She gets under my chair.
Let me edit that picture. Jump cut:
July 7, 2017
Levels of Ida.
Meade has let her into the house...
She gets under my chair.
Let me edit that picture. Jump cut:
She gets under my chair.
Let me edit that picture. Jump cut:
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You are going to regret that. Once they come in the house, they think they own it.
Oh man. You guys are doomed now!
At least you have hardwood floors for all that hair.
(Source current cat owner)
You are now effectively Cat Owned. You will soon find yourself cooking the foods that the Cat likes. It is irreversible.
Ida is awesome. Is it time for Meade to start a cat photo blog to follow up the dog photo blog?
If you allowed images, do you have any idea how many cat pics would be flooding in??
(No! Many more than that.)
Looking forward to the Idas of March.
> You are going to regret that. Once they come in the house, they think they own it.
Yep. One time I came home during the Christmas holidays and found the neighbor's cat sleeping on the couch. No matter how many times I sent him back, he always returned. When the neighbors moved, he remained. Pesky little devils, they are like weeds.
Speaking as a cat owner: I agree with other cat owners in this thread.
You.
Are.
Doomed.
(laugh)
Edit: Speaking as someone owned by a cat.
The dog that we let into our house doesn't dream of changing levels. He stays on the floor. There's one chair that he'll modestly request permission to get up on. He always waits for the express invitation, even though we always give it.
The cat has her own mission, which is to scout the territory, including all levels and all cat-able crevices. She considered getting in that space on the bottom shelf of books, which you see after I took 3 books out to give her room. She got me to do that!
It happens so fast you don't even realize the Cat is now in charge.
The cat has her own mission, which is to scout the territory, including all levels and all cat-able crevices.
Few cats can resist the pull of 'The Square'!!!
Yes, she is scouting out the spaces in the house, and that takes a week. Wait until the cat climbs up to the top of a cabinet or a high shelf and is afraid to jump down. Meade will have to play rescue fireman with a ladder.
Danger Will Robinson! This is how it starts. We let lovely Priscilla in when to rest when it got really hot out. The when Barney got beat up we had to let him rehab indoors, of course. Because they were always together Betty had to come in and hang out with Barney. Next thing I know my lovely spouse is herding 5 or 6 cats around, none of which seem to remember they were temporary guests. The cats (and a beagle) previously living here in luxury accepted the neighborhood visitors with typical feline aplomb.
Until Mr. D, the Maine Coon cat, came to be part of the herd and the dynamic shifted. Butch was slightly larger than the Maine Coon and didn't like having his Top Cat status challenged (although to be fair Mr. D didn't challenge anyone until years later when Betty got on his nerves somehow) and tried to bully D into staying outta his way. So for two years Mr. D pretty much hung out in our bedroom or stayed close to Mrs. MJB Wolf. After a several months long battle with failing kidneys (that was before we knew to avoid any pet food with components from China), Butch passed on and Mr. D emerged as Top Cat after all.
It starts with them lounging around looking pretty and ends with them taking over. You've been warned.
LOL. You do realize it's over. The house belongs to Ida now.
DBQ beat me to it.
Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
My sig other has her exact genetic duplicate in replicated DNA.
Cat looks around. Says "Well, it'll do".
My parents took in two strays. One was very young (they think someone may have dropped her off, knowning my parents would take her in) and never learned how to socialize properly.
The other was just a bit older. That one knows she won the lottery and really appreciates the good life of being an indoor cat with a steady supply of food.
A neighbor's cat would sometimes appear in our house. He'd come down the chimney.
The cat is the laser pointer and Meade is the kitten.
haha. Yeah good luck. Signed, cat mom to five. Including the world's hairiest Maine coon.
Is she a stray or a locally owned outdoor cat? Be wary of fleas and diseases.
I would never let an outside cat in my house absent a prerequisite lengthy stay in a halfway house to deal with immunizations, parasites, etc.
She is quite the regal girl, isn't she?
6 AM Wednesday morning: "Hey human. Get up! I'm bored. Play with me. Get me wet cat food. And where the hell do you keep the tuna. Oh, and about that lamp....if it was secured properly it wouldn't have tipped over."
I like cats.
The cat hair is unfucking believable. We have an indoor cat. 17 years old, weighs 5 pounds IF that, and basically she sleeps 20 hours a day. Too old to go outside anymore so. When she isn't begging for food, for cream (which she doesn't drink...she just wants us to give in and give her some), or using the litterbox. She is a short hair cat and the hair is everywhere.
She sleeps in a few places on the furniture and we have a square (ha!!!!) of toweling for her to lay on. Sleeps in the window to catch the sun in the morning. Sleeps on her carpeted cat perch.
Thank goodness I have a "Shark Rotator Professional" vacuum. (Available through Amazon and I highly recommend. Our house has carpeting in the lower part of the living room and guest room. We..meaning me...have to vacuum several times a week. The first time I used the new vacuum, I was amazed/appalled at the amount of debris. Thinking that ..."well, it is a new vacuum and the old vacuum sucked (or didn't suck actually) it is understandable" HOWEVER, 8 months later...still an amazing amount of fur.
I told my husband we could have knitted a couple of new cats by now. I hate to say it, but I am looking forward to the day that she goes to the big litter box in the sky! I am going to miss her, but the relief of not cleaning a litterbox and not having all that HAIR will compensate.
She got me to do that!
@Professor Althouse, a whole generation law students are trying to figure out how come you were tough with them but a pushover for a stray cat.
It starts with them lounging around looking pretty and ends with them taking over. You've been warned.
Are we talking cats or women?
@Professor Althouse, a whole generation law students are trying to figure out how come you were tough with them but a pushover for a stray cat
That C- student is thinking "if only I had come to class in a furry outfit"
I will side with Zeus in any confrontation. Better to keep the cat inside where it will only kill mice not young birds etc.
I am definitely not a cat person. They are tremendously destructive of wildlife. As one of our neighbors says" Cats are good, they taste like chicken."
I can do a patented cat shoulder rub that no cat can resist but am not myself that into cats.
Experimental psych students are warned not to use cats; they'll ruin the data.
Ida Know. This might not be a good thing.
"for cream (which she doesn't drink...she just wants us to give in and give her some)"
Yeah, that's what I hate about our cat. Bring out the butter & she'll race into the kitchen, demanding some. But once she has a pat, she'll turn her nose up at it.
Catz they be crazy.
Also they walk on you in bed. I'm speaking of a gf's cat, not mine.
Sticky-outward scotch tape in a loop can keep cats off shelves. They dislike the sticking-to-fur thing.
Cardboard scratching thingys are cat fun and save the furniture.
Dogs have their own ways with stuffed furniture.
I am definitely not a cat person. They are tremendously destructive of wildlife.
It took me a while to come around to this position, having grown up like everyone else with cats that came and went as they pleased, but cats should not be outside. In addition to being destructive to wildlife including songbirds as you note, their life expectancy is half when they are allowed outdoors. They are terribly vulnerable to predation and disease.
With males you may notice cat pee, if you can smell stuff.
Feral cats are okay with wildlife. As the bird population falls, so does the feral cat population.
It's domestic cats that extinguish the birds. They get fed at home and don't reduce in numbers to match the birds.
How is Zeus taking this usurpation?
With the usual Retriever good cheer and largeness of heart, I would guess.
The feral cat and three kittens that were outside a couple weeks ago have disappeared, presumably to the fields out back. Snakes, mice and birds out there.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
The cat hair is unfucking believable."
I have a Golden Retriever and my last action before I leave home is inevitably brushing fur from my clothes.
If anybody needs a couple of pounds of light golden fur on a regular basis, let me know.
As pointed out, Ida will soon know every nook and cranny of your home better than you do. A dear parted one went blind and we did not realize it until his annual check up. Absolutely nothing was different about his behavior.
We have one who will hide for the day. We can never find him despite looking everywhere in the house we can think of. Then all of a sudden, he'll be sitting in the middle of the great room.
One time I was making duck prosciutto in the winter and hung it in a closed off bedroom. One of the cats got in and, despite not having been in the bedroom for a year, immediately froze when he walked in the door and saw it.
Cats love vertical spaces. We always recommended those with multiple cats in a smaller home to get a cat tree or two. Works wonders.
@rhhardin If you have coyotes, then the feral cat and kittens most likely became "lunch". One of the "bennies" of coyotes around here is that they keep the wandering barn cats from wandering.
i find these figures staggering :
"Domestic cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals (mostly mice, shrews, rabbits, squirrels, and voles) each year, according to a study published last year in Nature Communications."
"America’s cats, including housecats that adventure outdoors and feral cats, kill between 1.3 billion and 4.0 billion birds in a year, says Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., who led the team that performed the analysis."
I doubt Zeus and his compatriots have killed anything more than a couple of rabbits and a couple of really stupid chipmunks.
Introducing cats and dogs.
Pet the legacy resident when the new resident is alongside.
Also they walk on you in bed. I'm speaking of a gf's cat, not mine.
She is trying to force you out of her bed....the cat not your gf :-)
Our cat did that to my husband. Walk and jump on him. Back and forth until he said screw this and went to sleep on the futon in the office. Then the cat just snuggled up to me. I would wake up unable to turn over because she was between my legs pinning them to the mattress. What a little bitch.
She now sleeps in the living room and we keep our bedroom door closed and we BOTH get a good night's sleep.
Sounds like I hate my cat, I suppose. I don't, though. I do love her. But after 17 years with THIS cat and 20 years before with another, and another one we have that was a stray who now lives in our workshop at night (outside during the day and he DOES kill the wildlife. YAY!!! that is his purpose)...I'm just tired.
Birds have so many more than replacement offspring that the kill-off rate is staggering with or without cats. Small birds are mostly there as food in their evolutionary niche.
If Ida is still part of your lives this December, be sure to anchor the Christmas tree to the wall and consider using only unbreakable ornaments. Christmas trees are on the same irresistibility list for cats as opened cans of tuna and cloth mice stuffed with catnip.
@rhhardin Of course the birds are there as food - as are the mice, voles and chipmunks. The point you seem to miss is that the cats are not a part of the natural ecosystem. They are not Blue Jays, or Cooper's Hawks or prairie falcons, or snowy owls or goshawks, or foxes, or possums, or skunks, or raccoons, or garter snakes, or timber rattlers, etc. whose numbers also rise and fall depending on available food. They are completely independent of the cycles of the natural world.
cat-owners-turn-blind-eye-pets-violence
There was a big flap here about the potential for the new Vikings stadium glass to kill migrating birds and what could be done to mitigate that. That kill would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the kill made by domestic cats.
"@Professor Althouse, a whole generation law students are trying to figure out how come you were tough with them but a pushover for a stray cat/That C- student is thinking "if only I had come to class in a furry outfit"
I'd like to see students as inquisitive, self-motivated, and independent as that cat. Any student who brought those qualities to my class received at least a B+, I am sure.
Do you have any idea how bad a student has to be to get a C- in a law school class?
Meade has let her into the house...
Althouse should have acquiesced when he just wanted a best friend. Now he wants strange pussy.
My brother's first cat, Chet, demanded to be fed (wet food) at 4:30 am, which explains why he was out on his own when they got him. He would get on the bureau and knock things off until someone got up. My brother put a wall of heavy objects around the edge of the bureau top.
My sister's Balinese (similar to siamese but lighter hair) put a solid white stripe of hair across the back of her maroon sofa in a year. Hair factories.
@rhhardin I forgot a favorite local predator: Great Horned Owls;and their favorite prey around here: rabbits. If the domestic cats kill off, or just drastically reduce, the rabbit population what happens to the GHO?
As a long time owned-by-cat person, I must say that notwithstanding the fact they exist just to use you, they do add a certain regularity to life. If I sleep past a certain hour, there they are with wet/cold paws to help me to begin my day. The morning routine is unvarying. Stretch, feed the cats, then breakfast. There is the de rigeur afternoon cat crash on couch and bed. And in the evenings when my wife comes home from work: Cat Exuberance!
Just one extreme word of warning: beware the cat door! We installed one a few years ago, still have it, and have had to learn to deal with the occasional wild animal play mate one or the other brings in. Just kill it and eat it, fool! But no. My cats’ relationships with The Wild are more nuanced than that.
I want to sleep on the keyboard, but no one is using it.
If the domestic cats kill off, or just drastically reduce, the rabbit population what happens to the GHO?
They eat the cats.
DBQ, one of my cats had to sleep under the covers in cool weather. When we woke up one morning, she stretched her front paws and snagged something...delicate. I'd rather have paws in my armpit.
@rhhardin "Feral cats are okay with wildlife. As the bird population falls, so does the feral cat population.
It's domestic cats that extinguish the birds. They get fed at home and don't reduce in numbers to match the birds."
How can you admit this and then say " but oh, never mind, the bird/small mammal population needs extraordinary culling" by domestic cats.
This is the first time I have seen you be so inconsistent. Must be your emotional commitment to your cat(s). Understandable.
@DBQ Great for a laugh! I think you are correct too. The GHO is a killing machine.
@DBQ One of our neighbors had peacocks and a GHO took one on and killed it.
Neighbors Siamese would wait in the tree for birds. Saw him leap out and knock one down in flight. A NatGeo moment.
The routine cats have is incredible. How do they know to get up at the exact same time every day? Even where they walk. They'll take a certain route through a room every time they walk through it.
My cat liked to destroy lamps. He was definitely an alpha male. If he wanted my attention (say food time), he'd first knock stuff off of counters/tables. If that didn't work, he'd go for the lamps.
@rhhardin "Feral cats are okay with wildlife. As the bird population falls, so does the feral cat population.
It's domestic cats that extinguish the birds. They get fed at home and don't reduce in numbers to match the birds."
Khesanh How can you admit this and then say " but oh, never mind, the bird/small mammal population needs extraordinary culling" by domestic cats.
It depends on where you live and the density of population. Dunno about rhhardin, but I live in a very rural area. Not a densely packed subdivision. The general population density is about 7 people per square mile in this area with a few small clusters of population. People live on large parcels. 5 to 10 acres is common. Ranch land is counted in the square miles.
So. Domestic cats, if people even have them, are fewer and far between. Not a problem.
We do have issues with feral cats, which are live trapped, and either "fixed" and released, put down or occasionally they find a home for them. However, feral cats don't last very long due to predators (mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, feral dogs, raptors, owls etc) and disease.
We are overrun with vermin like ground squirrels (DIE you little pricks!!!!) mice and other rodents. Birds galore. Believe me. The domestic cats can't possibly make a dent.
They'll take a certain route through a room every time they walk through it.
A neighbor cat made a clear path across my back lawn from frequent use.
I just learned that she is able to climb onto the second story deck. From there she mews loudly, which makes me feel I have to save her. So I let her in, and now, I realize I shouldn't have done that. If she can get up, can she not get down?
I led her out to the front door, but she didn't want to go out. So I stepped out, and she came out with me, and then I went back in and closed the door. I looked back out at her. (The door has a window that's at waist level.) She glared at me, then suddenly leapt up at the window and grabbed the 1/4-inch wide strip of wood at the base of the door window with her 2 paws and hung on while staring at me through the window! She hung on for a good 20 seconds.
It's over. Who was first to welcome your new Viking cat master?
I have one of those, btw. It's hard not to play "top this" with my vault of pics.
Wait for the daily agenda. That's the next step.
Ida is a home wrecker!
@ Althouse 10:48
LOL!!!! You guys are really in trouble now. :-D
Oh you're doomed.
@Khesanh 0802 at 10:08am - when the rabbits disappear, the owls will eat the cats. At least, that's how I lost one many years ago.
How can you admit this and then say " but oh, never mind, the bird/small mammal population needs extraordinary culling" by domestic cats.
Domestic cats are a problem because they don't decline with the food supply. Feral cats are okay. On the other hand domestic cats aren't everywhere so birds survive elsewhere.
The bird/small mammal population reproduces so much over replacement that the numbers you read aren't by themselves significant of anything.
The thing to look at is the stability of the system, not the numbers.
Ann, that cat is informing you semi-politely that you are now the beta female. I guess she has decided that Meade is a good provider, and is moving in on him. Your average Maine coon is a benevolent tyrant, but definitely a tyrant.
Get a very good vacuum. Even a few days of that cat in your house will donate fur that will still be there years later. That adhesive underpelt constantly sheds a bit, and the very fine fur floats. You won't comprehend the implications until you find yourself removing cat fur from your toothbrush.
It's going to be quite interesting when Ida's family arrives back in town.
Populations of prey-predator follow the Lotka–Volterra equation.
AA at 10:48. This cat wants to win the lottery and found a sure-bet.
Buy some good tick spoons (Ticked-Off is good).
No cat skeletons are found in trees. They can get down.
I remembered a funny story about a cat that I think I saw on Reddit. Let me see if I can recap
These people had a stray cat that kept coming to their home. A yellow stripped cat and it was so cute and friendly. They felt sorry for it so they fed it. He would lay on their outdoor furniture and sometimes come into the house. They named him...George (for example). George would disaappear for a few days and then show up. They worried about him each time he went missing and lavished extra love on him when he showed up.
One afternoon they were having a BBQ party at their house with several others in the neighborhood. Along comes George, who they haven't seen in a while. "George! Where have you been?" Another neighbor said NO. That is Ralph he is our cat that stays with us. Yet another person claimed the cat with another name.
Turns out that George had a sweet deal going and was mooching off of half the neighborhood. Visiting for a day or two at one place then moving on to the next. They ALL thought that he was their stray cat.
George was one slick operator.
Blogger mezzrow said...
It's over. Who was first to welcome your new Viking cat master?
Oh yeah. . . . . .
A writer about dogs gets a barn cat.
.From there she mews loudly, which makes me feel I have to save her.
Not sure if it is evolutionary or just coincidentally advantageous to cats, but it's noteworthy how much their mews sound like human babies.
The cat has her own mission, which is to scout the territory, including all levels and all cat-able crevices. She considered getting in that space on the bottom shelf of books, which you see after I took 3 books out to give her room. She got me to do that!
Lots of my feline patients hide in the trash can that's inside of a cabinet in the exam room. Second favorite is to refuse to exit their carrier (which the owners struggled to get them into at home.) Third most chosen space is the baby scale that sits atop the exam table- and when they perch there we do as much of the exam and procedures there as possible.
@ C Stanley Not sure if it is evolutionary or just coincidentally advantageous to cats, but it's noteworthy how much their mews sound like human babies
I have read that it is likely both. Kittens especially have a mew that brings out the protective, maternal feelings in humans. Turning this to their advantage they have developed the sound. It IS hard to resist little kittens mewing.
Our cats, have over the years, become more vocal and seem to communicate. Our 17 yr old cat is especially adept at altering her meows and sounds to suit the situation. When I'm in the kitchen with something that she particularly likes (Brie cheese for example) She will sit, stare directly at me and meow with a rising tone. You can almost hear the question mark in her voice. Meeeeeow???? Can I have some??? A completely different sound when she wants to be petted or plans to jump up into your lap. And yet another one to announce that she has had a very successful litter box experience. Woow! Cutest of all are the silent meows when she is really happy.
She imitates our tone of voice it seems. Maybe I'm just anthropomorphizing the situation. Or perhaps she has finally been successful in teaching us how to listen up!
CStanley, one of my cats would climb onto my shoulder every time I picked her up (putting holes in my shirts and skin on the way up), but at the vet's she would get on top of my head.
Cats find comfort in being in a high place or in a confined space.
Later, Ida was back up on the deck, mewing to get in.
I resisted.
I went out the front door and around in back and called to her, and she came over and proved she could climb down from the deck. She reached over the edge and got some footing near the top of the wooden upright, then quickly walked straight down. She came over to me and seemed quite happy, not at all scared, and certainly not mad at me. She did her usual pet-me moves and I petted her.
You are powerless to resist the floof. You'll see.
The floof is the stuff you'll find someday in your toothbrush. Or your eggs.
I never pictured Althouse as a cat person. Beware if you have anything valuable on a flat surface that the cat can get to. Lamps, jewelry, glass knick-knacks, eyeglasses, etc. The cat can and will knock them to the floor and break them, or play with them so that you can't find them (earrings, watches, etc). Also as previously mentioned, the hair is a great nuisance. And if the cat has any tendency to "go" anywhere besides a litter box, get it out of your house ASAP before you become too attached to it. Same if it has a problem with hairballs/vomiting. I have had many cats and loved them but they all had problems, especially as they got older. However, if you ever have a mouse problem, the cat should take care of it.
Also, I agree that cats should be kept indoors, and have enforced this rule with one exception. I adopted a farm kitten in 2008 that was only six weeks old and very friendly. We took him to our house and he fit in well except he always wanted to go outside. We had him neutered, all shots, etc. but he still tried to get out every time we opened the door. Eventually he started peeing on our furniture so we acquiesced and let him go outside when he wanted to. He stopped peeing in the house and made friends with all of our neighbors. As an adult cat he only came inside to eat and say "hi" or to take shelter from bad weather. I don't know if it was genetics or learned behavior from his early days, but he was not suited to be an indoor cat. After eight years he disappeared, I assume he was either killed by a car or adopted by someone else in the neighborhood.
We have always had a cat or 3. About 13 years ago I got a half-grown kitten from rescue who grew into an enormous Maine Coon. Our cats are house cats, but Milo would NOT stay in the house; don't know what combo of nature/nurture that was, but he was happy to go in and out each day and hell on wheels if he wanted to go out and we refused. He succumbed to kidney disease last year, which is not unusual so his being a mostly outdoor cat did not shorten his life.
I highly recommend compressed pine pellet litter. It's the only litter I've every come across that instantly and completely eliminates that strong ammonia smell from cat pee. There is no odor at all until the pellets all dissolve and it starts to get saturated.
The bird/small mammal population reproduces so much over replacement that the numbers you read aren't by themselves significant of anything.
I have two cats that are both avid hunters. They both are adept at gophers, kangaroo rats, lizards and birds. There has been no appreciable drop in the number of any of those animals over the years.
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