"That's Not Tuna!"

From time to time I like to do some embroidery projects (assuming I have a free second to myself). Embroidering when you have a kitten is not an easy thing to do. You take out your embroidery floss and you INSTANTLY have a kitten magnet. I start my stitches and as I am trying to get the thread pulled through to the other side, the kitten attacks (with rather sharp claws, mind you) so the task suddenly becomes impossible. I almost had to give up. Suddenly, Jerry comes to the rescue. He calls out to her and offers her food. However she gets half way across the room, then see's the string and comes back for it. Food didn't work, so he offers her something more enticing. "Does Cleo want Tuna?" He asks her. Instantly she runs to her food bowl, excited about getting something special. Then Jerry does the unthinkable. He puts down regular cat food in her bowl. She takes one look at the food, looks back at him, looks at the food, looks at him, then walks back to me, huffing. She was angry at poppa. Jerry would reach out to pet her and she'd snub him. It was clear that little kitty was upset about being stiffed some tuna. This went on for about an hour, Cleo sulking near my legs and giving her poppa the stink eye. Eventually, Jerry relented and gave her the real deal. He put tuna in her food bowl. And poppa learned his lesson that day. Never stiff the kitten.

Revenge on the Fan

Cleo is very curious by nature. She loves to investigate things. She is the perfect example of the phrase "Curiosity killed the cat." For example, take our fan. It's tall, high powered, has a safety guard on it, we use it to circulate air in the apartment. Of course, the way our apartment is set up, we have to have the fan near our couch. And since it's a tall one, that puts the fan blades just above the couch back. Well, one day Cleo decided that she was going to investigate this strange device that blows air around and messes up her fur. She taps the safety guard around the fan blades a few times and almost manages to knock it over. However, she can't seem to get enough momentum to do it. This seems to anger the kitty. Especially since when it rocks back it goes away from her, then comes towards her when it rocks forward. So when the fan is standing still, Cleo reaches out and decides to try and bite it. Lo and behold, her lower jaw gets stuck in the safety guard. I'm not surprised that she got scared and started flailing. Her jaw came unstuck rather quickly and when I took a look at it, she was uninjured. But it just seemed to anger her even more. Now, Cleo is a smart kitty. She watches how momma and poppa do things and tries to mimic it. It didn't take her that long to figure out how to hit the power button on the fan to turn it on and off. So the next day she reaches up and gives the power button a good smack with her paw and the fan turns off. And this is why you should never make kitty mad.

The Storm of Doom

Cats generally hate loud noises. Cleo is no exception to this. Whether it's wind rattling the windows or the snow plow going by or even just a loud noise on the street, Cleo will run and hide in one of many places. I can usually coax her out with some treats after I find her. As her momma, I know where she hides. Or so I thought. One night (on my birthday!), we had a really large storm roll through. Wind, lightning, thunder, the works.

Still from a video. Sorry it's so bad. This is from the storm that night.

It was loud and windy and lightning was everywhere. We were lucky that we didn't lose power that night, it was so bad. I spent some time videotaping the storm with my camera, but after a bit I realized that Cleo must be scared. So I went and got her treat box and called out to her. When you offer this cat ANYTHING food related, you had better watch out. When I got no response, I got a little worried and started to look for her. I looked under the bed. Empty. I looked in the bathtub. Empty. I looked in her litter box (it's one of those big covered ones) Empty. I started getting even more worried at that point. Was she stuck somewhere? Is she hurt? Did she get outside? I looked around even more, and the more I couldn't find her, the more worried I got. Finally, I looked over at the pile of cushions on the couch and saw a little cat tail sticking out from them. I called out to her again and little head poked out from the pile of cushions.

Add caption

She stayed there the entire storm and didn't even budge after it passed. She just went to sleep in her little den. Needless to say, I was relieved to see that she was ok. However, that day I learned that there is no such think as a "usual" hiding place for this kitty.

Litter Training

We all know that cats need to use a litter box when they are indoors. Most of the time, when you get a cat from the shelter, they are already trained. You just show then where the box is and they're good to go. However, things were different with Cleo. When we got her, she wasn't even weaned yet. So when the time came that she could finally go to the bathroom on her own, we had to teach her how to use the litter box. We found one that fit inside her box (kittens will get EVERYWHERE if you don't keep them contained) and it left her with no room to get out of the litter pan. I was in touch with an online friend and she told me that if you take her little paws and push them into the litter, that kitty will figure out the rest. Well, what she didn't tell me was that sometimes kitty will think that the litter is an awesome play area and start digging around in it like a kid in a sandbox. It took her a while to figure out that she can do her kitty business in her new play zone (for a tiny kitten, she sure kicked out a lot of litter!) but eventually, she got the hang of it.