random

[freckles_and_doubt]

It occurs to me that I could be over-anthropomorphising my animals when breakfast becomes punctuated with mutterings of "Get a therapist, cat!" on a daily basis. (Ounce is still totally neurotic, despite recent attempts to forcibly socialise him by making him eat next to the other cats rather than in solitary splendour across the kitchen. I'd diagnose PTSD, personally).

It's raining today, not bucketing, but respectable spurts of heavy drizzle with occasional forays into splattering and mini-downpour. As usual this makes me happy, especially since it'll do good things for my miniature mushroom city. Walking in the rain under my big black umbrella is one of winter's pleasures, although admittedly this works better when I actually remember to bring the umbrella. Not so with it, this morning, and consequently rather damp. With it enough, however, to wantonly eject two-thirds of the class from the tutroom on the grounds that they hadn't brought copies of the relevant text. I can feel a Ruthless Rhyme coming on.

Comments

[mcmayhem.livejournal.com]

I hold entire conversations with my cats- don't feel bad about merely instructing them in social propriety. Example: this morning one of my cats reappeared after a 3-day vacation.
"Frank! Heeeeey, where have you been? You went down to the river, huh? Well, I'm glad you're back; I was starting to get worried about you. I was about to send Mike out looking for you. You know your sister wasn't able to find you."
(he looks up at me)
"Happy to be back, huh? Here, let me get you some food."

I swear it runs in the family. My dad does the same thing.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I derive comfort from the fact that I'm not alone in this cat-person trope, or in the long, essentially one-sided converstations. (Although one of ours has a line in whinging mews with which you can actually hold a conversation, with sufficient creativity).

Also, I am comforted to think that cats don't mind what the hell you say to them as long as the concept "let me get you some food" arises somewhere. The rest is mere waffling by the pink blobs, and is tuned out. Thus I don't feel too bad about stigmatising Ounce horribly with the "get a therapist!" comment. Even if he wasn't too busy ducking and running because I've walked into the kitchen in a possibly threatening manner which suggests I'm going to kill and eat him, again, he wouldn't be listening anyway. Cats. Beautifully evolved, really.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Bugger. That first "converstations" should, of course, read "conversations", and probably would were it not for that last, fatal glass of port. On top of all that wine. Never post while drunk. Or tipsy. Or tired. Or, better still, do, because it probably amuses the crowds.

I need a tipsy icon. Or, possibly, not.

[mcmayhem.livejournal.com]

My latest drunken post seemed well-received, and being as that I do whatever pleases my audience...pass the port.

The cats at my house don't respond nearly as much as I'd prefer, so one-sided is how it goes the bulk of the time. Those who live at my parents' house, though, are quite vocal and even seem to have "yes," "no," "quickly," and "stop it, you oaf" down pat. This, of course, is a figment of my imagination and something which should never be admitted to a therapist, but still I insist that they're on the verge of communicating in plain English. They also seem to have an uncanny ability to correctly interpret verbal commands like "come in here and get dried off," "come sit next to me," and "please change the channel." Whether they choose to obey is a different matter entirely, but I sense a glimmer of knowing when they're addressed.

Is your icon from Spirited Away?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yup, fuzzies from the boiler room. Miyazaki rules!

One of my cats has a nice line in what appears to be existential angst: she wanders around the house mrowling plaintively to herself, apparently an ongoing soliloquy of some sort. Another has developed a direct method of communicating "hurry up and feed me NOW" - she pretends, graphically and at length, to be sick on the carpet. I agree, they probably understand a lot of what we say/want them to do, but, unlike dogs, have no interest in actually doing it.

[(Anonymous)]

Harvey shares that existential angst. Flies on our wall might frequently hear Beloved or I reporting, wearily, "Harvey wants." There is no object in that sentence. We don't think even Harvey knows what he wants. But want, he definitely does.

So of course we engage him, and Jemima, in lengthy conversations. The most recent of these was about 15 minutes of me explaining to Jem that the cat flap on the litterbox was really not part of a sinister plot to kidnap her, and it was okay to try it out, and *definitely* more okay to try it out than to wee on the floor again, and yes I did love her, and I'd let her out of the bathroom very soon now I promised, but first I wanted her to visit the cat toilet... that's great, very well done, but I did actually have to SHOVE her in there and I understood she might be a bit upset about that, so just to show there were no hard feelings, would she mind just walking in by herself? See, I'd hold the door open for her... oh brilliant, yes, thank you Jem, you clever darling, let's now leave this den of fear.

She really did seem to understand quite a lot of it, too.

scroob

PS

[(Anonymous)]

For any doubters as to Jemima's receptiveness in the above conversation: she is now (the very next day) using the cat-flap-toilet. All by herself and without any prompting. See? She listened!

fishie!

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

my fishie! *mine*

Re: fishie!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Down, firstfallen! Not your fishie, my fishie. Good lord, if I'd known you had this little self-control at mere iconage, I would have used the Golux one.

Fishie, incidentally, hardly ever mews, it's a sort of almost inaudible, rusty little one when she does. Instead, she communicates in headbutts. Most of them mean "scratch my ears NOW!"