Please Stop Biting Me; It Really Hurts

Spring is finally here!

Birds are chirping, trees are just starting to grow leaves again, and everyone is in a great mood.

When I think of spring, this is what I think of:

Image: Property of Disney

Side Note: If you have not seen Bambi, I don't want to talk to you. Last week I tried to explain the concept of being "twitterpated" to two different people, neither of whom had seen the movie. Please remove yourself from under the rock that has become your home, and watch, arguably, the best Disney movie of all time.

For the rest of humanity, I am sure you will agree that this is a pretty accurate description of spring.

Well, not for Kitten.  Kitten has become the spring scrooge.

Not so long ago, my relationship with Kitten went a little like this:

Now, it is like this:

(Source)

Have you ever lived with a Chupacabra lurking somewhere in your home? I have, and it sucks.

Seriously, Kitten has gone nuts. He spends most of the day hiding behind something, one eye peaking out, just waiting for the right moment to attack. I am not going to pretend that Kitten hasn't always been agressive, but his anger has escalated to a whole new level. His outbursts used to be tied to something obvious, like being brushed or having his nails cut. Now things like going to bed and sitting down send him over the edge.

I do, however, think that I have determined the cause of his anger. 

Recently, Kitten has undergone a pretty significant life change; he had no bed to live on or under for a week and a half. And by "he", I mean me, but Kitten still fails to grasp the concept of ownership. Though I guess maybe I also fail to grasp the concept of ownership since, technically, it wasn't my bed either. 

In summary, so as not to bore you with the details of my personal life, Ex-Boyfriend finally moved into a place that did not come furnished and repossessed his bed and dresser, leaving my bedroom a barren wasteland of cat-hair-tumbleweeds and bags of clothing. 

This apparently had a much more significant impact on Kitten than I would have anticipated. The removal of furniture from the bedroom somehow transformed Kitten into some kind of feral monster. It was like the bed was his one true link to domestication and without it, he was lost.

I tried to get a picture or video of him in crazy-mode, but I pretty much had to fend for my life during these breaks with reality.

Though if you look closely, you can tell from his posture that he is in fact ready to defend his new found wilderness (aka the place I once called  my bedroom). 

This position means I am about to hurt you.

The worst part was that I had to sleep on the couch during this transitory stage and Kitten really did not like that. Every time I would go to lie down for the night, Kitten would full-out attack. Like an I-am-going-to-draw-blood-and-make-you-wish-you-never-owned-me type of attack.

My new bed and dresser finally came this past Friday and Kitten definitely seems a little better.

He has slept on the bed with me very peacefully for the past few nights. I am hoping its presence has reminded him of his domestic roots. Please wish me luck.

Mission Impossible

Remember that time I wrote about how Kitten destroys every living thing he can set his paws on?

Or the time I got Kitten some cat grass in hopes that he would stop trying to eat the only plant left in my apartment?

Well this is a story about that plant. That sad, sad plant. 

The plant lives behind my TV and is elevated by a small stool and a pile of old textbooks. The plan is to coax the plant into growing up the wall. But Kitten is thwarting this plan. 

Even though the TV is on an angle, essentially blocking off the corner that the plant is in, Kitten finds ways to jump up on the ledge of the cheap entertainment unit that supports the TV and eat that poor, poor plant.

First, I tried blocking both "entrances." I placed a wooden statue on one side and fully opened the kitchen door on the other:

Unfortunately, and to my surprise, Kitten actually learned how to open the door to get to the plant. This came as quite a shock since I still stand by the fact that Kitten is intellectually disabled.

I tried placing my backpack in the space, thinking that he wouldn't figure out how to jump over it and onto the ledge.

I was wrong.

Again.

Kitten learned how to open the door and manoeuvre around the backpack.

I started placing textbooks in front of the door to keep it in place. This seemed to work for a few weeks and I started to think that Kitten had given up on getting to the plant. I eventually removed the textbook and just tried to remember to keep the door closed.

Then, a few days ago, I was woken up by a large crashing sound. I often sleep wearing earplugs, so this sound was undeniably loud to have woken me up. I assumed the noise was just Kitten being a jerk, but figured I should get up just to confirm it was nothing serious.

I walked around my dim apartment looking for what had make the sound. After seeing that everything was in it's place, I headed back to bed assuming the noise had come from a neighbours balcony.

Then I realized something was, in fact, amiss.

Kitten was not at my feet, nor was he running around in circles squawking, nor was he crashing into things in the Kitchen. If I can rely on Kitten for one thing, it is that he will, without fail, assume that if I am out of bed any time from 6:00am onwards, it must be to feed him.

It was 7:00am, and Kitten was not in sight.

I began to call his name. He didn't come. It then occurred to me that I should take my earplugs out. I then heard a faint scuffling sound coming from under the TV. I pulled the kitchen door open, which had been slightly ajar, to find the plant lying on the ground behind the TV along with a pile of books that had once been propping it up.

I can only assume that Kitten missed the jump to the plant, pulling the plant and books down with him. Kitten himself had some how slithered under the stool at the bottom and was lying there in a pathetic mess of failure and plant dirt. Sadly, this image went un-captured since I was eager to return to my sleep.



The next day I reinforced the kitchen door with my old Income Tax Act and made sure the statue on the other side was in place.

Everything was fine until two days later when I came home to find that Kitten had been at it again, this time tracking his evidence everywhere.

There was plant dirt and debris all over the apartment, yet the Income Tax Act was still in place.

Though Kitten may have proven that he can open a door, I was unconvinced that he could move the book, open the door, commit his act of mischief and then replace the book.

No, Kitten must had found a way around the wooden statue and then also figured out how to escape from behind the TV.

This was the story that I sat down to write. But as soon as I sat down to begin telling you about Kitten's mission of plant destruction, I heard a thud. Kitten had jumped past the statue in my very presence and had become lodged behind the TV.

After watching him struggle for some time and taking a short video of his misadventure, I pulled him out by the scruff of his neck.


I thought he had learned his lesson.


He had not.

It happened three more times in a row. 

I am not sure what to do. I used another book to block the statue side, but feel like this is only a very temporary solution; even if Kitten doesn't figure it out, I should probably actually do my Administrative Law readings sometime...

But I think Kitten will find another way. After placing the book there, Kitten has just been lying in front of the TV with a melancholy look of dispair on his face. I can't tell, because his eyes are blank and they always seem blank, but I think he is planning his next move.

I should also note that anytime Kitten does succeed in eating the plant, he vomits shortly after.

It seems hardly worth it.

But I guess I shouldn't  expect much forethought from this:

Kitten Hates Words

Sometimes, Boyfriend and I like to put on some music, have a glass of wine... and play Scrabble.

Boyfriend isn't the best to play Scrabble with -- he is all about the tiny words that fit in with other words,  getting lots of bang for their buck. This strategy completely closes off the board and makes it very difficult for other plays to put words down. Boyfriend will also get crabby if he starts to lose and will sit, sometimes for 20 minutes, trying to find the perfect word to play.

You know who else isn't the best to play Scrabble with? Kitten.

Kitten is illiterate and it really seems to irk him when the literate members of the house decided to play games that involve words.

The last time Boyfriend and I played Scrabble, Kitten decided to join us on the table. At first he sat beside the board, but slowly -- ever so slowly -- he inched his way over, and on to, to the board.

Until this happened.

Action Shot

Kitten had had enough of our book learnin' and wiped off the entire top of the board. Luckily I had taken so many pictures prior to this moment, that we were able to reconstruct everything. From then on, Kitten was scolded any time he got too close.

He wasn't too happy about it.

POTTY TRAINING UPDATE: Boyfriend and I took a trip to Ottawa last weekend, which meant that the potty training had to be put on hold. Since the training litter needs to be cleaned constantly, we had to put down an actual litter box for the time we were gone. It took me a few days to get the training one set back up after we returned, so basically there is nothing new to say about the potty training, except I am expecting some regression in the days to come.

It's amazing we can even keep Kitten alive...

If this is your first time reading my Kitten blog or if you have a bad memory, you might want to read this and this before moving on to today's post.

Oh and I got Twitter. I added a handy button (top right) to make following me that much easier.
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After overcoming his initial misgivings, Kitten seemed to take quite a liking to the cat grass that Boyfriend and I had bought for him. He spent a lot of time lounging on the window by the grass, nibbling and gazing out at traffic pigeons people nothing. Unfortunately, Kitten's time with this fibre-y fare was cut short.

Shortly after the grass was full grown, I started to notice that it was turning yellow at the tips and becoming floppy. I googled these maladies and determined that the grass was being over-watered. I talked to Boyfriend about this since he was the one who had been watering the grass every day, to the point that there was always excess water in the bottom of the holder. Boyfriend essentially told me that if I didn't like his plant tending methods, then I could look after watering the grass myself.

I let the water-logged soil dry and started to water the grass as it appeared to need watering -- for about a day. Whereas Boyfriend over-water, I plain forgot to water. Soon after my semi-hostile takeover of the watering duty, the grass morphed from limp and yellow tipped, to a crackly, straw-coloured disaster. I would like to think that this happened during our weeklong trip to Bonnaroo (where we had my wonderful friend Andrea come and check on Kitten every few days), but in reality, I know that the grass had passed the point-of-no-return long before our Tennessee adventure.

I forgot to take a picture of the grass before throwing it out, but I found this picture which is pretty much exactly what a picture of the dead grass would have looked like.

Source

Poor Kitten had his new found love ripped violently away from him, all because Boyfriend and I are failures at keeping things alive. Sometimes I really do think it is a miracle that Kitten is alive, but then I remember that Kitten is an agressive, un-coordinated, matted-monster beast... and it seems pretty accurate.

Contacting Kitten and Cat Grass

Okay, so quickly: I have some potentially exciting news. I am sure some of you have questions about Kitten that you are just dying to ask, or maybe you have a great post idea that you would like me to know about. Well now you can ask those questions and send those post ideas to me... through email! Amazing, I know, I know. But wait. It's not just any email... it's Kitten email! 

If you feel so inclined, please feel free to email me or Boyfriend at catherine@kittenthecat.org or boyfriend@kittenthecat.org (obviously respectively). You can also find these email addresses on the "Contact Kitten" page.

While I did toy with the idea, I did not create an email account for Kitten. I feel ashamed admitting this, but Kitten is in fact 100% illiterate. He would have no use for an email account. But I promise, that if you send me or Boyfriend an email, we will eventually read it. We probably won't respond, but we might. Though you seriously can email me (or Boyfriend) with ANY question (preferably about Kitten) that you have and when I have enough questions, I will do a post on it. Also, feel free to email me with post ideas and if I don't think you are are complete creative failure, I might do the post.

Now for today's post:

You might remember from The Quest for Regularity that Boyfriend and I bought some cat grass for Kitten to help him with his problem. If I hadn't thought it would make the situation worse, I would have made Kitten try Shatner's "Two Week Challenge," but we decided that cat grass was the safer bet. 

When I planted the cat grass seeds (which by the way is just a combination of barley and oats and other wonderful things) they looked like this:

In less than a week, it looked like this:

Crazy eh? 

Aside from Kitten's "problem," Boyfriend and I had wanted to get some cat grass for Kitten for some time. We hoped that if Kitten had a plant he was allowed to eat, he wouldn't try to eat plants he is NOT allowed to eat. I am going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, but bear with me. 

As I mentioned in my post Kitten: Destroyer of Life, Kitten has a thing with destroying plants and between Kitten and Boyfriend and I, pretty much every plant in our apartment has met an untimely demise.

Except for one.

We have this one vine that is impossible to kill with neglect AND we keep it behind our television so Kitten cannot not pillage it, as per his MO.

As you can see from the picture on the right, we stacked up a whole bunch of old textbooks so it can still get sunlight, yet Kitten cannot get to it (unfortunately, our studies have, as of yet, been insufficient to fully elevate the poor vine).

We thought we were pretty smart, outsmarting our disabled cat. But somehow, Kitten won.

He discovered that he is in fact able to jump up on that little ledge beside the TV and reach the plant. In the past few days, he has greatly taken advantage of this newfound knowledge...

I know there is some adage to capture perfectly what I am about to say, but I can't remember it: Sadly for Kitten, it is the plants that he loves the most, that hurt him the most. While undoubtedly delicious, Mr. Vine Plant is slightly toxic. This means that the bits that Kitten is able to sneak before we catch him, don't stay "sneaked" for very long. They have a strange way of "unsneaking" themselves onto our bathmat. (Don't fret; we found a way to use out kitchen door to block Kitten from jumping on the ledge, preveningt him from constantly ingesting toxic flora.)

All of this, is why we had very high hopes for the the cat grass. We were finally giving Kitten a plant he is allowed to eat. This, was his first reaction:

I can't say I have ever seen Kitten less impressed about anything in his entire life. 

After a while, he did decide to see what all the fuss was about and began to investigate the annoying thing that Boyfriend and I kept placing directing in front of him. 

Below is a quick video clip of Kitten making his first investigation. Please be warned, it is going to sound like there is no audio and then half way through I yell at Kitten to stop grinding his teeth (one of his many horrible habits). I thought I should let you know, since when I watched the clip before posting it I jumped a bit when this happened. It is very unexpected and I don't want to scare my Kitten blog readers.

This was the extent of Kitten's interest in the cat grass upon the first introduction. A day later I moved it to a spot he might find more intriguing. At first he was equally unimpressed: 

But he soon gained interest. 

Below is Kitten's second foray into the wonderful world of cat grass. He is clearly trying a bit harder this time. Personally, I think the problem is that he is embarrassed since his face is flat and he can't get a good bite out of it.

     

(I would like to apologize to one of my Kitten blog readers - who shall remain unnamed - for the music in the background)

As of yet, I am still unsure whether Kitten actually likes the cat grass or not. He seems to investigate it at least once a day and I usually find semi-chewed pieces of it lying on the ground, but nothing conclusive.

RIP Cheap Entrainment Unit Door

When I got home from class today, I found this:

You might not know, but Boyfriend has some rage issues. I have come home on previous occasions and found a smashed printer or a hole in the back our our coat-closet door. However, I didn't want to jump to conclusions, so I asked Boyfriend what happened. He look at me and then look at Kitten and said: "Well one of us ran into it today." Running into an open cabinet door is definitely something Boyfriend would do, but considering the look he gave Kitten before answering, I knew who the culprit was. 

Apparently, Kitten was in one of his crack induced running states and ran into the door, knocking it right off. Boyfriend was in the other room and only heard it happen. He said he figured what it was by the sound and by the time he came out to see, Kitten was just sitting there licking himself like nothing had happened. 

Personally, I think Boyfriend could have taken a bit more care in closing the doors since Kitten is prone to crazy running sprees. However, I am sure neither of us would have thought Kitten's face could cause this much damage. As you can see from the photo, the wood splintered and broke right apart. I am pretty sure this can't be fixed since the door is very heavy and glue is unlikely to hold the entire weight. 

I think I might just take the other door off as well and get some nice material to make a curtain instead. Anyway, I am sure you don't want to hear about my interior decorating plans; so back to Kitten!

At first Kitten seemed a bit interested in the damage he had caused...

... but he soon grew bored and moved on. He really has no disregard for others at all.


Don't worry though, I will keep a close eye on Kitten to make sure he doesn't sleep for too long or start vomiting or something.

Kitten: Destroyer of Life

Boyfriend and I are pretty bad a keeping plants alive. One time, we even killed a cactus. However, right before we got Kitten, we decided that we were going to make a real effort to keep some plants around the apartment. We went out and bought quite a few plants of varying sizes and put them around the apartment. We made sure they had sunlight and watered them according to their instructions. We even bought those glass watering bulbs, As-Seen-On-TV. So basically, things were going pretty well.

Then we got Kitten. As soon as he was large enough to jump, Kitten began to systematically destroy our plants.

He has three main methods of destruction:

     1. Eat the plant

     2. Scratch and rip off the leaves

     3. Smother the plant

[Note: The following pictures are from Kitten's youth. He was going through puberty and looked a bit weird.]

Here, we have an example of smothering the plant. At one point, this was a very nice decorative chilli plant; it had lots of little chilli peppers on it and was quite cute. Kitten essentially created a nest in the plant pot. By the time Kitten was done with this plant, it was just a bunch of brown twigs. 

On the floor beside the chilli plant is a plant that Kitten destroyed by eating the leaves. Unfortunately, I never got a picture of him eating it. Probably because Boyfriend and I were worried that the plant was poisonous and were focused on getting Kitten to stop eating it, not on taking a picture.

This here, is the chilli plant near the end of its life. As you can see, there is nothing sticking out from the top except some dead twigs.

In this picture, Kitten is about to move onto his next victim - Hibiscus.  

At one point we even had Hibiscus flowering. It had beautiful red flowers. But leaf by leaf, Kitten ate it until it didn't have enough energy left to repair itself.

You can also see from this picture that Kitten knows he isn't suposed to be in the plant pot, but of course it was a game to him. A game that he always won.

In these last pictures we have some type of tropical tree thing. Kitten liked to use this one as a scratching post. He would also scratch at the leaves and try to pull them off. Sometimes, he would even try to eat the leaves. We were always most worried about Kitten when he would attack this plant because the leaves had very sharp tips. Boyfriend and I were pretty convinced Kitten was going to poke his eye out. Luckily, he never did. Though he did succeed in destroying this plant as well.

These plants represent only a small portion of the plants that Kitten has destroyed. We stopped taking pictures because his once adorably destructive ways became just plain annoying. Boyfriend and I are down to two plants now: one we keep behind the TV so Kitten can't get to it, the other is an old bamboo plant that we keep in the kitchen. Kitten sometimes will show interest in the bambo, but generally he leaves it alone.[Until recently we actually had two bambo plants. The other one was on our windowsill, but Kitten learned to jump up there too and knocked it off the ledge breaking the holder and spilling rocks every where.]

  
    Basically, Kitten hates all things living.