Study Sessions: Kitten and The Blonde One

Welcome to a very special edition of the Kitten Blog.  

Today's post is a recap of my exam study sessions!  

Now, hear me out.  I know that might sound even more boring than watching paint dry, grass grow,  any baseball game, etc., but you would be wrong.  To help me make it through exam time without losing all sanity, I frequently invited friends over to study with me.  This led to many ridiculous Kitten/friend interactions, which I thoroughly documented.

A lot went down during exams, so I'm going to share my stories in two posts.  Here's the first:

Kitten and The Blonde One

Let me give you some history about The Blonde One.  One time, I took Kitten to the Blonde One's house when my apartment was under some repairs and I couldn't have a cat hanging around.  Kitten did not have a good time. 

At The Blonde One's house, Kitten hid behind the couch or under the bed the entire time.  When I went to retrieve him, he had to be lured out from under the bed.  Apparently, he had not used the litter box once... in three days.  I don't even know how this is possible, but she never did find any accidents, so I can only assume Kitten absorbed everything during that time.  

Now, you would think this incident would traumatize Kitten and instil a fear of The Blonde One in him.  It did not.

Kitten immediately took to his weird humping routine with her.  

Pictures aren't good enough? Here is a video of the deed going down.

This isn't the first time that Kitten has been weird with my friends, and it sure wasn't the last time this happened during exams (but I'll tell you more about that in my next post).  Below you can see that once he is done using my friend, he has a tendency to go and expose himself somewhere nearby.  Like, close enough they can see, but not so close that it is 100% obvious that he is doing it for their benefit.

If you are super interested in the whole weird process, here is a video of what happens after the humping.  And it literally happens every time. No jokes.

After Kitten's seduction attempt failed, he decided to check out some shit outside.  

This was all fine and dandy until The Blonde One thought it would be funny to get back at Kitten for violating her.

As if that wasn't enough, The Blonde One then decided that Kitten was the perfect tool to clean my windows with.  Though, I can't really argue with her.  He did a pretty damn good job.

To be fair, Kitten deserved this.  

Like I've said before, he can be quite the jerk (I'm going to give some more detail about this in a future post), and it's really only karma coming for him.  

He also needs to learn that his behaviour around my friends is wholly inappropriate.  I mean, if Kitten were a person, he would be charged with a criminal offence for his actions. Unfortunately, Kitten is dumb and cannot grasp the concept of social norms, let along object permanence. 

After The Blonde One used Kitten as a window cleaner, she decided to try to play with him.  However, her concept of "play" seemed to be chasing Kitten around in a frenzied way, causing him to become quite agitated and panicked.  

Here is the video I took before I started yelling at her to stop:

Well, that was the post about The Blonde One.  

Next post I'll tell you all about Kitten's study adventures with Elena.  Elena is much kinder than The Blonde One. Instead of tormenting Kitten she helped him with some personal higiene issues and actually played with him.

Sadly, kindness tends to go unnoticed by Kitten, who humped her as well. 

Freedom!

I'm back! Exams are done and I could not be happier.

Kitten stuck by my side, even when I yelled at him for knocking my highlighters on the floor and chewing on my summaries. 

But even Kitten started getting a little impatient with all of my studying...

At first, he tried lying on things that I needed, even though it was clearly very uncomfortable for him. 

Yup, I need that.

When he realized that I would not hesitate to move him off of the things that I needed, he resorted to giving me the stink-eye while I studied.

This was on the other end of the stink-eye.

And when I ignored the stink-eye, he tried convincing me that he was depressed. But I would catch him trying to secretly play with a ball and I knew the depression thing was just an act to guilt me into paying attention to him.  

After exams ended, I took the first day off to sleep until an excessively late time of the day (for me at least). This did not impress Kitten. Kitten had gotten very used to me waking up early and feeding him before I started studying.

Kitten tried may things to convince me to get out of bed that morning. First, he lay uncomfortably close to me, so that when I opened my eyes he was approximately two inches away from my face, staring right at me.

This did shock me a bit, but only enough to convince me to rise to use the washroom. Kitten practically flew to the kitchen when I got up, but when he realized that the kitchen was not my destination, he sulked back to the bedroom.

Next, he tried meowing halfway between the bedroom and the kitchen. I only find this funny, because not only does he never meow for long periods of time, but because his meow sounds like some sad squawk. He never really got the hang of meowing.

After this, he headed back into the bedroom to walk around/on my head and shortly after bit my arm. But this was my first morning off and I was not going to break.

His final attempt was to open the curtains by jumping up on the window ledge and pushing them to the side a bit. This was frustrating.

I am proud to say, Kitten did not win. I won. I slept in and fed him when I was ready to. It was a proud moment.

(Please note that Kitten had dry food at all times. Kitten just wanted wet food. My laziness did not lead to any actual deprivation.)

That's all for now, but I will leave you with these pictures of Kitten investigating my attempts at making my apartment a little bit prettier. He gets confused by new things.

While I'm Writing My Exam...

Okay, so something went wrong and I am having to post this now. But this is what I intended...

--------------------------

Guess what?

I am writing my exam RIGHT NOW.

That's right; I am in a classroom, writing my first exam of the term.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that I am the worst student ever to live, let me explain: This is a scheduled Kitten Blog, meaning that I wrote this on Sunday night, but had it scheduled to be published smack dab in the middle of my exam.

I thought I should use such a post to ponder how Kitten might spend his time while I am off spewing out more facts about corporations than anyone should ever really even know.

This is how I imagine his day is going:

Kitten will probably start off his day by lying on my bed, and rolling around a bit to make sure he gets his fur everywhere.

Afterwards, he'll probably go use the litter...

...and then have a drink from his Kitten Fountain.

Next, I imagine he will lie on the back of the couch, and distribute fur all over it too.

He will probably get bored of soft surfaces, like the bed and the couch, and move to harder ones, like the filing cabinet.

By now, he will want to go lie in...

... a couple of awkward positions.

And one more for good measure.

Kitten will then realize that he hasn't eaten in a while, and will go lie by his food bowls in hopes that his mere proximity to them will conjure the glory that is canned food. It won't. It never does.

After realizing that he can only eat dry food until my return, he will go and investigate the pigeons.

And then go back to the bed to get a bit more fur on it before I get home.

Kitten has an Intellectual Disability

Oh hey... I guess I should start Kitten blogging again.


Recently, a topic has been weighing more and more on my mind: Kitten's intellectual abilities.

While Kitten is a cat and cats have been found to have a slightly diminished intelectual capacity as compared to people, I suspect that Kitten might be behind even compared to other cats. Some shortcomings I can write-off as physical inadequacies that are the inevitable consequence of being so furry and flat-faced, such as his inability to stop before hitting a wall (a paw problem) and his frequently laboured breathing; others, I cannot.

Here are just a few examples:
The time Kitten ran into a door so hard that he broke it...
The time Kitten almost died choking on his own neck hair...
The time Kitten literally broke our window with his face because he kept running into it (I don't think I ever blogged about this one.)

Here a a few other telling examples that have led to my diagnosis:

(1) Kitten pretty much spends his days finding the most obscure spots and lying in them in the most uncomfortable ways.

(2) Here, it looks like Kitten is just having a nice little stretch...

Wrong. 

He is stuck to the chair, but instead of trying to detach himself, he just pretends nothing is wrong. 

This happens daily.

 (3) When you cover Kitten with a blanket, he will not try to escape or even move in anyway. Instead, "he accepts that this has become his life" (Boyfriend).

I am becoming more an more convinced that Kitten might be disabled. This may be part of the reason why our second attempt at toilet training him has failed miserably. But I will tell you more about that later.

Sorry again for being a lazy blogger!

A Fur Coat in the Summer

It is HOT in here!

If you live in Ontario, I think you might have noticed that we are having a bit of a warm streek. Today, with the humidex (apparently this is a Canadian term -- it's an index used to calculate what the temperature feels like), it was 41 degrees (105.8 F). And tomorrow, well tomorrow is going to be 48 degrees (118.4 F). 

I am poor and I am lazy, so I do not have an air conditioner. I have a fan that I found in our apartment's garbage closet last year.  This is all fine and dandy for me since I love the heat. Or maybe I just really hate the cold. Either way, I could live like this everyday if it meant never being cold. 

Unfortunately, Kitten does not feel the same way. He is trapped in a fur coat, against his will, all summer long. He has spent the last few days spread out on the floor looking very hot and moving very little. 

What provides Kitten some relief from all of this heat, is the fancy new water fountain that Boyfriend and I bought for Kitten recently. 

We wanted to go to our friends cottage for four days and didn't think Kitten needed anyone to check up on him. Fill up his litter and give him several bowls of food and he is good for three or four days. He may be all matted and attention-seeking once we get back, but he is very much healthy and alive. The only trouble is that he gets his water all dirty. No matter how many bowls you put out, he gets them dirty. I am pretty sure this is because food gets stuck in his face-fur and gets transferred to the water bowls as he jams his flat face in to get water. We used to leave the toilet lid up because he would just drink out of there, but now that we are potty training him again (which I will tell you all about later), we can't do this. 

So, what did Boyfriend and I do? We went to our wonderful neighbourhood pet shop and bought a cat fountain. And let me tell you, Kitten LOVED it.  As soon as we started it up, he drank for seriously, half an hour. It was crazy. 

We are thinking that maybe Kitten was just super dehydrated because he hated drinking from his little water bowl. This might explain the problems he was having earlier... 

Once he was done he just watched the fountain -- for hours. 

The water fountain has become Kitten's new best friend and may possibly be saving his life during this heat wave. Sometimes, when he is just lying there looking hot and depressed, Boyfriend will pick him up and place him in from of the fountain. It's like he has forgotten about this existence of water, because as soon as he is in front of it, he will drink like hydration is the best gift he was ever given.

This is how he lies when he is hot and depressed.

We do feel pretty bad about how hot Kitten must feel. Boyfriend and I even considered giving Kitten a "Lion Cut." It is pretty self-explanatory, but incase you don't know what a lion cut is, see the picture below.

(Source)

We decide against it.

Full-Time Study Buddy

First, I want to for apologize for my absenteeism. Unfortunately, there was just no way to justify Kitten blogs during this round of studying. But, while I may not have been able to post anything during the past week, I did manage to take many pictures of Kitten as he helped (impeded) me in my studies. 

Also, I know this isn't much of a post, but I do have a few more elaborate ideas in the works for when exams are actually finished, so stay tuned...

Oh, and those books to the right found their way into the recycling about 2 minutes after the exam.

Please enjoy some of the best Study Buddy moments...

Kitten's favourite place to be when I am studying is right behind my laptop. Most days he will stay there the entire day as I study. Though, sometimes he likes to see how how many highlighters he can knock off the table before I get mad (the answer is one). On occasion, he will get a sticky-tab stuck in his tail and I usually get a few moments of enjoyment watching him frantically try to get it out. 

Sometimes he would try to steal my spot when I got up. I am not too sure what his plan was, but I assumed that he had not taken over my spot to finish my notes on future interests, so I would move him.

This usually made him mad, but he would just look at me with his ears back and then go back to lying behind the laptop.

Then there were other times when he would just be so adorably cute that I would need to stop and pet him. Of course that would just get him purring like a little motor boat and be an even bigger distraction.

There were also times when he would try to attack my headphones. It was cute at first, but he started getting really aggressive. Some of you may be aware of what Kitten has done to my laptop cord; I didn't want that to happen to my headphones too.

And yes, my favourite mug is a Jonas Brother's mug. I love it NOT because I have a secret love of the Jonas Brother's, but because my wonderful mom bought it for me for Christmas AND she bought it NOT because she thought I would like a Jonas Brother's mug, but because she knew I wouldn't, and that is why it is the best mug. 

As you can see above, I was also able able to snap a picture of Kitten mid-yawn. I thought it would be super cute, but it wasn't. Apparently there is a brief moment during his yawn when Kitten turns into Predator.

I really have no idea what is going on below. At one point during the study marathon, Kitten jammed his face under a pile of books. He slept like that for a really long time. It was bizarre, even for Kitten.

Also, here a a couple of the videos I took. The first one is Kitten battling my headphones and the second one is Kitten being super adorable. If you turn the volume up all of the way, you should be able to hear Kitten: (1) Make a cute sleepy noise; (2) Purr; and (3) Lick his lips.