Theater and Cats DO Mix!

Those serious Sioux City thespians are leading the way to a whole new vision in cat-theater futures.  The Sioux City Journal reports today that if you bring a can of cat food to the theater for the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it’s as good as a ticket.  Proceeds go to the local humane society. 

You can bring other cat stuff as well to serve as your admission price, just don’t bring your cat — contemporary theater for now remains wholly unprepared for cat-inclusive audiences and will need to surmount obvious technological barriers before that dream is realized.

Best Jazz Album Name Ever

Do I need to tell you how great to have a cat actually playing guitar on the cover of Who Let the Cats Out?  Cats are a lot more musical than we imagine, if they can just calm down and not run out of the room when someone starts to teach them. 

Mike Stern’s Who Let the Cats Out is clearly among the great jazz album names that include cats in the name.  I’m not entirely familiar with all the cat jazz album titles in the world, so make sure to remind me with comments of the many I will probably miss.

I like that Who Let the Cats Out is both a funny riff and so very true.  Because we all heard Who Let the Dogs Out, but the truth is dogs that get let out are far easier to find than cats who get let out. An out cat can’t hardly be found if he wants to be, which he usually doesn’t.

Naturally, Who Let the Cats Out is a jazz album. If cats were a musical genre, they would be jazz.  And if cats played music, they’d play jazz.  My cat Brody plays the keyboard, and it’s improvisation at a very pure level.  No technique, knowledge, or musical score can impede him when he starts tickling the ivories.

The Greening of the Kitties (and their Mousies)

My cats love green stuff.  They adore catnip and wheatgrass.  They love to gnaw my houseplants and always find the lettuce in my grocery bag.  You could say green is their color, so it was only fair I brought back something for them from the Green Festival, a yearly pro-environmental fair which happens to be my favorite place on the planet to spend my green.

Cats in general need to green-up their acts, or rather, their people do.  This story on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website points out that cats can be as bad for the environment as anyone, so it’s a good idea to educate cats and their people on the effects of some of their choices.  Fortunately, what’s good for the environment is usually good for cats, like purchasing food with less additives from more-responsible producers.  

My Green Fest cat gift is another great example.  Dye-free, made from all natural materials, no plastic whatsoever, this hand-made mouse toy made by Purrfect Play was worth a little more green than your average mouse toy.  Not only because I got to support someone who is working to reduce my cats’ carbon paw print (i.e. kitties’ planetary impact), but because of how much my cats like this product.  Of course, the real product testing at the Self Help for Cats labratory is always conducted by the cats themselves.

Upon awakening in the morning, I presented Brody with the green mouse (actually white and tan), and to my surprise, it must be stuffed with some very powerful catnip (organic, of course).  Well, Brody went nuts - he immediately bit deeply into the mouse and lost his head, digging pointlessly into the sheets with a wild stare and flipping his body about as if trying to remove his fur suit over his head, feet first.  The verdict — Brody give two fangs up for the Purrfect Play mouse, which was immediately saturated in cat drool at a heretofore unheard of rate.

So you see, cats really do dig green stuff.  With enough organic catnip mice, cats will be well on their way to saving the planet in the most entertaining fashion the world has ever known.

***

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy reading how cats can help sea otters in Kitty Toilet Training a Dream No More.

Spin, Spin Lollipops: Decorate to Stimulate

Herman and his mobile share a moment of peace.

I’ve said it before: Your house may be the place you land your sorry butt at the end of the day — but it’s your cat’s whole entire world.  That’s why you have redecorate everything with the cats’ needs in mind.

To that end, I recently purchases an Ikea mobile (second-hand for $2) that looks like giant red lollipops floating upside down in space and proceeded to attach it to the hook already present in the ceiling just above our two six-foot cat towers. The whole idea here was to have a little cat-interactive art to swat at. 

The Mobile Glamoros:

(Pronounced Glam Morose - Ikea’s tribute to goth?)

After the cats’ initial “we’re just going to ignore that thing” attitude wore off, well, let’s just say the lollypop mobile survived its inaugural battle last night.  I myself slept through the skirmish, but fortunately Hank left me a full report, in verse, which it satisfies me heartily to share with you here:

Spin, Spin Lollipops, a Poem by Hank.

    DARK, DARK.

Race, Race, Race!

     to the tower, to the top, to the towering tower top!

(thunder) (thunder)

Rub Rub.

Panther head on tower top.  Rub, Rub, Rub.

dark, dark,

spin, spin,

Lollipops, Red Lollipops go spin, spin.

Dark, Dark.

Panther.

thwock!  Spin, Spin     other direction.  Bap!

twing, bonk. Dark, Dark. Lollipops spin.

     Stand, stand.  Survey all, hit Lollipops with tail,

and descend.

(Thanks to Hank for allowing me to share his poem here on Self Help for Cats, where cats and creativity meet for expresso.)

Cats Gone Night Crazy? Coping with the PM Feline Freak-Out

So we bring cat in from the wild and expect it to act all sophisticated and keep a decent sleep schedule like a normal person. Next thing you know, cat needs to be checked into a padded room at the stroke of midnight. If your cat transforms from love angel to whack devil about the time you want to go to bed, don’t start Googling feline funny farms. Probably the one who needs a metaphoric lobotomy in the situation is you, the human.

Yes, it’s quite a problem that our little furries with the sharp claws happen to be nocturnal by nature. In recent decades, as cats have made the big move from the barn to the bedroom, lots of people have discovered their sleep disturbed in one way or another by the nightly “kitty crazies.”

My own worst story was waking up one early hour to feel my adorable and wild-ish Maine Coon chomping deeply into the connecting tissue of my small right toe. Now if you’ve never awoken to the bite of an animal, well, it’s like being chased by a swarm of bees or confronting a mama Grizzly or having to escape from a fire – it’s one of those things that’s always best when it happens to someone else.

Make It a Cat Date Night

Chances are, whatever you did this week, whether it was playing emotional badminton with the subject of your work crush or trying to fan the flames of your old desire at home in a windstorm on Pluto–whatever you did this Viagra-enhanced Valentines Day week, you probably were not paying a great deal of attention to your cat. That’s why this weekend you need to set a formal Cat Date Night.

Cat Date Night is a simple concept. It means quality time with the cat. It means doing what the cat likes. It just so happens that my cats like to turn down the lights and dance in the dark. Either that or shred a feather, or possibly be brushed. Maybe all of the above.

Isn’t it time to rekindle the spark with the ones who truly love you “as is” — your cats? Yes, it is time, so go to!