Honk!

One of the things I can use to stop Charlotte from doing "bad" things is to "honk".  We have an aerosol boat horn (a small can with a horn & button on top - intended as a portable boat horn). 

She hates the sound.  So do we.  But, it works better than trying to get up and get across a room to stop her.  She's learned it well enough that is has gone from running when I blast it to running when I pick it up to, now, just the threat of "I'll honk you" has the desired effect. 

These hand-held boat horns can be hard to find at an economical price, but they're worth it.

Awww!

On a recent afternoon Tom fell asleep while providing Charlotte with her favorite nap spot.  For some reason she really likes to curl up on Tom's lap, especially if he's got one leg crossed over the other.

She'll sit on my chest/belly (my lap is usually covered with my laptop) sometimes.  Usually she just stays a few minutes, then goes to Tom.  Other times she'll go to another of "her" places.  Once in a while she'll spend long enough on me that I have to disturb her nap.

Her weight seems to be holding steady for some time now.  We watch for the belly bump and try to cut back just a little bit when it starts getting bigger, but without her feeling like she's being deprived.

New Digs

We're in the process of slowly moving from state to another.  The house we're moving to is almost twice the size of the one where we are.  And, being a log house it has deep window sills.  And a lot of linoleum in the large kitchen & dining room.  She loves to tear into a room with a slick floor then skid across the floor and rumple up any throw rugs.

With all the floor space, she loves to run the length of the house.  And she loves to go "fishing".  I bought a kid's fishing kit (all in one rod & reel, complete with line & a practice plug).  I cast toward the bathroom or kitchen and she chases the plug.  She hates to have the line touch her - that triggers a whirl & run, which catches the line and really pulls out the line until she gets free, often behind a piece of furniture.  Sometimes she just watches it go by after she runs to it.  I have to keep changing directions so she'll chase it.

She loves the window sills.  Between the deep sills in the dining room, living room and bedrooms, and the sliding glass door in the living room, she can look out all four sides of the house.  The sills are deep enough for her to lounge.

She made a happy "I know where I am" sound when we pulled into the garage in this this house when we returned to our current home.  I'm hoping, expecting, her to have a similar reaction when we return to the new house.

The Head Bump

Another behavior that has entered Charlotte's repertoire - the head bump.  Just in the last 2-3 weeks she's started really bumping us, bumping things as she goes by.  It started as a small bump now and then, mainly while on our laps.  Then it became a stronger bump as she passed.

Now, she bumps just about everything she passes and bumps our legs as she runs past as we're walking.  It's a little scary at times because she's really bumping hard as a foot comes down and we might trip on her one of these days.  And when she does it on the stairs it's even scarier.  We need to be aware of her at all times for our safety.

Her need to get up onto things is getting stronger and more frustrating.  Once we get to Montana we're going to find some ways to allow her to get up high on things that are allowable.  I'm tired of picking up piles of shirts and other things that she's pulled down in her efforts to get up on shelves, dressers and other high places.

As I was writing the paragraph above, she came from the bathtub to visit.  She likes to go sit in the tub and lick water from the shower walls after we finish our morning showers.  She also likes to pounce on the curtain to see the water drops roll down.  Once she's through playing in the wet tub she comes to share her wet feet and wet bottom with us.  Sometimes, once the shower curtain has dried, she will launch herself at it with all four feet in an effort to get the water drops down - but it just doesn't do anything but push the curtain out past the tub.  On bad days we wind up gathering the curtain and folding it over the rod to stop her beating it up.

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.