Slow And Steady Kicks Your Ass

A few weeks ago, I observed that cat-biting seems to be a favorite turtle activity.  Here’s more evidence:

But apparently, cats aren’t the only things turtles like to bite:

I told you turtles were little bastards!

I also found this unrelated, but I thought amazing, series of bald eagles hanging out with cats.  I always thought an eagle would eat a cat, but maybe not:

You’ve gotta love the impotent paw swipe at the end.

The eagles seem to hang out with the cats fairly often:

The youtube is full of interesting animal interactions – deer grooming cats, cats nursing rabbits – you name it.  I went looking around because I’ve got a squirrel who’s pretty tame and will come up onto the porch when I’m out there to eat birdseed and fetch pecans (I have a bunch of unshelled pecans that are too small to bother shelling).  The first time the cat saw the squirrel out there with me, she went out and sat right in the middle of the pecans.  So the squirrel comes back after hiding one of the nuts, wants the rest of those pecans, and gets all up in her grill.  Eartha quite frankly didn’t know how to handle it – she backed off and went to sit in her chair.  That’s how it’s gone pretty much ever since.  I think the squirrel is very curious of her – it’s tried a couple of times to get up close enough to the end of her tail to sniff (or bite?) it, and when it gets within a couple of inches, she freaks out and either runs or menaces the squirrel to get it to back off.  She’ll still try to chase the squirrel sometimes, and a few days ago actually managed to jump right on top of it before deciding immediately to let it go.  I think she knows that squirrels are pretty scrappy, so it unnerves her when one walks right up to where she’s sitting in her chair and puts its face within 6 inches of hers.  Maybe at some point I’ll get some photos of them together and put them up.

Angelina’s Wide Stance

Prediction: Someone, somewhere, will show up at a Halloween party this October with a mannequin leg sticking out of a long dress

The intertubes have been all abuzz about the weird pose affected by Ms. Jolie, not only on the red carpet, but also on stage, during Sunday’s Oscars.  Several theories have been advanced to try to explain it, but I think I have figured it out: 

 

Yeast infection. 

 

Oh yes, I said it. 

 

If the vadge was in need of a good airing-out, perhaps Ms. Jolie should have called upon our friend, Hello Kitty, for assistance.  A wind has got to be more effective than the mere breeze that can be achieved with that pose:

Don't even ask

That’s No Ordinary Rabbit

They didn’t zoom in enough to see whether or not he’s got big pointy teeth.

h/t to commenter PeakVT at BalloonJuice

Update:  apparently rabbits aren’t the only non-traditional herding animals.  Seems appropriate to demonstrate how their opposite, the tortoise, also engages in herding:

That’s one pissed-off turtle!  And if the youtube is an indication, turtles really hate cats.  Cat-biting seems to be a favorite turtle activity.  They’re some mean little bastards.

Possibly The Most Awesome Thing EVAR

One of these arrived in the mail last week.  Pay special attention at around 0:14 of the clip:

Eartha Kitty, of course, is a wuss, so her reaction was to cower under the bed while I was flying it.  Then I had to find a place to hide it, because she doesn’t forget the toys that have frightened her when they’re running. If she finds one sitting around after it’s turned off, she abuses it. 

I’m not sure yet who I will eventually end up gifting with this treasure.

You can get your own Flying Fuck at ThinkGeek.

Collaborative Effort

Most of you have probably already seen the terrifying photo of Newt with his current trophy wife, Callista, that has been showing up all over the internets.  Tbogg in particular has a thing for this picture, and there have been a lot of theories advanced as to what it most resembles.  I had noted the other day that I was reminded of a bird of prey, then went further and said that if you clapped a felt hat on her head and put her in a pair of lederhosen, you’d have the new poster child for re-launching the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” campaign. 

But last night it hit me; this is what that picture of Callista really brings to mind:

Full credit goes to the mad photoshop skillz of Mr. Jeffraham Prestonian; I had the idea and found the images and even got them sized correctly, but lacked the ability/tools to do freeform cut and pasting.  Kudos to JP for stepping up and doing this thing which really had to be done.

Inexplicably Funny

No one knows why cats look so funny when they climb ladders, but they do.  The same can be said of them as Dr. Johnson said about women preaching:  “… is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs.  It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”  Well, except for that last bit – it’s never surprising to find a cat climbing whatever is available…but in the case of ladders, “it is not done well.”  Doesn’t seem to fit with the natural coordination of their limbs.

With regard to the Johnson quote, yes it’s terribly misogynistic, but, 1760’s.  Not surprising to find it done, so it’s refreshing when it’s done well.  Actually my favorite Johnson observation is the one in which he noted that second marriages represent “the triumph of hope over experience.”  Quite the cynical old codge he was – truly a man after my own heart.

 

More Fun With Critters

These are cute little fellers, when they aren’t INSIDE THE HOUSE

We’ve had quite the spate of bad weather lately – too much rain and tornado sirens going off on average 2 times per week.  We got another soaker that started Saturday evening and carried through all day Sunday with heavy rains that only let up for half-hour intervals before the next violent downpour.

 

The storms themselves don’t bother me all that much except for their propensity to really pick up steam right when I’m ready to eat dinner.  It’s hard to enjoy your meal when you’re having to pop up every few minutes when the sirens go off.  Aside from that, the biggest problem I have with violent storms is that they absolutely terrify kitty.  I’ll sleep right through the storm – but if the cat starts howling in fear, it wakes me up.  When it’s a prolonged storm, typically I just fish her out from under the bed and put her under the covers and go back to sleep – for some reason, it calms her to be next to me, at least enough that she quiets down.

 

Anyway, we were having quite the fun time on Sunday.  Eartha had spent Saturday night under the covers and these thunderstorms just continued to roll through the entire following day.  Around noon, we had one of those brief reprieves and she insisted on going outside, so I let her go while keeping an ear cocked for thunder.  If I don’t get her in the house when it starts, she hides under the house and I can’t get her back in until the storm lets up, which sometimes can be hours.  So when I heard the thunder start up again off in the distance, I immediately went to call her in.  She came dashing through the door so quickly that I failed to register – until she was inside the house – that she had something in her mouth.  I ordered her back outside but she wasn’t having any of that – it was THUNDERING out there!  She runs into the absolute worst place in the house – the central hall – and dumps her cargo.  It was a chipmunk, and it was just laying there, at least at first.  And she’s just sitting there watching it from 3 feet away.  Before I could even think of what to grab to scoop it up, it came to and dashed past the cat into the living room.  Apparently she had just caught it before coming in and so had not yet gotten to the fun part of it, where she got to play with it until she killed it.  This was one hearty, hale, and healthy chipmunk!

 

So now, it’s a Sunday, there’s another massive storm bearing down, and I have a rodent in the living room.  The cat pretty quickly forgets about the chipmunk as the thunder gets closer; she has more important things to do like find a place to cower in fear.  To add insult to injury, once the storm passes she decides it’s time for a nice nap – it’s like she’s forgotten all about her furry friend she brought home.  She slept for the next 3 hours (in spite of periodic hectoring on my part) while the chipmunk made a few ventures (that I saw) out from behind the massive bookcase/TV cabinet unit to explore the living room.  I had, of course, blocked off the exits, hoping to be able to at least keep it in one room.  My plan was that if the critter survived until the next day in the house with the cat, I’d call the Humane Society and see if I could borrow a live trap. 

 

I went and took a shower, and when I came out, kitty was up and about – but she was in the kitchen, staring intently at an opening at the base of the dishwasher cabinet.  So intently that I concluded that somehow, the chipmunk had either made it around the barriers (or been carried) from the living room to dining room/kitchen.  She even tried to crawl up under there – now I was having visions of making an emergency call to the plumber on a Sunday to pull out the dishwasher to free the cat.  The chipmunk’s locale was confirmed a bit later when I heard piercing shrieks coming from the kitchen, but alas, no capture of the critter by the kitty.  Eventually, after several hours, the cat got bored with staring at the hole and wandered off, only to resume the vigil later for another several hours.  This in spite of my pointing out to her that sitting a foot in front of the opening wasn’t all that great of a strategy – the chipmunk would get close enough to see her, shriek, and retreat again.

 

That’s where things stood when I turned in Sunday night.  After making sure the barriers in the kitchen/dining room doorways were secure, I went to bed and Eartha did, too.  I figured I might wake up to piercing shrieks in the middle of the night, or to an eviscerated carcass somewhere in the house the following morning.  Instead, everything was quiet overnight except for more storms.  Monday morning, no sign of the critter.  I call the Humane Society to see about borrowing a live trap – they tell me they don’t loan them out anymore.  Great.

 

So as I’m back in my bathroom getting ready to go out and buy a damn live trap, I hear the shrieking – but it’s way closer than the kitchen.  I make two passes through the house looking for the cat, and finally locate her behind the washing machine in the back hall laundry closet.  How the hell did it get back THERE?  Somehow it managed.  After removing the cat and blocking off exits to the hallway, I flushed the critter out from under the machines by running a yardstick back and forth to force it out.  Then it shrieked at me.  Those little fuckers are fast!  I was trying to trap it under a towel, herd it into a box, anything.  No luck – it could get back under the machines before the towel hit the ground.  Also I learned that the bastards can jump; I almost had him once and he made an impressive 2-foot high jump, which explains why I wasn’t able to block him into a room.

 

Finally I settled on a “herding” strategy:  I would close off the closet and bathroom doors in my bedroom, open the door to the patio, and open the door between the hallway and the bedroom.  I flushed him out from under the machines again, and he took the escape route into the bedroom.  After closing the door to the hallway, I used the yardstick to herd him from under the bed towards the door – he ran into the corner where the bathroom door is and scrabbled and shrieked for a few seconds, then I herded him towards the outside door.  Then – VICTORY!  It only took about a minute to get him out once he got into a room where the outside door was the most attractive and obvious option.

 

The chipmunk in this case had the very best possible outcome, considering that he entered the house in the mouth of a cat.  As for the cat, as much as Eartha pissed me off with her nonchalance about fixing her mess, it was pretty impressive to me that she always knew where the thing was.  What’s really strange is that even though she didn’t see the chipmunk leave the house, she’s not gone back to even look for it.  Somehow she just knows it’s not in the house anymore.  I don’t expect that she’ll ever repeat this – she’s quite the killer, but her habit has never been to announce her kills – she just dispatches them and leaves them at the door where she knows I’ll see them.  The only reason this one got brought in was the approaching thunderstorm, and if I hadn’t called her, she would have just taken it under the house with her.  As for me, I was able to get the thing out of the house without having to go buy a trap, and consider that I got off rather lightly.  I mean, it could have been a rat she brought in with her. 

Frank Booth Had a Cat

Don't you fucking look at me!

Actually, the kitty above has feline asthma; I just think the picture is funny as hell.  It looks like the cat is hitting a catnip bong and really getting into it or something.  And yes, if Frank Booth had a cat, this is what it would look like.

I found this while doing some research; Eartha Kitty has feline asthma, though fortunately not a really bad case that requires an emergency inhaler.  When she starts showing signs of having a harder time breathing, she gets the prednisone pills for a week and within an hour of the first dose starts getting better.  She’s never had more than one attack in a year, usually in January – when we surprisingly have some high pollen counts.  I’ve just figured that there’s some allergen around at that time of year and that, perhaps combined with cold air, causes the flare-ups.  A few days ago she burrowed up under the quilt on the bed and I assumed it was because she was freaked out by the sound of sleet hitting the roof & windows – but then she stayed there for 4 or 5 hours.  When she finally came out I noticed the labored breathing and concluded I’m an idiot.  She did the same burrowing thing on the bed when she was sick last January, so maybe I’m not as cat whisperer as I think I am if I can’t figure out something like that after living with this animal for 7 years.

Quick! call in the Cat Whisperer!

Let’s take a break from politics and other serious matters to get the opinion of our resident world-famous cat whisperer on this one. (I think the beast speaks a foreign language, though.)

Kitty Rescue Squad

So, about an hour ago I walked into the bedroom and through the french doors saw, beyond the patio, a flash of DOG moving through the backyard.  Because Eartha Kitty was out there, I went out to investigate – no kitty to be seen, but when I called for her, it caught DOG’s attention and he decided he’d like to come in – which he was not allowed to do.  Thus denied, DOG departed.

After making sure he was gone, I went out on the patio and called again, and sure enough, got a howling meow in response, coming from the general direction of the garage.  I moved closer, continuing to call but still failing to locate the source of the howling.  Finally, I looked up – and there she was, perched on a large branch of the oak which overhangs the garage roof and pretending she had no idea of how to get down.  I finally coaxed her down to the garage roof, where she again affected pretense of having no idea how to get down – despite the fact that I regularly see her jumping from the roof to the top of the fence which runs alongside the garage only 2 feet away.  Tiring of her charade, I retreated to the patio, only to notice for the first time the decapitated corpse of the young bunny she had deposited there (apparently not too long before going up the tree, judging by the condition of said corpse.  If you’re keeping score, so far the count stands at Bunnies – 1 and Eartha – 3, though she did lose out on 2 due to technicalities).

I continued to call, and she continued to howl, though she was all along looking nervously from the roof all around for DOG, who by this time  had not been seen in the vicinity for 15 or 20 minutes.  By now, the birds were becoming very upset with her.  Finally, I said, “fine, come down when you want, I’m going in.”  I step in just long enough to shut the door, and when I come back out, she’s nowhere in sight.  A few seconds later she comes slinking warily around the corner of the house and heads straight for the door, ignoring her trophy on the patio.

She’s been inside 30 minutes now and is still on patrol, like she thinks I let DOG in the house.

Life with a skittish animal is so very different from life with a well-adjusted one, though in spite of the howling during thunderstorms and the conviction that every person who is not me wants to kill her, I have to say that Eartha Kitty is perhaps the best cat I’ve ever had as a companion, in terms of being well-mannered and affectionate.  No early morning wake-ups for feeding or letting her out.  No pooping or peeing outside of designated areas.  No furniture shredding.  Not pushy about much of anything, except for when she really, really wants to play.  And although I regret the bunny genocide she’s undertaken, the count so far stands at something like 15 rats or more per bunny, and have you ever tried to explain to a cat that it’s ok to kill one type of small furry rodent, but not another?  All in all, a very fine cat indeed.

*No photos of incident included, to avoid revealing the tragic state of the back yard.

Update 6/18:  Last night’s bounty was a nice juicy medium-sized rat.  Which arrived with head still attached to the body.  As I said, every other one…

Update 6/20:  This morning’s fresh catch – a little headless mousie.  (Headless now, that is.  I assume the head was still attached when it was caught.)  I think I’ll just keep updating this one post with every new kill – I always knew she was a prolific killer but I may have been underestimating her prowess.  She may be the feline equivalent of Jimmy Carter – History’s Greatest Monster™.