Life with cats, It's All Your Fault! division

[truepenny]

Catzilla is a young cat (four this summer), and like young cats everywhere, he occasionally gets a fit of the Mad Kitty Dashes. (Although, we should note for the record, this is an occupational hazard not limited to young cats. The Elder Saucepan, who is fifteen, just came gallumphing through the dining room like a crazed wombat.) Last night, as I was doing my rounds prior to going to bed, Catzilla was seized by the Mad Kitty Dashes and launched himself: from the front hall! through the living room!! and directly into my shin!!!

Graceful and dignified, the cat is an elegant companion.

It hurt, let me add, like a son of a bitch, and this morning, I have a bruised area slightly smaller than a half-dollar on my right shin.

That's consequence number one.

Consequence number two is that Catzilla has decided I am an Abuser of Cats.

I give the cats treats just before bed, partly for their delight, and partly as a way of conducting roll call, to make sure that nobody has gotten his stupid fluffy self shut in the pantry or something like that. Ironically, since Catzilla is the one I'm worried about, he's the one most likely not to bother with showing up. But he usually appears, and when he doesn't, he's almost always under the dining room table. Last night, he did not show up. I went downstairs. No Catzilla under the table. I searched the house. No Catzilla. I crawled around looking under everything that could be looked under, and finally found him under the living room sofa. I went to give him his treats, and he fled--You kicked me!!! It's All Your Fault!!!--from under the sofa to under the piano. Then from under the piano into the kitchen. From the kitchen up the back stairs into the TV room and under the futon, and all the way with that particular flattened slink that cats use when they feel that they are being persecuted.

Finally, under the futon, he decided he was probably safe, and I was able to give him his treats. But he didn't come out, and he didn't come visit us in bed (which he sometimes does and sometimes doesn't), and he did not come get me up this morning, which he almost always does if he feels I'm sleeping too late. (There is a reason Catzilla's other internet handle is Bossycat.) When I came downstairs, he watched me with an accusing green gaze from the window sill. You kicked me. It's All Your Fault. He did come to see about breakfast, but we had a terrible setback when we ran into each other again, although mercifully not nearly as hard.

You kicked me! said Catzilla, skittering sideways. It's All Your Fault!

::facepalm:: said I.

He did come have breakfast, although he came the long way through the upstairs hall and down the back stairs so that he could sneak to his food bowl behind me, and he has come bouncing into the study to check the view out the window. But he zipped away from me just now as I went to put out food and water for the feralistas, so clearly it is still All My Fault.

I'll know I'm forgiven when he comes to walk across my keyboard again.

Comments

[cowansfaith.livejournal.com]

We are owned by a Maine Coon cat. She's almost two years old. I've seen that creature spontaneously race up vertical surfaces and flip.

She's our first (And last!) long-haired cat. She lets us brush her upper body, but if the brush touches her lower side she flips out. So she mats something awful. Last week my husband was trying to clip her mats while I was trying to hold her still and she was trying to kill us both. In all the fracus my husband snipped skin instead of fur. It was three days before she dignified him with her presence, and she's very much his cat.

[miss55.livejournal.com]

Catzilla must be a real treasure. While no cats reside here at present, I have fond memories of cats of equal arrogance.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

If they run into a stationary object, They Meant To Do That. If they run into a human, it is Not Possible that it is the cat's fault, therefore it must be the human who is at fault.

[umbralin.livejournal.com]

That's what humans are for: Cats need someone to blame when things go wrong. Well, that and food and scratchies.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I explain Naomi's modest reticence by explaining how I kicked her as a kitten. (she was in the middle of the room in the dark, and I bumped her with a bare foot)

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

My former roommate could not understand why Mildmay, who was then almost two, never seemed to make any special effort to get out of his way when he was walking from room to room.

"The problem," I explained, "is that he ain't been kicked in the head enough yet."

This got me a look of horror, as if, in my spare time, I deliberately went about kicking cats in the head. I then had to explain that cats do not realize that the bipeds cannot see, smell or ambulate as well as they can, therefore the occasional, accidental kick in the head is inevitable, at least until the cats learn the avoidance techniques.

Unfortunately, learning the techniques does require a period of shunning the biped.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

See, now, it could be worse: my cat waits until other people are around to pull this. I call it her "When we're alone, she beats me *mercilessly*" face.

P.S. - I feed that cat hand-pureed delicacies and provide her with a silk pillow to shed on.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

It's your fault. If you cared--really cared, in a sincere and whole-hearted way--about his happiness and well-being, you wouldn't have been there where he wanted was compelled to run. He'll forgive you before the heat-death of the universe, or at least next Wednesday, especially if the weather turns cool at night.

I am currently In Discussions with The Dread Pirate Roberts and Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd over their conversion of the linen closet shelves to cat lounges, to the detriment of the contents of the linen closet, which interfere with this conversion and are therefore subject to summary ejection by said felines. As the DPR is a lousy negotiator (when your basic approach is Touch Me and One of Us Will Die, Monkey, you don't have a lot of maneuvering room, and Mr. Floyd is a shy and reticent soul, talks have not made much headway. I expect to find a sheet and a couple of pillowcases on the bathroom floor when I get home, and possibly a towel as well.

[alex51324.livejournal.com]

Give up and put a cat bed in the linen closet, fidelio. Find another place for the linens. (that's what I did, at Old House where I had a linen closet. Now I don't have one, and the cats instead occupy the sink. And an ottoman that I left at the top of the stairs for a few weeks pending locating a better place for it. By the time I thought of it again, it had been designated a Cat Place and now cannot be moved.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

They've already rearranged the top of my bureau for their convenience; I am keeping the linen closet for the sheets and towels. It will be a long war, but unlike the Soviet Union, they can at least be distracted with 'nip.

They don't want a cat bed; they want to stretch out, long and langourous, on the shelves, the way they stretch out on the living room mantle, the treads of the stairs, and any other spot that allows for long, luxurious lolling, especially if it's at a commanding height that allows them to sneer at certain other, older, fatter cats, cats who have less lift in their leaps.

[alex51324.livejournal.com]

Oh, well in *that* case, putting a cat bed in the linen closet should ensure that the leave it alone....

[pameladean]

We have a lot of nice golden hardwood floors. Aristophanes is pretty much the same color. He is an underfoot cat par excellence. I am amazed, amazed that he has not been seriously hurt and that none of us has gotten a concussion or a broken limb from preventing such serious injury. He is almost seventeen.

He saves his really ostentatious behavior for anybody who messes with his mats, however.

P.

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

The best training method for reigning in a cat's tendency to randomly take off running is a big friendly Labrador. I had the Dumbest Cat Ever (tm) but she totally learned that random running from place to place in the house meant that gigantic ball of enthusiastic fuzz would be right behind her trying to figure out what they were chasing. She'd take 2 or 3 steps and thens suddenly stop.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Oh Catzilla, no.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Fluffy kitty! Catzilla says plangently.

(He's sleeping on my desk. I would seem to have been forgiven.)

[heresluck]

Graceful and dignified, the cat is an elegant companion.

As you know, this sentence gets a regular workout around here as well. ::facepalm::