Category: #kittyproblems
Lil Bub Makes My Day.
I don’t know if you crazy kids are into the instagram these days, but I sure am. I keep my “celebrity” following to a minimum, as I really would prefer to see pictures of my own friends (I make exceptions for Justin Timberlake and 2Chainz) but I do follow a few “famous” cat accounts.
You may or may not be familiar with these kitties. There’s @adventuresofbarry, he’s just cute. 
Grumpy Cat (she’s trademarked so I’ll just link to her webpage here)
@samhaseyebrows (so adorably questioning!) 
and my newest favorite, Lil Bub. 
Lil Bub makes me squeal with glee. SO FREAKING CUTE. And it was just announced yesterday that Bub is the focus of a new documentary that’s just been accepted to the Tribeca Film Festival. I really don’t care what it’s about, as long as there’s Bub in there, I’m happy. I was excited to learn that Lil Bub has quite fashionable gear for sale at reasonable prices as well, so I bought a tank top and a calendar. This made my day. PLUS…part of the proceeds go to charitable animal stuff and the rest goes to (QUITE SMARTLY) Bub’s food fund. The humans for these cats sure know how to grab on to their 15 minutes of fame. Shit, I’ve been reaching for mine for almost a year now doing this blog expecting to get discovered.
Unfortunately, as adorably unique as my kitties are, and no matter how much I know I could EASILY pick my boys out of a lineup of seemingly identical ones, they do not have funny fur colors that make them look like they have eyebrows or an eternally sticking out tongue. No, mine are just full of personality, the kind of bratty personality that kind of shows up in pictures and refuses to move an inch for video. I don’t even bother trying to catch these little imps in action anymore, they have a sixth sense for knowing when the camera’s rolling and stop doing anything remotely interesting immediately. DAMMIT, CATS. DO SOMETHING TO EARN YOUR KEEP.
Silence? Not in this house.
I may have been lacking in posts since my birthday, but I can assure you it’s not because the cats have been quiet.
In fact, they’ve been louder than ever.
I think it’s the weather. It’s been cold, not as cold as, say, Chicago right now, but it’s cold for me. If I wear a scarf to work all day, I’m too cold. I hate stuff around my neck. Stifling. But something about this weather is making my cats absolutely bat shit crazy. Taco is louder than usual, and that’s pretty freaking loud. Even Moosh is getting into the act. Meowing just because. Staring at you. Then meowing. Then running after each other and meowing.
Taco REALLY hasn’t shut up. It’s rather windy out right now, he made a weird growl-meow at the door earlier and then hauled ass up the stairs. He hates wind.
Cats. Sigh. 
Victorious!
I have accomplished a major goal today, on my 3rd day of vacation, and it’s only 8:30am (I’m a morning person, what can I say? I can’t sleep in). This means that I can officially spend the day lounging around reading if I so desire, and ignore the to-do list I already made. I just started a good one. I laughed about the writer’s name but it turns out she’s rather good. Joanna Trollope. I think I enjoy British writers more than American. Something about their cadence, I suppose. I will, however, read anything and everything, so long as something hooks me enough to find out what happens.
This goal goes back to the cat tree. I’m sure you’re all quite sick of hearing about the damn cat tree, and unless something incredibly fascinating happens with it someday, this will be the last I directly reference it. My dreams of the cat tree were mostly for Moosh, as he is a “tree dweller” sort of cat. I base this diagnosis on more than a few facts: he perches on my shoulders, he’s been found on more than a few occasions on top of the cupboards (once IN the cupboards), and he sits on top of the office bookcase. Taco just likes to go wherever, being UP on things isn’t that exciting to him. He just wants to be where the action is. I thought he’d enjoy the scratching stuff, though.
But guess who’s been using the cat tree more? Taco.
I don’t know what he’s looking at. Maybe the stickers numbering the pieces that REFUSE to come off. Ugh.
At first, I thought it was just him being a brat, taking over whatever space Moosh would want, but I tried putting Moosh on the highest part of the tree and he would either just jump down or step onto my shoulders and jump to the ground from there. Moosh HAS enjoyed the angled edges of the tree on various other levels, as he likes to smush his face against them. It looks very painful to me but it seems to be enjoyable for him. Whatever.
Turns out he just needed to do this on his own terms. Today, he got on the 2nd highest level. I managed to coerce him up to the next with promises of face smushes. And he stayed! I even walked away and he stayed. And realized that he had a pretty freakin’ good view.
King’s view.
MOMMY ALWAYS KNOWS BEST, BEYOTCH.
Update: For no apparent reason today, I caught Moosh on top of the fridge today, where he hasn’t been seen in months, who then, upon being spotted, made a run across the cupboards, then back again to the fridge and then down the minute I sat up to attempt a picture. This is what the cat tree was supposed to solve. Sigh.
Old cats and ex-mommy status.
My mom works weekends, because she has her awesomely fabulous bookstore to run (Sam’s Books, in Oldsmar, Florida, if you’re ever in town, please check her out). My birthday is Saturday, and of course this is a busy day for her, so we celebrated together yesterday. My mother is probably the reason I regard birthdays so highly, as she always acts as if mine is a holiday. We went out to lunch, browsed around a bit then went back to her house where she had a piece of vegan cake waiting for me. Man, I love cake. I love cake like a fat kid loves cake. If I ever lose that 20 pounds (that would still keep me in a perfectly normal range, so no, I do not have body dysmorphic whatever) that I’ve been threatening to lose for the last 16 or so years, I’m going unvegan for a day and eating an entire Publix cake. Because Publix has the best freakin’ cakes ever. I also got to grab a big stack of books which means I will probably not get all the things accomplished that I threatened to accomplish on my time off.
Being at my mom’s means I get to hang out with my kitties. Who I realized, are really now her kitties. Although I picked them both out as babies and was their mommy for the majority of their lives, I am only mildly tolerated now.
Even Fatty’s eyes are fat. I heart my big boy.
Fatty, my fat fat fat baby, doesn’t even do our choreographed stretch when I pick him up just the right way anymore. Of course, he IS turning 16 this year. And he wasted no time gaining back all the weight he lost when he almost died of anemia.
The other baby, Little, has never really been anyone’s cat. He keeps to himself. He allowed me to pet him briefly but was quite clear in letting me know that he was only humoring me.
There’s something sad about ex-mommy status, even though I have two boys of my own at home. I would probably be more upset about it if I didn’t take into account the reasons that I didn’t uproot them when I finally moved out of my mom’s house at the ripe old age of 24, those being that I rent (they’ve been freely allowed to scratch everything forever) and I didn’t want to separate them from my mom, who of course is an amazing mother (obvs, you can see how well I turned out). She’s good for them. I’m ok with being the sister. Besides, color-wise, I have an identical set here (black and a tabby). Life is good.
Side note, I got to go through a bunch of old stuff yesterday including my old dance costumes. I wish they still fit. I’m not kidding when I say I would prance around the house in them.
HOW CUTE IS THIS??? It ALMOST makes me want a kid. Almost. Not really. I just want to wear it.
Using my death bed productively.
Taco doesn’t care about my plight. One day of kitty snuggles with ol’ Sicko was enough for him. He’s busy with his new CAT TREE friend. Hmph.
I’m still sick. I love how optimistic I always am at the beginning of getting sick, as though THIS TIME is gonna be the time that I’m gonna whoop this sucker and get it out of my system in 24 hours. What, yours hung on and became pneumonia? Not gonna be a problem for me, because I’M KICKIN’ SICK’S ASS RIGHT NOW! And then the next day you wake up, test things out, snot starts flowing again, and you lose a little more hope. Usually I only feel like total crap for 2 days on a cold and then the rest is just getting out mucus in various ways, a la coughing fits, neti potting and nose blowing. I’m on day 4 and am now just beginning to feel like I’m in control of my brain again. Does your brain shut your brain down to conserve energy to fight germs? Seems efficient. Although not helpful at work.
To make matters better, this was also the week that I picked as my first vacation of the year at Big Brown, and decided to take a few days off the real job as well. Because…IT’S MY BIRTHDAY WEEK! I know that some people don’t think birthdays are all that important or exciting but I grew up as an only child so my understanding of it is that it is MY DAY so everyone in the land should celebrate ME! I may be turning 31, but in my head, I’m still a bratty child. I wish my newly beginning wrinkles thought that. So today was my Friday, which I can’t really enjoy because drinking a) dehydrates, and I need to keep my mucus watery and b) isn’t all that good for your immune system. I’d rather get over this crap now than prolong it because I have some half-assed desire to celebrate a fake Friday.
To further destroy my ego, the weather, which has been borderline hot, is about to swiftly swoop to much lower lows (and lower highs) than I care for. And that, of course, ruins any silly dream I may have had of birthday beach days. This is why I could never have pool parties when I was a kid. My birthday weather was always “too unpredictable.” Bah to that. Anyway, that will activate my allergies, and in turn make the snot flow even more (if that’s humanly possible).
Since I’m not doing anything fun, I decided to read. Yesterday I really needed light reading, so I read some chick lit, which turned out to be teen books, but I enjoyed anyway. Today, since my brain is a little less foggy, I’m turning to non-fiction. I decided to finally read ALL the books in my house that are about cats that I’ve been meaning to read.
I think I already know the answer to the genius one…
Turns out I have only 3. I really thought I had more than that. So imma get down to business. Perhaps I’ll let you in on my knowledge tomorrow, since I am free from working duties for the next 5 days, albeit limited in the “fun activities” department. I have a to-do list, though…
Not so patiently waiting.
I finally did it.
I bought a cat tree.
I’ve shared this fact with a few non-cat people, and their response is: “HA HA HA HA That’s a f*$#ing waste of money, you FOOL! You could MAKE that!”
Well, DUH. I’ve been saying this forever. And what HASN’T happened yet? It hasn’t been made. Which is precisely why I’ve waited until my cats are almost 5 and 3 years old to buy one. My poor, deprived kitties. All because Mommy is too freakin’ stubborn to go against her DIY ego and buy one. There’s also the fact that the nice ones are kind of expensive, and I’ve never really found one I liked. But I found one. Yeah, it’s a little more expensive than the traditional carpet-y ones, but it’s nice. It’s not AS nice as the ones I wrote about before, but it’ll do. Before I put the ol’ credit card number into the interwebz, I did way more research just to see if I could possibly find another one that I’d like better. Because it’s always my luck that as soon as I buy something, I find one much, much better. The only ones I found were, again, way out of my price range. Like this one from Urban Cat Design (in the NETHERLANDS):
Books and kitties. Two of my favorite things. (Real books, because this lady will NEVER own a damn eReader.)
So I bought the one that I talked about buying recently, the one that was reasonably priced compared to the ones I LOVED but couldn’t possibly justify spending so much money on. AND…this lady never buys anything on the interwebz without a coupon. So I got free shipping and $20 off to boot. Uh huh. I’m an awesome bargain hunter on expensive things. Like the $160 boots I got for $40. I really thought that one had to be a scam, but the boots are fabulous.
Now I wait. Because it’s coming from California. If I hadn’t held off for so long, I might have it this weekend to put together, but the boys are going to have to wait for next weekend, since I rarely have time or energy during the work week. Oh well. Moosh has been entertaining himself just fine with the silver ball of sparkles that are mostly strewn around the floor right now and I really should take away from him because Taco will eat the sparkles. Taco has a, um, sensitive butt, to put it nicely. The sparkles make it bleed a lil. Not serious, but unnerving. It’s so unfortunate because it literally is the ONLY toy that Moosh will play with, and he plays with it SO enthusiastically. Kitty mom is conflicted. Meh.
Now he can jump on his OWN furniture. HAH!
Kitty mommy problems, whatcha gonna do? Ooh, another rap song. Bam.
Taco is rather unhelpful.
I brought work home tonight. This isn’t my favorite after-work activity, but I was determined to push through and get ‘er done, if you will.
It should come as no surprise that this was not to Taco’s liking, because, after all, WORK means NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEE!
Here’s Taco LITERALLY sitting on my work.
I don’t know what kind of work you, dear reader, do, but mine involves being creative and thinking and concentrating. Not always the fun kind of creative, like blogging or photoshopping pictures of kitties, the kind that you’re glad that you get paid for. The kind of work that is really quite impossible when you have a cat sitting next to you HOWLING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS. God forbid I make the mistake of looking over and making EYE CONTACT with him, as that is a direct invitation to jump on my lap (while continuing to howl at the top of his lungs) and step all over it, which sucks doubly because I maaaay have overdone it just a touch at the gym yesterday and my legs are currently unusable and untouchable (but I so oddly want a massage, go figure).
Here’s another angle after an aborted lap attack. Back on the work.
I managed to work through during the howl breaks and somehow get it done. Poor Taco couldn’t even get TOO excited, because immediately after finishing my dearly beloved mother called, hindering the speed in which his little mouth was fed. Fortunately for him, my dearly beloved mother is also becoming quite the technologically advanced lady and suggested I put her on speaker phone. So proud of your iPhone using, Mamacita! Props on the texting, particularly Emoji.
My workplace is very dog-friendly and I realize that is much more sensible than cat-friendly…after all, I’ve never actually met anyone allergic to dogs (although I’m sure they’re out there) but many allergic to cats and dogs are really much better with the vast population than cats…but I do wish sometimes I could work AT work with a kitty on my lap. Just one that’s not meowing. While I am the resident crazy cat lady there, I’m most definitely not the only one. Many would appreciate kitteh luv. Oh, but the chaos that would ensue if I tried to haul these freaks in my office. Sigh.
Speaking of cat-friendly workplaces, if you like lolcats and you haven’t seen LOLWORK on Bravo yet, you totally should. It’s highly amusing. I love the crazy cat lady gay guy whose sample of quotes includes “People tell me my cat is like a dog and I tell them to shut up.” It’s not the most amazing show ever but it’ll give you a giggle. They don’t get to bring their cats into work but there IS a homemade cheezburger cat mascot costume! I’ll leave you with THAT thought. Good night.
Moosh being the good son, as usual. Silent.
Cat hair in my eye. WOO!
I don’t know if anyone else have cats that seem to ADORE smashing their faces into yours, but I have one and a half. Moosh shows his love through borderline violent face smushing, hence his name, Moosh Moosh (he was Oz when we got him, renamed him Porkchop and again renamed when it became apparent he was indeed a Moosh Moosh). Taco does it when he’s REALLY REALLY craving attention, not just his usual meowing and stepping over to get attention. The face isn’t so much his target, though. Any part will do.
Anyway, I bring this up because I have had a piece of cat hair stuck in my eye ALL DAY. I can feel it with and without my contact in. It’s not super painful, but it’s annoying. I only know it’s a cat hair because I saw it and tried to get it out and it disappeared to wreak havoc on my poor eyeball all freaking day long.
Moosh spreadin’ his shiz.
This is not the first time. I’m always pulling effing cat hairs out of my eyes. I’m lucky that most of my wardrobe is black or I’d be furry all day long, thanks to my laziness regarding lint brushes. If it’s not in my eyeball, it’s right after I’ve applied the stickiest lip gloss ever. Try fixing THAT without getting hairy, sticky lip gloss all over your face.
More fur on my bed.
So can I shave them? I think i could handle the claws but they’re both so jittery (I don’t know why they like us and hate new people so much, WE’RE the ones that torture them) I think I would scar them horribly with a loud razor. At the very least, Taco’s stress levels are of utmost concern, as we currently (get this) have couches FREE OF PEE PADS! CRAY, as the kids say these days. Taco sleeps on the couches a lot lately, which the boyfriend sees as a concern but is exciting to me because the vet said they won’t piss where they rub their face. “Sleep on” is close enough to “rub face on” for me. So exciting.
This is what my life has been reduced to. Complaining about cat hair in my eye and being enthralled about cats not peeing on my couch. And writing a blog about it while my boyfriend watches Shahs of Sunset, which despite my love for horrorshow reality shows, does nothing for me. Oddly, I’m ok with all of this.
Nothing better to do than capture the brotherly love on camera.
Cats. Shut up. Please.
So I started this new kick. Being positive. Because I realized that I have become a rather temperamental be-yotch lately. Which I don’t mind so much, but I’m even starting to piss off myself with my grouchiness. Therefore, I’m attempting.
Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone else around me was having bad days and being cranky, which is hard to overcome. And then there’s my stupid wrist, which is more crampy than it was before I went to the doctor and started wearing the damn brace, and then the rest of my arm started hurting too from overcompensating. And thanks doc, I know you said I was cleared to work with a brace, but have you ever tried to grab boxes coming down a moving conveyor belt, jiggle them around under a half-broken scanner and then place them perfectly tetris-style in a plastic igloo without the use of the thumb on your dominant hand? I was hoping my left arm would become magically useful and I would move into ambidextrism, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s either very stubborn or it takes a lot longer than a week to teach one’s moronic digital half to pick up the slack.
Just call me gimp.
This is where I expect my cats to “poor you” me. But no! They still want to be fed. In fact, they seems to want to be fed more than usual. The non-winter Florida winter is making them ravenous. And I refuse to feed them more than they’re suppose to be fed. So guess what happens? MEOWING. SO MUCH MEOWING.
Usually it’s just Taco being a loud a-hole, but now Moosh is getting into the act with his high pitched MEEEEs. I came home from work tonight craving quiet, and Taco meowed for (and I’m NOT exaggerating here) a half an hour straight. At some point he was so worn out from meowing at me he actually stopped following me around and laid down to meow at me. They certainly weren’t starving. There was food in the food island. They know how to get it. Both of them. I guess it’s not as good as when you’re SERVED food.
Taco’s finally shut up, although he has a new, weird obsession with eating my clutch purse. The boyfriend is home and we’re sitting in football-induced silence, and it’s lovely. Yay.
Meowwy christmas!
Never a dull day…
Cats really make life interesting.
I mean, who knows how bored I would be without them? For example: Tuesday, I had a few minutes to sit on my ass in between work and the gym and more work. Taco was such a dear that he vomited food all over our comforter again! Stripping the bed and tossing it all in the wash (after removing the food particles, of course) was such a PERFECT alternative! Because I have a lot of time to do laundry several times over.
You’re welcome for the clean bed to sleep on.
I suppose it was better that I saw it rather than the boyfriend NOT see it and lay in it (it was all on his side of the bed), but cleaning up kitty puke is never my favorite chore. My mom’s cats (also my cats) puke on her bed all the time. Now I understand how she feels.
I’m starting to think that perhaps I should just cover every surface in plastic like an old lady. I mean, the couches are already covered in puppy pads and our mattress has a waterproof case on it (we bought a new, very uncheap new mattress not that long ago and decided for that sort of investment we should guard against possible Taco pee, even though he’s never done it there. So far, though, it’s only been tested by me falling asleep holding a beer. It worked. Phew.) so we might as well just take the extra step to encase it all. Shrink wrap?
Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture?
I love my boys and all, but don’t they know that I don’t get paid for cleaning up after them?
MEOW hear this! 