Sleeping with The Panther

Since last winter, Herman Panther has taken to sleeping in Hank’s arms like a lover.  Now, I don’t want you to think that I mind, because I don’t mind at all.  Seeing as how I tend to be mistaken in my sleep for a mild cyclone, I’m perfectly happy letting two of my boys have at the comfort of each other’s arms. That way I’m free to twist the sheets into rope and send the blankets into 14 directions and generally get the sleep that I need unencumbered. 

Unfortunately, my spot on the door-side of the bed puts me directly in the path of the sleek but leaden-weighted Herman Panther, a place that seems predetermined to be his springboard on and off the bed. 

Imagine me, deep in sleep, in my stormy lullaby-land, unconscious, unknowing, unable to anticipate my 16-pound bowling ball on claws bounding off my belly like it’s the trampoline launch at the cat gymnast olympics.  Or equally astonishing, awakening to the scrabbling ascent over my protruding hip at he claws his way up, over, and into the valley between me and Hank.

Let’s just say I could do without these sudden awakenings. But there is little that can be done, short of building a fence on my side of the bed, which is an idea I just now had that might work.  But short of that, his only other route is to cut across my pillow, painfully yanking my hair with each step. Or sometimes, he’s cut across my face, and I awaken with scratched cheeks.  Yes, I don’t mind Panther sleeping with Hank, it’s just his getting in and out of bed that causes issues.

However, once he makes it to his target, let’s call it ”warm-body Hank,” a bit of magic occurs that kind of changes everything.  This is how it works:  Herman mills around in the vicinity of Hank’s neck looking especially clueless and waiting for “it” to happen.  Then, suddenly, he’s drawn in under the covers right in the perfect spot next to warm-body Hank.  It happens so fast, it’s amazing!  It would take the cat about a year to find that spot himself, believe me.

Now Herman’s sleeping head rests on Hank’s big manly bicep, and Hank’s other arm gently embraces the happy black cat.   Through the night they sleep thus, man and cat and other cat (at feet), and woman slash cyclone slash trampoline.  Now, what was it I was complaining about?

Got Cat Blog? Catabloguing the Blogatosphere

They’re all over the Infobahn, if you’ve managed not to notice: Cats blogging their hearts out, and the people who type for them.  There’s even a whole uber blog all about the cat blogosphere called Cat Blogosphere, with the tag line: ”We cats are taking over the innernets.” Here you can check-in on the latest haps from cats blogging day and night around the planet, abridged and indexed in adorable kitty tawk.

Yes, clearly in the virtual world as in life, cats have made their beds and are doing their best to sleep uninterrupted in them.  I find it “personally” useful that someone is at least partially cataloguing the cat blogs, not to mention the other important stuff often reported on the site, like Bad Kitty’s Festival of Chaos, etc. 

Of course, nothing beats word of mouth, so naturally I want to know about any great cat blogs you know of, kitty tawk and awl. If you have one to share, you can leave it in comments, below, or send it to selfhelpforcats (at) gmail (dot) com. I’ll add any site to the blogroll if it’s, you know, something the discriminating Self Help for Cats reader might like. 

Kitty Toilet Training a Dream No More

Are you like me?  Do you dream of training your cat to use the toilet? Or is the subject of your salivation one of those fancy litter-flushing contraptions that promise to put an end to the great tootsie-roll treasure hunt? 

Well, the dream is off, everyone.  Apparently, of all the things you can put down a toilet, cat crap is where we as civilized people and cat lovers must draw the line.

That’s because of all the foul stuff that gets flushed down the crapper, cat crap is beyond even the beyond.  How is that possible, you ask?  By what cruel twist of fate could it be that little Foofie’s poops are so much worse than even our own?

Well, the marine biologists have spoken, and they think flushed cat crap is killing sea otters, or rather, the parasite it carries, Toxoplasma gondii, is.  In fact, even Governor Terminator is on cat poop’s case, signing a California law warning consumers that dumping cat litter into toilets or storm drains may harm otters.  

So while my dream of scolding the cat for leaving the seat up is all in vein, I am glad I didn’t already take the trouble to potty-train kitty, an activity I was neither looking forward to nor confident I could even accomplish.  Fortunately, I discovered before I tried that this cat toilet usage is, if not the incarnation of evil itself, at very minumum plainly and totally not okay. Especially when you consider how cats and otters are so closely related in the grand scheme of things. 

(Not that it would be okay if, for example, otters happened to be more closely-related to dogs. Even if at times I seem to suggest that dogs are spoiled media-darlings, I would never take that petty squabble out on a hapless and very cat-like otter. Also, some of my best frenz have been dogz.)

So for now, unfortunately, we’re stuck with litter-cleaning the old-fashioned way, which in my house pretty much means Hank is doing it.  That is, until one of them big cat-litter robot manufacturers gets a looksie at this here Website, then I figure me and Hank’ll have more litter-cleaning robots than we’ll know what to do with!  We may need to reprogram one of them to make the coffee, or something.