smokingboot: (cat)
smokingboot ([personal profile] smokingboot) wrote2009-06-11 06:52 am

Great start

I am up at godforsaken o clock because our cats are being very strange.

Why do animals react so oddly to some people? A friend came round and our little white cat, Mismatch, has been freaked ever since. Admittedly this friend is the same one who turned up with her toddler and freaked out Mismatch for 9 days, but no toddler this time, and the lady is as gentle as a lamb.

Now, little white cat is the smallest of them all, and is very good at finding hidey holes no-one else can reach. Currently her favourite is under the bath. Imagine a bath with all its underworkings hidden by wood panelling. Imagine one of the panels off. This is clearly some kind of cat narnia; she goes in to find warmth, darkness and an unassailable position among the pipes. She comes out smelling of rust and water with some kind of deposit on her fur that stains and won't come off for days. She loves it, and as we discovered, spent all day yesterday hiding there.

After my friend left, [livejournal.com profile] larians coaxed Mismatch out of her den, and like a crazy fool, put the wood panelling back. This morning she has yowled miserably, waking him four times until he took her down to the room where she and her sister traditionally sleep, and left the two in there together.

She carried on for a bit then calmed down, at which point, Ralik our older tom started giving it some. I thought he wanted out and let him go outside. I went back to bed only to hear scrabbling at the back. I let him in again, he went upstairs and started yowling. He's not hungry, he doesn't want out, ergo I'm baffled. I sat on the stairs with him, he was silent and calm. So that [livejournal.com profile] larians could get some semblance of sleep I have stayed up. On hearing my presence Little White Cat has started yowling again. I have let her out of the room. Now she is OK. Everything seems fine as long as one of us is with them. I haven't the slightest clue what the problem is.

And I'm feeling nauseous...

[identity profile] evilwillow.livejournal.com 2009-06-11 08:22 am (UTC)(link)
Remnants of the full moon perhaps? Your cats always go crazy around this time of the month.

[identity profile] smokingboot.livejournal.com 2009-06-16 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
More crazy! I hope to introduce you to the latest additions sometime this summer. Any possibility of you coming down to London Town?

[identity profile] velvet-the-cat.livejournal.com 2009-06-11 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Cats just don't make sense. Ours will yowl until one of us gets up. She's then fine for a little while but will then go and yowl at the other until they get up. Once we are both nicely herded into consciousness she'll bugger off out. Rather maddening creature at times!

Sounds like yours are equally as bats!

[identity profile] smokingboot.livejournal.com 2009-06-16 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I honestly think the whole species is insane.

But then I have a nasty suspicion that if Gaia exists, it says the same about us!

[identity profile] greatbigshowoff.livejournal.com 2009-06-11 09:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Sounds like you've removed her coping strategy. Quickest way to sort her out might be to take the panel back off the bath.

[identity profile] smokingboot.livejournal.com 2009-06-16 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I would agree, but I just dread accidents, cos I fear she's deaf and half daft...horror stories abound in my head about pipes bursting and gushing boiling water all over her in an enclosed space...

She seems to be getting over it. But I think you are right and there's good to be done in making sure she always has somewhere she can go to hide.