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

Is it something about this time of year - my two are chasing each other and play fighting far more than usual at the moment.

Charlie is encouraging Tasha by walking into a room - chirruping to her and then pretending to wash. She thinks he's not concentrating and takes him "by surprise" by jumping on his back. Chase and 'fight' follows! This is happening regularly every evening!

Sunday's fuel depot explosion at Hemel - which is about 8 miles from us - has freaked Tasha a bit. She no longer likes banging sounds, however quiet. When it happened she dived for cover under the bed and wouldn't come out for a couple of hours. We didn't know what had happened. We looked round the house to see if anything had fallen over as it sounded like a very heavy flat object landing on a solid floor. It was only when I got up 2 hours later and checked the news that I realised what it was. It was very loud.

SC - chin up.

<> (SC)

Oh dear. Sorry to hear that the world sucks for you right now, but you are totally right that cats can *always* make you smile, even (especially?) when you don't feel like it. I can be feeling as miserable as an old miserable thing, tucked up in bed and not wanting to get up, and suddenly Azar will climb on top of me, snuggle up in the crook of my arm and give me a huge MIEOW! as if to say - 'Hey, I'm here! What else could you possibly need???' And he always cracks me up. And then Sunny will come and lie on top of me - all seven kilos of him, seven kilos of pure doggy-cat luuuurrve - and I realise that moping around in bed *just won't do* especially when my 'poor starving babies' are wanting their brekky. Honestly, don't know what I'd do without them, bless their furry little hearts.

<> (Lady)

Could be the cooler/colder weather perking them up. My two are also a lot friskier these days, especially Azar. Which is good for Sunny who is quite lazy. I've watched Azar go up to a sleeping Sunny and suddenly pounce on him after licking his head for a bit . . . it's so funny to watch. Sunny goes - WTF?? - and then the two of them are suddenly rolling around having a wrestling match together and then Azar will race off with his tail all puffed out looking like a toilet brush, encouraging Sunny to chase him around.

Meanwhile, am still having problems with Sunny pooing on the sofa and the bed . . . really don't know what to do about this.


az

Oh, my. Pooing on the furniture's not good. I'll see if I can ask my cousin, she had a similar problem. Will send her an email and see if she has any suggestions.

We have a problem with Herman and pooing, not that he doesn't do it in the litter pan (or over the side of the pan, at least), but that he flings it all out when he's trying to bury it.

Flinging also happens here, but less so after recently buying a larger litter tray for the boys. Shallower and longer than the previous one, which creates other *issues*, but the pooing on bed and sofa is really getting to me. So yes please! Ask your cousin how she dealt with this!


az

Thanks for the concern, all! I'm just generally down at the moment, because I'm back to looking for w*rk, and the realization that my best friend is someone I don't know if I enjoy much anymore. I've known her for (gulp) 50 years, since we were barely out of diapers, and politically she's just become so...Republican -- even got a Xmas card from Bush (don't you have to send him *thousands* to get those?!?).

Enough of that!

Lady, glad to hear Charlie is back up to playing "bait and swat" with Tasha!

az, sorry to hear about the Sunster -- is this an old problem, or could it be a dominance thing about being the "man" of the house, since Peter's been there? (and, no, we know you're not getting rid of Peter!! ) This is a toughy, though...


And I'm afraid Herman is not the only one who tosses more than he buries. Rocket has been known for this, which sometimes includes what Missy neglects to deal with.

SC

I've learned that there's less flinging if there's not much in the box when he goes in there. He has a hard time maintaining his balance as it is, when he's trying to walk on litter and it's shifting around, he has a more difficult time. This frustrates and seems to embarrass him. If there's poo in there, and he trips on it, he gets annoyed and tosses it out.

Sometimes, he just misses the litter and gets the poo. he also manages to fling half the litter out while he's at it a good deal of the time. Poor little guy. His condition seems to be improving a *little* now that he's gained some weight... but when he does fall over, it makes a lot more noise now.

Rocket sounds like he's a handful.

I hope you're feeling better again soon, too, Space Cadette. Best of luck with your job searching.

Az, I sent that email to my cousin and will let you know as soon as I hear back from her. I don't know as that she checks email every day, but I know she does check frequently.

Get one of those hooded boxes. It leaves only the door to get flung out of.

With any other cat, that would be a fantastic idea! We tried that, but again because of his condition, he can't maintain his balance well enough to get back *out* of such a small entrance. When we did try it, there was a lot of yowling for a few minutes, followed by an enormous crash as he took the whole box over when he fell.

He falls over about once every forty seconds or so. Unless he's already lying down.

What I have done is placed a large bath mat under the box, and placed it under an end table we don't use for anything else. He cal lean against the table legs for balance while he does his business, and most of the stuff he flings stays on the mat.

Although on Sunday afternoon he was scooping like a feline rototiller in there... to see the floor afterward, you'd think he was starting a zen garden.

Perhaps if you took a large cardboard carton cut the lid and one end off, and cut the walls down to a height that he won't get lost in it. Set the litter pan inside. It would give him something to lean on and contain the flung stuff.

I may give that a try, actually. We'll have to keep an eye to see how high the walls would have to be (not sure what his maximum fling height is ). Thanks for the awesome idea.

I've read that cats don't really like enclosed litter boxes - can't blame them really. I mean, can you imagine the smell trapped inside a smallish space?

Mudhooks, sounds like your 'design' leaves the top open as well, so there are only 'walls' on three sides and one side open for Herman to get into the box. That sounds ideal to me.

I'm thinking that the poo thing is a territorial war, now that Sunny is getting older and possibly losing his 'Alpha cat' status. Especially as, since Lua died, Azar seems to be 'taking over' more and more. He's become much less timid with strangers and often goes up to talk to people when they come over (which I think also has something to do with Azar finally accepting Noggin and letting him pet him, etc), though he still doesn't let other people touch him. But this used to only be Sunny's thing, greeting people when they came in. And in terms of 'bed locations' Azar has not only taken over Lua's old place near my head but has recently started climbing on top of me at night, which is something only Sunny used to do.

Meanwhile, I think I caught Sunny on the bed yesterday morning about to dump a load - as soon as I walked into the room he crunched down and looked extremely guilty, then he quickly scuttled out of the room (still crunched down) and ran to his litter box and immediately did a huge poo there. So I followed him into the bathroom and said a lot of 'nice Sunny, what a good boy' stuff to show my appreciation.



At least the poos are dry(ish) and easy enough to clean up, though last week I ended up having to wash the bed cover twice! But after the peeing incident on the sofa last month I'm really worried he might one day pee on the bed - on our new king size mattress! - which would be disastrous. So perhaps we should invest in one of those waterproof mattress covers? Or maybe just a big sheet of plastic to put under the normal mattress cover we have now. Gaaaa.

Meanwhile, both Noggin and I are making an extra effort to show Sunny a lot of extra attention and affection, though it's kind of hard to imagine being able to spoil the beast any more than he already is.


az

One of my old roommates had a serious problem with her male cat peeing on her bed while she was at work during the day. He only did it on her bed, so we figured it was some passive-aggressive thing related to her working overtime and not giving him "enough" attention. Could be the same thing with poor Sunny.

I do the "good boy, what a nice boy!" thing with Herman whenever he manages to poo without falling. He used to fall in it, and get it all over himself. And then get *really* angry when we tried to clean him off. The table legs have all but eliminated that problem. I might try that box idea, though... he'll have to get used to going in and out of the "door", as opposed to tipping over and rolling out when he's done , but it could alleviate the flinging problem.

I'm still waiting to hear back from my cousing Natalie how she got her kitty to stop pooping on the furniture, he was doing it two, three times a day for a while.

Well, Noggin and I have decided to buy some new shower curtains - very cheap at the 1 Euro store - and put one extra one under our normal quilted mattress cover. Just in case!

When we bought the new mattress last spring we, of course, also bought a mattress cover for it, that would not only absorb sweat and whatever, but could also be washed regularly - and keep our new 400 euro mattress fresh and clean!

When we bought the mattress cover the shopkeeper asked us if we wanted a quilted one or one that was also water-proof, and we said we just wanted the quilted one thinking that plastic underneath might be weird, might create an unnatural 'sweaty' bed environment if the material couldn't breathe properly . . . anyhow!

All I want now is that if our bed gets peed on that it doesn't end up soaking into the mattress! So, shower curtain under quilted mattress cover seems the cheapest way to go at the moment.

Gaaaaa. (have I said that already? )

az

Way back when, our vet suggested placing a plastic sheet OVER the couch or places where Benjamin had taken to peeing. They don't particularly like walking on plastic and so placing the plasic on it (especially a really crispy plastic if you can find it) not only protects the covers but does double duty as a deterrent.

Here is an apropos pie-chart explaining "what your cat is thinking when he looks at you like that".

http://www.toadalamode.com/catschart.html

Azahar, my cousin wrote me back about her cat and his pooing issue. he used to poo on the bed, it started one day out of the blue. She says her vet thought that it was a stress reaction due to her changing shifts and replacing a chair in her living room within a few weeks' time. Have you had any recent changes that might have upset him, or do you think this might be due to him not feeling well somehow?

She says that it took some time to coerce him into using only the litter box, and that it took exactly what you have been doing- positive reinforcement and treats when he used the litter box- and completely ignoring "accidents", as opposed to punishing him. Cats don't respond well to negative reinforcement, of course. (I can attest to that, the other day I scolded Herman for something and gave him a swat on the rump, and he spent three hours glowering, growling and hissing at me from under the couch afterward!)

Hopefully this is a behavioral thing, and not a health issue.

Mudhooks, I loved that pie chart. Forwarded it to all my cat-loving friends.

Nope, no changes recently. Anyhow, this behaviour first started last spring and is (still?) just occasional - it doesn't seem related to anything specific going on at home (other than possible territorial squabbles with Azar).

Meanwhile, went out and bought a cheap shower curtain yesterday, which is just about big enough to cover the top of the mattress. So once it's aired out on the roof for a couple of days (to take away the 'new plasticky' smell) I'm going to lay it under the quilted cotton mattress cover and hope it doesn't 'crackle' too much.

Mudhooks, visions of the '50s and plastic sofa covers! Eek! Thing is, the sofa and bed are mostly where the boys hang out (atm they are both curled up on the sofa, side by side, looking like little s - ha!) so I wouldn't like to stop them from doing that.

So I guess I'll keep on with the positive reinforcement thing and just try to minimize possible damage as much as possible.

az

Shower curtain is in place. It covers the width of the bed okay but leaves about six inches at the foot of the bed and also the 'under the pillows' space unprotected.

I won't need it at all, but in fact the weekend was more than somewhat unpleasant (won't gross you out with the details . . .)


az

I won't need it at all, but in fact the weekend was more than somewhat unpleasant (won't gross you out with the details . . .)

Sorry to hear, az.

SC