Survival of the Fittest: Video Edition

I am artificially keeping Kitten alive.  No, this does not mean that I have Kitten hooked up to some sort of cat life-support system with a morphine drip and feeding tube (though I have given Kitten morphine before).  What I mean is, that there is no chance, not even a sliver of a possibility, that Kitten could live in the wild (urban or otherwise).

I know I have written on similar topics before. Select examples include: Kitten has an Intellectual Disability,  Kitten Almost Died, RIP Cheap Entertainment Unit Door, and 5 Reasons Kitten would not Survive the First Week of a Zombie Apocalypse.

But I still feel like without some concrete evidence, it is difficult for people who do not personally know Kitten to fully grasp how dumb he is.

To help you better understand the level of Kitten’s inability to function as a living being, I have compiled this brief and very incomplete video collection of Kitten’s shortcomings.

Kitten loves to chase things, however, he has little concept of how to come to a proper stop and also forgets very quickly why he was running in the first place.

This is how Kitten eats.  It involves a lot of weird jerky head movements and inability to actually get any food in his mouth.

Kitten will not let me brush him and since the following is his idea of bathing, he ends up covered in mats, necessitating stupid haircuts.  Please note that this is actually the full extent of Kitten’s concept of what constitutes appropriate personal-hygiene measures.

Kitten does not understand object permanence (or in this case, world permanence).  To be fair, neither do babies.  But, even minimally sentient beings often understand that they can escape from underneath blankets.  Kitten does not.  If you put a blanket over Kitten, he will stay they until you take it off.  He accepts that warm darkness has become his life, and at a certain point will begin to welcome it.  That point is at 1:29 in this video, where Kitten begins to purr in his dark sanctuary.   

In the same vein, Kitten simply does not get what is happening when you put something as small as a washcloth over his face.  It is basically the end of the world.

Kitten has a love-hate relationship with cat toys.  He loves to chase them, but has an irrational fear of being chased/attacked/murdered by them.  He doesn’t understand the concept of “play.”

Bags. Kitten loves bags. I know I have said this many, many, many, times (and once more).  But Kitten’s favourite home has always been and forever will be, a crusty paper bag.

It is basically a miracle that he remembers to breath.

Kitten's "New" Home

Okay, so it isn't exactly a new home. I would say that it is more of a "garbage home", since I found it in the garbage.

But let me start from the beginning...

As I am sure you are aware, Kitten absolutely adores loves reveres bags and boxes (see also: here and here).  Here is the most recent exemplification of his infatuation:

But most bags and boxes are so fickle. Bags fall apart or sag so that Kitten cannot get in and boxes are usually temporary fixtures within our apartment, destined to end up in the recycling bin. 

So one day, when I was throwing some garbage down the garbage chute and I saw a perfect Kitten sized box just lying there (people in our building prefer to leave their garbage just outside of the chute as opposed to actually throwing it out), I knew what I had to do. 

I took that garbage box (which by the way was perfectly clean --  it looked like the type of box someone might use to carry their groceries home in) and made it into a Kitten home. At the time, I probably had some intention of painting it to make it look a little less like garbage, but clearly, that did not happen.

Regardless of its appearance, Kitten loves his garbage home:

 Though being Kitten, sometimes he just can't quite figure it out.

Lost & Found: Return of the Bag

Wow, working full time = Catherine forgets about Kitten blogging!

Luckily, I have something pretty exciting for you today. You might remember in my post, Kitten: Bags & Boxes, I mentioned that some of the very best Kitten-in-bag pictures I had taken had been lost. Well today, I found them! 

Enjoy!

 As you might be able to tell (depending on your gender) this is a La Senza bag, which means, that not only did Kitten get a bag, he also got some bonus tissue paper. It was a pretty exciting day.

Soon after getting the bag, Kitten somehow poked a hole in the side, which apparently, increased the bag's value by about about 500%. 

He would hide in the bag and try to attack us through the hole, since clearly we had no idea he was under the bag. It got pretty intense. 

 The hole was just big enough to fit a paw, while maintaining a view of his prey.

 Boyfriend decided to try it out too. He wasn't quite as good as Kitten.

P.S. Today I had lunch with my blog muse! I originally started the Kitten blog on the advice of an old high school friend / "colleague" (we both worked at Dairy Queen). She has a blog too, which I read daily and you can check it out at happyorhungry.com (which I highly recommend doing). She is also much better at keeping up with posting than me!

Boyfriend Buys Pants

Over reading week Boyfriend bought a new pair of pants. It was an exciting day for everyone in our family: Boyfriend now owns TWO pairs of pants, I no longer have to listen to Boyfriend whine about how he doesn't like the way his one pair of pants fit, and Kitten got a new bag.

As soon as I put the bag down, Kitten dove right in. Getting in the bag is always the best part for Kitten. I am pretty sure he thinks no one can see him when he is in the bag. The tricky part, is getting out of the bag. 

As you can see, this bag has strings. Strings tend to complicate, what is for Kitten, an already complicated task. Kitten can never seem to figure out how to escape the clutches of bag strings.

Anyway,  I know I posted about Kitten and bags not long ago (Kitten: Bags & Boxes), but I thought this video was worth sharing. 

Spoiler Alert: The bag wins.

Enjoy!

Kitten: Bags & Boxes

I apologize for the lack of Kitten Blog lately. I have no excuse. Times have started to get stressful at school again and I can appreciate that some Kitten Blogging might be necessary to provide an outlet for procrastination for both myself and fellow Factum writers.

This entry is all about Kitten and his love for boxes and bags. Of course, this love is not unique. From what I have heard, pretty much all cats love a good bag or box. I still thought you might enjoy a few good pictures of Kitten while he is exploring these magical places.  Sadly, I seem to have lost some of the best Kitten-in-bag pictures from about a year and a half ago. These pictures were taken pre-MacBook and were most likely lost in the numerous re-formattings required by my old and unfaithful Dell. 

Enjoy!

I am not sure why we had this box laying around, but Kitten thoroughly enjoyed it. Boyfriend & I briefly considered transforming it into a castle for Kitten, but decided against it. I was opposed to the eye-sore it would create and I am pretty sure Kitten is colour blind anyway. 

Kitten's favourite time of the week is grocery shopping day. Not only does he get a chance to chew through the  bread bag before we get a chance to put it away, he also gets to romp in a wonderland of bags. 

Boyfriend and I always use reusable bags, so there is never any threat of suffocation. Though sometimes, we forget Kitten is in the bags and step on him. We also like to play a game where we pretend we don't realize he is in the bag and then carry it around. I don't think Kitten appreciates the joke, but I do think he finds the ride fun.

I am not too sure what is going on here. I feel like Kitten may have thought he was invisible and tried to spy on me and Boyfriend. That or he just woke up and was really confused about being in a bag. He might have also forgotten how to get out. 

I know I have posted one of these before, but the series of them are quite priceless. Kitten seemed to be under the impression that he could sufficiently fit inside the soda cracker box. As you an see below, he was not impress when he realized that I could in fact still see him. Or he may have just been eating some soda cracker crumbs. You can never really tell with Kitten.

The finale of this Kitten Blog entry is a brief video clip of Kitten playing with a bag. I should have mentioned earlier that "bag play" is not always fun and games for Kitten. He takes it very seriously and unfortunately, sometimes the bag wins. This is one of those times.

5 Reasons Kitten would not Survive the First Week of a Zombie Apocalypse

Should a zombie apocalypse strike, I assume Boyfriend and I would flee the city to campout in some forest or rural village. While I would like to think that we would take Kitten with us, the truth is, he would probably slow us down.

1. He has ZERO Hunting Skills

Being alone, Kitten would need to find his own food. While this might not be a problem for most cats, I guarantee it would be for Kitten. First of all, Kitten has trouble eating from his food dish on a normal day. His face is just the wrong shape. It is very difficult for him to get his flat face into a dish that is not flat. You think Boyfriend and I would get him a dish more conducive to his face shape, but we find we are better able to maintain his weight this way (that was a joke, we are actually just too lazy). 

Secondly, Kitten is very picky about what he eats. He likes cheese, pizza, soup, and Nibs. These things are not readily available to cats without the assistance of a loving owner. Basically Kitten would starve.

2. Kitten has Horrible Personal Hygiene

For the longest time I wondered why Kitten never got hairballs like other cats, especially considering the amount of fur he has. Eventually, I realized it was because he never actually cleans himself. Anytime Boyfriend and I go away for a long-weekend, we always return home to a matted, greasy disaster. Kitten needs to be brushed constantly and also needs to be bathed to compensate for his own self-neglect. I honestly believe that Kitten would develop some fungal infection, or something along that line, within a week of being left alone. 

Kitten also has this thing where he gets very goopy eyes. He needs to have his eyes wipe by me or Boyfriend a minimum of once a day. I think before the fungal infection ever even got to him, his eyes would goop over completely and blind him.

3. Kitten is Incredibly Lethargic

I understand that most cats like to nap; I mean they do have their own saying about it. But Kitten, he doesn’t even nap. He just lies in various places around the apartment in whatever position he happened to fall in. You can nudge him, and push him, and “gently” kick him all you like, but he won’t budge. 

I am pretty certain that Kitten would prefer to let Zombies trip over him instead of actually moving. He would be dirty and hungry, but he would just lie there waiting for food to come to him. It wouldn’t.

4. Kitten is Terrible at Hiding

You know how when you play hide-and-seek with really small children they can’t grasp the concept that even though they can’t see you, you can still see them? Let’s just say that Kitten and two year olds have more than just bad hygiene in common.

There is no possible way that Kitten would be able to successfully hide himself from predators, and by predators I mean the billion dogs that live in my apartment and will have formed a hunting pack within the first week of the apocalypse, undoubtedly led by the small wiener dog on the first floor.

5. Kitten is not Afraid of Things that Try to Eat Him

Okay, Boyfriend and I are the only things that have tried to eat Kitten. I mean I can’t vouch for the vet, but I am pretty sure the vet has not tried to eat Kitten. However, I still feel that this is a major evolutionary flaw that could be the ultimate downfall of Kitten.  

(Please see my first post for a picture of Boyfriend trying to eat Kitten -In the Beginning...)