Not a Good Samaritan - The Great Chinchilla Incident

I know some cats can be jerks but one particular bedraggled looking Chinchilla that suddenly appeared in my garden one day was a major jerk. To give you some background to this pronouncement, he was the cat that, on the second day of bringing home a very timid and beloved rabbit named Fluffy, this cat jumped over the fence, chased Fluffy. The terrified Fluffy ran as fast as he could but the cat caught Fluffy and bit into his neck. With my son and I screaming and trying to help, I was finally able to rescue Fluffy. Sadly, the next day Fluffy literally died of fright. So it is fair to say that I did not have a high opinion of said cat.

The Great Chinchilla Incident began on a seemingly uneventful day when I went to a shopping centre close by. It was not an area that I normally frequented.  I saw there was a notice, in the window of the milk bar, with a photograph of a cat stating ‘Missing Chinchilla cat, red collar, Reward given if found’ including a telephone number.  I realised the cat looked just like the hideous white cat from over the back fence; the murderer of Fluffy.  It all made sense. The cat had only recently appeared and was in a rather unkempt state.  This was my opportunity to not only reunite the cat with its owner, but also to get rid of it from our neighbourhood (and claim a reward). I telephoned a most relieved woman- yes her cat was still missing.  We agreed to a plan of action- I was to cage the beast and call her as soon as her cat was captured.   It sounded easy, but as soon as I approached this monster of a cat with a towel, he became a hissing, scary bundle of claws and matted white fur.  He was quick and mean; darting into bushes and shrubs to evade capture. Eventually I did manage to corner him, cover him with the towel and shove him into a cage where he continued to growl and snarl for what seems like hours until the woman came to claim him. 

The owner had brought a friend with her.  The owner cried when she saw the cat; quite convinced that it was her long lost, darling pet.  Unfortunately, the cat seemed less than pleased at the reunion and was just as surly to the poor woman.  After a time, her friend kindly ventured that maybe it was not her darling, Snowball but the woman remained resolute- it was her Snowball. This should have been a happy ending to the Snowball story but it was not to be.

The very next day a notice arrived in my letterbox ‘Missing Chinchilla cat, red collar. Reward given if found.’ with a completely different phone number.  I realised then that I thought I was being a Good Samaritan when in fact I had kidnapped my neighbour’s cat and handed it over to a complete stranger. 

Luckily, I had kept the telephone number of the woman who claimed to be the monster cat’s owner.  I was too embarrassed to admit my mistake and own up to my neighbour who was now missing her cat.  So I contacted the impostor to sort it out.  After all, it was partly her fault that she claimed the cat that wasn’t hers. 

When I rang the impostor, she was fast coming to the conclusion that the hissing monster sitting in her lounge room may not be her darling Snowball after all.   I don’t know how it was all resolved: suffice to say that the hideous cat appeared over the back fence once again, perhaps with increased malevolence towards me. There was no Thank You card or reward in my letterbox from either of the would-be owners.

Did I learn my lesson? Probably not...await the next exciting episode of my failed Good Samaritan attempts.

Top 3 Annoying Habits of Bob

It is hard to decide which of Bob's annoying habits would be in the top 3 list as there are so many to choose from but I will give it my best try.

The first one would be his attempts to guide me into the bathroom (the place where I feed him)whenever I go near the area. Let me tell you, if it is not obvious from his photo, Bob is a big boy, a big 8 kilogram boy so when he is barrelling into my legs at speed it is no mean feat retaining my balance. The trouble is I live in a small two bedroom unit and the only way to get into my bedroom or the office or the toilet is to pass by the bathroom. And every time there was a thundering of paws heading my way as Bob tries to persuade me to feed him again!

His second most annoying habit is when I am most vulnerable stark naked and wet coming out of the shower. That is when Bob pushes his way into the bathroom letting in cold air and finding this the ideal opportunity to brush his furry tail and his wet nose on my wet legs. I only have a mere moment of feeling clean and fur free before it all starts again. I have considered shutting the door but this results in constant miaowing and scratching at the newly painted doors.

The third top annoying habit is resulting in higher energy bills and a cold grumpy cat-mother. Trying to do my bit in reducing energy costs and living in a smaller space than previous years I anticipated the reduction in my energy bills by closing off the bedroom and the office. Unfortunately it appears that Bob sees that as restriction of his freedoms and takes every opportunity to rush into the unused rooms when I open the door and he sits under the bed or desk refusing to move. This leaves me with three options - leave the door closed and Bob with no toilet access, leave the door open and the heater at the same temperature (and me freezing) or leave the door open and crank up the heater. My only trick to get him to move is to put some food in his bowl which maybe his intention all along.

The Final Straw

Bob the Wonder Cat has had a challenging few months with me preparing to sell my house. First there were the painters and being moved from room to room, then the bench top people making horrifying noises as they cut the stone bench tops to size and then more painting of the kitchen with doors moved around and in and out of the house in various stages of painting.

He wasn't happy but he coped.

This was followed by inspections by potential buyers when he had to suffer the indignity of a harness and the stress of driving around in the car for an hour so people could trample around in his territory.

He was patient, he was tolerant but then there was the last straw.

Having sold the house and organising to move into a smaller place I decided to sell the additional cane lounge suite that wouldn't fit. When the buyer arrived Bob was curious as to what was happening and had to be shut out the front of the house so he didn't get in the way.

When the door was finally opened revealing a virtually empty room and the absence of his favourite chair that was a perfect suntrap in the afternoon, Bob looked at me as if to say 'What the....' before collapsing defeated on the floor. Sorry Bob!

Circus Performer in a Cat Suite

I have recently discovered that my cat Bob (the wonder cat) is a Circus performer. I knew from early on in his adoption that he was an unusual cat. First off there was his colour. Not ginger but described on his adoption papers as Champagne. Then his eyes are the most incredible bright orange colour. And the talking, he never stops. But his kitten tendencies I took for a big woosie cat that never grew up. I didn’t realise it was limbering up for his next Circus performance.

In spite of his ‘pudginess’, according to his unkind Vet , Bob is able to leap up on almost anything, not matter how high or how precarious, like the top of a flat screen TV or his quite unstable scratching tower. Not so usual I hear you say and, to be honest, I had the same opinion until two feats of acrobatics/gymnastics that, in all my contact with crazy pets and in particular cats, I had ever seen.

The first I thought was simple cardboard box obsession that is a common condition of your common and garden variety of house cat. One of my cats, Zappy, the mad black cat was dangerous when it came to boxes. He would lurch and hide underneath any stray box ready to strike when a tender bit of bare ankle came near. I had an aversion to boxes for a while until Zappy went to live across the road with my neighbours, which is a whole other story of betrayal and lost love that needs its own blog.

Anyhoo back to Bob. Bob loves to sit in boxes, which is sometimes a bit of a squeeze. But what he does that is unusual is that he loves to take a flying leap into the box so that it slides across the polished wooden floor for a metre or so.  He also loves balls of any kind; ping pong balls, cat toys with bells inside, balls of aluminium foil and, as it happens, apple-shaped stress balls.  Bob, in fact, is not just a Circus Performer but also an accomplished soccer player.  Any balls hit his way will be swiftly and expertly returned.

His next Circus feat was in relation to pursuing a favourite round device; the apple-shaped stress ball. He was chasing it around the room, into the kitchen, underneath the rug, skittering along the wooden floor until it became wedged under sofa. He stalked off in disgust into the kitchen until I took pity on him and dislodged the ball and rolled it along the floor in his direction. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, the swing lid of the bin was sitting on the floor between Bob and his object of desire. This did not stop Bob as he hurtled towards the ball and straight through the lid. Which I shouldn’t mention did get a little stuck around his rather extensive middle. TA DAH! …Another Circus feat to add to his repertoire.

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. 

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Catastrophic Cat Naps

Okay it is probably not as dramatic as ‘Catastrophic’ but I have to now restrict my naps to a ‘cat-free’ zone of the house or to be more specific a Bob (cat) free zone.

                To explain this strange turn of events, I have to take you back in time. I was with my long term partner who was a snorer of epic proportions; I was working full time and attending 6 classes a week after work to complete my yoga teacher training. So in summary sleep deprived with too much to do…hey that sounds like now…anyway I would regularly fall asleep on the train on the ride home after my classes.

                One fateful night I lapsed into a semi-coma only to be woken with a start, nothing unusual there, except as I opened my eyes everyone, without a word of a lie, literally everyone in the train carriage was staring at me.  To this day, I am not sure what I did or said but I do know that I tried my best not to fall asleep again for the rest of the journey.

                Since then I have learnt from various friends that I not only snore but I also whimper, cry and talk in my sleep which leads to my current dilemma.

                Bob, I may have mentioned, is a chatty cat. In fact, except when he is asleep, he ‘talks’ all the time. He even mutters away when he is eating. He particularly likes to respond to me when I talk to him.

                So when it comes to cat naps on the couch Bob takes up his usual position on the top of the back cushion. But every time I fall asleep, I am woken by Bob ‘talking’ to me. After a couple of incidents of interrupted cat napping, I realised that I was probably making some sort of noise or taking in my sleep and Bob was dutifully responding to my apparent questions.

So sadly, cat napping and my cat do not mix!....



For more mad animal stories see my website www.madanimals.com.au

Cat (Bob) Facts

Just to let my cat Bob know that I don’t need his help with…

• Tying my shoe laces
• Sewing on buttons
• Typing a report on my laptop
• Using a computer mouse
• Rearranging pens on my desk
• Filing paperwork
• Preparing food
• Licking the butter off my toast
• Emptying out the litter tray
• Wrapping presents
• Getting things out of cupboards
• Getting food out of the fridge
• Stacking the dishwasher
• Talking on the phone
• Watching TV

In fact, anything where an inquisitive face, a playful paw or a flicking tail will probably make the task almost impossible.

Pity Bob can’t read…

For more stories see my website- www.madanimals.com.au

Challenges of Dog vs Cat Ownership/Slavery

Having just been conned (by the cat) into getting another animal, I am reminded of the differences and the challenges of both.

Bob the wonder-cat

Cats, I now recall, cannot easily be confined. Pretty much anything is within their reach - bench tops, tops of fridges, windows, curtains, cupboards. They will find ways to access food (particularly your own) that you may not have thought possible. All the ‘safeguards’ I put in place for Bruce the wonder-dog are no match for Bob the wonder-cat.

 I forgot that with Bruce (and other dogs) as long as it was out of his jumping range, I could prepare food, eat food, have a drink, open a cupboard, write on my laptop or use the phone or pretty much do anything without a furry face or paw in the way.  In fact with a cat, no task is sacred. I have had to already resort to ‘Bob-free’ zones in the house when his curiosity has reached the point of becoming more intrusive.

With Bruce, and probably dogs in general, the challenges were different.  The noise from his feet on tiles and floorboards was annoying, but at least you could tell where he was as opposed to Bob sneaking and jumping over my back onto my keyboard without warning.  Dog also bark. They bark, if they are like Bruce, at nothing in particular and usually when I was in the middle of a conversation on the phone or working on a tricky passage in one of my books.  Dogs can be contained inside or outside as long as they are not escapologists.  A friend of mine has been cursed with three dogs that can escape under fences, through doors and even between the most impossibly small gaps in gates. Bruce, fortunately, was too lazy to want to escape; he knew that there was a steady supply of food and warm places to sloth at my house to ever be inclined to run away.

                Dogs seem also to have less delicate sensibilities than a cat; cats would not, as a rule, relish getting wet or muddy or rolling in putridly evil smelling substances.  Felines would, however, enjoy sharing with the family the bloodied corpses of their latest killing spree and, if possible, to spread them in a thin and even layer across your best piece of furniture or expensive rug for the greatest effect.

                Both cats and dogs have a knack of finding the most inappropriate, least washable surfaces when leaving a deposit of disgusting substance that can severely challenge the tolerance, the stomach and the housekeeping skills of their owners/slaves. And why is it that these ‘deposits’ have to be dealt with when you are just about to eat?

I will leave you with a quote from a recent face book conversation with a friend when Bob decided he wanted to use the keyboard as some sort of disco dance floor

“…see you later, danger, danger Bob has discovered the lap top!!!!

we33333333333333333333./*hg/….”

So if you are ever having a conversation with me via email, text or face book and my response seems to be indecipherable, you could be conversing with Bob and not me.

For more mad animal stories see my website – www.madanimals.com.au