The CAT room!

msolga - mouse sounds adorable - rosie likes my socks too - i find them all over the place!

Yes Timmy was a very very smart tuxedo cat with very beautiful black eyeliner and shiny green eyes - long legged, long tailed and skinny and very agile. he had white chest, tummy and legs with black marks on his legs, black back and ears and part of his face and a little pale pink wimpy nose. Also very independent and a one-person cat - MINE! When I get my scanner set up again I'll scan a photo and post it.

Roberta Patty must have been an embarrassing little minx at times!





this is my little monster's latest atrocity - she developed a passion for climbing this pot plant and sure enough one day i came home to find it on the floor and the pot in smithereens.



it is a little known fact that she is also a talented card player

Vivien, wow! Now, our cats cannot play cards! They cannot open doors... Sometimes I think they are not too smart - especially Nisse... :-)

Msolga, about the names. Ours are Nisse and Mysan. I wanted them to have Swedish names because my husband Stefan is Swedish. Nisse is the most popular cat name in Sweden. It comes from the name Nils. Mysan means something like 'the cuddly one' and that she is. Especially with me - she is definitely 'my little girl'.

Hexe - now that is a different story. She is my sister's cat and was at first called 'Mauesle' which means little mouse. She was more or less feral when my sister got her and her baby son Tiger. She would not let you touch her. They had to take her to the vet and she was attacking the vet so that she - the vet - said she would recommend putting her to sleep because she will never be a tame house cat. So the little mouse was renamed 'Witch' or Hexe in German. Today Hexe is very mild tempered, likes to sleep in my nephew's bed and in general stays with her humans.

My friends in Sweden run a retail business called "Nisses" - and they are not at all cat people

I think they named it after Neil, (a Kiwi) using the Swedish version, Nils! It used to be "cheap Neils", but they've dropped that part of it, for the new store. Neil took me on the "Billiga Nisse" (Cheap Neil's) tour of Sweden a couple of years ago - pretty scary!

LOL, Roberta!
But I'm starting to wonder of it's YOUR influence that produces such eccentricities in your cats.

Viven

Yes, Mouse was gorgeous. The sad thing was, she just vanished one Christmas Eve. Never to be seen again. You have no idea the lengths we went to find her, but to no avail. What a rotten Christmas that was!


Rosie is coming along in leaps & bounds! She's beautiful, Vivien! And what a life she has. Lucky, lucky cat!

Yes, please! .... Would love to see a photograph of Timmy. I adoe tuxedo cats. Did I tell you that Flatty wears a tudexo?

urs

You obviously come from a family of cat lovers! The very BEST type of people, don't you think? I'm always wary of people who don't like animals ... or the people that my cats are very wary of. Cats are very good judges of character (& suckers!).

None of my cats play cards either, but Nermal can shut the game down with a single keystroke. Never figured out how he does that.

He's smart, Roger.

I hate to tell you this, Olga, but I already thought of that. Some day I'll tell you about the other crazy pets in my life. I'm not sure whether I make them that way or whether I'm attracted to them because they're that way. Quien sabe?

Vivien, Thanks for the wonderful photos. Card playing. A harmless activity. When I was writing my first book, Miranda deleted all the figures for Chapter 4. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. Little Patty liked to climb my trees. When Mikey took an interest, I put masking tape across the top of the pots. My trees couldn't hold his weight. And I didn't want him to think that the dirt was an alternative to cat litter. Ain't pussycats grand? :-D

MORE crazy pets, Roberta? Oh, good!
Yes, do tell more tales! (When you have the time, of course.) I love your critter stories.

me too, and your stories as well

I'd wondered where Nisse and co got their names from - they are lovely names, thanks for the explanation

Mikey update: He's got a crush on the student I tutor. She arrives, and he drapes himself across the table we work at. (He takes up most of the table.) He faces my student; his back is to me. I'm not offended. As long as he's not biting anybody, namely me, I'm happy.

Miranda and Patty story: I came home from work to find Patty in the cupboard that houses the cat food. She was knocking all the cans on the floor. Miranda was on the floor trying to open them. Glad they were the old need-a-can-opener kind. She might have been able to figure out the new flip-top kind.

msolga no i didn't know Flatty wore a tuxedo - how about a photo? I'd love to see him.

Roberta - first book - more books?? wow!! i can imagine the language when the chapter disappeared!


Miranda and Patty raiding the cupboard ! I could just see them

One of my favourite cat stories involves Floosie - a ginger/white cat I had some years back (named because she behaved like an absolute tart with ALL men!). She was the boss cat in a household of 3-4 for many years, until she succumbed to snake bite.

Floosie didn't like doors shut - any doors, room doors, divider doors, cupboard doors - she liked them all open. Usually, as long as she could move through the house with ease she was fine, but if anything prevented her - there was hell to pay. She would wake you up in the middle of the night if you had thoughtlessly closed a door (some house guests found this disconcerting!). She'd holler, and put her paw under the door and vibrate it against the door frame. No chance of a pee in peace in her house!

She particularly liked the linen press door left open (Poss does this all the time in a different house!). But the linen press door was just outside the bedroom door. I got up one night to go to the loo in the dark, and didn't turn any lights on. I glanced at the clock as I left and padded out. But coming back was a bit different. Where I'd just pushed past the linen press door on the way out, coming back, I walked straight into it - and it hit me on the forehead, just above the eyes.

It knocked me out cold, and I was on the floor for about 20 minutes, before coming round again! It gave me a monster headache, and I was lucky not to get a couple of black eyes.

I learned to be much more careful, and that door was closed as often as I could get away with it!

ouch!

Margo, Out for 20 minutes!!!!! Holy moley. Felines! Miranda was the door opener here. Mikey doesn't have a clue.

Floozies! Oh my! All my female Siamese have been shocking - except my first Miranda, who loved me with a dark passion, and hated any man I liked. I will tell the tale of Miranda I and Peter one day.

Anyway, Miranda I loved to be able to explore every room in the house. I was in a share student household at the time - four bedrooms. Sally used to keep her door shut, which frustrated Miranda, who would try the door often.

When she was angry because I had told her off, she used to stalk down the passage, and, somehow, manage to thud her body into Sally's door with a sound like a cannon ball hitting it.

It was very funny watching a cat having a tantrum - unless Sally was asleep inside...or had a new partner...

It is soo funny to read these stories!

The only door our cats can open is the door to the pantry. Usually the only thing that they steal in there is the bag of cat chips. Or nothing at all. Makes me wonder what is the big deal... I want to have to door closed because it is cold in there and I don't want to kitchen to become this cold.

I was at a birthday party yesterday. We talked about sharing the bed with a partner etc. I said that it's good that my husband comes home so late because I usually go to sleep with both cats in the bed with me. One of the guests looked at me absolutely disgusted. 'Cats in bed! That's terrible! But they are not allowed to be on the table, are they?' 'No, not while we are eating...' Well, she then told me that she doesn't like cats... Guess what - I don't really care and I love cats!

These stories are great...I have 3 cats-Whisper, Nugget and Tabby. Whisper is my oldest, he's a silver and grey tabby with amber eyes. Nugget is the middle child and the only girl- she's an unusual calico- more striped than spotted with a bright orange diamond in the middle of her forehead. Tabby is an orange and white tuxedo with tabbie stripes, his face is white except his nose...looks like he dunked his snout in orange paint.

They all have such distinct personalities. Whisper is a total mama's boy while Nugget is the epitome of spoiled princess; Tabby is a country bumpkin who is a very polite and cuddley cat.

Whisper has recently learned how to open doors and now I find him every where he shouldn't be. They all have the habit of prying open the cupboard doors and getting in and knocking everything over. I love them all, though, especially when I go to put on my shoes and find thier favorite toys stuffed inside as a gift