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The Official HTF Cat Thread (1 Viewer)

Kevin Hewell

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1994 ad from the New York Daily News in USA Weekend, for a cat scratching device called the "Scratch'R'Cizer" (had to hold the page in place to get the picture to take); remember anything like this?

(Posting full size so you can see the ad.)

View attachment 163133

I can see a cat ignoring that and going straight for your comforter.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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In October, I had to put down my cat (seen in my profile picture) that had been my buddy for 23 years. It was painful. He had reached the end though and never suffered, for which I am grateful. My wife, seeing my depression booked us an appointment at a cat shelter and we ended up adopting two new beasts. One an orange kitten, that looks like my old friend, and a two year old that reached out and grabbed my wife as she passed her cage. That was that, when my wife opened the cage the cat immediately embraced my wife and she was coming home with us.

For most of my life I was a dog guy. I am just a huge animal lover anyway, but moving into my previous house, cats started showing up and attempting to move in the day we bought the house. So, we had three cats move in, several others come to visit, and I even woke up from an afternoon nap on my couch at one point with a cat I had never met cuddled up with me.

In this new house there has been a cat that has been coming to visit. He is quite friendly but looks well taken care of so I am sure he belongs to one of my neighbors.

All the cats that moved in with us were adult cats, so they were all already well behaved and quite smart. I never had to do anything to house break them or anything like that. They knew exactly how to behave during cocktail hour and did not do anything out of line. They also all got along well because they all moved to my house from the same neighbor's house where they had lived together. So, really they brought their bags from next door and just said, "We're staying."

So, getting these two new beasts, I wondered how much I would need to do to get them to adjust. I was surprised to find out that the orange kitten came here all the way from Kuwait. All of his papers and passport arrived in the mail about a week after he moved in.

So, the energy level and speed with which these guys move was an adjustment. Also the leaping ability and their interest in climbing on and exploring everything was an eye opener. Basically, I had never "cat proofed" a house before and realized with these two I would have to. Not major but, our other cats never bothered anything, these two watch everything you do and everything you touch they assume is a toy. I actually had a toy emergency at one point and ran to the pet store to buy them a bunch of toys because they were taking everything they could get their paws on. I think at one point they had collected every pen and pencil in the house.

They are also way too observant, as if I do something, they rapidly start attempting it. The kitten was fascinated with me turning on faucets and has a thing for water. So, he watched me turn the water on and quickly discovered he too could do that. I came down one morning to find him in his bathroom shower attempting to work the knobs to turn the water on. He is very much enamored with the bathtub in his bathroom. Frustrated with the water not coming on he began swatting the faucet as if he wanted to punish it.

Now, being that he was just a kitten, I figured I might have to train him to use a litterbox. Nope, first night here he was following me around the house as if I was his tour guide and he follows me into his bathroom. He sees me using the toilet, looks at the litterbox, gets in it and uses his box. He has used it ever since. No accidents, no intentional going to the bathroom somewhere else.

It's been a fun ride getting to know these two. The first night was really interesting because I thought the two year old cat would be the one to adjust quickly and that the kitten may be a struggle. It was the opposite. The kitten adjusted within 5 minutes, the two year old vanished into the house and I could not find her until she appeared again the following afternoon.
 
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midvalleyguy

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buttsniff.jpg
 

Winston T. Boogie

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So, first Christmas for the kitten that lives with me now. I was fairly concerned with that taking place. When I put the tree up, he climbed it. Perched in the branches near the top and sat there for about an hour. Added the lights, which he found fascinating. Told my wife we should wait a bit before putting ornaments on the tree and preferably do it without him watching. Unfortunately, these new cats watch all that you do and then, they attempt it. So, best case was that he not see the ornaments going on the tree.

He came in when there were a few ornaments left and observed my wife removing them from a box and putting them on the bottom of the tree. He sat and watched this calmly. About an hour later I walk into the room with the tree and he is sitting on a gift box gently lifting an ornament off the tree and much to my surprise, dropping it into an empty cardboard box that was sitting under the tree. I shooed him away but by the following day, he had removed all of the ornaments that were within his easy reach on the bottom of the tree and dropped them all into the carboard box. He then would occasionally go over to the box and give the contents a stir with his paw.

The ornaments he removed, I did not put back on the tree. Noticing though that he was attempting to go a bit higher to remove more ornaments, I took the box he was using and put it in a closet. Interestingly, no further ornaments have been removed. He will occasionally reach up and touch one, but the pure mayhem I was concerned about, thankfully, has not happened.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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Thankfully, the two year old female has left the Christmas stuff alone. She seems uninterested in it. The worst Christmas issue so far has been garland my wife hung from the big wooden beams in the great room and kitchen area. The kitten loves to play Tarzan and go swinging around hanging from the stuff. So, that I adjusted so it is now up high on the beams and not dangling down where he can get at it to do his Johnny Weissmuller impression.

He has got to try to at least touch everything I put up. I hung a couple sets of skis with pole on a wall and he just had to paw them. Both before I hung them and then after they were on the wall. I swear they follow me around to get ideas about what they can do next.
 

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