Yes, Dougy plops down on my computer desk every day. Mostly, he plops down right where my mouse hand is, and I endure kitty butt on my hand. Or fluffy tail. Tee hee! (It isn’t all hell.)
Most days, we work it out, but today Dougy didn’t want to give up the space he took from me. So I tormented him with attention!
Poor Dougy gets no respect! Kitty tears rip at our heart. :'(
Andy still needs a dose of medicine in the morning. He may be in much better shape than last February, blood pressure down, but he still needs that medicine!
That’s the problem. Each time I catch him to give him the medicine, the little fellow learns a bit more about, well, escaping or avoiding capture. He is a smart little cat!
But there still is one thing he can’t avoid: curiosity. Open the front door, and both cats have to go see what’s out there. If I place myself on the dining room side, Andy’s as good as trapped! If I’m on the kitchen side, he has a good chance of avoiding me for a bit longer.
ROUND ONE: Well, I’m on the dining room side of a curious cat trying to see what’s outside the front door. Better stop for the moment. Andy may be seconds away from his medicine!
Andy won this round…!
Dang! He was on the window ledge instead of at the door. He slipped past me, and the game goes into Round 2.
ROUND TWO: OK. I’m in no mood for BS this morning, so I brought out the big guns for Round 2: Greenies treats! Shake the bag and Andy came running. Of course, so did Dougy, who got between Andy and me.
I got up, moved over to the spot where I usually give the boys treats. I shook the bag again to remind the little darlings what was in store for them. Dougy plowed right into the treats; Andy held back because I was too close to the treats. He’s worked out the distance from him to my extended arm, and absolutely wasn’t about to get any closer than that extended arm plus a foot for reaction time!
ROUND THREE: I scootched the treats away from me, closer to a corner where Andy’d be a bit more blocked. I sweetened the treat area with a few more treats to make sure Dougy (eating from the first pile and, of course, right in my way, blocking Andy from me) wasn’t a factor in the game. I let Andy nom away on the new pile of treats, then reached out to pet Dougy. That put my hand closer to Andy than the one foot safety zone. I grabbed and caught him!
Andy gave me “The Look”, the one he gives me that tells me he is properly terrorized by my power and size, that he’s given up…until he senses an opening. Don’t let “The Look” fool you! It is his route to freedom every time I fall for it.
Andy is a good kitty.
Yeah, sure! Good for a chase! So I caught the rascal, wrapped him in the towel, I got most of the medicine in his mouth, but he jerked his head a little and had medicine on his chin, too. Most of it got in. Yesterday…not so much. You do what you can, but don’t try to make up doses if some doesn’t get in. Tomorrow — there will be a tomorrow, Andy — I will try to hold his head a bit more securely.
Andy will get his medicine! Let’s see. Giving Andy medicine took from 3 AM till a bit after 5 yesterday. Today it took from 3 AM till…6:05. I’m not sure, but the cat seems to be winning.
Andy is a suspicious little cat, and doesn’t readily come to play, unlike his brother Dougy, who’s always up for play. Because of Andy’s quiet nature, any time he shows interest in something or wants to play, I definitely encourage him!
Most of the toys Dougy likes, Andy doesn’t. One toy is almost exclusively Andy’s: the rod with the multi-colored ribbon on it, the Cat Charmer (so it’s called)!
I lead Andy into temptation…
I have his interest!
I leave this toy out because it is kind of fun to see that Andy’s been playing with it, specifically, it’s never in the same place I last saw it! Andy picks it up and carries it around.
Most mornings, I wake up, and it’s on the floor by my bed. “Come play with me,” Andy tries to tell me. “Now!”
=(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)= =(^+^)=
We played a little with the toy, then went our separate ways. Andy came back, though, and crawled into a favorite hidey hole, the box across from my computer desk.
Andy, watching me from the box across from my computer desk.
He knows I still have his favorite toy on my desk…!
I accidentally let in a miller when I took out the trash this morning. The boys may have been sleepy up to that point (a bit after 4 AM), but the moment Andy first noticed a live moth in the room, mayhem ensued.
Yep, mayhem ensued!
Andy chased the miller to the top of the cat tree, where he pounced and pinned it. The carpet on the cat tree apparently gave the miller just enough wiggle room, though, to escape my little predator’s razor claws of death. Mrow!
They call this “foreshadowing”!
Off it flew, a bit battered but — better believe it — a bit smarter!
But not smart enough! Dougy spotted the miller on the wall by the dining room table, and chased it onto the table, where it landed on top of a precariously piled stack of periodicals.
Dougy, no petite cat, then prowled around on the tabletop till his perilous pawhold on a clutter of papers and things yielded to an opportunity to knock things over or to pounce the prey he and Andy positively would eat raw if possible!
POW! Another pouncing claw of death descended on the pitiful, poor prey!
But this time, Dougy caught the little bugger! And promptly chewed it up and swallowed it. Right in front of Andy! Andy was scandalized, though I’m sure he wouldn’t save a nibble or two for his brother either. Not if that nibble was a juicy miller moth! Nope! Not a juicy miller!
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States license.
Attribution: Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org
The miller is the adult form of the notorious garden pest, the army cutworm, so I approve of this recidivist behavior in my cats: Once a killer, always a killer, eh!?
Good boys! The miller slipped into the house slightly after 4 AM, and the boys chased, pounced, captured, and ate it, all within five minutes! You get the next one, Andy. Promise!
Just a quiet Sunday with my cat, Dougy…
Don’t worry! Andy came over for lovin’ after Dougy got his daily dose. My job — and theirs! — is done for the time being.
It’s overcast and cool today, the sort of day you can get loads done in the yard. Or nothing done inside! I decided to give myself the inside option.
The boys, too, are in a quiet mood. 
Andy terrorized the place earlier this morning, trying to “chase” a bird that flew over the house from the bird feeder on the lane. He used me as a stepping stone up to the window ledge by my computer. I guess he saw the bird again because his tail was twitching furiously!
Dougy chose a less vigorous activity after he tore up the place earlier grabbing under the recliner to catch the feather toy I flipped under there. The top of the cat carriage still has its attractions for the boys, but Dougy’s the one snoozing there today.
Here’s another photo, one that I liked because of its impressionistic presentation of Dougy on the cat carriage:
If you fail at taking a good photo, call the bad ones “art”! 😉
It took me just short of 15 minutes to round up Andy and Dougy yesterday to get them to their morning appointment for a summer haircut. We were not happy!
Dougy on top; Andy below.
On a happy note, though, they behaved well at the groomer’s, so they still are welcome kitties!
Today I take the boys in for their summer haircuts at the pet groomer’s.
Dougy probably will come home scalped because he didn’t cooperate with me when I brushed him, and I didn’t have good control of the many mats now in his hair. Shame on us both! Andy will do better since his hair tends not to mat so much.
Speaking of agendas, some time back, I posted a few photos of a political mailer Andy took a fancy to. He played on it, he guarded it with his body, he chewed on it, he chased Dougy away when Dougy tried to have fun with it, too.
After Andy chewed it up pretty thoroughly, I tossed it out. Notice my caption at the time, below the photo:
“#&%^# cat!” Andy (most likely) slipped the mailer out of the trash once again, and has been playing with it. It is a bit more worn out now. Maybe I can finally toss it one day, shredded to pieces.
Then, today, I noticed something curiously familiar on the floor in the bathroom:
Someone, most likely Andy, wasn’t quite ready to give up on the Smith mailer!
Bad kitty! I will find a spot in the trash under the sink where this will disappear until I bag the trash for pick up tomorrow morning!
Congressman Adrian Smith of Nebraska’s 3rd District
Congressman Smith won the primary Tuesday, with 68% of the Republicans voting for him to run as the Republican candidate for another term. My cat Andy seems to like him as well, though his agenda is not political.
Not much, but there was snow on my car this morning. Mostly, it rained overnight. And it’s barely above freezing at 3:14 AM.
The only safe flowers here this morning are on my screen saver!
On the >whew!< side of things, I got up around a quarter till three this morning, and got right down to business with the boys. Mission accomplished by 2:58 AM!
It took next to zero effort to catch Andy, who trapped himself on the cat tree when he tried yesterday's trick of jumping into the horizontal tube, with the intent to pop out the other side.
We've seen that move before kitty! I put my hand over the escape end, and Andy was mine! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!
While I had Andy wrapped up in the towel to give him his heart murmur medicine, I decided it’d be a good time to administer the flea-tick-ear mite-intestinal hookworm-roundworm fluid, the standard prophylaxis as we go into the warm months. [“Warm months” isn’t meant to be ironic…!]
Catching Dougy was a no-brainer, and he soon had his dose, too!
Even though the boys are indoor cats, an infected mosquito could slip in when I enter or exit the apartment or through a cat-damaged (ahem!) screen.
The boys hate the stuff, though I suspect what bothers them is the alcohol smell. They don’t suffer any side effects from it other than hurt pride from being captured and dosed. Dosed, they going into hiding, so there will be no new kitty photos today!
I noticed yesterday the apple trees out back are in bloom. I was going to film them this morning, but last night’s snow-freezing rain may have fixed that plan. I’ll see when the sun comes up. 🙁
I don’t know what’s gotten into the cat brothers today, but they are driving me nuts!
Andy chasing Dougy; Dougy chasing Andy. Random thumps and crashes. Somebody’s climbing the screen in the dining room! A sound like Cain murdering Abel; another like the ghost of Abel murdering Cain!
GEEZ! Cut it out, boys! Someone will get hurt! [Dougy calmly walks by with a tuft of Andy fur in his mouth…!]
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Finally, we settled down, though Andy’s sneaking around, either looking for trouble or trying to spot it before it finds him. Now, he’s resting near me, a neutral spot both use when trying to make best use of this monster they live with.
The monster they live with.
I may be old, but I DO have a purpose!
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
My late mother was a teacher. She noted children were most wound up on days a cold front rolled it. Yep! Guess what’s happened here today. (I just answered my question about what’s gotten into them, too. Neat.)
The rainbow behind this cloud is that Andy, the sick one with the heart murmur and the daily dose of medicine, ran like the wind, kept up with his brother Dougy, and was none the worse for it.
He has a veterinarian’s appointment in May to evaluate how he’s doing, but my unofficial evaluation is he’s doing quite well indeed!