Fetch! At bedtime

Last night Charlotte brought the (electronic) squeaky mouse up to our bed just as we were going to bed.  Tom tossed it out the bedroom door.  She brought it back.  He tossed it again.  She brought it back again.  And again.  And again.  She kept bringing it back, and Tom kept tossing it (and I was guilty a time or two).  It went on for nearly a half hour! 

On the plus side, when she settled down, she settled for the night.  On the minus side, I figure she now knows she has us trained and it will become a part of going to bed most nights.  Like I've said before, we have to be careful how we react to her attempts to train us.  This one might have been a mistake.

Charlotte having breakfast among the herbs

Ding-a-ling!

We created a bit of a monster.  By responding & talking back to her as she meowed in the kitchen, we encouraged her to be more (and more and more) talkative.  Now she goes in the kitchen when we do and just meows.  A lot. 

So, I've been trying to get her to be more specific about what she wants.  In the morning, as we make the first (small) pot of coffee, she meows for either a trip out to the garage or "scoops" (a scoop of kibble).  But it all sounds the same.  So, we ask her to "stretch" (literally stretching along the door frame) to indicate she wants to go out in the garage.  And we've put a bell on the pantry door so she can ring the bell to ask for her scoops.

Last night she had a breakthrough.  She went into the kitchen (we were on the couch), meowed once, then rang the bell twice, then came back to where we could see her and waited for her scoops.  I went and got her scoops for her and she was happy.  I was even happier.

This all goes back to my first cat.  She would meow at the door of my little travel trailer in the middle of the night.  I'd get up, open the door for her to go out and she'd just sit there.  At 2am I don't have a lot of patience.  After several nights of this I pushed her out the door and went back to bed.  It turned out she was thirsty and her water dish was empty.  She quickly learned to push at the dish and meow and not be at the door.  Communication.  It can work wonders.

So, THAT's why she plays with the shower curtain

From her early days with us, Charlotte has had a fascination with the shower curtain.  As soon as we're through showering she's in there.  Most days we can let the curtain get mostly dry before we flip it up over the curtain rod to get it out of her reach. 

This weekend I've been watching ... it's the water drops.  When she pounces the water drops on the upper part roll down to where she is.  So it's a real game for her.  Pounce!  Rolling water drops.  Pounce! Rolling water drops.  The sound of it kinda makes us crazy.  But now I realize it's not the curtain, it's the water she's playing with.

It's so "fun" to have her come straight from the bathtub to our laps.  On a light day she's just got wet feet.  On a heavy play day she's got very wet feet, wet butt, wet tail.  And the more of her that's wet, the more likely she is to sit on us and share the wet.  Yippee!

Other times she'll play in the tub (including licking the tub walls) and go out to the garage and come back muddy from the dirt she gets into on the garage floor.  Most of it started as road grime on the bottom of the car.

One of these days we'll have to see how she does with cruising the edge of the tub while one of us is taking a bath.  (My first cat loved to try to catch the little squirts I'd shoot from my fists.)  We'll have to bathe without the little space heater - she hates it.  There's something about noisy fans - doesn't matter if it's the space heater in the bathroom or the dash vent fan on high in the car.