75 posts tagged “simba”

Everything has been moved to our new place, except for our television, cable box, and modem.  We don't get cable/internet at the new place until the first weekend of February, so we are currently at our old place to watch the season premiere of Lost.  Of course now they are playing a silly recap, so I thought I would take time to update on the move.  (Aside: do they really think that people are going to start watching Lost for the first time NOW, so much that they need to recap all the previous seasons?)

The cats are pretty well adjusted to the new place, although Jiblets is still skittish at the sound of new noises.  The first day he was scared and hid in the litter box and then under a low table after we carried him upstairs.  Thankfully his strong need to cover Simba's litter box waste pulled him from his hiding spot.  When he heard Simba scratching in the litter, he left his hiding place to go do his covering duty.

Simba has been the bravest cat, as I knew he would be.  This is the fourth time that he has moved with me, so this is not very traumatizing to him.  As soon as we let him out of his carrier at the base of the stairs, he flew up them and began exploring, rubbing his face on every surface.

Eggy has been in between the too, a bit scared, but not so much that she is hiding all the time.  She and Jiblets have been enjoying the cat condo, as I am sure they were happy to see it again (we moved it a week ahead of them).

Here a couple of pre-move photos.  As we took away more and more furniture, they had to resort to new place to lay.

I recorded some video of their first day at the new place.  I will post it once I get it edited/uploaded. 

The favorite sleeping spots of the cats (top of dresser, cat condo, etc) have been moved to the new place.  Thus, all three cats could be found on the bed together.  Which is a rare occurrence indeed.

All of my cats are strange in their own way.  I do not think that I have detailed their individual neuroses all in one post, so I thought I would lay them all out here.  Who knows, maybe your cats do some of these things too.  Or maybe my cats are just weird.

Simba: He does not like the feel of cat litter on his paws.  We surmise it is because he has long hair, but really we have no idea.  Rather than cover up his waste in the pan with the sand litter, he will scratch around the pan.  He has scratched walls, newspaper under the pan, etc.  He does this every time he uses the litter.  About seven years ago, I tried to please him by switching to a non-sand litter made from wood chips.  He promptly pooped in the bathtub.

He also scratches near other things when he does not like the smell.  For example, if Prince E is eating something with a strong scent, the cat will go over and scratch near him.

He only likes two toys that we have.  One is a squeaky rat (that is not so strange) and the other one is a wire that used to have a mouse on the end that has long since fallen off.  Simba was never interested in the toy when it had the mouse on the end, but he loves the empty wire.  He will jump up and try to grab it with two paws and frolicks like a kitten.

He loves catnip (not strange), but only likes to eat it when it is in neat piles. If it is spread about, he will stop eating it.  If I gather back into a small pile, he will resume eating it.

He has one sound.  A meow that sounds likes this, "MEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW."  And it is loud.  He will do this sound even if he has a plate full of food, fresh water, and has been brushed and played with.  Still trying to figure this one out.  Since he often does it when I am on the telephone, I think it means, "Pay attention to me!"  And then if I do, he promptly lays down for a nap.

If I ignore his meowing (like when I am sleeping), he will gently tap my arm with his paw to nudge me awake.  He will also do this when sitting next to me on the couch if he wants to be pet.  Although he loves being pet, he has never once willingly climbed into my lap.

He does not like it when I close the bathroom door and will meow and bang on the door.  Although I guess that is not that strange because Eggy does it too.

Jiblets: He is a very shy kitty and runs and hides anyone comes to visit.  He stayed huddled under the couch covering on the floor under Prince E's legs for most of the weekend that Kiki and her family spent with us.  He did manage to come out and let my mom pet him, but it took a lot of work and quietness to get that to happen.  Luckily he is very comfortable with us now, but still will run if we make a loud noise.  We have learned that we can walk past him while he is laying in the hallway and have him not flee, provided we don't look directly at him.

He does not really like for us to pet him very much, except when we are in our bed.  This means that most of his cuddling happens at night or in the morning.  However, often when we come home from work he will look at us and run onto the bed to say, "Hey! Come pet me!"  If one of the other cats is already on the bed or if a cat comes up on the bed while he is there, however, he will run away. 

His most bizarre behavior, however, is his nightly kneading.  When we get ready to go to bed, he will jump into the bed to be pet and scratched.  After being pet by us, he will start kneading the bed.  Specifically he likes to knead my blue Vellux blanket.  I imagine this is some hold-over from his nursing days.  Perhaps he was weaned to young?  If he really gets into the kneading, he will start to drool, although I think it comes from his nose, rather than his mouth.  If I am laying down when he begins kneading, he will stand with his back legs on some part of my body (legs, thighs, stomach, rear end if I am laying on my stomach).  If I move away from him he will also move and climb back onto me.  This can go on for 20 minutes sometimes.  Most of the time I enjoy the Jiblets massage, provided he does not deploy his claws. 

He has several different meows, but the funniest is when he chirps like a bird when he gets quite excited.  Neither of the other cats make this sound.

He is quite helpful and will cover up the other cats' poo or pee in the litter box when they don't cover it on their own.  Sometimes if Eggy is in the room with the litter box, Jiblets will wait patiently at the door and then will go in when she comes out to cover up for her.

Eggy:  When we first got her, she was still a kitten and had no meow.  This may be because she is somewhat hearing impaired.  She now has a meow, but it makes rare appearances, usually when she wants a treat or food.  I am still surprised if I hear her walking around meowing because it is so infrequent.  Her meow is as cute and small as she is.

She eats things that she should not.  She once ate, and threw up, a pen cap.  She also begs for "people food," which I do not accomodate, but her daddy sometimes does.  Over the weekend I have been working on a Christmas gift that included labels.  I printed out the labels on Friday night and had them on my craft table.  Saturday morning I found two on the floor chewed up and a third on her food plate.

She carries weird things to her food plate, like the aforementioned lables.  We have several toys that are little mice at the end of strings or wires.  She carries them in her mouth by the mouse all the way to her food plate and drops them there.  Perhaps she is sharing her "kill" with the other cats?

One day Prince E was eating food in a chair in the living room and set some napkins on the floor.  Eggy started tearing them up with her claws, making a little nest, which she then promptly took a nap upon.  We have since left her little piles of napkins occassionally to make nests.

Eggy loves a wide variety of toys like most cats, including chasing after a string and following the laser pointer.  Ther is one toy, however, that makes her go insane.  She turns from her sweet precious little kitty self into a beast.  She will hiss at us and the other cats if we get near her when she has that toy.  We now keep it hidden away and Prince E only brings it out once in awhile.  When that happens, I leave the room.  I have no idea what about it makes her so crazy.  It is similar to other toys we have: a little mouse on a string.  It must have some kind of catnip or other substance inside to have such a profound effect on her.

Like Simba, she does not always cover her waste in the litter.  Luckily Jiblets does it for her.

What about your pets?  Do they do anything weird?

I started this post initially writing how proud I was of myself for not talking about the cats once in the first 15 days of NaBloPoMo, but then I double-checked and saw that I posted a picture of Eggy.  Oh, well.  Only two cat posts in 15 days is also pretty good.

I have been meaning to post on a wide variety of topics, but have not gotten around to it.  So here are all those topics together:

Prince E and I had a good time in New York City for our anniversary.  I hope you liked the photos I posted from my cell phone during the trip (see below).  Prince E was happy that he was able to buy a "Rolex."  We had fun with my brother and sister-in-law going to Little Italy and Chinatown and my brother joined Prince E and I on a fun duck boat tour, despite the rain.  We saw South Pacific and were very impressed with the singing.  We were all dressed up and I was surprised to see the guy next to me in jeans.  I was also surprised that they only had one ticket taker for the whole balcony area, but had enough money to pay a woman to stand next to the ticket taker and shout "hold your own ticket!" even though that quite obviously slowed the ticket taker down in his scanning of tickets (the individual holding of tickets, not the shouting.  Although it could have been the shouting, too).  After the show we enjoyed a walk in Central Park which would have been better if I had not been wearing dress shoes.  On Monday I got up early to try to get stand-by tickets to The View.  I was not early enough, though, as they took the first 8 and I was 10th.  I won't mention how the women who were numbers 16-18 got in because they knew some gray-haired guy who came out and helped them cut the line.  We ended our visit with a long walk from the Guggenheim back to our hotel, walking on Madison Avenue past all the fancy shops.  I was amused to find this toy for sale (and no it was not a vintage/resale store and yes that price tag says $25).

The New Kids on the Block concert this past weekend was everything that the 13-year-old girl inside of me could have dreamed. I must admit I did tear up a bit when they first came out onto the stage.  The concert was a great mix of their old and new material, and they even surprised me by having Joe and Jordan due their successful songs from their solo careers.  It was pretty amazing to see/hear an arena filed with 20,000 people, mostly 30-something women like my sister and me, all singing in unison.  How we all remember all the words to this day I have no idea.  I also loved how genuinely happy all the New Kids seemed to be.  I think they truly understand how rare it is to have a second go-round at this type of popularity and they are savoring every second.  Their new music is a lot more "adult," for lack of a better term.  While a lot of their old material is quite innocent, the new stuff is much more blatantly about sex.  I found myself not really wanting them to be gyrating their pelvises and singing about giving me "some grown man" because I still see them then way I did was 13.  I wanted them to hold my hand and think I was cute, not have sex with them. I was happy that Kiki came to the concert with me, especially because we shared our love for NKOTB growing up.  I still remember when she got the cassette single of "The Right Stuff" and I was so jealous.

I was also glad that Kiki brought her hubby and son with her.  It was little Kai's first trip to Illinois.
It was also his first time meeting cats.  He was able to pet both Simba and Eggy, but Jiblets was too scared to show his face all weekend.
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On a completely unrelated to anything else note, one of the most annoying and common misuses of a word to me lately is "bias" used as an adjective.  Like "That man is so bias against me."  No, he is not.  He is BIASED.  With an ED.  It annoys me a lot. I am seeing this more and more in the e-mails I get about The View.  I am seriously considering not even reading anymore until the election is over, but every once in awhile some e-mails me a tip or an article and I don't want to miss those by ignoring all the "The View is bias" e-mails.

Here are some random photos.

Simba inspecting the painting that I won of him, done by Leanne Wildermuth at Intricate Art.  I love it!

One of my prizes for winning the Project Blog competition earlier this year was a pet portrait by Leanne Wildermuth of Artist by Nature.  I submitted several photographs of Simba and she is creating an oil painting of him.

She tracks her work on her blog and has a sketch of Simba already posted (toward the middle of the blog entry, the third cat shown).  Notice that she called him "stunning."

Happy Birthday to Simba Kitty, who turned 10 years old today!  He enjoyed his day with his annual treat of pet grass.