What's Wrong with These Cats?

My girlfriend and I have two cats. A female named Kitty and a male named Jay. In reality, Clare had these cats long before I came along. In fact, she's had kitty for 17 years. Since we live together, they're my cats, too.

Anyway, these cats have always been a little eccentric. Kitty is famous for her thumping skills. She'll back up to a wall and hit it repeatedly with her hind legs (Think Thumper from Bambi, but with a longer tail). Jay likes to jump in the bathtub after one of us has taken a shower and lick the water off the sides.

These little idiosyncrasies make them unique and entertaining, but the have their dark sides too.

First off, they have the worst grooming habits I've ever seen in cats. Cats are supposed to be clean animals, right? They constantly have dingleberries (if you don't know, I'm not going to explain it) and cat litter crusted on their feet. They don't bury they're crap, and they track litter yards away fro the litter box (including onto our bed).

After we bought our condo this summer, we let Kitty walk around on the back porch whenever we were outside. For the record, both of our cats are inside cats, but we figured, if we could keep an eye on them, it shouldn't be a problem. Then it became a problem. One night while hanging out on the back porch we didn't notice that Kitty had wandered away. We spent nearly an hour trying to find her. We found her in a yard on the next block, but it was enough stress to make us decide that there would be no more outside adventures for Kitty. This wasn't that big of a deal because soon after fall kicked in and we were no longer outside as much. Kitty, however, didn't get with the program. To this day she'll go to the back door and cry. Well, maybe cray isn't the right word. It's more like a screech or a scream. We're amazed at the volume she can get. She's a small cat (no more than 5-6 pounds), but man, can she belt out those cat-screams. Oh, did I mention she usually does this about 2am every night?

Then there is the puking. I have no idea what this is about, but both of the cats have a habit of gorging themselves and then puking the food on the floor a short time later. I've been told that cats don't do this, but I've also been told that cats are clean.

This was a simply annoying habit until the other night when Jay damn near puked on my head. For those of you that have heard an animal vomit before, you can imagine how troubling it is to be awoken at 4am to that sound. In my confused stupor, I woke up and put my had right in the pile of puke. I'm impressed how quickly Clare woke up and snapped into cat-puke cleaning mode. The bed sheets were rinsed, new sheet was put down, and my hand was thoroughly scrubbed in a manner of minutes. It was hard to feel affection for Jay after that incident. It took me a few days before I could bring myself to pet jay when he would come up to me and rub his slimy nose on me.

Speaking of which, that's another annoying habit...


(Picture of Kitty impersonating Jay and his strange bathroom habits)