the left sink was immaculate. Once the sink was cleared of dishes, she glared at the offending cutlery until it was rinsed and put in the dishwasher. Then she used that laser-like kitten glare to stare down any bits left in the sink. Once I'd mostly cleaned the sink of bits and pieces, she focused on the remaining two tiny flaws in the sink surface. One I was able to clean off, but the other I explained was a chip in the sink surface that won't go away no matter how long I scrub it. Once I demonstrated this fact to her satisfaction, she allowed me to hang up my cleaning apron. I could envision her dusting off her front paws and looking self satisfied at a job well done. Her job, that is. My work had been merely mediocre until she had saved me with her superior supervisory skills.  I was finally free to go about my morning as I pleased until she found some other task that required opposable thumbs.