Kitty Tales

Cat Olympics - August 18 2004

I've been enjoying watching the Olympics, and so have Neelix and Kes. In fact, they have decided to host their own Cat Olympics! There are many varied and entertaining events such as:

Running (full pelt along the hallway)
Hurdling (over the furniture)
High Jump (to the forbidden dining room table)
Wrestling (but we're just playing, Mum, really!)
Gymnastics - Floor (ooh, that was a good stretch...)
Gymnastics - Vault (over the scratching post, forward one and a half twist)
Weightlifting (themselves after a good feed)

And the results are... wow... it's a tie! Neelix and Kes have both won a gold medal! The crowd cheers.

Nightmare on Sharky's Street - April 5 2004

This little horror story takes place in my bathroom every morning. It's become a bit of a ritual. Unlike the Freddie Kruger classic though, the cast is actually quite good-looking (well, the four-legged cast anyway...). But very much like the movie, this story starts quite innocently and there's a bit of a twist at the end. You have been warned.

You see, I always shower in the mornings. As soon as I get up, Kes runs to the shower door and wails in that high-pitched little squeak she tries to pass off as a meow. If I don't head straight for the shower, the squeak becomes more of an insistent demand until I capitulate.

When the shower door opens, Kes walks into the middle of the shower and looks at me, sometimes squeaking again to tell me I should just hurry up and turn on the water. I turn the tap just enough so a bit of water dribbles from the shower head. For Kes, this is the showering equivalent of playtime, when she can practice moving around puddles of water with her deft little paws. When she has had enough of that, she will move to the edge of the shower and look up at me again. I turn on the shower properly, with just the right mix of hot and cold water, and Kes starts drinking... and keeps drinking... and drinking, until she has had enough. Thankfully, I have a decent hot-water system that lasts.

Sometimes she will skirt around the edges of the shower, and a couple of times she has run directly under the stream of water. Mostly she straddles the entrance with her right paws in the water and her left paws on the bathmat. This means I cannot close the door until she has finished. Which means unless I want water all over the floor, I have to wait until Kes is finished before I can have my shower. Which means my morning showering routine is determined by a very cute, but unrelenting kitty. Which probably means I really should be in therapy.

Whilst Kes is drinking, the water is hitting the bottom of the shower and then splashing up... on Kes. So what we have now is a kitty with a fairly dry left side, a sopping wet right side, and a face full of little water droplets sticking to whiskers. The transformed water-demon will finally get sick of drinking and back away from the shower. Now any normal cat (as normal as a cat can be who likes getting in the shower anyway) would shake themselves to offload all the water. Not Kes.

At this point in the story I should mention Neelix.

Neelix likes water about as much as I would like hot lava poured down my back, which is to say, not at all. The mere sound of water is enough to worry Neelix.

The problem is, Kes knows this...

Can you see where this is going now?

Kes runs from the bathroom to find Neelix, sidles up to him showing her dry left side, then turns and shakes herself, scaring the hell out of Neelix. Of course, this only fooled Neelix the first few times and now he starts running as soon as Kes stalks out of the bathroom. After I have finished my shower, I usually go for a walk to find the puddle of water that indicates how far down the hallway he got this time...

Associative Reasoning - February 19 2004

I'm on holiday from this week, and my mum is staying with me for a few days. Last night, she tucked some stocking socks into her shoes, and of course, this morning they were gone. She found one in the lounge room, and asked me to keep an eye out for the other one.

It was in one of my shoes!

So either Neelix or Kes (probably Kes, as she's the cheeky one who always hides things on me), has taken the sock from mum's shoe and put it in my shoe. Amazing!

Gunfight at the OK Corral - February 17 2004

I've been working some very long hours lately, and my kids have been devising ways of amusing themselves whilst I am gone. They showed me one of their tricks tonight.

Cue Neelix, who ambles into the lounge room with his usual swagger which reminds me of a character out of a Western. He spies his prey, a shoelace with the ends cut off and knots tied into each end, and he glances over at Kes who is pretending to ignore him. Slowly, he sidles up to the shoelace whilst looking in the other direction, and then pounces, taking the shoelace by surprise. It didn't stand a chance. Neelix races out of the loungeroom with one end of the shoelace in his mouth, dragging the rest behind him. Take that, you ornary shoelace! Kes forgets any pretence of indifference, and races off in hot pursuit of the hostage shoelace.

As they disappear up the stairs, Kes pounces and just misses the end of the shoelace, and much running-about ensues. It sounds like a stampede up there. A few moments later, Kes gallops down the stairs, victorious, with one end of the shoelace in her mouth, and Neelix in pursuit of the other end. The battered shoelace flails about from one mouth to the next. Kes has it. Now Neelix has it. Now Kes has it again.

Kes decides to take the law into her own hands. She feigns a left turn, but then turns right at the last minute, gaining valuable seconds on Neelix. She jumps up to the couch, dragging the whole shoelace with her... and then sits on it.

Neelix, seeing that there is no shoelace, flops on to his side and goes to sleep, dreaming of the hunt. Kes looks at me smugly, rolls over to reveal the shoelace, and goes to sleep. All is now quiet on the Western front, as the tumbleweeds roll by.