Conference misery::feline_v1

Einstein gets my attention by either knocking objects off the desk or table,
jumping (at high velocities) on my head or by biting my nose or chin.  All
work well as they are impossible to ignore.

Tigger just rubs my nose with hers or waits patiently to be acknowledged.
If she wants to go out, she rubs against the window and waits for me to hear
her.

Chiun paces the room, yowling mournfully at intervals. If that doesn't
work, he starts circling; he hops onto the bed, increases his mass (a
spell that all cats can cast at will), and stomps across the most
sensative portions of my anatomy that he can find. Then he hops
off the other side of the bed, sometimes speeded on his way by a
well-placed foot, and circles around again. I don't have the heart
to really knock him into the wall, so sooner or later I have to get up.

Chiun also likes to nibble earlobes. That isn't so bad - tickles, kind
of - but while doing so he kneads his paws, right in my face.

Abigail doesn't climb over us to wake us up, but she will sometimes
sit in the window and pluck at the screen with one claw. She'll wait
just long enough between twangs to give a waiting-for-the-boot-to-drop
feeling to the exercise, and I can't take it for very long.

Love 'em dearly; don't ask why!

-b

then there's Wally, who is too shy to say hello to company, but who also
can't stand not knowing who's come to visit.  So he waits about a half hour,
then proceeds to tear through the room at high speed, giving a quick glance
over his shoulder to identify the interloper.  He repeats this at least a
dozen times, silently screaming for attention, but too scared to stop and
collect it once he's got it!

	When we sleep in too long, our cats stage a wrestling match on our bed.
		<_Jym_>

Cisco is a Siamese. If I am up and around he will call to me and hover while
staring at me with round eyes. If he wants to show me something he will lead
me to it, if he wants to be petted then he will keep staring and hold his
ground. If I am asleep he waits til I am awake then does whats appropriate.

Malcolm is a licker. He will wake me by licking my nose or nibbling on my
earlobe. At other times he will jump on my lap put his forepaws on my chest
and then lick my nose.


							.wIx.

Einstein and Tigger have new habits.  If they want to go out before I
am awake, they take turns climbing on the headboard and pouncing onto
the waterbed.  They repeat this until I am irritated to get up and
let them out.

When Einstein feels he needs company, he stands at the door and cries.
He won't quit until I join him outside.

Chiun has figured out a new way to get attention: paper-tearing.

He'll find the nearest source of paper, which is usually either the
listings we've left on the floor or else a handy paperback, and will
start delicately ripping little bits from the corners. If he doesn't
get attention soon he may dismantle the whole item. He even nipped
at a book while I was reading it once, and the expression in his one
good eye was roguish, to say the least. If we put all the books and
papers away, he'll knock over the wastebasket for fresh supplies -
so I usually give up and feed him!

(Oh yes, and I found out why Abigail plucks at window screens (see reply
.2). If the light is on inside the room, it makes the screen opaque,
rather like a scrim on a theatre set, and she plucks at it as if to
remove the "obstruction" so she can see outside. She only "plucks" at
night, and if I obligingly make a shadow on the screen so she can see,
the plucking stops.)

And some people say I spoil my cats!

-b

  The average feline is a master of the art of getting the attention
  (not to say the 'goat' :-)) of humans.  This list of eight feline 
  purr-versities was contributed to the "The Book of Lists #3" by 
  Josephine O'Halloran of Howell, New Jersey:

  1.  Sleep on your face.

  2.  Pee in the bathtub.

  3.  Sit on the dinner plates.

  4.  Lay across newspapers, book, or magazines you're trying to read.

  5.  Shed hairs on all your dark clothes.

  6.  Stare at your face until you wake up - usually at 5:30 a.m.

  7.  Try to steal the filling out of your sandwich.

  8.  Whack a plastic ball against the bathroom tile at 2:00 a.m.


	Of course, this started me thinking of others.  My additions:

  9.  Attack your bare toes while you're in the bathroom trying to 
      shave.

  10. Attempt to get into a well stocked refrigerator whose door you
      barely managed to open with both hands full.


  Any more favorites to add to this list?

  Neil
                                         

11. Chew on your feet while you're sleeping (even if they're under the
covers.
12. Shred the furniture.
13. Stand where you're going to step (alternate version is to walk right
in front of you - they seem to sense exactly where you're heading and walk
slowly, weaving back and forth, to that spot).
14. Roll over on back, waving paws in air, to get belly rubbed.
15. Sit in the middle of the room and wash indiscrete body parts when
you have company.
16. Open the kitchen cabinets and begin to walk in.  Get up on the counter.
17. Rattle the food dishes.                                                
18. Wait around a corner, jump out at human, and run madly away with tail
curled up over back.
19. Stand somewhere and WAIL.

--Louise

Lie down on the keyboard when you're trying to type.

        /s/     Bob

Push things off of furniture onto the floor.  I had a cat that was deaf,
and he figured out that he could get my attention in the morning by
shoving stuff off of my desk, which was right near my bed.  It sure worked!

							-- Nina

When I was a child, our cat trained us to keep her litter box clean. If she
thought it was too disgusting, she would stand on the edge of the box and rock
it until it tipped. Worked like a charm. Trained us after two performances. A
question at home was, "Have you looked at the cat's Skinner box lately?" I'm
glad mine don't read this file. They think noting is a waste of time... 

	Jon

As I've remarked elsewhere, Harold likes to jump up on my shoulders.  
It's hard to ignore a 10+ lb. cat on your shoulders, especially when he 
sticks his wet nose in your ear.

Richard likes to sit on the table while I'm reading my newspaper in the 
morning.  His favorite spot is, naturally, right in the middle of the 
paper.  He's usually happy if I let him snuggle in the crook of my arm, 
and if I position him just right, I can still read the paper..

Tom

Add to this list:

1)	Getting into a closed refrigerator and eating all leftovers that
	might be in the lower half of the refrigerator.
	BTW, since I had a teenage brother in the house it took us a long
	time figure out what was going on.  We figured my brother was eating
	the leftovers.  We finally caught the cat opening the refrigerator.

2)	"Adjusting" the color television.

3)	Play "fetch" at 3:00 A.M. by putting a paperwad on my face, I'ld
	throw it off.  Cat would return paperwad to my face.  Attempts to
	confiscate the paperwad would result in being presented with another
	paperwad or similar item.
        
4)	Jump in the bathtub.


	

This one had us going for a while: we just moved into a new house in
Newburyport, and for the first time had Cable Television. The decoder
box that they gave us gives off a non-trivial amount of heat, and it's
become routine for me to find her laying half-on and half-off of it
when I come downstairs in the morning. (The other half of her is un-
fortunately directly over the air intake vents on my Sony BetaMax,
but that's probably going to be another note sometime in the near fu-
ture...) That heat, but the way, persists whether the box is turned
on or off.

The box comes with a remote, and to make things easy we have run the
power cord from the TV through the decoder, so that turning the decoder
on via the remote control also turns on the TV set. One day our daughter
came home from school and found the TV on - gave her a good scare when
she first came in knowing that nobody was supposed to be there. Then it
happened to me when I came down one morning - and I was the last one to
go up the night before, and KNEW I had turned everything off.

You can see it coming: as she stepped off of the box, she was stepping
on the ON/OFF switch on the top of it - probably scared the hell out of
herself the first time it happened.... And I have since taped the plastic
top from a battery package (a little oblong dome) over the switches to
prevent a recurrence.

Certainly had our attention for a while, even if it probably wasn't her
intent....

	/Harry

    I am not sure about this one but...
    
    I feed my cats at about 0800 and 2300. On weekends, tho, I
    like to sleep late. My siamese, Cisco, finds this unacceptable
    and will start talking to me if I show I have woken enough
    to make it fair. Lately though he has started to get up on
    the clock radio and as a result has turned it on. This has
    the result of waking me enough to make it fair to yowl.
    
    I hope that it is still chance and not his last resort move
    on those hungry mornings when Malcolm, who is also my fault,
    has been badgering him excessively.
    
    							.wIx.
     

    My cat, Reggie thinks the minute I walk in the door, my first stop
    should be his dish. If by chance I have something better to do,
    he quickly adjusts my priorities! He slowly walks up to me, sniffs
    the choicest ankle and wraps his teeth around it, all the while
    glaring at my out of one eye. Shortly there after he gets his food,
    plus a few olives as a peace offering. 
    Sometimes when he feels lonely he'll sit in the middle of the kitchen
    table with his back to and CRY. Every so often he'll take a quick
    peek to see if I'm paying attention. If I am he'll quickly change
    his tune, HEAVEN FORBID, I think that he needs me!! Cats can be
    such little buggers sometimes! Laurie
     

    
       Residual likes to lay on his back until you rub him, then he
    will proceed to chew on you. He loves to perform for dinner.
    
       If he wants to go out he usually stands by the door or runs
    around the house like a maniac. If you ask him, "you want to go
    out?", he will respond by meowing. You then ask him, "are you sure?",
    and he'll meow again. So then I let him out.
    
    PC

    re: .15
    
    Thanks for the cable box suggestion.  My cat, Tasha, likes to sleep
    on top of the cable box and has even figured out which buttons annoy
    me.  (channel up/down and on/off).  The worst part is that the buttons
    autorepeat.
      
    I'll cover them tonite, and wait to see how long the cover stays on...
    
    thanks,
    dennis
               

    -Tasha likes to carry around small bundles of computer wire for
     me to play fetch with her.
    
    -At 3am in the morning, either tackling a paper bag, or else swatting
     some new toy (live or dead) around the bathroom.  A few times I've
     even gotten up to rescue whatever was screaming so much.
    
    A suggestion for the paperwad on the face problem.  Tasha tried
    dropping computer wire on the bed for me to throw at 3am.  That
    only lasted for a few weeks before she gave up.  I would just wake
    up enough to grab her and cover her with the blanket.  Several growls
    later, I'd let her go.
    
    dennis
    

    My husband and I are busy getting 6 railroad modules ready for the
    Amherst show in Feb.  Boy are Hotrail and Chessie ever big helps;
    at 3:30 this morning they decided it was time to rearrange the track
    that hasn't been set, and then they tried to rearrange the roadbed
    as well.  After hearing a huge crash and several screams, we ran
    to see what had happened.  There sat Hotrail in the middle of one
    of the modules, looking very innocent, and under the modules with
    tools, wires, loose rail, and anything else she could get, sat Chessie
    screaming at Hotrail.  She wasn't hurt, just mad because she got
    pushed off to the floor.  I can't wait to get the wall and door
    finished to that room, then we won't have to worry about the modules
    or the cats.

    Sukie and Jasmine, my parents two black cats each have their own
    special way of getting fed.  Being quiet (honest!) cats they've
    worked out other routines.
    
    _ Believe me they are quiet, we thought they couldn't meow at all
    until they were nearly 9 months or so and one got locked in the
    loft and the other sat under the hatch crying pitifully until we
    stupid humans realised where the other was and all Sukie wanted
    was her sister back to pick on.
    
    The food getting routine for Jazzy is to sit on the top of the fridge
    freezer in the kitchen right by the cupboard where the Meowmix and
    Whiskers is kept and stare at it every time you go near, trying
    to climb in every time you open it.
    
    Suke's method is more basic.  She to sits on the f/f, which
    incidentally is head height, waits until someone goes past and then
    smacks you relatively hard (depending on how hungry she is I guess)
    round the back of the head.  Its not that she's learnt it gets food
    really as she doesn't often get rewarded for violence towards us
    but she still persists.  She also seems to get great fun out of
    whacking the tops of heads that are just standing up from looking
    in her fridge.
    
    
    Jo
    Reading, UK.
     

    Coming from a house where the number of cats in the household was
    6, we had different variations on a theme to get attention.
    
    Waldo would climb up the porch pole, fling himself on to the garage
    roof and look in our bedroom windows; in the summertime he would
    just walk right in, screen or not.
    
    Cinders would run around the kitchen as fast as she could and purposely
    bang herself into the refrigerator.
    
    Leo would lay in her food dish when she was hungry.
    
    Ugly (what a name for a cat, I know) would just sit there and scream
    his lungs out.
    
    Puddles would go to his litter box and fling his litter all over
    the place
    
    Fritz would sits on the counter in front of the television screen.
    
    -->:) John<--

    Kayleigh used to wake me up by sitting on my tummy and pushing her
    nose in my face - if that didn't work, she'd stick her claws into
    my arm.
    Oliver burrows right to the bottom of the bed and licks my feet.
    If that doesn't work, he starts nibbling.
    
    Both cats sat in the very centre of any book or paper I was trying
    to read, purring ecstatically.

    
    
    8*)  reading a book.  You cannot read a book unless the kits are
    sleeping!!!  8*)
    
    F.

    It's been quite here for a few months so here goes...
    
    As F. (is that you Francine) said, reading books is out of the question
    as you are obviously not paynig attention to Puss.  Reading a news
    paper on the floor is impractable, as Puss has this horid facination
    for rolling around on the paper and then useing it like a GRand
    Prix starting grid.... Or the favorite at the moment, when you have
    been paying attention to the little %$^&&*, sorry cat, and she decides
    it's time to leave the room, she wanders over and delicately inserts
    her paw into the slightly ajar door (it's always left open for this
    purpose) and works the door open enough for her to get out... BUT!
    When you are watching a film/reading a book/talking on the phone/etc
    she finds it impossible to open the door, she then proceeds to wail
    untill the door is opened for her... AND THEN SHE REFUSES TO LEAVE
    THE ROOM.....
    
    
    CATS ..... I love 'em!
    
    Bob B-)

    I'm new to this notes file.  (Which means I'd better back up a few and
    do my "into" in the other note)  But all this reminded me of how my cat
    caught our attention when she was relatively young.  We used to buy the
    semi-moist food at Agway by the case, it came in individual celephane
    packets.  This cat (we named her Holly, but usually just call her cat,
    or puss or now we have a toddler who calls her Kitty) decided quite
    early one Satuday that she was hungry.  We usually took the packets out
    of the case and stored them in a plastic box under the sink, along with
    the paper towels and other things.  This one Saturday Cat decides she's
    going to help herself, goes under the sink and grabs what I'm sure she
    thought was a packet of food.  It was a full roll of paper towels!  She
    proceeds to drag them through the house to the foot of our bet and try
    to tear off the wrapper.  I recall she was still quite young and the
    roll clearly was much bigger in size!  This cat, I think, has decided
    that anything wrapped in celephane is food for her!  
    
    I now buy Happy Cat and put it into a covered plastic container.  All I
    have to do is open the bag from the store and I've got this purring
    maniac wrapped around my feet!  She could be asleep on the bed upstairs
    and it's like "instant cat" when the bag is opened.
    
    Sometimes my cat takes priority over my husband and son, that's true
    cat-love!!
    
    
    Lyn Tripp
    (call me DECTAG)
    

A question springs to mind - why do we have to cook the chicken/fish?  Surely
a cat's digestive system can cope with uncooked meats since that is what it eats
in the wild?  

Whenever Henri has been particularly naughty and jumped up on the worktop to
steal uncooked meat, she suffered no side effects (apart from me jumping up and
down in rage at the thought of spending another night on egg and beans...:-})

[Ruth]

    re: .28 - How about toxoplasmosis??   It is said that most cases
    are from eating raw meat.
    

    Ruth,
    
    Cooking meat for cats is very important.  Especially if you want a
    healthy, parasite free pet.  I'm glad that your Henri has not suffered
    any ill effects from uncooked meat.  Here are some of the things that
    could happen:
    
    In the USA especially any raw poultry is very likely to carry
    Salmonella bacteria, which causes food poisoning, this can be fatal in
    kittens and older cats.
    
    Uncooked fish can carry all manner of parasites that neither you nor
    your cat would want to have.  Not fatal, but surely expensive. 
    
    Uncooked beef, can carry toxoplasmosis as mentioned in other notes. 
    Dangerous to kittens and pregnant women.
    
    Uncooked pork will give cats and humans trichinosis (Spelling?), a parasite that
    that can be fatal to cats and very painfull and permanently crippling for
    humans.
    
    So please, especially for a sick cat, take the time and trouble to cook
    the germs and parasites out of the food you give your cat.
    
    Feline chef,
    
    Sue & Panther & Spot
    

    re: .30   Thanks for that note Sue.  I had forgotten about the
    Trichinosis (I don't eat any red meat but my cats still do) and
    wasn't aware of alot of the other problems.  I learned something.
      Nancy DC

    Yes, thanks for clarifying things, Sue.  Although I was aware of most
    of these diseases and their effects on humans, I somehow thought that
    cats would be more resilient.  It really makes one wonder how they
    manage in the wild - I wonder how many die from food poisoning of one
    sort or another.
    
    [Ruth]

    
    Good question, how do the wild cats survive?  I guess the answer is not
    too well.  The life expectancy of a stray is about two years.  (I
    understand that it is less if the poor animal was not born a stray.)
    
    Heaven knows the world is not working in their favor when they are on
    their own.  What with round worms, hook worms, heartworms, food
    poisoning (If they are eating out of garbage cans,) or it's inverse,
    starvation, cars, cruel humans, uninformed kids, I could go on for
    pages.  So could many of the wonderful people in this file who have
    taken on feral kittens or cats and "free" cats that turn out to be
    anything but free!!!  (Vet bills for an unhealthy stray can be
    staggering, but the love the furry brats give back is priceless!)
    
    I think I'll see if I can go home early today and hug my kids!!
    
    We should also give each other (We Feliners) big hugs for this file,
    where I have learned so much, and for the collective caring about our
    fellow creatures!!
    
    Feline Good about us!
    
    Sue & Panther & Spot