Fur balls and sulking cats

If you own a cat, or have ever owned one, you will know that they can be such a source of amusement, annoyance, irritation, pleasure and amazement in equal measures (if you can indeed divide your sources into 5 equal parts).

We currently have two cats. One is an elderly moggy who we got from a friend who was changing his job and couldn't look after her due to the time he would be spending working away from home. She is called Mavis Riley (we added the Riley, I admit) and was 2 when we adopted her in 1998. Her name then was Pumpkin - something we could not bring ourselves to maintain!  She is a very pretty cat and has beautiful markings, but is also very nervous and she cowers at the slightest noise.

Oscar is a pedigree - a birman. He's nearly 10 now, but still plays and charges around the house like a crazy thing at times. He is rather like the lamb in the nursery rhyme "Mary had a little lamb" - he follows me everywhere - in fact Keith sometimes jokes that if he comes in and wonders where I am, he just looks for Oscar and knows I will be somewhere nearby! He's a bit of a rascal at times, likes to terrorise poor Mavis by "playing" with her - this usually entails him stalking her as she walks through from the kitchen to the living room, then pouncing on her and pinning her to the ground by gripping her neck with his mouth. This wouldn't be so bad if Mavis was up for it, but most of the time she just wants to be left alone and ends up hissing at him and trying to escape.

He also sulks when he knows we are going out for the day - like he did last weekend when we were at the Prospect UPMarket event. As soon as he saw all my plastic containers and table etc in the living room, he knew we were planning on deserting him. Therefore, he sneaked into our bedroom before we had chance to shut the door, and this is how I found him on our bed:

He actually looks a bit evil on this photo due to the red eye, but I couldn't be bothered to alter it and I think it adds to the "sulky" mode!

As both our cats are long-haired, they need grooming regularly - and still manage to produce fur balls at times (which I thought would be ball shaped, but they're actually tubes of fur in case you were wondering). Mavis is not so keen at being groomed, and she has a very knotty underbelly and side - she only lets me groom her head and back, unfortunately. However, Oscar adores being groomed and lays out on his back for me to brush his tummy as well as everywhere else. When he was quite young I once collected all the fur from the grooming session and rolled it into a round ball. He saw me doing this, and "pawed" it out of my hand, chasing it across the room like a football. We've played this game ever since! He lets me take it off him, flick it across the room then he charges after it, kicking it as he goes. Today, there wasn't much of his fur on the brush, so I had to use the fur from Mavis instead. I took a photo of the two balls of fur- the one he played with is about an inch high - and we get lots of play-time from this. I wonder if anyone else has ever played this game with their cat or if I am just as silly as Oscar for inventing it!

This morning, I tried a new game with it - throwing it down the hole in the middle of his cat tower - the first time I did it, he leapt straight onto the shelf where it disappeared and stuck his head down the hole, trying desperately to find it. Once I'd shown him that it had actually fallen to the bottom of the tower and he could access it from ground level, he watched me do it over and over, retrieving it each time from the base!

He's now sleeping behind me on the chair in the computer room - I'm precariously perched on the edge of the seat in order to make room for him - cats eh? 

How cats help us!

I'm sure anyone who's ever owned (or been owned by) a cat will recognise the sight that follows. It seems that no matter what I try to do, Oscar always wants to "help". It both infuriates and amuses me at the same time. Usually, I am fighting to keep his paws, whiskers and tail away from glue, paint, scissors, knives or water pots full of dirty water whenever I am creating. The minute I sit down at a table, in front of my PC, or on my stool in the studio, I know it's only a matter of time before I am joined by my feline friend and constant companion!

It should therefore have come as no surprise when I was working my way steadily through the entry forms for the Hornsea Speech & Drama Festival to see him flirt his way from his tower, onto the dining table and on top of the pile of forms I was trying to fill in. At first he just sat on them and looked down at the pen and papers. Soon, he'd settled into lazy cat mode, front feet tucked neatly under him and eyes suitably drowsy enough for me to feel guilty if I so much as contemplated removing him. Luckily, he is a very placid cat and I was able to simply lift him from the table to his hammock on the radiator without a murmur. I did, however, sneak a couple of photos in first - just to show what he's like!

I think cats are ace. I know a lot of people really have a strong dislike for them, which I will never understand - some people are simply dog lovers and refuse to warm to cats, but I like dogs as much as I like cats - I just seem to understand cats more!

By the way, as I type this, I am perched on the very edge of my oh-so-comfy swivel chair in the study because, yes, you've guessed it - Oscar is snoozing on most of the seat behind me!

Cats and artists

I've noticed over time that many artists with whom I correspond regularly also happen to own cats - or rather, are owned by cats, as I'm sure they will agree! I wonder what it is about us that draws us to them so much? I realise that not all artists I know are cat lovers, in fact some actually have a dislike for them.

For me, it is the fact that they are such quiet creatures, they all have a beauty about them and I love the way they walk, look at you (quite often with disdain), talk to you (oh yes, they definitely have different noise according to what they actually want) and comfort you when you are ill or feeling down. I can't contemplate life without a cat to share it. I have two at the moment and I am very emotionally attached to both of them. One of them, Oscar, had to go the vets earlier this week and I'm afraid I just couldn't bring myself to take him this time. He's had infected bites from the local bully cat before, and the last time I took him he needed a couple of stitches as the skin was so badly damaged. At one point during the examination by the vet, I had to leave the room and sit on the steps outside for a while, or risk passing out! I felt silly and embarrassed, but I just got too upset to stay and watch. So this time, Keith said he would take him for me. When I got back home after collecting our grand-daughter from school, Oscar was asleep on his tower in the living room.

He'd been prescribed a week's course of antibiotics and some antiseptic wash to bathe the wound twice daily. Plus, the dreaded cat collar was sitting on the kitchen side ready to attach if necessary! What amazes me most of all about cats is their apparent lack of pain - Oscar was a model patient at the vets, letting him shave his fur off all around the wound without flinching, and he's not at all bothered when we bathe the wound with hibiscrub. Thankfully, the antibiotics are kicking in now and the wound is starting to heal up - but I still cringe when I look at it!

We haven't put the collar on him yet, that was mainly to avoid him constantly licking the affected area - which, contrary to popular belief, is NOT a good thing for cats to do! I'm glad we haven't had to make him wear it, as it apparently can make cats depressed. How the vets know this, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't want a depressed cat in the house!

I sometimes think I maybe should have just had female cats, but Oscar is such a delightful companion, and the only time he seems to get into scrapes is when other cats try to invade his territory - he's never gone far from our house so I don't think he's the perpetrator, more the defender in these attacks.

He doesn't even look like a fighter, does he?

On the other hand, this photograph of the cat we call "Pug-face" (aka Oliver) demonstrates a true bruiser of a cat, whose owners are even upset at how it shows no affection at all!! I'm sure it was either Pug-face or a new addition to the neighbourhood - both are built to fight and really look as though they mean business!

Cat Plant

Due to the presence of a new, somewhat feral-looking tom cat in our neighbourhood this year, we have had to close the cat flap so that our two can get out of the house only. Therefore, once they go out in the early morning, they obviously have to wait until I get up before they can come back in. One of our cats, Oscar, has taken to trotting across the road to our neighbour's house. She always looks after the cats whenever we are away so he is very familiar with her. He even manages to sneak his way into her bed in a morning, the crafty thing! Anyway, this morning when I looked out of the studio/conservatory window, I couldn't resist getting a sneaky shot of him waiting for me to let him in. I found it amusing and thought I'd share the image!