h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

:O Our cat is a chow hound. If he doesn't get his daily sample of dogfood, he will gorge himself on his catfood and throw up everywhere. He just loves dog food.

I have a cat called Smokey who is 17 now, but in his heyday he was known to catch birds, rats, a mallard, a squirrel and even ate next door's rabbit (I didn't confess to that either.. "What, the rabbit's gone missing, oh dear, yes I'll keep an eye out....")

He then started to attack and take my neighbours chickens, the only evidence of which I saw was the feet and beak which he kindly left on the porch for me... until one day....

My youngest daughter worked nights at the time and so slept until lunch time most days. I returned home at about noon one day to hear the weirdest noises going on upstairs. It was a hot day and I ran upstairs to see what was happening. My daughter was running around the bedroom in "the buff" trying to catch the live chicken that Smokey had caught for her as a present and dropped on her sleeping form.

I caught it quite quickly, but she had a shag pile carpet and it just kept hanging on, if I had pulled any harder it would have had legs 10 feet long! In the end we put a bucket over it and slid a piece of cardboard underneath (like catching a in a glass) and then I was left with the problem of returning it to my neighbours... "Er..my cat.. er... brought this in. No, no, I don't know what happened to the other 7 chickens, but he brought this one in alive, so... er... I don't suppose it was him who er... killed the others, er..."

Exit

Happy cat day
Universal Granny

A live chicken, cheerfully delivered while sleeping in the buff...

that was a surprise!

Jack, a purebred Maine Coon who is twice the size of his friends but still just 2. He lives in a box in the air, five stories above a garden full of birds and dogs and people. He visits the other cats of the floor every few nights, (we leave our door propped open as do they <4 others&gt and they come to visit or he drops by to sample their food and leave offerings in other litter boxes. He is quite insane by cat standards as a result, of course. He is human as far as he knows, he will talk to you when you talk to him and watch television or read the paper with you. And when I say talk, I mean talk. No simple *meow* for Jack. He has a huge repetoire of noises, some of which are frighteningly close to sentences. Most of all he loves to play fetch. Not so much with the glitter foil balls he used to love when he was younger, but mostly now with branches he removes from plants in the small garden on our small patio.

I fear he has learned it from watching dogs do it with their slaves in the garden five stories below.

Idgit also enjoys fetch, although to her it's known as "Kittyball".

oh, no! my poor kitty just ate a hornet and he was making these terrible little mewling noises! oh, the price he pays to protect his family!

My cats' names are Keyzpoof- said KEYS- E- POOF, Pretty, and keyzpoof's three children, JoyBabe, HannahBunz, and our dear Turd.

They all leave us presents around the yard. Our poor neighbor tries to house special sparrows, well, let's just say there are no more sparrows to house. Yesterday, my sister found a rat with no head in the front yard! They used to kill rabbits as a pack when they were young.
Turd is retarded. Literally. He sticks his tongue out, like he forgot to put it back in, and it's not just out a little bit, but it's all the way out! I mean, this cat has the LONGEST tongue I've ever seen! And he gets especially crazy when we give him his drugs. (A pinch of catnip always does the trick).
Also, a favorite trick of Jpybabe's is to walk across the piano when it's quiet in the house. It'll scare the crap out of you. And the funniest thing is when Turd sees a fan running (or not). He acts like it's out to kill him, and he'll run sideways out of the room with his head on the ground as fast as he can!

Well, those are my crazy cat stories! Love to read yours!

BLJ

BEAUVINIMOS!!!! omG!

i know. there's this weird commercial that just cam eon for french vanilla flavored constipation medicine. i could barf. we picked blueberries today.
hey, how do you change your "nickname"? i don't like to be researcher whatever I am called.

blj

i imed you about that. we picked blackberries. mr winkers ate a hornet.

i'm very sorry. poor cat. turd ate a white and pink blueberry. I think I'm going to go read and eat my icecream ttyl.

keyzpoof

hi Keyzpoof,

Turd being afraid of electric fans makes some sense at least. Sunny the olive fetcher has a total fear of 'abanicos' (hand held fans). Okay, they make a sort of 'phhht' noise when you open them, but whenever he even sees me pick up my fan he races out of the room, terrified. He also has a fear of pens.

Another cat of mine, Azar, has a fear of everything except me. Which at first seemed normal as I had rescued him from the street after some lunatic had tried to kill him (only succeeded in half ripping his front left leg off - it is still bendy, kinda looks like a hockey stick). And so, as I say, it made sense at first that he would be frightened of other people. Heck, he wouldn't even let me touch him for the first three months. But he has now lived here, safe and loved and constantly cuddled, for seven years. And he still won't let another person get anywhere near him. Kitten hood traumas run deep, I suppose.

az


az

Purdy, my first cat used to wake me up by licking my eyelids. As you'll know a cat's tongue is very rough, but I've been woken in more unpleasant ways.

I'm not too keen on the 'presents' my current cats bring me, either a mouse or birds head not sure which one of the two of them has this 'habit' or what they do with the rest of the body.

Emmily

Who here has a cat who loves/hates the hoover (vaccum)? The young one (Jack) runs from the room and hides as far away from it as he can, while the old one, Bubba (17) will have his fur cleaned with the hose attachment.

My two aren't bothered by the hoover, but if I get the polish out, (or any other spray can) that's when they run.

Emmily

As I've been following this thread, I find myself wondering just how smart are these small furry carnivores?

I have two cats, Rocket and Missile. They have an addiction. They love to chase laser pointers (or, more precisely, the little round red dots). So much so, that when I even go into the drawer where I keep the two laser pointers I have, they start standing on their hind legs, and pawing at the side of the drawer and otherwise begging.

Now, this is not for food, this is just for a toy. They have no physical reason to get this crazy over a toy, it's not necessary to their survival, and yet they carry on with a lot of meowing and pawing whenever I go in this particular drawer. What would be the reason for their remembering where this is kept? It's not like we don't play every single day, with all sorts of more normal cat toys. This is the only toy which elicits this reaction, though.

I keep remembering that episode from the first "Star Trek" series, where the alien managing the "theme park" states that the more advanced a species, the more intelligent, the more they have a need for play...

Any theories?

SC

My cat was just the opposite when I got her a laser toy. She chased the dot for ONE day, and after that she just looked at me with a bored expression, as if to say "It's JUST light." She loves her regular toys, but won't bother with the laser pointer at all.

Micio (her name is Italian for kitty) figured out how to climb a bush and get onto our roof. She would then meow at my window till I let her in. Finally we just installed a ramp up to the roof, so she could go down as well as up, and put a cat door in the window. She still has to meow for me to let her in the pet door, because I had enough of chasing live chipmonks around my room.

JEllen and Micio

I think intelligent animals do need more "playtime" than average. And with pets, the more socialization and interaction they get, especially when they're young, the more their personalities bloom.

A place I rented a room in one year (5th floor flat), the landlord had a fairly old slightly built female cat that only left the flat to wander down the corridor, yet she was *very* quick - playing with her with some bits of string, you could see her *about* to move, and then see her a foot away from where she started, but not actually see her *start* moving.

There was a very small balcony leading off the livving room (about 6x3 feet) with a catflap in the door. Twice in the year I lived there, the landlord, who often went away for the odd day+night without incident, went away for a whole weekend. Despite much attention from me on the Saturdays on both weekends, on the Sunday morning the cat managed to catch a pigeon almost as big as she was on the balcony and drag it through the catflap into the main room, and start plucking it.

The first time the bird was still capable of flying, but the next time the bird was too far gone by the time I awoke to the noise to find a living room full of floating feathers, and I had to dispatch it by wringing its neck, which is easier than it sounds. In the end, after realising that a 360 degree twist wouldn't do the job, I ended up finishing the job by pulling off the head by mistake, which did at least work, but is not a pleasant thing to have to do when still half-asleep.