Saturday 23 May 2009

I can feel the hatred searing into my back...

I am sorry to report that there is a member of my family I have upset . Really, really upset. I can tell this because every time I look round I am being glared at balefully from the corner of the kitchen. The cat is miffed. Miffed in the regal, how-dare-you? way that only a cat can be. My crime? I threw out the mat that used to sit by the back door.

To explain, Schieffer lives in the kitchen. She has a cat flap in the back door so she can come and go as she pleases, wandering around the garden, falling asleep on the back step when it is sunny and hunkering down in the warm kitchen when it is not. She has a little cat bed, tucked neatly under the radiator, which she sleeps in quite happily. She even has it customised just how she likes it: coated with so much cat hair that a stray bolt of lightning would probably result in a completely new household pet. However, for those in-between times when she doesn't want to sleep, when it's too warm for the bed but not warm enough to stretch out like a mangy impersonation of a tigerskin rug on the patio, she likes the mat by the door. Or rather, she used to like it.

In cat terms, the mat was perfect: comfy enough to loaf on, suitably decorated with the spare cat hair she hadn't applied to her little tartan bed, and close enough to the cat flap so she could keep an eye on those pesky birds in the garden. She had adopted this mat, made it her own. Oh, and did I mention she had puked on it? Repeatedly? I had attempted to clean it a few times but her habit of eating grass (or my mint!) in the garden and then coming indoors to throw up was a bit difficult to keep up with. With a whole kitchen floored in easy-to-wipe-clean-and-disinfect laminate wood stuff, she always ALWAYS chose to yak up on the mat, and she did so regularly. The other morning I came downstairs to discover that she had done it again, during the night, and this time there were.......(deep breath).........lumps. Dried lumps. Eurgh. Whole mat went into the bin.

I have replaced the mat with a nice new one but the cat is not happy. The new, clean, mat does not have the patina of the old one. It does not smell of old cat and regurgitated vegetation (yet). So the cat is in a huff. Look.That is Schieffer sulking, pointedly sitting on old newspaper, squashed in beside her food bowls, rather than deigning to grace the new mat with her royal backside. She is also, I suspect, telepathically trying to tell me how much she hates me and how, if she had opposable thumbs and could open cat food pouches herself, I would be history. I wonder how long she will be able to keep this up?

EDITED TO ADD: I went through to the kitchen after posting this AND SHE HAD PUKED ON THE NEW MAT! A huge pile of semi-digested cat food. She still won't sit on the mat, but is perfectly happy to throw up on it. She really hates me.

15 comments:

  1. I wonder if there's some chemical smell to the new mat that's keeping her off? (Maybe from a coating on the underside?) My cats would be all over a new anything, rolling around on it, picking at it with their claws, laying claim to it.

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  2. She has every right to be furious, and what a creative way of showing it lol. If cats could shout, what would they say?

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  3. Top tips for Bulimic Cat:

    Put out less food, so she can't be too greedy

    Put the food in different places, so she has to walk between mouthfuls, aiding digestion

    Avoid cheap cat food

    Of course, from a psychological point of view, the news isn't good: eating disorders are often associated with over controlling mothers.

    Bobo

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  4. Oh this is too funny! But you are right. She is looking daggers at you. I'd be careful where you go and what you do. Very careful! LOL!

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  5. As a cat owner(ownee), I have to say, they are fickle creatures.

    My Mums cat used to spew daily. The answer was putting out a spoonfull of food at a time. But of course, there isn't much you can do if she chooses to try and be a hippy tree hugger type cat and eat nothing but green stuff.

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  6. AHAHAHA

    She looks so... baleful.

    Cats are such funny creatures. And so much more likely to wish you harm than dogs...

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  7. Great post! Cats:)
    Try a piece of newspaper on the mat for a while, see if she will sit on it then.

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  8. Maybe kitty is just reading the paper?

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  9. Whoa! That truly is the stink eye... if looks could kill :)

    I once spent $200 on a new kennel for my dog coz his old one was leaking and he refused to bloody go inside it, preferring to half-drown in his old one. I was livid. Ungrateful little shit :)

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  10. You can lead a cat to the... mat... but you can't make him/her sit on it. Clearly.

    Maybe if you made it clear that the cat was NOT allowed to sit on the new mat, that would do it?

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  11. I'm with Isabelle, having seen the way her "Cats are not allowed on tables" policy worked out.

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  12. If cats had opposable thumbs, they'd rule the world. And I'd be very afraid, because Max (aka the evil ninja assassin cat) would be able to find stray change under the couch cushions and find some way to order a handgun online. And then I'd be spending all my time poaching salmon at gunpoint.

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  13. I read in my cat book that cats enjoy throwing up; that it's not like us throwing up - unless it's an ongoing thing, of course. But really, the only thing that makes cats so lovable and interesting is that they do bizarre stuff like this. They don't have all the bouncy charm of a dog, so they have to come up with something to get some attention. My cat's latest obsession is with the pot of cat grass I bought him. Everytime I fill the little saucer under it with water to water the plant, the cat decides he NEEDS to drink this water -- but he can't get at it because the pot's in the way so he ends up pushing the whole pot (saucer and all) all over the house with his head. It's hilarious, but he gets so frustrated. It's not like he doesn't have his usual regular bowl of fresh water on his feeding mat 24/7.

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  14. One of our cats, Mischief, would love the new mat. Whenever anything new appears in the house, she is there spreading hair, furballs and discarded claw ends. For six days she sleeps on the rug at the end of the bed, on the 7th, when the bed linin is changed she upsticks amd moves to the center of the bed and sits with a smug expression on our face, flicking strya hairs from side to side. Drives Mrs B up the wall.

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  15. Bahaha! Poor thing. You know cats hate change!

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