Friday Cat Blogging
Adapting
Zzz … zzz … zzz
[Editor: Froggie was looking for dry, not comfortable, and a trash can under the eaves of a neighbor’s house, fit the bill.]
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22 comments
Cats really *can* sleep anywhere, can’t they?
– Badtux the Amused Penguin
The mind boggles at the places we find our cats sleeping!
Too bad there’s no Olympic event called “Competitive Sleeping”. Probably they’re afraid the winner would be a cat.
I get pangs of pain just seeing some the positions the cats get into when sleeping, especially Sox who spent a lot of time with his front legs and back legs pointed in opposite directions.
The top of that can is an incline to the rear with a maximum flat area of about the same width as two fingers. Froggie was up there for a couple of hours before dinner.
Love the little “blaze” on his whiskered face.
That would be her, Jill. Froggie is named for her voice. If you heard a recording of her purring, you would understand. When she gets going it is like standing next to one of those pick-ups with the sub-woofers in the bed.
I have that can, Bryan, though mine still has the green flip-up part. Thus my comment about “cats really *can* sleep anywhere.”
Jill, look at the coloration. Female cats are XX, male cats are XY, and orange/black coat colors are defined by the X gene. A cat with both orange and black in its coat is almost always female because males just don’t have enough of the orange-black color genes to produce both orange and black in a cat’s coat. (Unless they’re sterile XXY mutants, but that’s a different issue).
I don’t know about your trash bins, but you really need bigger heat registers, because you aren’t about to get smaller cats. HLM does a very effective job of hiding that register.
“Her” cute little kitty face! I forgot about the “calico” coloration being female.
Love the name, too.
I’ll have you know, Bryan, that I *do* have smaller cats. Last week was their yearly exam, and during the five years on the last page of their medical record, TMF went from 16 pounds to 14 pounds, and HLM went from 12 pounds to, err, 12 pounds (because his weight was already perfect, of course, as HLM would tell you himself 🙂 ).
I have resolved my heat problem in my bedroom by adding an electric chicken-coop-style heater. That is a bit cheaper than larger furnace registers :).
When she gets going it is like standing next to one of those pick-ups with the sub-woofers in the bed.
i’ve known cats like that. christopher houdini, he of the inaudible and nearly invisible purr, has recently [since moving to the new place] upped his volume. he’s now among the loudest of the purrers in the crew [which isn’t saying much], and can even meow audibly too [though several of the grrrlz are much louder].
Sexing cats isn’t as easy as some species, especially when there is no possibility of lifting tails, so you have to learn the tricks when you deal with ferals. Generally the size and shape of the head of an adult will tell you, as most of the feral males have rounder, and larger heads than the females, but that only works for fully grown adults. The “three colors = XX” rule is very helpful.
Badtux, I was actually thinking more along the lines of a sheet aluminum shelf or diverter to put over the register. Basically a box with no bottom and one side open so the cat could sleep on top of that, and hot air could still get into the room. The cost of electricity down here makes electric heaters very expensive.
Property is a stealth purrer, and Sox’s tenor is Siamese-class when he gets going. Actually all of the “kittens” are fairly muted, even more than their mother, who chirps more than meows. Maybe he was looking for better acoustics, Hipparchia.
Froggie doesn’t really look comfortable, but she looks like she’s where she wants to be for the time being. I know what you mean about the purrs. Rocky Girl has one heck of a motor, too. I was in bed wondering when that stupid truck would drive away. The truck never did leave, but when I woke up fully, I found out then noise was Rocky Girl.
It was nice that you got RG that blanket, OWL.
Froggie has “issues” with some of the other cats, so that position is not only dry, it is protected from casual attacks.
you’re probably right about the acoustics. i was thinking just a couple of days ago that if i ever end up with some extra money [while still living in this house] that i’d like to have a decent sound system again.
“Property is a STEALTH purrer” LOL!
=^..^=
I actually tried your proposal using a shoe box prototype, Bryan. All that happened was that the cat moved to be in front of where the heat exited, blocking it there instead. What did work was to put a box fan on top of the grate, HLM is big but not *that* big, he couldn’t block a whole 20″ box fan. But then I have a 20″ box fan on top of the grate, which doesn’t work well when I get out of bed on that side during the night (because the kittehs are monopolizing the other side of the bed) and stub my toe on it.
So I said f*** it and got the thermostatically controlled electric heater for the bedroom. I have Santa Clara Municipal Power so it’s cheap enough, and the cat doesn’t spend all the time on *that* grate so the heater doesn’t run all the time. There’s other rooms, other grates to sleep on, after all :).
She purrs, Jill, but you don’t know it unless you have your hand on her. She gets so excited when I’m handing out scratches and strokes that she almost never gets touched – my hand passes over where she was, as she dances away in apparent ecstasy.
Ah, you have a truly public “public utility” that doesn’t gouge you, Badtux, while I have Gulf Power, a division of Southern “all your money is ours” Companies.
Hmm, maybe some decorative, perforated aluminum, with angle bracing … but the stubbing hazard is still there…
Yeppers, anytime some wingnut tells me “government can’t do anything as good as private business,” I say “Santa Clara Municipal Power, b***es!” Not only is it cheaper than surrounding PG&E ripoff power, it’s also more reliable than “PG&E — we skimp on maintenance until our gas lines explode” power, *and* returns more in in-lieu-of-taxes monies to our city than PG&E pays in taxes to surrounding cities, thus allowing us to have lower taxes. Ticks PG&E off to have this counter-example to their monopoly pricing and poor service, but there’s nothing they can do about it.
So this allows you to run a “cat spa” on the weekend 😉
So you noticed the common theme for my Friday and Saturday cat pics, eh? Heh.
See, I do pay attention to things other than the current race.