Fun things your pet does

[Aggie]

Try bettas.

They're--betta!

They are funny, funny fish-peoples.  Our betta, Buddy, comes when called and swims around fluttering his fins & trying to be a pretty-boy to beg for food.  He likes to sleep at night cradled in the leaves a half-submerged spider plant.


We also have 6 White Cloud Mountain Fish in the vase, but they are more or less just hard-wired feeding machines.  They always beat Buddy to any food in the tank*, but are totally oblivious to them funny-looking things on the other side of the glass.


*We usually feed frozen bloodworms to the fish.  The 'whiteys' pick up all the individual pieces that melt away from the block, while Mr. Piggo bulldogs the biggest piece he can find.  It's inevitably too big for his mouth and by the time it's small enough to eat, the rest of the food has disappeared. He is very intelligent, but not very damned bright....  reminds me of mom's poodle.

[Sibling Chatty]

I love bettas. They've got personality, where other fish generally don't. (Some of the bottom-cleaners and suckers do, but that's from interaction that's forced. Bettas seek attention out.)

Dad used to get 3-4 female bettas, watch the nesting behaviour, put males in 'just long enough' and then raise bettas to sell. We'd keep 5 or 6 bowls with a male in each, and allow the females a long rest before breeding them again, unlike commercial breeders.

One year, he didn't bother to try marketing them and we had over 100 fish in vases, bowls, large glasses, you name it, it had fish in it, including Mom's crystal. We gave them away in the neighborhood along with care instructions. Five years later, most of the neighbors still had a betta or two hanging around. They're beautiful.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

The couple down the street moved away in September and of course took Kitkat with them . She would wail  through her apartment window at me or anyone she knew for what seemed to be hours if she was alone up there .

I warned them about her penchant to be out and about hunting and sucking up to strangers on the street , or trying to catch pigeons on the Danforth (a busy street made somewhat famous the Bare Naked Ladies ) .
Well , it seems they felt a bit guilty of depriving her of the fun she used to have with me  , one of my roomies  saw her being taken out for a walk in a harness and leash .
I suppose they were deathly afraid of losing her like i did and they weren't about to take chances .

I still miss her and think of her a lot , i miss her antics , i miss her cursing out my roommates ( "Chad" witnessed me one day pushing her about as she was wolfing down some tuna .
She gets pissed when people bother her as she eats her favorite meals and makes constant meowing sounds with her mouth full until the offender stops .
It was outright hilarious , i stopped bugging her at supper tyme , but would do it for visitors who never witnessed such a thing .
I imagine she was trying to say ." Dammit , bugger off , leave me be , ye bastid !"

I become her custodian  whilst helping a friend move into a new apartment . When we were idling away in the parking lot, the super and his wife came out carrying two cats , a big tabby and a wee calico .
The previous tenants abandoned them ! Both were beautiful and unafraid of humans , it broke my heart not being able to take them both .
My bloody friends egged me on to take them both , yet none of them would take either , the bastids !

Anyway i took the female home since i was afraid Fritz might not take kindly to another male ( I was mistaken , Fritz tolerates any other cat in the house as long as their body language agrees with him .)

After six hours traveling to and fro i finally get Hissy ( Kitkat's name at the time since she would hiss at us if we didn't let her run about freely , she had never been outdoors before ) into the house .
Fritz was napping on his couch (as usual ) , the moment    Kitkat saw him she bolted and hid away crying non stop .
She did this for about two weeks , a bit of a shock to me since she had lived with another male tabby for all her young life at that point .

Fritz just ignored her . I must say it was a very distressing two weeks . I forgot what I did to finally relieve her of her fear , but after two months she became the boss of the house .
I put food down and she would get right to it often pushing Fritz out of the way ( he would just back up a few feet and wait his turn ).
He looked a bit despondent so I went out and purchased another food dish .
She quickly lay claim over all of Fritzies favourite perches ( the top of the stairs , my room , Chad's room , Don's room , the basement , the kitchen etc. Poor ole Fritz relegated himself to the living room where kitkat was told off by Fritz if she ventured in .
Fritz never went upstairs again when kitkat was here .
She followed me around like a leech as well as my housemates . We would spend so much time catching her ahd tossing her back in the house when we left for our jobs .
She stopped short of following my mateys into the subway and would take her sweet time getting back home .
A number of times strangers would take her home with them ( but I suspect she just followed them into their homes ) .
But she would not shut up if she wanted out , so I guess the people had enough of that racket and let her go back home.
In my case , she would follow me ANYWHERE ! , if I had to take her to the vet all i had to do is walk there . She would at my heels and all I had to do is open the door for her . Fritz , however, is never more than 50 feet from the house and knows what a cat carrier is all about , the three of us tried to get him into one and it was an exercise of absolute futility , the mere site of one and he disappears .

The last time i got him to the vet i had to carry him inside my jacket , he pissed on me as we came to the intersection waiting for the light to turn green . He calmed down a bit as soon as i let him perch atop my shoulder though .

I remember when kitkat was in heat , she used to follow me about and if I settled down to a table , desk or messing about the kitchen she would be there to jump upon the surfaces and begin the slow process of knocking every damned thing on the floor , this went on for months .
She learned she could escape the house ( after the cat door was removed , I thought i saw Fritz in the basement until I realized the "tabby cat" was three times the size of Fritz) . Kitkat discovered that she could jump up to the backdoor ( if i had the window section up a notch ) squeeze her head through and force the screen out with her head . I figured out she was doing this as one day while heading off to the market I heard a familiar sound of metal tags tinging at my heels . It was kitkat ! Tis much bewildering at  the time since not 30 seconds earlier I had tossed her back into the house after her darted past me .
She also learned that when Don left for work at 5 or 6 am , she could crouch down by the door and it still being dark out , could easily sneak out past him and follow him to the subway station .

The calico had so many admirers , the local school girls would be by three times a day to fawn over her . A few times an entire class would be walking by on a field trip and she would stop the entire procession . She became accustomed to this and had to be out at 8 am , noon and 3pm .
One neighbor didn't like her free roaming ways one bit and came by to let me know she was  using their backyard as a dumping ground all too frequently ( apparently the neighborhood cats took a liking to his yard ,  i believe it was because of all the birds ). I brought them some  "pest begone" ( mostly pepper ) , it helped and all the other neighbors took what steps they could to address the problem .

Being aware that cats can carry some deadly parasites and he had young children it wasn't a problem for me to try to reign Kitty in a bit . Boy , was she pissed at us for keeping her confined . She clawed me couple times but stopped when she found out a smack on the hindquarters was to be expected in return .

This is getting long winded and I'm beginning to misspell everything , i'd like to share more stories of Fritz and Kitkat another time , G'nite .

[pieces o nine]

Long story short, I am in a house in the suburbs.
[This may not be the very last thing I expected to occur in this lifetime, but it ranks down towards the bottom of the list.]

Dom thee Danger Catte is adapting pretty well to everything and moving into Feline Middle Age with all the dignity he can muster. His favorite spot is the very back of a cedar-lined under-stairs closet, where he can contemplate things in the dark.

Silent Bob loves the tiled floor facing the walk-out downstairs patio. He uses it as a burnout pit (e.g.: motorcycle aficionadoes here enjoy revving up their bikes in a more-or-less stationary position before slipping off the brakes and peeling out in a spray of dust and noise). No dust or roaring enhgines, but he does essentially the same thing -- runs in place making scrabbling sounds on the tile until he suddenly shoots across the floor. He never tires of this game.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

Fritz , every few months will jump on me and head butt me continuously .
Sometimes ( about a dozen times a year ) he has his wee tongue sticking out , it is outrageous to see and always has me laughing .

So far he is the only cat I've seen do this .

[anthrobabe]

The betta "Maniac" has learned to beg food at the top of his bowl.
He has obviously figured out that the slightly fuzzy blobs in 'dry outerspace' not only *scoop him out from time to time for cleaning(oh the indignity) but also that is where FOOD comes from.
As he lives in the kitchen it's usually me moving about- so here's this fish floating at the top of the water-  very much looking almost right at me as if to say-- OK hurry up lady I be starvin in here!


*gently and slowly scoop him out- in a cup of water-no netting and dumping going on.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

Fritz loves to box , I have a hundred scars to prove it , generally he doesn't draw blood unless he's stoned and he is well aware that he is faster than me .
It is when I put on my " gauntlets " that he stops pulling in his punches , he'll jump up on my arm and start chewing away , often clamping all four sets of claws on me while trying to puncture the gloves .
We have had matches that went on for a couple of hours , after I shake him off and rub him into the carpet he'll snare and growl at me , then run off for me to chase him or find his latest ambush spot .
If I give up looking he''ll reappear and dart past me so I can resume the chase and fight , if I try to walk away he'll run to my feet at " love bite " my heels .

It's his favorite past time .

[pieces o nine]

Dom thee Danger Catte used to love to play like that! I made shoulder-high "oven mitts" out of layers of old blue jeans so that he could really sink in his fangs and back claws, yet not draw blood. He liked to rough house as much as he liked to fish (chase a catnip toy on a long, long string attached to a dowel rod, up & down the hall, up a& down the stairs, over the sofa, straight up into the air, etc.).

Once Moufette passed on, though, he settled down a lot. I miss his wild side.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I made shoulder-high "oven mitts" out of layers of old blue jeans so that he could really sink in his fangs and back claws, yet not draw blood.

My birds frequently while on my bare shoulder decide to 'slide' down my arm leaving skid marks. In fact I have some very thin blood line in my right arm from one of those. I should take them to have their nails filed.

[pieces o nine]

^ to stop those school-boy pranks, install a newell post on your elbow...

[pieces o nine]

Thread Necromancy!

I arrived home tonight to find Dom in the middle of the living room, yowling like a cat who hasn't eaten in at least 15 minutes. He'd jumped on a desk and batted off some paper to play with -- he likes standing on a magazine and fanning the loose edge of the pages up from the floor with his paw; he can do this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until I have had ENOUGH. Then he looks at me like, GEEZ, what is it now?

The comedy part is that the paper he chose to play with was a coupon book from a local fast food place in the junk mail. I was going to take it to work and leave it in the break area for when people forget their lunch but forgot it. So I arrived home to find Dom yowling to be fed NOW, surrounded by coupons for "Buy one Meal X, get one X Sandwich Free!"   "Buy a Sandwich Z, get a Fries for Free!"   "Buy one Meal Y, get a Shake Free!"

He's been known to accept a french fry now and then, but never demanded his own "Happy Meal" before!  Alas, he just got cat kibbles.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

LMAO!

Clearly, it was all your fault that his new toy had broken...

[Opsa]

He was just trying to save you money, and look at the thanks he got. No-one listens to dem kittehs. It's a crime, I tells ya.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

Here's a story I believe to be true as relayed by a mutual friend . It appears Jim lad left a package of funny tobacco on his dresser and went off to work . His dog was bored and hungry I suppose and ate the entire 7 grams or so . Apparently he loves the taste of the stuff and Jim has realized that he cannot hide the stuff from that canine sniffer . Mum cannot understand why Rover sniffs around Jimmy's clothes , bags or his pockets with a whiny looking expression . Since he's a dog that loves to eat in excess anyway she doesn't realize when he has the munchies after successfully findinga bud or two . Hah ! What a mutt !

[Aggie]