Oliver in the New Year

Oliver is trying to be helpful. Here he is helping me put the Christmas Ornaments away. Good kitty.

Oliver and the Magic Flute

Ken noticed on previous occasions that Oliver responds to the sound of the flute. A few nights ago, here was the scene in our kitchen:



If you follow this blog or know Oliver personally, you also know that he can be aloof, uninterested and sometimes confused. But the flute seems to bring out the best in him. Even replaying this YouTube video in his presence gets his full attention. Ah, the mysteries of the animal kingdom.

CSI Ballard -- Cat Pee Investigations, Part Deux

Nothing to see really more than last time, but that little s**t has been busy upstairs as well. Many a guest who has been at our house in the last two weeks has witnessed me stop in mid-sentence like a crazy person and ask if they smell cat pee. Well the black light doesn't lie and Oliver has been in our bedroom (the one room off limits to him) and has marked up the closet doors. Boggles the mind. All this after we went to Petco tonight and bought him special treats. The irony--it kills me.

CSI Ballard -- Cat Pee Investigations Unit

You don't know true pet-owning joy until you are crawling around on your hands and knees in the basement in the dark sporting a blacklight and a sponge.



What I used to get the stain/smell out is any one of a number of enzyme-based cleaners that remove all traces of the pet urine and leave behind a "fresh" scent. As an added precaution, I also doused the areas he marked with a citrus spray because cats hate citrus.

Tune in next time to see if Oliver gets the message or if I've kicked off a pissing contest in the basement. Yeah!

The Fall

Last Wednesday, I saw a pretty cool indie movie with the Sarah & Mika called The Fall. It's unbelievably opulent. Done by the same director who did The Cell with Jennifer Lopez--you know, back when she acted--it's richly colored and textured with engaging characters and haunting music. Truly, a spectacle to behold. The story is pretty good, I think they could have simplified things a bit and cut 20-30 minutes out of the film but I do recommend it.

Inspired by an image in the movie, I tried to recreate it at home... Ah well.

Another Open Letter to our cat, Oliver

Dear Oliver,

This would be easier to take if you didn’t have (a) every toy on the planet or (b) an automated feeder that dispenses pricy organic cat food or (c) unsolicited showerings of love & attention from your parents.

So imagine our surprise, when the neighbor casually mentioned that you have been going into her house through her cat door every day for three years and scarfing down all the food she puts out for her TWO cats.

Upon learning this awful and embarrassing truth, I immediately rushed out and bought a 20-pound bag of her preferred cat food. But it was still unclear how to allow you outside access yet keep you from going next door. Your father, the creative genius and amateur thespian, decided to inflict a “scare” upon you with the help of the neighbor. He figured that if you associated going over there with something unpleasant, you would stop doing it. So he dressed up in some Halloween costume odds & ends, put a plastic bag over his head (I think he cut some holes for air) and put some plastic diving flippers on his hands. Little did you know that when I released you outside and you B-lined into her kitchen, he was waiting for you. The surprise of the ruckus and hollering should have convinced you never to step foot in that house again.

But… you were relentless.

Extreme measures therefore had to be enforced and for the first time since we’ve lived here, you became exclusively an “inside cat.” Oh, how you made us suffer. Did I mention how pathetic and inconsolable you sounded? It was like detoxing an addict. You paced by the door and meowed incessantly. You even brazenly jumped up on the kitchen counter one day while we were at work and ate half a loaf of bread—through the plastic. Another time, I set grocery bags in the house and went back to the car to get the others and within 30 seconds you had located the dinner rolls and taken a big bite of one through the plastic.

We felt it was our duty to be strong where you could not be, so as a last resort, we started confining you to the basement when we were at work because of your propensity to consume anything that was not encased in hard plastic or metal. One typical March morning, I locked the door to the basement before leaving for work. Everything would have been fine except your father came home before I did and tripped the house alarm. Not a problem usually, since he’d just come up to the main level and disarm it. But as he started upstairs from the garage-basement, he realized the door to the main level was locked from the other side and he had forgotten his front door key.

“Where are you???” he called my cell phone in a panic, the alarm blaring in the background.
“I’m looking for curtains at JC Penney,” I said stunned and slightly annoyed.
“What am I supposed to do?” he demanded. “The police will be coming any minute and I have to tell them I’m locked out of my own house. This is so embarrassing!”

None of this, may I remind you, would have come about if it weren’t for your insatiable appetite. True, our neighbor didn’t do us any favors by allowing you to come over for so many years unchecked and, true, your father could make it habit to carry his house key. But what’s really going on here? We make sure that your daily meals and current weight are normal for a cat your size and age. You get loads of attention and stimulation. There should be no reason why you are so obsessed with food.

So I ask you, what demons rumble in your kitty tummy and propel you to drive us insane?

~Mama

Teeth Brushing for Cats

Ken demonstrates the dangerous endeavor of brushing Oliver's teeth.

Oliver (& Us): Transfixed

You probably think we are insane to encourage our cat to watch TV but I tell you, this Video Catnip DVD seems to capture Oliver's imagination like nothing else we've seen. (That is, if cats have an imagination)



We decided to test his concentration. Impressive.



He's getting to the point where he may well start pushing buttons on the receiver. They put a warning on the DVD that cats have jumped onto TVs or tried to get inside televisions looking for the stars of the video. So now I make sure to close the cabinet when we are not using it.



We try to be responsible cat parents and limit his DVD watching to 15-20 minutes a day. But an odd side-effect of this DVD is that he will sit and watch our TV shows as well. He probably hopes to glimse a juicy bird or squirrel. But he must be kicking himself inside because up to now, he would just stare at us when we watched TV ignoring the magic movie box. To think what he was missing...

What will you give me if I move?

The Cat Finally Contributes

Oliver: the rat-killing, hyper-groomer

This morning, Ken found and disposed of a medium-sized dead rat that was wet & chewed (but whole, thank God) in what we now refer to as "Oliver's Lair of Doom" (a.k.a. the basement). This is rare behavior for our fuzzy friend since we've trained him to believe that food comes from an automatic electric dispenser and has nothing to do with "instincts" "hunting" or "one's place in the food chain" but everything to do with "is it 4 'o clock"?
The only other time that we've found a small creature meeting tragic ends via Oliver is when our good friends Sean and Shannon visited this house for the first time. We were showing them around and as we descended into the basement, I said, "Over there is the entertainment center and karaoke machine. Over here is my Mulan movie poster. And, oh look a dead bird. In pieces."

Cat Trap, part deux

At 5 am Wednesday morning, Ken sprang from bed at the screeching of the cat trap’s tell-tale alarm. In my foggy state, I heard him throw open the kitchen door, looking for our furry counter-jumper. Predictably, Oliver bolted out the cat door before Ken could catch him. But the satisfaction and pure glee that the cat trap had worked lessened the crime-against-humanity-hour at which we’d been awakened. Kudos to Ken for an ingenious plan! Ken said he just wishes we would have put a webcam in there to capture the wondrous moment. I just hope after all this effort that Oliver has “learned something.”

To Build a Better Cat Trap

Our darling cat Oliver has recently taken to jumping up on the kitchen counter and scrounging whatever edible food item is not tucked safely inside several layers of plastic. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come home from work to a rosemary roll I really wanted with dinner in bits and pieces all over the floor. We were perplexed as to how to discourage this behavior because we can't bar him from the kitchen due to the house's layout, using upside down sticky tape (a previously successful method in Ken's apartment) warns him it's there with a distinct smell--not to mention it's very inconvenient for the humans using the kitchen--and electroshock is apparently out of the question.

So my clever husband awoke me at 2:30 am the other morning to share with me his grand vision of how to teach our little cat that mommy and daddy don't take kindly to tiptoeing on the counter. Aside from the timing, it was quite good.

Behold, the cat trap....



Can't see it? Here's a closer look:



The idea is to create an unstable landing surface that will present an immediate consequence (he'll fall back) and to negatively reinforce jumping up again we have the Tattle Tale, a motion sensing alarm that emits a loud siren when jostled in any way.



The beauty of this cat trap is that it's quickly moved aside when we need to use the kitchen and easy to set up before we leave. It also goes without saying that we'll make sure not to leave open or poorly wrapped food on the counter anymore. I'll let you know how it goes.

But being completely metal, it could be electrified...I'm just saying.

An Open Letter to our cat, Oliver

Dear Oliver,
As you know, your father brought you into this family from a former relationship and over the past few years, I have come to love you as my own. So at this point, I feel there are some things we should discuss.

Now, I understand that looking one's best is very important. Why else would you constantly groom yourself and rub up against every corner in the entire house? But when I try to pet you, why do you stay just out of reach or scamper out of the room? And god forbid I try to pick you up. You get all wiggly and impatient. Why can't you just let me love you?

Sometimes you are extremely charming when you thread through my legs while I am making breakfast or playfully cute when you chase my pant cuffs. But mark my words cat, if you continue to cut in front of me when I'm coming down the stairs, I will kick you like a football. Why do you tempt fate like that? I tend to overlook your between-meal snacking because eating flies and spiders augments your protein intake. Besides it's the only contributory task you do around here and I don't want to take that away from you. But I do want you to know it's rude to stare at people. Especially when your dad and I are snuggling on the couch watching Grey's Anatomy or a Net Flix--I can see you across the room watching us.

Lately, you've been acting really weird and will not be consoled. What's with the despondent meowing and mindless pacing? You can't possibly be hungry because you have an electronic feeder that provides you sustenance 4-times a day. You can't be thirsty because you have a high-tech water fountain delivering oxyginated water. You can't be bored because you have numerous toys and a cat door to the vast and interesting outside world. And you can't be lonely because you have all the neighborhood cats to play with, including your Tabby boyfriend, Hunter. (Not that there's anything wrong with it...) We assume this is why you hiss at all our female guests and take to male contractors so quickly.

I only want you to be happy. But you have to make an effort too. Do you think you could just relax a little, watch where you're going and be nicer to the ladies? In return, you can continue your favorite pastime of licking the side of the dishwasher as much as you like.

Love always,
Your step-mama