After that last post I figure we all could probably use some cats. I certainly could.
So here are some cats behaving just a little bit suspiciously.
Non-cat owners might find the next one suspicious as well. It’s not. It’s just what cats do.
Categories
Today’s Memeday has been pre-empted by cats
And of course, one of the few comments on that article was a freeze peach whine. Of course.
@Anne Lewis
Aww, looks like my Allie who passed away a year ago.
On the topic of wild animals, I live in a suburb and I’ve seen a lot of critters even though there’s not a lot of undeveloped land. There was a family of raccoons I would see in the bushes near my old condo, and sometimes they would knock over the trash cans. There were possums there too, but I rarely saw them alive. Deer are pretty much everywhere and eat everyone’s gardens (not mine though, since it’s on a second-floor balcony). I once was surprised by a vole that was sleeping under my car hood and ran out onto the windshield when I so rudely awoke it. I’ve had swans threaten me (stay away from male swans in the spring) and had a Canada goose make a nest out of my planter (did you know they have teeth on their tongues and hiss like a banshee?). Of course there are squirrels and chipmunks and ducks and herons, too. Oh, and soooo many bunnies. They’re everywhere here. We also get the occasional coyote; usually when I see them it’s one lone coyote walking down the street in the really quiet hours, like 3am. Supposedly there are cougars/mountain lions and bears around but I’ve never seen one personally.
I haven’t encountered any raccoons in the wild yet, although they’re common enough that there’s a woman who takes care of orphaned raccoon kits here in Saskatoon. On the other hand I seem to run into jackrabbits every few months in different parts of the city. There seems to be one living in the park a couple of blocks from my house, as I’ve seen him a couple of times in the last week.
My favorite cat story: a friend lived on a house boat in a marina, and her cat was a well-known thief. Everyone in the marina knew whom to blame when small items went missing, and my friend had a box on her boat where she collected all his ill-gotten goods so people could retrieve them at leisure.
My raccoon story: when I moved in to my last house before this one, I left the back door open while I was unpacking and deciding what should live where. I was in the front of the house for a long while, and when I went back to the kitchen a raccoon had made himself at home and was eating my leftover dinner stew out of the pot on the stove.
No, really, just come on in and help yourself, neighbor.
Kitty update:
Carisma loathes the new collar I got for her. She’s doing a lot of work to remove it, but she needs to learn how to wear it because 1) she’s going to show Didi that wearing a collar is not the end of the world (so I can put one on Didi as well) and 2) I’m going to put that safety net to my balcony pretty soon, and I’m paranoid about those two escape artists figuring out how to squeeze out no matter what precautions I’ve taken.
Grumpy Carisma:
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckl6H9UW0AAMQ75.jpg
Carisma seems a bit more roundish and she’s developing an appetite; I’ve finally found kitten food she deigns to eat with gusto, and soon by the end of the month I have to swap foods for that high-energy mix for her and kittens-to-be. Didi is helpfully polishing off remains from the plate, win-win.
She is also testing her skills at nest-building, mostly at night by climbing on top of me or Significant Otter (and alternating between us), kneading hipbones and meowing. She needs to learn how to be better at it.
Didi? Didi is content. There’s a new cardboard box where she can turn into a kittyloaf, food, scritchies and noms. Toys and play, occasional chase of Mr. Red Dot. What else could a cat hope for?
Me:
For the last four days my innards have decided that they no longer want to be inside me and try to make a run for freedom. Ugh. Fortunately physiology is keeping them where they should be and it merely feels that way.
@ skiriki
Your cat looks like David Bowie! 🙂
No raccoons. Fucking RATS! Envious
We do have some stray cats hanging out around the neighborhood. I’m always worried about them crossing the street, but they manage. Dog likes to stare at them from the window, but loses interest when they stop moving
Alan Robertshaw:
She’s fabulous and she knows it. Every bit of her is pure cute, which is good, because she crashed the server again, this time by yanking the power cord between system and UPS. Really hard to stay mad at such cute kitty…
I’m getting major Basic Instinct vibes from that first cat under the title!
@Alan
There used to be a duck pond behind a Burger King in the next city over from my hometown. Not only would the ducks quack at you until you fed them leftover fries, they watched the humans in their cars and eventually learned how to use the drive-thru. They’d actually walk up to the drive-thru speaker and quack into it, which was always fun to hear while you were eating inside the restaurant. Unfortunately, this no longer happens-the city relocated the ducks to a state park in the same city, drained the pond, and turned it into a soccer field-when there was already a soccer field in one of the city parks. I have nothing against soccer, but I always thought it was completely unfair that a second soccer field took priority over such smart ducks.
Because of where I live and the schedule I work, I see lots of raccoons while I’m driving in the wee hours. They’re often destroying somebody’s curbside trash, and they look up startled by my vehicle with that eerie reflective eye glow, and sometimes flee across the road in front of my car so I have to brake to avoid hitting them.
All that to say, they’re a lot cuter in the daylight and out of the roads and/or garbage.
We have a cat (well, we don’t *have* him so much as he walked into our kitchen one day and refused to leave) named Hercules Mewligan. He and I have bonded over our hatred of howler monkeys- I think they’re malicious demonic alarm clocks from Hell, he thinks they’re taunting him by refusing to be eaten.
One day, that kitty will work out how to make snares, and then they’ll be sorry.
Oh, I luv talking about animals. Guess that’s sort of obvious 🙂
@ David – if I didn’t know better I would swear that u had a hidden surveillance camera in my house lol
@Paradoxical – Really adorable photos!
@ Anne – Cheska looked like such a sweetie!
@ Skiriki – Carisma is so beautiful and I can really identify with your kitty being so cute u just can’t stay mad at them!
I have a racoon story too. Before we moved near Palm Springs we lived in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. We had dogs, our usual collection of cats and two goats (Mackie and Hammy).
One night the goats were going crazy in their pen. And no wonder. Standing right on the other side of the fence was a family of raccoons. There was a daddy racoon, mommy racoon and baby racoon! They were all standing in a row on their hind paws staring at our goats through the fence. Wow! I never realized raccoons could get that big!! Poor Mackie and Hammy. Their knowledge of the animal kingdom was restricted to dogs, cats and other goats! Fortunately, the raccoons soon got bored and retreated back into the foothills.
Anyway, I loved all the stories and pics. My baby Lilly just wandered in. She’s jealous because she’s not a media star too. I explained that Mama just isn’t very skilled with a camera! A very happy weekend from our cloudier (I think that’s what Sheldon Cooper called it) to all of u!
A family of raccoons lived in the attic over my apartment. I called the building manager saying that some animals must be up there: I could hear them. He called me the next day saying that he’d gone up to check and there was nothing there. I continued to hear them. My ceiling was leaking when it rained, and one evening part of the plaster fell in, leaving a hole in the ceiling. I called the manager, who said he’d let the repair people know. Days went by. I heard an odd noise, looked up at the hole, and saw a small raccoon face looking back at me. I made a kind of screech, which startled it, and it fell into my apartment.
Into my apartment. Neither of us felt this was acceptable, and also I was very worried that the mother would come looking for the baby who was now packed into the corner under my DVD rack. And I have a curious cat. And raccoons sometimes carry rabies.
I called the manager again in a state, and he said he’d come right away, and did I have a pail and a towel?
This form of raccoon carrier worked about as well as you’d expect. After we caught the kit a second time, the manager assured me he’d take it across the street. I knew this would not lead to the kit’s future well-being, but the manager refused to call the Humane Society.
I still had a hole in my ceiling and the mother must have had some way into the attic. I taped trash bags over the hole and tried not to think about it until it was repaired. The mother never tried to get in.
Later I moved across the hallway to another apartment, from which, the next spring, I saw a raccoon climbing the tree to the roof. I called AGAIN and was again told that I shouldn’t worry because they’d repaired the other hole in the roof.
The internet tells me that raccoons will return to a good nest site for years, and later I saw her teaching her new kits to climb down the tree. It’s a pity the raccoons are smarter than the management, I guess.
I don’t find them cute, I’m afraid. They glare at people as if we are the ones in the way, they scatter garbage everywhere around dumpsters and feed the local rats, and they kill stray small pets and ducklings and so forth.
http://0.tqn.com/d/urbanlegends/1/S/6/6/1/raccoon-holding-cat-c.jpg
http://2static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Raccoon+comp_5b1e4b_5829213.jpg
http://content.lolspots.com/cmOLVn43i.jpeg
@WeirdWoodTreeHugger,
yes, the complaint about freeze peach cracked me up. Yes, free speech means the freedom to rant abusively at people on dating applications after being asked an innocuous question about what you do for a living without getting booted off. Somehow I doubt ‘Conor’ will be meeting that special someone any time soon.
Yes, and if you invite someone to a party, only to have them get drunk, throws sandwiches everywhere and start shouting insults at everyone, asking them to leave is oppressing their freedom of speech too /s
I am loving everyone’s kitty pictures, keep them coming.
Cute animal memes and pictures? Yes please!
@iknklast and Alan
You know what? I only said that because it just seems like the kind of thing a trash panda would do. I didn’t have a story in mind.
But, unsurprisingly, there is such a story.
http://www.wftv.com/news/local/raccoon-steals-womans-purse-she-watches-turtle-rel/270860168
http://hypervocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/raccoon-steals-purse-3.jpg
See this shit? Purse thieves, the whole bunch. Also there’s that time when they stole 28lbs of cat food.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwe-hDnEiRc
No wonder most of these “10 funniest raccoon videos” are about stealing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3LpQkOpD20
Haha, very funny. Theft is hilarious. NOT. Stealing food out of a dog’s mouth? That’s pretty low.
I still love them though. 🙂
Did the missing paw racoon get a little hook? And maybe an eyepatch. I can feel this as a possible fiction character.
Our wee Sukie cat has been missing for three weeks now and her twin sister Mollie is so obviously sad about it.
We go out looking in the small hours and Moll puts her head into every hole and cranny just in case she’s stuck in there.
We’ve put up posters everywhere around and have been getting a lot of helpful concern, plus some taunting texts from some sick twit who thinks it’s funny.
bluecat-I am so sorry to hear about Sukie going missing! :'( I hope she is found soon!
After reading Skiriki’s post about naughty but cute Carisma, I am holding a public shaming for this guy:
Shiro, aka Devil of Floofy, so far has chewed through:
three phone chargers
one expensive gaming mouse cord
the cable TO MY LAPTOP WHILE I WAS WORKING ON IT
No idea how he hasn’t gotten shocked as they were all ‘live’ at the time. He’s bloody lucky he’s so gorgeous.
@peaches – best possum descriptions ever! You know what’s weird about that? Many people here in Aust. are indifferent to the native possums but think opossums are amazing. Novelty value?
Why the devil’s marsupial, though??? Poor things 🙁
@bluecat,
I am very sorry to hear about your cat missing, I hope she finds her way home soon.
That last one, yes, my cats do that too. My guys are quite affectionate though (for cats), and recognize when my sensitive tummy is giving me trouble. I know this because Kiki will try to comfort me when I feel bad. By sitting in MY LAP when I go.
Didi and Carisma are best friends of @fingiesmirk on Twitter. 🙂