I have a cat at home who is relatively young (4-5 years), relatively ‘heavy’ (14 pounds), and seems to have normal vision, hearing, and balance.

She regularly fails to get “high enough” to whatever she’s trying to jump to, like the bathroom counter or windowsill, and ends up sliding down the side of the counter/wall in an undignified scramble.

Previous theories have been that she’s too lazy to exert enough effort to do it right the first time. (She seems to manage the second time, if she bothers to try and doesn’t flounce off.) Nowdays, I’m starting to worry that there’s something wrong with her. I’m not sure.

Steele is a freaking moron and this is so transparently bad, but we see a lot of this from “Obama, do or die” comments online that claim that there is no such thing as a gaffe for Obama - EVERY move he makes is strategic ju-jitsu chess mojo whatsitsname. So I guess this sort of thing is ubiquitous for humans, and not just for cats.

I watched that clip last night, and the only thing I could think was “Stupid like a fox!”.  I have to give the interviewer props for not actually rolling his eyes while on camera.

Of course, Mr. Steele.  You meant to smack yourself in the face with multiple cream pies in front of everyone.  Brilliant strategery.  Surely nobody will think you a fool now, after such a deft rhetorical gambit.

What?  “Don’t call me Shirley”?  Oh, Michael, touche, dear sir.  Touche.

Damnedyankee, thanks for making me snort soda out my nose. Ouch.

I was picking up my son from a sleepover and chatting with the family while my son gathered his stuff.  Along comes their 10 month old calico, at high speed, batting a toy along a polished wood floor.

As I was about to leave, the heavy wood door was swung open in the foyer, with about 2” of space underneath (as the threshhold was elevated).  Furlough comes barreling along and her toy goes flying under the door.

Whummph! Cat face meets door.

She picked herself up, gave us that “and you silly humans are laughing at ... what exactly?” look, and went around the door to collect her toy and proceed.

Ah, I’ll never forget the time that Max jumped up onto my bed and unexpectedly landed on the book I was reading.  He jumped straight up into the air as if he’d been burned, turned to leap off the bed, bounced off the closet door, then finally veered out of the bedroom.  I laughed for five minutes straight, and he scowled at me the entire time.  RIP, little buddy….(he just passed away from tainted pet food in February)

The GOP movers-and-shakers really do act like they’re auditioning for the new “Three Stooges” movie, don’t they?

This is something they do all the effin’ time.  Remember “Bush is privy to some scary intel on Iraqi WMDs he can’t release for national security reasons?” or McCain’s “I have a plan to win in Iraq and to catch Bin Laden, but I can’t tell you ‘cause then the enemy would know.”

The tainted pet food thing made me shake with rage when I heard about it because you’re so helpless in the face of it. My heartfelt condolences.

Oh. My. God.

My tuxedo shorthair has a nerve problem that makes it so he’s not real sure where his left feet are and these “meant to do it” moments have become his standard operating procedure. He just now pulled some books off a table while, I assume, trying to jump up there. I come to check out the ruckus and he’s sitting there on the floor licking his butt like he just took a moment out of reading the Thucydides laying open at his side in order to bathe his balls.

Our youngest likes to bat away at the dangling chain from our ceiling fans. Only thing is that the only way she found to get in range of them was to jump on our backs (all claws out) and use her claws to climb up on our shoulders and stand on her hind paws to get high enough.

First time I was wearing my winter coat, I saw her coming and it was cute and funny. After that I was in t-shirt in the house and she started doing it while we had our backs to her… it was a bit less funny.

Her front paws are declawed now, but we still raise her up above our heads sometimes so she can have her fun.

She also likes to run at top speed down hallways. Once I came out of the room and into the hallway as she was running and I so surprised her she let our a startled cry and jumped about 3 feets in the air before running back the other way.

We “inherited” an adult female when the neighbors kicked her out.  She had a habit of getting out whenever she went into heat, looking for love in all the wrong places, and having a litter of kittens.  She got thrown out after the last escape.  You would have thought that having her spayed would have been the obvious answer, but it wasn’t to the neighbors.

So we took in said cat, named “Kitten,” though we believe her middle name might have been “Factory.”  And, being reasonably well informed as to what happens when adult female cats in heat escape the safe confines of the house, we had her spayed.  But Kitten never got along with any other cats.

Well, Mrs Pico brought home a fits-in-one-hand kitten (pictures here), and the hissing match began—and continues to this day.  Kitten has claimed our bed as her spot, and once I go to bed, kitten will jump up, find her spot, which is designed to guard the bed from intruders.  Then, sometime in the middle of the night, Pluto will jump up, there will be a snarl, and Pluto will have the bed for the rest of the night, while Kitten winds up sleeping with the daughter or spare daughter.

Mine has a bad habit of trying to jump up on top of one of the tall bookshelves. I keep telling her, “You’re going to hurt yourself, you know,” but she does it anyway. One time she did hurt herself—she slipped off and smacked her foot on the way down, hard enough to have her limping for a few hours. I said “See? I told you!” and she looked at me like “Oh, that? I was testing your emergency response time. You didn’t get a very good score, by the way.”

The only reason I found out it was the food is because my smaller cat (who eats a lot less) got sick shortly after he died.  My vet had believed it to be pancreatitis at first, and Max was simply not recovering.  He’d lost two pounds and would not eat or drink on his own.  I was force-feeding him soft food with a syringe and giving him water orally at the end, and he was in a lot of pain so I had to make the decision to put him down.  But when Sophie got sick and the ONLY connection between the two of them was the same bag of Iams dry cat food, I finally realized what happened.  I had her hospitalized immediately and two rounds of antibiotics later she’s made a full recovery.  But I feel a lot of anger and guilt over Max—I’m convinced it was salmonella poisoning due to their symptoms (bloody diarrhea being a primary one).

The pet food industry is in about the same shape as our food, and we have children dying after eating peanut butter products.  The food I had has still not been recalled in any way.  I don’t trust those recall lists anymore—the most recent one for salmonella came two years after they KNEW that shit was in the food.

Sweet galloping McGillicuddy, I wish Steve Gilliard had lived to see this—Michael Steele blithering about ‘street cred’ and black outreach while the GOP implodes beneath him?  Being undermined by his own party and genuflecting before the racist pigboy Rush?  Gilly was at his best in this kind of target-rich environment.  It would be like the 4th of July everyday at the News Blog.

Is Kitten a Calico, Dana?  They are notorius for hating their own kittens even, they hate other cats so much!

My aunt brought home a tiny kitten named “maggie” and was very concerned what her adult fixed male would do about it.  She kept them separated, until the weekend came and the old boy begged and begged to be let into the kitten’s room.  Once permitted supervised access, he then properly bathed the kitten and snuggled her up!

Sometime later, auntie had to take him to the vet - he had been letting the kitten “nurse” on his nipples and had what the vet described as a “major cat hickey”!

Some years later, when she took in a new kitten, “maggie” the calico would hiss at him and hate on the poor tiny thing with great loads of venom, but Charlie the Mom would have none of it, acquiring an entirely new set of cat hickies.

Blitzgal, that’s so incredibly sad.  (((((((hugs)))))))

I daily count my blessings that my cats truly hate the affected brands and food styles (they simply refuse to eat anything in chunks with gravy).  I don’t know how I - or especially they - got so lucky to be so picky.

I like to think that somehow, somewhere, in the Purina lunchroom, some buyer who refused to purchase gluten from the cheap sources cornered a bean counter and screamed “I told you so!”.  Purina brands were largely unaffected.

Ms. Kate, I was truly worried when I brought my latest kitten home that Milo - the tuxedo mentioned above - would terrorize it since he hated all other cats with a deep passion; especially Grady, my outdoor Russian Blue. But no, little Briquette charmed him into receiving nip hickeys like Charlie there (Briq also sucked his ‘thumb’ raw, abandoned too young). Additionally, the kitten seems to have eased the tensions between Milo and Grady quite a bit. They’re certainly not pals, but at least they can co-exist in the same room for a few minutes now.

(he just passed away from tainted pet food in February)

We got caught in the big melamine scandal by the ONLY dry cat food that was tainted:  Natural Balance.  So, yeah, you can’t even trust the little guys.  “Rage” is probably mild to express how we felt.  We did at least have another 4 months with Boris where he did really well just on subcutaneous fluids, but eventually his kidneys gave up and he went down fast.

Though, Ms. Kate, you make me feel a lot better about putting our current two on Purina Pro Plan Selects.  We had to get Keaton off wheat gluten because it was making him throw up every goddamned day, but I was worried about going back to a big manufacturer.

Sarcastro, we also have a tuxedo cat—a really BIG male—and yet he’s super-maternal.  When Boris was dying, he kept him groomed every day when he couldn’t do it himself (the vet said he was the best-looking dying cat she’d ever seen), and when we got Annie, as far as he was concerned, he was her new mommy.  He still keeps a close eye on her and grooms her every chance he gets.

Huh. My tuxedo cat is incredibly neurotic and hates EVERYTHING except me. He kind of tolerates “Daddy” (my boyfriend) and mostly leaves “Sister” (litter mate, calico cat) alone, except for one or two cat-fights a day that can get out of hand. He hates, hates, hates “Brother” (dog, German Shep mutt, 8 months) and yowls at him constantly.

Although my tuxedo yowls constantly anyway, and is generally very, very angry. Except when Mommy is loving on him. Then and only then will he be quiet. *sigh*

When I was in college, my friends and I went out to a restaurant and while we were waiting for our food a few of us went to the bathroom. Now, getting to the bathroom you had to go up a step that was kinda hard to see (if you were walking straight, looking straight you would totally miss it and trip) a few people tripped early and then we had two guy friends who came late.

One went to the bathroom.

So, we’re all watching and waiting and taking bets as to whether or not he’s gonna see the step or trip. He trips, but to play it off he does this faux “lay up”, where he takes three extra steps past the trip and then pretends to shoot a basket, as if he meant to do that. It was totally transparent and because he tried to play it off in such a ludicrous manner we laughed even harder.

He shrugged it off and laughed at himself and then got back to the table and went, “Yeah, I tripped, so what.” and sat down and berated the rest of us for not warning him about it (yeah, we were being assholes but still).

*blubs at all the cat stories*

We haven’t run into any bad cat food (knocks on plastic workstation desk) but we recently acquired a wee kitten. We think she’s not going to get very big, but she’s not a year old yet. She and our older cat don’t get along at all well. It doesn’t help that Velvet, the kitten, rolls over on her back, waves her claws in the air, and growls at Spook whenever they come within 6 inches or so. I’m convinced Velvet starts half their fights by being ready for a fight all the time.

Spook, when she wants something and I’m lying on the bed reading, comes and plops down on my book and doesn’t budge until I get up and cater to her whim. I wish cats could tell us specifically what they want, but it’s pretty clear if I’m paying attention. Usually when she’s interrupted my reading I’m pretty irritated and not paying any attention, so we wander from the food bowl to the bathtub (she drinks out of the faucet and looks at the water bowl like it just insulted her momma) to the back door until some connection is made in her little pea brain.

Essie, I could have written that, except that my Tuxedo cat is mellow Silent Joe and the Calico is the neurotic who will Not. Shut. Up. Oh, and I don’t believe they were litter mates.

My little guy Pyewacket used to nurse on my earlobes and neck. I adopted him at under 6 weeks old from a (literal) sack o’ kittens a man brought into the vet where my roomates dog was getting a check up. Because of his young age and general ill health in kittenhood Pye never got above 7 pounds.

Although he stated that he brought the kittens in because he wanted the vet to pick out the two stongest ones to use as ratters for his barn and would be “disposing” of the rest he did not want to give Pye to me becasue he thought I looked “satanic” (facial piercings, dyed hair etc) and claimed to be worried I would sacrifice the kitty. Pye was also jet black with huge yellow-green eyes and looked like the classic witches cat. The vet somewhat shamed him into handing over Pye for adoption.

Pye had ulcerations in his mouth and a bad case of coccidia (kind of like a cat flu) when I got him and he was severely undernourished. I fed him formula, water and meat based baby foods out of an eyedropper every two hours until he bulked up. Luckily I adopted him on a non-work day and had the next 48 hours or so to watch him. I think he nursed my earlobes for comfort more than a misguided attempt at feeding.

Until I adopted my current kitty (Zelda, 16 years and still going strong) Pye was the most wonderful animal I had ever lived with. He was active and fiesty but still sweet and loving, not always smart but certainly not stupid. I am sorry to say that he was killed by my neighbor’s pit bull just before he turned two.

Side note to Pam; this has not turned me into a rabid pit hating freak, just made me more cautious about cat/dog interactions.

Sorry about the diversion, all the talk of cats got me thinking about him!

Also:

Cats don’t think of themselves as one of the humans. They think of you as a very large, bald, insane cat.

When I first brought home my tuxedo cat, he decided I was Mommy and would follow me around incessantly. He still charges around the house ahead of me, securing the rooms before I enter them.

But he was VERY disturbed by this need that I had every morning to get wet. He’d poke his head around the shower curtain and give me a look like “...the HELL you doing?!” He’d check the tub after I got out (funny to see him splashing around in an inch of water due to a slow drain). Finally, one morning, while I was doing pre-shower hairbrushing, he jumped into the tub and started cleaning himself. When I turned around to get the faucet going, he looked up at me like “Um, hello, OCCUPIED…” He probably thought he was doing the huge, bald, crazy mommy cat a favor.

My big guy Mario Lemiaux, who is white with tabby patches, will greet me as I come up our dead-end street each day, calling out with a loud MOWWW MOWWOWWW! that I can sometimes hear from around the corner.  He waits for my arrival, asking to be let out just before he thinks I will be getting home. 

He leads me to the back door, tail in the air, mowowowing all the way.  He’s about 15lbs, very long legs, mostly lean. 

When I come home from a business trip, he shuns me for a few hours.  Then he will NOT let me out of his sight. Inside the house, he’s my tabbyshadow.  If I leave the house, I am followed and seranaded.  I went to the neighbor’s house to help him start his lawnmower and Mario came crying and scolding Mowow Mowowowowwwww! The neighbor said “I think he missed you”.

His sister has the endearing habit of chasing her tail in the bathtub ... which has lead to it’s share of “I meant that” moments.

But he was VERY disturbed by this need that I had every morning to get wet. He’d poke his head around the shower curtain and give me a look like “...the HELL you doing?!” He’d check the tub after I got out (funny to see him splashing around in an inch of water due to a slow drain).

Mmm.  And then there’s the common cat habit of following you into the toilet and staring in fascination at you sitting there.  It doesn’t help your concentration, that.

We did have a cat with a habit of jumping into the bathtub to lick at the dripping taps.  One day, however, I left a drawn bath and went back to my room.  There’s this loud splash, followed by panicked footsteps.  I track them down to a very very frightened cat hiding under a bed, convinced that the universe was conspiring against her.  And the weird bit is that she was only wet from the “elbows” downward - I figure she hit the water and managed to levitate straight out again…

Ms Kate: Kitten is a grey tabby, which is known as “snodgrass colored” at our house.  My mother had a grey tabby names Snodgrass, and ever since them, through my two sisters and me, grey tabbies have all been snodgrasses.

The place in which Kitten previously lived had other cats and dogs, so you’d think she’d be used to other animals, but she just doesn’t get along with my other critters at all.

It’s cute when cats do it, because they are not TRYING TO RUN THE COUNTRY.

Essie (first comment), one of my cats did that for about a year between ages 1 and 2.  She failed at jumping up on everything, though she was a great jumper as a kitten.  After that, she seemed to learn how to jump again, and can now be found leaping up on the refrigerator frequently.  I figured it was something like what happens to kids at puberty, where their brains haven’t quite caught up with the actual shape of their bodies.  But I’m not sure, because your cat is older and presumably full-grown.

Ada, the cat with the jumping problem, is a tortoiseshell and she will never shut up.  She has the loudest meow I’ve ever heard out of a cat.  She turns it up to 11 when she thinks you’re ignoring her.  She also mumbles to herself constantly—you always know where she is, because you can hear “Rrrrrr.  Mmmrrrr.  Mowrr?”  I’ve really come to believe that tortoiseshells are particularly talkative, pushy cats—I’ve met several that act like Ada.  She’s super-friendly and loves people, but she’s extremely pushy about demanding love and attention.  She won’t just sit in your lap and purr—she has to constantly nuzzle you, wash you, roll around, knead on you, and generally get in your business.

I’d rather spend time with cats than Republicans any day.

Phoe: our first cat was a female longhaired tortoiseshell.  We didn’t have a shower, just a bathtub.  Jill would sit on the edge of the tub to keep the bather company, and as her tail would flick back and forth, a few drops of water would get on it.  That made it slightly heavier, so with each subsequent flick, the tail would move lower and lower, until, by the end of the bath, Jill’s tail was sticking straight down into the water.  As you were finishing the bath, you had to wring out her tail, or she’d leave a wet mess throughout the apartment.

Jill also slept on top of doors, as in: on the one inch top of an opened door—usually the bathroom—she would lay down, balance herself, and fall asleep.

Essie (from the first comment): maybe the cat’s depth perception is off.  When a couple of ours grew too fat to do the things they used to do, they quit attempting them.

PiaToR—at the risk of TMI, I think my cat likes to follow me in when I’m on the toilet because he knows that I don’t really have anything better to do with my time in there than to scratch his fuzzy head.

Of course, I also had a cat who would watch me, fascinated, and I didn’t think anything of it, until he started peeing in the toilet himself…

Important Amendment to Previous Post: not while I was trying to use the toilet at the same time. That would be very gross.

PiaToR—at the risk of TMI, I think my cat likes to follow me in when I’m on the toilet because he knows that I don’t really have anything better to do with my time in there than to scratch his fuzzy head.

Mine would sit out of reach in front of me, with their heads cocked.

“Why is the funny monkey man making grunting noises and looking annoyed at us?  Truly, this is more entertaining than chasing birds.”

Then again, they were never too smart.  You haven’t had any fun until you’ve seen your cat waggling its butt in the air stalking some bird - and manage to sneak up yourself and rap her between the shoulders.  Jumped three feet in the air and ran for the trees without even stopping to see who had done it to her.

PiaToR—at the risk of TMI, I think my cat likes to follow me in when I’m on the toilet because he knows that I don’t really have anything better to do with my time in there than to scratch his fuzzy head.

Harriet does the same thing.

My cat also knows she has a captive audience. As she’s gotten older her craving for THE LAP has intensified so she is in the bathroom within seconds of sitting on the pot. She’s also a climber so sometimes she goes from the lap to the shoulder. Book in one hand, cat butt in the other….

My little guy cat follows us eagerly into the bathroom and has to be discouraged from climbing around on the toilet to see what we’re doing. Mostly, the big attraction for him is the flush. He LOVES to watch the water spin around and disappear.

If he’s not already in there with us, we can call him: “Titus! I’m gonna flush now!” and he comes zooming from across the house so he won’t miss it.

i am sadly without a cat, after many years of being owned by the smartest craziest black cat ever born. my dog is rather cat like though, he’s small, never barks, and only cares that i exist when it works for him. i would love to get him (and myself) a kitten friend, but the landlord says no more pets.

the dog watches me on the toilet too, i assume it’s for the reason mighty ponygirl pointed out, that he knows i’m stationary and can pet and scratch his crazy little head and face (he’s a shih tzu, but we keep his hair pretty short and when it grows out a bit he looks like a muppet).

Heh!  Two facts: 

1. My washing machine is broken, so I use the bathtub to wash clothes.

2. My tabby cat Athena loves to play in the bathtub.  She’ll bat a toy in there, then get a running start and dive in after it. 

Fact 1 + Fact 2 = Hilarity ensues. 

Sometimes when I have the laundry soaking in there, I’ll hear Athena playing, then the sound of her galloping towards the tub, then the sound of a cat flailing about as she tries to escape the tub and finally, one very wet and angry cat will stalk over to me, sit down, and glare at me in outrage, making these huffing noises like, “Well, I never!” that sends me into fits of laughter.

Snowmentality - “She also mumbles to herself constantly—you always know where she is, because you can hear “Rrrrrr.  Mmmrrrr.  Mowrr?”

My tabby cat, Bumper, does this to. It reminds me of Marge Simpson. He is probably the most talkative cat I’ve ever seen. His cry is generally weak until you put him in the carrier for a car ride(doesn’t matter where you’re going) and then he sounds like Rob Halford.

These cat stories are adorable.

I actually have a geekier impression of what Steele was doing. He was trying to convince everyone that he is the master of the Xanatos Gambit.

My two calicos are very loving of each other. They are littermates, which might explain it. They are even more loving of me and my partner than of each other.

We also have a grey cat who is part Siamese. She hates the calicos, hissing at and attacking them unprovoked. Calicos are supposed to hate other cats and Siamese cats are supposed to need to be with others. Go figure that one out. Unless it’s because the grey cat grew up with my now-departed beloved first calico, who had no use for her or any other cat. I brought the grey one home when I moved into my first solo place because I thought she shouldn’t be alone all the time. She would have preferred being an only cat. Had I known, I would have never brought the grey one home. Live and learn.

Just this morning, one of the calicos was jumping from dresser to bed, but the comforter was too close to the edge so she started to slide backwards down the bed instead of landing on it. She got to the bottom and stalked off, and the look on her face was, “I was just sliding down my pole, gotta go get into my firetruck now,” I swear.

My cat had what the vet believes to be a seizure at the beginning of this week.  Apparently he hadn’t been eating and I didn’t notice, so his blood sugar was dangerously low.  He had two more episodes after we got him home, though they were a lot more mild.  He’s been about a foot away from me all week getting continuous pettings and having momma check his eyes every thirty minutes.  In order to make sure he drinks enough, I’ve been giving him water with an eye dropper, which he thinks is the greatest thing on earth.  I’m like the cat version of Dominos.

He’s such a big baby, for a while we’d rescued a kitten and kept them apart until the kitten was on adult food.  They’d play under the door, but once we let them mingle my cat hated the kitten.  The kitten of course ran straight for him with a look that said “toy!” and thought he was the greatest amusement park in the world.  We had to give the kitten up because he peed the carpets, and my cat reverted back to being an affectionate cuddle slut.

Every time I open a bag of food, I’m terrified that this will be the one that kills him.  I’ve had this cat for more than 10 years and I’m not ready for him to leave me.  I wish I could afford to switch him to a bones and raw flesh diet, but we’re lucky if we can afford Purina and still have food for the humans.

We did have a cat with a habit of jumping into the bathtub to lick at the dripping taps. 

Ours love the “drip drips”, but they also figured out how to work the taps as Mario is very dextrous (he opens the windows in the basement, unlocking them first!).  Amelia Earcatt figured out the kitchen sink tap - bumps her head under the handle until it drips.  This resulted in one very high water bill, as they turned on all three sink taps in the house while we were at school and work almost every day!

Then we got them a continuously flowing and filtering fountain gizmo for $30 and they love it enough that they don’t turn the water on themselves.  They still beg for drip drips whenever they can swing it though.

Aw. I think our cat follows us into the bathroom so that he can look outraged and say “You’re doing WHAT?!?!? in my drinking bowl?” He also drinks from the taps and laps up the last of the bathwater.

And yeah, if he were running the country we’d be toast.

PiaToR—at the risk of TMI, I think my cat likes to follow me in when I’m on the toilet because he knows that I don’t really have anything better to do with my time in there than to scratch his fuzzy head.

My father has formalized this arrangement - he has two maine coons that have long hair that needs to be brushed all the time, so he keeps their brushes in the two bathrooms in the house.  They follow people into the toilet because toilet time is brushing time!

OMG! That’s the perfect metaphor!

Jill also slept on top of doors, as in: on the one inch top of an opened door—usually the bathroom—she would lay down, balance herself, and fall asleep.

Somehow, Annie managed to get herself up on top of the shower door.  She hasn’t managed a regular door yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.  When it comes to heights, she’s absolutely fearless.  Good thing we live on the second floor.

In order to make sure he drinks enough, I’ve been giving him water with an eye dropper, which he thinks is the greatest thing on earth.  I’m like the cat version of Dominos.

If the vet ends up telling you to give him subcutaneous fluids, it’s not as scary as it sounds.  It helps to have two people, though—one to soothe the cat and one to actually do the injecting.  Other than that, it’s not a big deal at all.

When I showered in a tub, my tabby would pace the side of it between the inner and outer shower curtains. Now that I have a shower stall, he jumps up on the bathroom counter and fusses at me between when I turn off the water and when I emerge to reassure him that I haven’t drowned or been eaten by coyotes.

I, too, think the 5 year old cat who misses the first jumps and gets up on the second must have a depth perception problem. In which case, in a sense he does mean to do that—a practice jump is his way of finding out what he needs to do. Presumably, the fall is easier if he under jumps rather than over jumps.

And indeed, cats do think of us as big hairless cats. Mine used to get terribly upset if she could see me showering. She couldn’t quite grasp we didn’t mind it the way she would and so she was miserable about our self-torture.

Mnemosyne wrote:

Somehow, Annie managed to get herself up on top of the shower door.  She hasn’t managed a regular door yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.  When it comes to heights, she’s absolutely fearless.  Good thing we live on the second floor.

Jill was able to manage the bathroom door most easily, by leaping from the bathroom basin, but she got to the top of other doors as well.  She always wanted to be on the highest spot in a room, and would sleep on top of the hot water heater, which was in the kitchen.  (Hey, it was a crappy apartment.)

We had a leather ottoman with a towel laying on it.  You can imagine the hilarity that ensued when Cali tried to jump on it.

She also like laying on the backrest part of the couch (I notice a lot of cats like this).  When she fell heavily asleep, she would inevitably fall off the back and her face while trying to scrabble for purchase as she fell….I’m laughing now.

Of course, all of this was followed up by high-tailed flouncing from the room.

Totally Off-topic:

This is a last ditch effort by myself to save the life of our Siamese.  Zoey is a 8 year-old spayed female that’s never littered.  She prefers being outdoors, so much that when the weather gets below 50 outside, she takes to peeing in the corners of the house.  She is litter trained, will use the litter box, but apparently pastes the corners because it’s out fault we live in Iowa.  (or best we can figure out)

Zoey is non-papered and declawed, and Siamese rescue refuses to help us find another family.  Local rescue organizations don’t want her.  But my wife and I are going to move soon and we cannot let this cat destroy one more house’s carpeting or basement floor.

Please - PLEASE - if you live in warmer climes and are willing to take on a very Siamese cat, please contact myself as idiosynchronic with google mail or my wife Hotmail account as revmudd.

Otherwise, we’re going to have to put the cat to sleep in the next month.

Ouch!  We live in the Poconos—snow country—and letting a declawed cat outside is just not wise here.

But perhaps she uses the corners because they smell like cat urine to her.  Once she started there, even if it was because she was pissed off—pun intended—she placed a scent that she’ll never forget.  A new house without such corners might be OK. 

Why don’t you try to take her with you, and see if non-scented corners help with the problem; that way, if it doesn’t work, you still have the option of putting her down, but you’ve given her a chance.  You’ll know in just a day whether or not it worked.  And there are some products out there which will take care of the problem in the floors if caught early enough.  If you have carpets, the problem can be worse.

For once I agree with Dana - take her with you.  It may be entirely possible that your old house had cat pee in the corners already, and she took the cue.

You can also put a litter pan in each corner - but it might be best to invest a day observing her and grabbing her if she’s about to spray.  Another thing to try: a scent that repels her or neutralizes any accidents ahead of time - like a good soaking with nature’s miracle.

Did you use scoopable litter?  One of my cats hates non-scoopable litter and will pee in the shower if we use another type because it doesn’t neatly absorb it and we can’t remove it daily (but we have two cats).  Another Tip: do not EVER use scented litter - some cats really hate that they cannot smell their pee in the box and a bit into the house.  Mine HATE scented litter, so I don’t use it - you can mix in some baking soda if it gets ripe.  Costco and Target and other places have generic brands that don’t have a scent.

Good luck!

Has she done this in more than one house, or just in this house?  If it’s just this one, Ms. Kate and Dana may be right—it may have more to do with the house than the cat.  I had a cat that sprayed in my old apartment but never sprayed once after we moved to a new one. 

I love my crystal litter from Trader Joe’s, and the cats seem to like it, too.  A couple of major brands (ie grocery store or Target) make crystal litter now, too.

More than one house.  4 as of now.  I think its curtains.  Thanks for responding back.

We also have a grey cat who is part Siamese. She hates the calicos, hissing at and attacking them unprovoked. Calicos are supposed to hate other cats and Siamese cats are supposed to need to be with others. Go figure that one out.

Siams tend to do very well with other Siams or people but it’s definitely not unusual for them to have trouble with other cats especially if one of them is not a kitten during the first meeting.  I started off with an older tabby and a lynx-point Siamese who had been introduced to said tabby as a kitten, they tolerated each other.  Unfortunately older tabby became very ill and needed to be euthanized.  We adopted a calico, who is a complete sweetie but completely hated by the lynx-point and he tried to ambush her at every opportunity.  Faced with nasty fights everyday we adopted a blue-point Siamese to change up the group dynamics.  Lynx-point and new blue-point now love each other dearly and tag team picking on the Calico but thankfully it rarely happens lately because they would rather play with each other.  Why they pick on her I don’t know because she will completely shower them with affection if they let her; it’s very odd.