All the little kitty paws with the little kitty claws (Cat ownership thread)

[Dubious Pie]

This is a place to share fun stories and ask questions about the wonderful adventure of cat ownership.

Here is my 2 cats:

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To start things off:
(This is more of a cat anecdote than a story.)
I have two very large cats. The funniest thing was one time when one of them jumped down from the counter, landing on the floor, making a loud thud. The cat was so scared by his own thud that he leaped up in the air, and make a thud again, and leaped again. This happened on the order of four times.

[Volthawk]

I've got two cats, still kittens. The first two pictures are from quite a while back, around the end of last year. The last two are more recent (can't remember how recent, though)

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They're brother and sister.

[Archonic Energy]

may i be the first to say...

Soft kitty,
Warm kitty
Little ball of fur
Happy kitty
Sleepy kitty
purr, purr, purr.


Also @^ dude, your kitty looks stoned!

[Lord Loss]

I has a siamese cat. But I don't use a digital camera. So you can just imagine him.

He looks more like a tonkanese with the colors of a siamese. He has a slightly split ear from getting into a fight... with a Raccoon! And I seem to be the only person that he likes even when I'm not feeding him. He one popped out of the basement to attack whoever was there, saw it was me, did a 180 and fell down a good few steps (but they were carpeted).

@Volthawk

Seriously though, what are your kitties on?

[Asta Kask]

Catnip. Industrial-strength catnip...

I have a black cat who is the most talkative cat I've ever met. He's always meowing, chirping, or making some other strange noise, except when he sleeps. His brother (who lives with my Mom) never talks, so perhaps my cat stole all the talk-genes. Castor (my cat) also has huge canines, visible even when he has his mouth shut, and very long, strong claws. *sigh* I had a sofa once...

[onthetown]

I have a cat and my mother owns a cat. They're little beasts. My cat will hurl herself against doors and windows in the middle of the night to be let in and out and in and out and in and out; my mother's cat prefers to stay inside so she just climbs all over you when you're sleeping and pokes you with her claws periodically when she lies down.

My mom's cat is scared of her own shadow and very nervous; she was found in the middle of a hurricane at the barn where I used to board my horse. She and her brother were hiding inside a crook of a tree trunk, alive, while their mother and another kitten were found dead outside in a cardboard box nearby. We took her home as the owners of the property only wanted her brother (they know a vet who castrates males for free). She was very tiny, likely not old enough to be away from her mother, and we were constantly tripping over her until she grew up into the gigantic mass of black fur that she is now. We assume this is why she's so bloody... stupid. I've never met a duller cat. She's very friendly and sweet, but over the years she's proven herself to have a very, very low IQ. Though sometimes she wisens up and makes us think that it's just an act...

My cat was bought from a pet shop when she was three months old as a Christmas present for me. They told us she was a boy, and we kept thinking that until the vet who fixed her told us otherwise. She's a hunter, unlike my mother's, and we constantly have dead things on our doorstep. She follows me everywhere, sleeps with me, goes for walks with me in the forest (just trots along at my heels like a well-trained dog)... We are teh bestest friends. She hates my mother's cat, since my cat was here first (she's older than my mother's by two years).

So here they are (the black one is my mother's, the orange one is mine) --

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And an older one of Whisk and me (my hair is much longer now) --

[Asta Kask]

Cat + Ping-pong ball = hours of fun

[Marnath]

Cat + Ping-pong ball = hours of fun

Really? mine played with it for about 80 secs, then she bit it and it crumpled. No more fun. Also, one of my two kitties is also a big talker, none of us have ever heard of a cat who "talks" this much. Every night she tries to catch the hole in the drywall where a hook used to be, she is convinced that it is a bug she can't quite reach. Makes quite a racket, especially when she overbalances and flops onto my power strip.... BBEEeoooww----- goes the computer. Darn it Skinny i was trying to post!

[Asta Kask]

Really? mine played with it for about 80 secs, then she bit it and it crumpled. No more fun.

Mine just bats it with his paws - he never moves in for the kill.

[Bhu]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE KITTIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously though my family have been devoted cat owners for generations. Now that the apartment I live in has loosened it's rules I may once again carry on teh tradition and rescue some needy kitties from the humane society.

I'd have to say our favorite cat was Tabby, a mixed orange and white kitty. he weighed about 25 lbs and loved everyone. Even dogs.

[Karoht]

I have an odd kitten.
She's a year old. Still tiny tiny cat. Her name is Chidori. We got her as a rescue, I think we got her at 3 weeks old.
So Chidori has an odd little behavior. When I go to the bathroom and sit down on the toilet, holy crap it's love time. She comes over, she purrs, she rubs away at my feet, and she really wants my attention and pets right now.
Funny thing, we experimented with this. If I just sit down on the toilet, and I don't use the facilities, she knows it is a ruse, and doesn't come near me. Weird right?

Well, it seems like bathroom time is the only time she'll accept attention. If she decides to hop into my lap, the minute you pet her she runs away. But while she's in my lap she'll paw at me or rub or mew at me for attention.

She's a strange one. Mostly gets along with the other cats of the house though.

[CoffeeIncluded]

I would have a cat, but my parents don't like them and my mom is allergic.

So I work with the kittens and puppies at the animal shelter (A kitten perching on your shoulder or head and nibbling your hair or ear is a great conversation starter for potential adopters; I've gotten quite a few kittens adopted this way.), or the cats at the vet where I intern a few times a week (One of them is almost dog-like; he's extremely friendly and nonchalant and will go right up to you and play with, then sleep on, your sneaker while purring extremely loudly.)

[_Zoot_]

As someone that has always wanted a cat, but never been able to get one because they would most likely eat all the other pets that we own (lizards, birds, fish and the frogs, but I don't think that they would have much luck with the dogs) I wanted to ask a question:

Can cats be trained (or raised) not to eat things like birds? Or is it something that can not be avoided? I ask because I am seriously considering getting a cat when I move out from my parents home...

[THAC0]

My cat was a shelter-kitty, but we think he's got some bengal in him. He's a large cat, 15lbs with no fat on him. He frequently unlocks and opens the dishwasher, but his best trick was a few months ago. He'd gotten annoying, wanting attention in the middle of the night and trying to get this by going into the litterbox room (adjacent to the bedroom) and slamming furniture against the wall. So I closed him out of that room, figuring he could go a few hours without the box.

One night I woke up to the sound of crinkling paper. Eventually I hauled myself out of bed to see what was going on. He'd gotten a newspaper, spread part of it out, put the rest around the sides, and was taking a poo right in the middle of his new "litterbox."

[THAC0]

Can cats be trained (or raised) not to eat things like birds? Or is it something that can not be avoided? I ask because I am seriously considering getting a cat when I move out from my parents home...

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. You might get a cat that has no interest in such things. But that's not reliable, and isn't a guarantee that one day they'll just grab it. It's an instinctual behavior that has been in place for a long, long, long time. Just like you can't train a husky out of wanting to run and pull, you can't train a cat out of eating small animals.

[_Zoot_]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. You might get a cat that has no interest in such things. But that's not reliable, and isn't a guarantee that one day they'll just grab it. It's an instinctual behavior that has been in place for a long, long, long time. Just like you can't train a husky out of wanting to run and pull, you can't train a cat out of eating small animals.

Drat. Anyway, I thought that I would ask...

[The Vorpal Tribble]

I have a female cat, which is odd because she's a female dog, if you catch my drift. Anyways, she's the type of cat that will come up to love you, and you are allowed to pet her for approx. 10 seconds before you get nipped or scratched.

I found her as a kitten in a thicket of poison ivy in the middle of nowhere where my parents were going to be building their house. Her temperament never improved.

I've known many cats, as well as 15 at parents farm, my sisters have another 4 between them, and never met a cat like this one.

She is some kind of evil feline queen that tolerates me and sees all others as potential corpses. I think she would do well as Mr. Scruffy's mistress.

I named her Mysrra after the race of religious fanatic catfolk in a MUD I used to play.

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Moments before she leaped up to draw blood for me snapping my fingers to get her attention.

[Ponderthought]

I have a cat. We call him Match, as he matches the hardwood floor and the dog. I believe he might be a serial killer. Cats hunt small animals yes, but I havent seen any cats that kill their prey by biting open their skulls and leaving them in the exact same spot every time.

[Dubious Pie]

One of my cats have fangs so big that they are visible when his mouth is closed.

[Drolyt]

I have a cat that I found when she was a kitten and I was only a little kid, just entering preschool. I'm not sure whether she came from the local cat colony (whom we occasionally fed, which was probably a bad idea since one of them started living on our back porch and had a bunch of kittens) or was abandoned. I named her Toty Toes (I was a weird kid). I don't have a camera, but she has black fur on top and white fur on bottom and green eyes that glow in the dark. She is very intelligent, we try to keep her as an indoor cat (the alley was full of dangers including animals and cars) but when she was younger she figured out how to open doors and cupboards so we always had to lock them and then she would hide and try to get out whenever anyone opened a door. She was also very good at hiding and loved to steal human food whenever we weren't looking, literally jumping onto the table and eating off our plates, and we were never very successful in teaching her not to do that. She has weird tastes too, she would eat raisins and other fruit. I don't really mind letting her have meat, since I figure that's what she would eat in the wild, but we don't let her have anything else besides her cat food. Lately she's had trouble with furballs so we don't let her have human food very often. She's absolutely adorable and seems to have some rudimentary understanding of language, at the very least she is very good with names (if we say the name of someone she knows she will look at them or go to them) and some nouns (she seems to understand "food" and "dinner" best) and she even seems to understand some verbs.

[Marnath]

One night I woke up to the sound of crinkling paper. Eventually I hauled myself out of bed to see what was going on. He'd gotten a newspaper, spread part of it out, put the rest around the sides, and was taking a poo right in the middle of his new "litterbox."

O.o OMG.... smart kitty is smart. I wouldn't think a cat would plan that out like that, too complicated an idea.

[Drolyt]

O.o OMG.... smart kitty is smart. I wouldn't think a cat would plan that out like that, too complicated an idea.

Nah, cats are smart. My cat has never done that, but she has built herself a bed before. She has also been known to fetch stuff she thinks we want and she meows whenever she wants something and even tries to show us what she wants in creative ways. She's even figured out how to turn the tv on and is kind of obsessed with this automatic light she figured out she could turn on by walking past it.

[Bhu]

O.o OMG.... smart kitty is smart. I wouldn't think a cat would plan that out like that, too complicated an idea.

I've known cats who could open doors, cupboards, and even refrigerators. Some cats are very smart indeed. My grandma's cat was a fuzzy alarm clock. She set her alarm to get her up the same time every day, and if it ever failed he woke her up on time somehow.

Granted the first thing she did every day was feed him...

[Volthawk]

My girl, Lolly (the darker one), seems to bite as a sign of affection. You'll be giving here a big fuss, and then she'll start lightly biting your fingers.

[Asta Kask]

Drat. Anyway, I thought that I would ask...

Odds are better if you get a male cat. Female cats are better and more powerful hunters - the urge is stronger. Probably also better odds if you get certain purebreeds. But there are no definitives.

[Asta Kask]

What are little cats made of?
What are little cats made of?
Claws and fur
and teeth and purr
That's what little cats are made of.

[Castaras]

Used to have a cat. Her name was Cleocatra (or Cleo). She was never the most intelligent of cats, and was also rather small and grumpy all the time - especially when she got older. She'd go absolutely wild over springy wire at any age. In her old age especially, she'd get "bored" when you're petting her or stroking her for a while, and will savage you for no reason whatsoever.

Never much of a birder, very much a mouser (although she wasn't that great with that... she was sleeping in her catbed [for once :O], got out, mum picked up catbed to clean it, and there was a mouse wide awake and happy underneath the bed), and didn't like other cats. When I was a baby though apparently she'd pester mum if I was crying[Your kitten's crying! Your kitten's crying! D:], and drop dead mice outside my bedroom door to teach me to hunt.


*sigh* I miss her still.

[Timberwolf]

I'm not a cat owner personally, but if I ever get a pet, it will be a cat. I really want an Egyptian Mau, basically a mini, affectionate leopard that does all the crazy things cats do and doesn't moult really long hairs.

[druid91]

Cats are awesome, unfortunately my dads/mine remains with his ex-girlfriend. He was an incredible little buddy, He did not like the outside though, we could leave the door wide open and he would sit there at the door looking out, and would not leave, we actually dropped him in the snow once and he went inside shook himself off and sat on my coat.

[Lord Loss]

My kitty is a roleplayer. He was lying one the top part of the sofa and I put a D20 in fron of him. He'd then bat it down with his paw. I'd put it back up. repeat. My Kitteh also loves paper airplanes. I make them, pitch em, he hunts them down and... ATTACK OF TEH KITTEH!