Cats Herd You

Happy First Gotcha Anniversary, Cousin Shep!

Some of you may remember how Cousin Shep joined the extended family a year ago, but we know that we have new readers since then. Our grandpeep had just passed away, leaving Cousin Earl alone all day while Aunt Orvis worked. Cousin Earl lost both his companion cat, Nellie, and his human in the space of six months, and now he was alone all day while Aunt Orvis was at work. It was time to find him a buddy.

That buddy came from the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando, in the form of big, easygoing Shepherd, who we call Cousin Shep. Even from his first vet appointment, pictured here, he was totally chill.

Like any cat, he loves a good box.

And he gets really excited when the best programs come on the cat TV.

He’s always there to help when it’s time to get ready in the morning.

And most important of all, he keeps Cousin Earl company.

Happy first gotcha anniversary, Cousin Shep! We’re so glad that you’re part of our extended family.

Kitten 101: Kitten-Proofing Your House

It all started with two adorable kittens in PetSmart. Not for us; we aren’t ready for new kitties around the house. A friend of the head peep who never had cats before said her husband had fallen in love with the idea of two kittens… but she had no idea what to do for them. Our Kitten 101 posts are part of the process of gathering those thoughts together for our friend so that she has some ideas about things to do for her very first cats.

If you don’t have kittens, your house probably isn’t kitten-proof. Even if you have grown cats, there are likely things that you haven’t thought about in years that a mischievous kitten can get into. Kitten-proofing your house before your new kitten comes home is an important way to help keep him or her safe.

The first thing you want to do is get down on your stomach on the floor. This isn’t so that your family members can take funny photos of you. Instead, it’s so that you have a kitten’s eye view of things. Wow, that refrigerator suddenly looks big, doesn’t it? But the kitchen towel you have hanging from the refrigerator door handle sure looks like it might be tempting for a little one to leap at. What else should you look for while you are taking a kitten’s eye view of your house?

Look for holes of all kinds. A cat can fit into nearly any space where her head will go, and a kitten’s head is really small.
- Check to be sure that heat vents or registers are not loose. You don’t want a kitten in your ductwork!
- Check for openings in the drywall around your plumbing, including under your sink cabinets. Our house was replumbed years ago and the drywall was never properly patched around where the pipe for one toilet passes through the wall. That’s the kind of thing that you’re accustomed to looking at and don’t pay attention to any more that can become a real hazard!
- Check inside your cabinets to be sure that the interior is solid all the way to the top. A hole near the top leading to a void space where the corner of cabinets is otherwise inaccessible isn’t unusual in apartments, and one of the cats who came before us, Radcliffe, vanished into one of those as an adult cat right after we had moved into a new place. For several hours, we thought he had escaped outside. It’s better to be sure those spaces are kept off limits.
- If your kitchen cabinets are set up so they don’t meet at 90 degrees (if you have a corner sink, for example), look underneath where the face frame for the cabinet overhangs the toe kick. There can be a triangular hole underneath if the cabinet edges are not mitered. Another of the cats who came before us, Talia, climbed into one of those holes as a tiny kitten and ended up behind the adjacent access panel at the bottom of a dishwasher. There was still duct tape covering that hole when the head peep moved out of that house years later, but no more kittens ended up under the dishwasher!
Living Room Furniture
- If you have a recliner, take a look at how much clearance there is under there, and realize that it’s nowhere for a cat of any size to be when you recline or sit it up. Always make sure you know where your kitty is before operating the mechanism in a recliner.
- What does the bottom of your sofa look like? Most of them have a gauzy-looking liner that is easy for cat claws to tear through, giving them access to the area between the coils on the underside of the sofa. Kittens can be injured if caught when the springs compress. It’s easy to replace the lining on the bottom of the sofa with more durable fabric. Any cheap fabric that seems durable will do, and all you have to do is turn over the sofa and use a staple gun to attach it around the sofa frame. Since it’s on the bottom of the sofa, no one but you knows about the Barney the dinosaur print fabric on the bottom of your sofa. Well, no one but you and your cat.
Your Bed
- The box spring of your bed usually has a fabric lining underside similar to your sofa, with the same hazards. You can solve it the same way by replacing the fabric. At our house, we have boards under the box spring that were previously used with a platform bed. Anything that keeps kitty out of the underside of the box spring.
- If you have a waterbed frame with drawers, you may think you’re safe from having to worry about the underside of the bed, but the head peep would like you to know from experience that motivated cats can learn to open drawers. And getting a cat out from behind an under-bed drawer is really hard. You might consider looking at child latches for your under-bed drawers if this becomes an issue.
Breakables
- If you have lived in a cat-free home, you may have gotten used to keeping breakable knickknacks on shelves and tables. Kittens are the awkward teenager version of cats, and they’re more likely to knock down objects by accident, so you may want to move them to inaccessible locations. We have just a few cat-inaccessible locations, though Newton dreams of getting up there to them.
- For breakable art that you want to keep out in locations where kittens are likely to roam, consider using something like museum putty, designed to hold art objects during earthquakes.
Houseplants
- You may not realize how many of the houseplants you have around your house may be dangerous to cats. Common plants you may bring into the house seasonally like mistletoe or Easter lily, or everyday plants like rhododendrons are all toxic.
- Refer to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control list for a complete listing of plants toxic to cats.
General
- Make sure that string-like materials are locked safely out of a kitten’s reach. Although images of kittens and yarn are iconic, it can be deadly if swallowed, so make sure that yarn, string, needles and thread, fishing line, and any other string-like materials are only played with under supervision.
- Make sure the fireplace screen has no gaps.
- Check window screens to be sure they are secure. Excited kittens can leap at screens when they see something outside, so make sure they can’t be pushed out. If you don’t have screens on windows, be sure the windows aren’t opened. Kittens are fast on four little legs, and you can’t necessarily get to the open window faster than they can.
- Make sure the door to your utility rooms shuts, or be sure that you can securely close your washer and dryer. Warm places like those are attractive to cats, but they can be trapped inside.
- If possible, restrict access from the garage. If your car leaks antifreeze, it takes as little as a teaspoon to poison a cat.

It may sound like a lot of work, but once you have done the work of kitten-proofing your house and made it a kitten-safe environment, maintaining it is easy.

If you enjoyed this post, don’t miss Kitten 101: Gear for your New Kitten.

Happy Ninth Gotcha Day, Pierre!

Once upon a time in 2005, there was a litter of cats born on a boat, under a tarp. The boat’s owner didn’t know about the kittens, and moved the trailer. By the time the boat’s owner discovered the kittens, the mother cat was nowhere to be found, and the kittens went to a local rescue group. They all got nautical names, and when they were old enough, they went to PetSmart for an adoption event.

A little gray tabby kitten, named Pier, was looking out of the cage at PetSmart and his eyes locked with the head peep’s eyes, and it was love at first sight. There hadn’t been any plans to get a kitten right now, but little Pier came home that day, and he was renamed Pierre.

He was kind of a timid little guy and spent a lot of his first week under the sofa, but quickly learned to come out for food and playtime.

(He still plays with that Christmas mouse to this day!)

And pretty soon he was hanging out on the bed like a big kid.

And of course showing off his spectacular kitten tummy.

He quickly showed a special talent for getting inside things.

Including getting into trouble.

He started to grow up, but he didn’t grow out of that tummy exhibitionism.

Or grow out of getting inside things.

Really, really inside things.

And under things, too.

He also learned to relax in front of the TV like a proper mancat.

And if you’re really lucky, he’ll flash you that tummy.

So happy ninth gotcha day, Pierre!

Thank you to all of our friends in the blgosphere for sharing it with us!

Mailbag Q & A

A lot of good questions have come up in the comments of recent posts, and we thought the questions were worth answering where everyone could see the answers. So welcome to our first ever Mailbag Q & A!

What kind of bird was that? It’s huge!

The bird in that post is a Florida sandhill crane. They grow to about 4 feet tall, though our friend is not quite full sized. Although it’s illegal to feed them, many people do, including some of our neighbors, and this guy pecks at our windows in part to get attention, hoping for a handout. They also peck at windows when they see their own reflections, but it’s obvious that he was not just looking at his reflection, since he was paying close attention to us, too. Our local sand hill cranes have been known to chase humans through the neighborhood who look like they might be about to offer something to eat. Being chased by a couple four-foot-tall birds is scary even to a full-sized human!

They are usually seen in mated pairs, so we’re hoping that our bird buddy will get a girlfriend soon and not come around as often to stare at us. It’s our job to stare at him.

Does Pierre always act that way when you’re making the bed?

Pierre usually huffs or sighs to show his annoyance when the bed is being made, but when he is feeling territorial about something like the sheets and the head peep doesn’t pay attention to his lashing tail of warning, he will eventually hiss and swat to get his message across. If she walks away and leaves him with no one to oppose, his hostility melts and he is back to his friendly self in minutes. He was soliciting attention in the living room only moments after that video was shot. The head peep’s hand, on the other hand, will have band aids for several more days.

The head peep wants to add that she would not have been smacked with Pierre’s claws if she wasn’t filming because she wouldn’t have pushed him quite as hard in the first place before walking away, and because she would have been able to see what her hand was doing rather than watching the viewfinder. While she did capture a glimpse of Pierre behaving badly, she knows it wasn’t the best idea, and she doesn’t recommend doing it to anyone else.

Do you ever see alligators on your cat TV?

We have in the past, but the most recent was four years ago. There aren’t any resident alligators in our pond, but up until a few years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see one during breeding season, when they are most active about moving around.

These are photos from the last time we saw the alligator, in 2010. They were taken with a point-and-shoot, which at that distance is a point-and-see-what-comes-out. The head peep wasn’t going to take close-ups of this guy without a telephoto lens.