I’ve been saving this essay for a special occasion, and inadvertently, Rhi provided me with an excuse to post this on a day when I really don’t have anything else to write about. I dedicate this post to all those who hate kats and/or long stories.

I share living space with four very large, very bossy felines. Godde knows, I didn’t PLAN on having four kats, I just went through a period of being a sucker for adopting wild kats. Let me be clear from the outset that my kats are not “normal”. They are all rescues and three of them are from feral litters so they are still somewhat wild. To say that they are all 100% neurotic would probably be an unfair understatement.

Jazz (Big Fat Kitty) is a 10-year old male with black fur and yellow-green eyes. He weighs in at a stately 24-lbs, and has the loudest miaow on the planet. He uses his amazing vocal range to “page” me and the other kats. When he was younger he used to play Fetch over and over again. Nowadays he carries toys around the house in his mouth. I can always tell those times from his muffled miaowing (which sounds like somebody talking around a mouthful of food). Jazzie is diabetic and has to have twice-daily insulin shots which puts somewhat of a crimp in my social life at times. It’s pretty easy to give him a shot, he doesn’t even notice, the biggest problem is finding a loose enough patch of skin on his fat … um, I mean *stately* body. He has recently taken to getting my attention when I am sitting at my computer by standing on his hind legs and patting me on the arm. This is a good thing because it helps to strengthen his wobbly old legs. Jazz believes that there should never be a bath mat on the floor in the guest bathroom and enforces this rule by peeing on any mat that I am foolish enough to place in that specific location. Although Jazz loves all three of his brothers and can be found cuddling with any of them, his true soulmate is Sugar.

Sugar is a 10-year old male Sealpoint Siamese with no whiskers. The reason he has no whiskers is because Jazz bites them off during a meticulous grooming procedure that they have apparently worked out between them. This does not deter Sugar from streaking up the 6-foot kat “condo” and launching into acrobatics. While Sugar loves me very much, his true love is Jazz. He head-butts Jazz to get his attention and to get the grooming process underway. He also has that “adorable” little Siamese habit of nipping me when he gets to feeling a little passionate from being petted. I have tried everything to cure him of this habit, but in his mind that is how he shows me affection. Sugar enjoys a random game of Hopscotch which involves jumping from the carpet to the bath mat to avoid the tile in between, then sitting on the tile on the other side of the bath mat. I suspect that Sugar is the one who occasionally leaves a large steaming pile of crap on the carpet just to prove that while he is the purebred of the group, he can still be “one of the boys”.

Indigo is an 8-year old male Flamepoint Siamese, he has long silky white fur with honey-coloured point markings and big blue eyes. I sometimes suspect from his behaviour that Indigo is an alien. Think of him as the Blond Siamese Bimbo of the feline world as he’s not the smartest of the four. He is, however, the most skittish and even though we have been together for the 8 years since he was in utero, he still runs from me if I approach him outside of his comfort zones. We have an established daily routine that begins 5-6 seconds after he hears me brushing up loose litter from the carpet around the litter boxes. Since I am kneeling on the floor, I am deemed safe to be approached at which point I am permitted to lavish affection upon his lovely self. After a minute or so of that he attacks the kat condo and commences to scratch the living hell out of it while I spank his arse. As soon as I stop he miaows at me in a rather displeased tone and permits me to pet him some more. Indigo is asthmatic. It’s heart-breaking to see him having an asthma attack as there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help him. He receives steroid shots about once every 4-6 months, but the V.E.T. doesn’t like giving them. From my viewpoint I would rather Indigo has a shorter, happier, active lifestyle than be unable to run across the room to smack Sugar upside the head or start a wrestling match with Chyna.

Chyna is an 8-year old male with long silky white fur and blue eyes. He is Indigo’s natural brother (same litter). Chyna is very smart. He can tell time. I know this because he wakes me up at the same time every weekday morning and adjusts the wake-up call by a couple of hours on the weekends to allow me to sleep in a little. Never quite enough to suit my preferences, but at least he does allow me some courtesy. Chyna likes to drink out of the toilet but he doesn’t like to put his face into the bowl. Instead he gets on his hind legs and reaches into the bowl with one front paw, dips into the water, and then licks the water off his paw. Chyna is *skinny* despite that he is a little pig and out-eats all of the other kats. Chyna believes that regardless of whether there is food in the bowls, I should be summoned at twice-daily intervals to refresh the food supply. Chyna does not like my body pillow to be on the bed and will wake me up insisting that I push it onto the floor so he can sleep in its place. For about five minutes before he jumps off the bed. When he was a little kitten he had a major problem with Mr. Buzzy. I don’t know if it scared him or what but he would hiss and swat at it. Which was distracting to say the least.

The kats, as a group, have come up with their own various rules and social hierarchy. One of them is the Three Kat Rule. Only three kats are allowed to be in the same room at a given time, with the exception of meal-times. Occasionally, all four of them will pile on the bed but one of them (and this is always random) must sleep a full two-feet away from the other three. Jazz often sleeps with his “arm” around somebody else. I suspect it is also Jazz who dumps katnip pillows into the water bowls to brew katnip tea for their parties.

It’s not easy to keep a fresh-smelling house when you have a cumulative 70-plus pounds of feline eating and shitting machines. Even though I scoop their boxes daily, there are rare times when I reach the top of my stairs and the smell of a brand-new-litter-box-visit almost knocks me back downstairs into the living room. Those are the Double Scoop Days (I’d like tinkles with that, please). Likewise, it is impossible to keep kat fur off of anything, hence the term “furniture”. To avoid permanent furring, as soon as I arrive home I immediately peel out of my “outside” clothing and put it away.

I have learned that it is pointless to give new toys separately to each of the kats at once because they prefer to have one toy between them. That way they can fight over it and steal it from one another. I no longer question it. All four of my kats LOVE to be spanked. I kid you not. The harder the better. I mean, I can *really* whale on their backsides and they yell at me when I stop. They crouch with their butts in the air and their ears folded back as I spank away, and sometimes they’ll lay into the scratching post.

Folks, I’m a professional, please don’t try this with strange pussy, as injuries may result.

Current mood: katty

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 at 8:14 am and is filed under Humour, Kat Tails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.