Friday Cat Blogging
At The End of Her Rope
I could use a thumb for this hook.
[Editor: CC was taking a ‘walk-about’ this afternoon. The initials are for ‘Crazy Cat’ – what else would you call a cat who likes showers and vacuum cleaners?]
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9 comments
Wait. This thing is attached to a collar *without* a harness? WTF? I can get TMF to walk about just fine on a leash but he’d slip a collar lickity split (he’s just so friggin’ shiny that it’s like he levitates the collar right off of him).
She can drop the collar if she feels like it, but doesn’t want her human staff to know. His other cats haven’t figured it out, and don’t try, but CC has a lot of interests that would out of reach if she didn’t slip the collar occasionally. The other cats have much thinner coats, which makes a big difference.
None of mine will tolerate a collar, and when I put a harness on Sox, he just flopped over and refused to move.
He starts training them to the ropes at about 8 weeks.
Mencken wears a collar with his ID on it in case he leaves the house for some reason (it’s never happened because he wants nothing to do with the outdoors — he had quite enough of that when he was a feral, thank you very much — but still a good precaution) but TMF practically ejects a collar, it doesn’t stay on for more than a few minutes before I find it lying somewhere on the floor. TMF did the same thing the first time I put a harness on him — just flopped right over. I simply pulled up a folding chair and started reading a book, and eventually he got tired of lying down and started moving ;). I don’t walk him on a harness anymore though because there’s an untutored tom spraying around the neighborhood and he has a bad reaction to that, puffs up and starts looking for that interloper on *his* territory, even though he’s been “fixed” long ago… apparently too late, tho :(.
Ours wear collars with great reluctance. We have trackers on them, mainly for boris and his visiting Izzy the Mastiff, and because Robyn is an old chap. I can’t see any of ours sybmitting to a harness though!
Yes, if you wait too long, they pick up all of the tom habits, including spraying/marking, that no longer do them any good. I hope he doesn’t decide to ‘mark’ his territory.
Ringo is the only one who goes outside, but she will slip the collar while you are putting it on. Sox has been outside a couple of times, but the ferals were mean to him, so he won’t try any more. That’s why I tried to use a harness, so he could go outside and not get stuck under the house – again.
Ah, yes, the unrequited love of Boris and Izzy. I still think it is a plan to take out the Satan cat next door.
Like all great ideas, Jams, they only work for other people. The automatic litter box was a disaster, as was the flood from the automatic water bowl, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the harness.
So far no spraying. But Mencken’s starting to get a bit of a dazed look to his eyes, like, “I’m living in a madhouse!”, because one minute TMF is cuddled against him with nose buried in Mencken’s fur, the next he’s howling and yowling and screeching and hissing and spitting at Mencken. I don’t blame Mencken, this is getting annoying…
Automatic litter box ( SNORT!). Yeah, like that could ever work :). I must say that the Platinum water fountain did work well for my guys, they liked it a lot. But it was a maintenance nightmare, if you didn’t clean it religiously every few days it got slimy and it had all sorts of crevices and crannies that needed special tools to get into (which came with it but still, a PITA). I just keep a water bowl by the lavatory faucet and change the water every time I use the bathroom, that seeks to keep them happy.
The neutered males outside feel Mencken’s pain, because they will get nailed by the functioning toms whenever any cat goes into heat. They really have no idea what is going on. I try not to hit them with the SuperSoaker when I need to stop the noise.
There are tranqs for cats if things get bad.
Half the cats wouldn’t go near it, and the other half just went in to make it work. It never actually got used as a litter box after the first time it was used.
Yeah, I rotate through water dishes because of the slime and the hard water deposits if I don’t. Property would prefer that I let the bathroom faucet drip, but that isn’t going to happen.
CC is certainly a delightful looking cat. I wish my cats didn’t fear the vacuum. CC sounds like she is purrfect! I think 8 weeks old is the perfect time to start the kitties on collars/leashes. I’ve thought about it, but now my cats are too old. They would just flop down – the less high-strung, and the high-strung ones would run off and hide, probably getting the collar/leash caught on something so I would have to move all sorts of stuff, just to get to them.
CC ignores the vacuum, but Ringo hates it, and attacks it instead of hiding. It very difficult to use a vacuum when a cat is attacking the wand with claws extended.
My concern about collars and harnesses is based on the fact that my cats, with the exception of Sox, are climbers and they could get caught on a tree limb.