All I did was maybe mention somewhere online that I had kittens. I didn’t ask anything or aggressively poke the internet in any way. But now my screen is drenched with kitten advice, frequently accompanied by an invitation to part with lucre for some product that is Just The Thing. And, if I’m honest, I click on it, too. And that is why I know so dang much about kitten behavior now.
For instance, if your one-pound kitten is systematically destroying your upholstered furniture, it is no longer recommended that you swat said kitten into next week. Even if that’s what your mama did to you and you turned out FINE! Just FINE! Swatting kittens is frowned upon, even though kittens are notoriously bouncy.
What they need is something vertical to scratch on that is not your upholstered furniture, or something horizontal if they’re that kind of kitten, or something that looks like a cave that they can roll around in and scratch at the same time, or a sisal basket. Really, buy them all, try them all.
And if your furniture is still starting to look like new dreadlocks, consider this: your kitten is wrecking your furniture out of sheer anxiety because their entire sleep cycle has been upended by a lack of opportunity to pounce on things in a murderous manner. Kittens need to (it says here) have at least five separate episodes of make-believe murdering every day, followed by a long, remorseless nap, a good stretch, and another bout of terror and mayhem. If they do not get this cycle five times a day, they feel twitchy and awful in the same way you do after too many nights in a row of thinking about the current administration. And the only thing that calms them down is destroying your sofa. So you need to play with your kitten a lot. A lot. Or, as I did, get it a matching kitten, and let them have at each other.
Also? If your kitten keeps knocking your tumbler of water over even though she has her own bowl of fresh water, consider this: Kittens do not like bowls of still water (it says here) and furthermore they do not like to get their whiskers mashed upwards by the edge of the bowl, and what the little princesses need is a shallow bowl with a constant trickle of water going in it and a reservoir that only needs replenishing once a month because you can buy filters for it every two weeks at five dollars a pop. It’ll come with an app that will monitor your cat’s hydration in real time and alert you to any anomalies. Which, if detected, can be brought under control with a radio anomaly collar (sold separately).
That’s a lot of information to take in. But it’s probably sound, because you don’t see many shredded sofas in the wild. Cats in the wild are surrounded by pounceable items and their sleep/murder cycles are in balance. Furthermore, they have access to either trickly water or still water that is agitated by prancing antelopes. They are neither bored nor depressed.
I believe it all. After all, people are no better. Most of us don’t build our own shelter or procure our own food or even cook. We don’t sing with each other or create anything of value or beauty and our daily activities are far removed from our animal needs. We move pixels around or fill out forms or spray innocent shoppers with perfume or deliver plastic cat toys wrapped in plastic or any of a number of useless activities and as a result we wander around incensed about imaginary slights or worried our pants are out of date or freaked out about our money or our mortality, and sure enough we get into all sorts of trouble and eat a bunch of crap and judge people we don’t even know and some of us even dump shredded sofas in the woods. Or drop bombs. We’re fundamentally disconnected from our natural world.
So we need to play with our kittens or everything will go to hell. But we should never make fun of them for chasing laser lights that aren’t real and vanish and reappear for no reason. We’re no better.
Right, Crypto-Boy?
I’m commenting over on Substack. We’ll see how that goes.
Thank you Bruce!
I’m not a cat person. I’m not really fond of predators, plus I am allergic. That being said, my best friend has 3 indoor cats. One of her cats, Mitzi, and I have become friends. When I come in, she runs over to me, and she is the first person (?) I seek out. She meows at me like she is telling me about her day. She sits close to me and stares at me. She is beautiful — sleek black fur and vivid green eyes. She is the only cat I have ever felt attached to.
I am a parrot person. Although they don’t destroy sofas and drapes, parrots do their share of damage. My African Grey, Max, had poop that could dull the finish on hardwood floors. I still have poop stains that are impossible to clean off my furniture and walls after he’s been gone a year now. There are chunks of wood missing from baseboards and the bottoms of doors, where he had chewed. I always went with a decor that is easy to keep clean: no fabric upholstery (only leather), no carpeting, and no window treatments. It doesn’t matter if my home won’t ever be featured on HGTV. My avian companions have always been more important than decor.
I am down to one parrot now — Petey, a yellow naped Amazon. It makes me inwardly roll my eyes every time someone says to me, “Oh. I thought that parrots had a really long life span.” Yah. That’s a POTENTIAL life span. Just as humans have a potential life span of around 80, shit happens. Same way with birds. Doesn’t help that a lot of bird breeders are the equivalent of a puppy mill. Does nothing to help their life span. And, yes, they get cancer, heart attacks, and strokes just like people do. Plus they can die of shock, which happens more rarely in people, otherwise this last year would have done us all in.
Anyway, I’m glad you have your kitties to keep you on your toes, and I have Petey to keep me going when I ruminate on how this country has turned into the Upside-Down and I don’t want to get out of bed. Some of us need the very creatures that need us — maybe even more.
Dave famously hated cats but the first one he cottoned to belonged to my sister Margaret. It was a big orange cat and he liked to sit out with Dave when he went outside to smoke a cigarette. Dave liked him because if he petted him he would purr so hard he choked. He was “overcome by joy,” as Margaret pointed out. Then he let me get Larry, and discovered cats can be funny, and then it was all over. Tater was his all the way. PS I would think chewing on your house is at least as bad as shredding your furniture.
That was the most beautiful run-on sentence I’ve ever read.
Owned by cats, so enjoying the hell out your narrative!
Stay tuned. There will be more.
This is a perfect summation of the mindset of a new mother of hyperactive twin kittens, a single mom with no backup whatsoever. i am currently confined to a chair, typing with one hand until His Highness Art Tatum goes down for his nap. My feed is absolutely full of screaming warnings about killing him with ordinary kibble, shattering his nails with clippers, bla bla bla bla bla. Hang in there. It’ll get easier for both of us.
Isn’t it wonderful how these self proclaimed experts pop up? As if you’d never had dogs before?
Thanks for sharing him with us! I can at last enjoy a puppy vicariously.
I have only yesterday rediscovered my Writing Room, which I used to use to keep away from Dave when I was trying to work. Turns out it’s still a great room and you can keep kittens out of it too. Once the little buttonheads settle down, they’re just fine, but there are a few stages in their day that will be All Kitten All The Time and don’t even try to get anything else done. It’s a squirmy lovefest. No tongue, though.
Julie, as a jazz lover, it really makes me smile that all your pets seem to have had a jazz reference in their names.
“Seem?
I can comment on substack but it won’t show mw the others? Is it because I didn’t pay up?
Bonnie, I’m having similar problems over there. Sometimes I can see and sometimes I can’t and sometimes it just tells me to bugger off. I suppose there’s a learning curve, but I like the WordPress site because I know how it works and I know the people here.
Thanks for enlightening me on the Murder/Sleep Cycle interruption issue of our Demon Cat Eli the Terrible. I will instruct his Human, our Granddaughter, to spend all her Money buying all the Gadgets being hawked to give him the Therapy he Needs now… I’m just his unpaid Staff.