Tag: cat

events are often synonymouse

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I wrote this morning: “Maus am Morgen, vertreibt Kalorien und Sorgen.”  A variation of a Germany proverb, more or less: “Mouse in the morning – repels calories and sorrows.  It sounds better in Germany.

And now this: Henry has his private play mouse. The little mouse I caught
this morning and which I brought to the old, disused barn next door, was in the house again just now. I recognised him because he has a dud left hind leg. I don’t know if he has the leg because of Henry’s roughhousing, or if Henry keeps catching him because he has a dud leg.

If Henry should bring Synonymouse in to play again I will drive him in the nearby woods. I don’t care if he will miss his family.

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Oh my!

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Since his last growth spurt a couple of month ago Henry has become a picky eater.  The few times when we found his bowl of wet food licked clean we discovered that the neighbour cat has been visiting clandestinely.  Now with the heat during the last week he’s gone of wet food almost completely, licking once or twice over the various patés and jellies and chunks we offer him, occasionally taking a nibble and that’s it.  He will condescend if you offer him one of his treats but even that he seems to do more to please us rather than because he likes the stuff.  He does still eat his crunchy pellets but I have noticed that he manages to eat almost exclusively the yellow bits, leaving the brown and reddish-brown ones behind.

Think about it – would you be able to separate your vegetables into carrots, peas, and cauliflower pieces and only eat the peas – all this without using your hands?  My, what an agile tongue Henry has!

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team work

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Henry and I make a good team.

I was awakened this morning by: “Damn, there is another mouse in the house!”

The mouse retired (or rather hid).  My son insisted that he snug under his bed.  Lothar and I doubted it, because the space he could have used was incredibly narrow.  While the two men were still arguing, I saw that yes, this mouse could make itself almost as flat as a sheet of paper.  And no, it wasn’t under the bed anymore but clung to the wall behind a mover’s box.  Henry saw it too, scratched at it and mousey (who really was a shrew*) ran down the wall, out of the room and hit  – of all things! – behind Henry’s cat loo in the guest toilet.  I closed the door and Henry and I had five minutes of fun (I don’t think the shrew had much fun) until I managed to capture it in plastic bowl and covered it with a dustpan.

Lothar did the last bit and showed the shrew the way out, while Henry had a liver stick, and we highfived, Henry and I, that is.

* The fact that Henry brings shrews home to play kind of explains why the mousetrap baited with Nutella doesn’t work, as they are insectivores.

** Yeah, oh yeah! I can eat the whole glass of Nutella all by myself now!

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cultural differences

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One of my German language students recently had a mouse in his flat and asked my advice on a mouse trap.  After helping him with the right words I added that the best mouse trap was a cat.  —

Today I told the class about Henry bringing mice into the house to play with them (unappreciative little buggers, they seem not to enjoy his friendly advances).  The student laughed and then asked if I had punished the cat. I was impressed by him using such fancy vocabulary and then tried to explain that Henry meant the mice as gifts to me.  I explained how I praise Henry and then distract him with a reward in order to catch the mouse and send it outside.  He looked at me incredulously.  “Is this a German cat?”  I said yes.  He shrugged his shoulders, in a way that probably meant “That figures!”

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tomcat warming

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Socks, our cat in South Africa, was a British longhair.  Okay, some kind of longhair.  This means I am used to cats puking.  No matter how much we brushed her (she used to love it), every now and again she’d sit in the middle of the living room and retch her heart out, or rather a furball.  And Lothar or I cleaned it up.

So far, Henry has spared us this experience.  Until tonight.  I guess it was his wish to shed his toasty fur coat in this heat (who wouldn’t?) and he’s swallowed more hairs than usual.

Oh joy!

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I may be starving but I am still picky

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Henry wakes me at 7 am because he is hungry.  Now I am not complaining, I know that 7 am is a humane time in the life of a cat but to be fair, it is the middle of the night for me.  Of course, I oblige and get up and stagger in the kitchen, open the drawer, get a tin of his favourite food.  I notice that his eating place needs a quick sweep so I turn round to get the dustpan and brush out of a cupboard in the bathroom.  Next thing I know I have a cat attacking my calves from behind!

Henry was obviously worried that I would go back to bed without feeding him.  He hit me quite hard, yet without using his claws.  Still!

I cleaned his place and gave him his food (did I mention that it was his favourite food?), set it down before this obviously famished feline.  He wouldn’t be a cat if he hadn’t sniffed at it, nibbled a bit and a half, and walked off.

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closed doors, nosey cat, and scratches

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Henry – like most cats I suppose – doesn’t like closed doors.

“But I want to know what you’re doing in the bathoom!”

“I know it’s raining on the other side of the house but I like to check out this side now!”

“What do you mean you need to work and don’t want a furry  muff lying on your desk keeping your warm?”

The one door that has been closed for him is the appartment door leading to the staircase and the rest of the house with the other flats and cellars and garage.  In the beginning we had to throw things in the living room to distract him and dash out if we wanted to leave. Nowadays, he has more or less accepted this limitation to his realm and only occasionally tries to sneak out.  He is easily dissuaded and it looks as if he is only making a half-hearted effort anyway because of what is expected from him.

When somebody rings the doorbell and he is  around, we usually pick him up and he allows this without struggeling.  Big mistake yesterday!

When my sister was at the door and I wanted to let her in with Henry on my shoulder, I didn’t realise that our neighbour with her two Jack Russels was behind her. Henry saw them earlier than I did and before I could react he used me as his escape route, up my arm, on my shoulder and down my back.  And I have the scratches to proof it!

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the trills of having a cat

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To be clear: there is no h missing in the header.

I am amazed at the noises Henry is capable of.  He has always been quite vocal, much more so than any other cat I have owned, but I find it very intriguing  how he tells me that he has brought a new plaything in the house – be it four or six legged.  He is trilling and chirping, warbling and twittering in a very distinctive way which puts me immediatly in alert mode.

Which reminds me: the mouse is still in the house.  Apparently.  I haven’t seen it and the only indication that it is still there is Henry sitting in front of the kitchen skirting.  It’s a waiting game.

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living with a mouse

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Henry has also brought home his first mouse.  Unfortunately, the mouse was cleverer than he expected because it hit successfully in a flower pot.  I don’t remember who lost interest first, Henry or me, but it was 2 am and I went to bed.

When my husband found the mouse cowering behind an orchid in the morning, he tried to take it outside (the whole flower pot) but mousey jumped and ran behind the living room cupboard.  Henry followed – we had no idea that he could even get behind the cupboard – and appeared again in the CD rack.  Mousey stayed hidden.

I bought a live trap but have so far been unable to set it up.  Hence, we had another night of living with a mouse.  I came into the living room this morning to find two pot plants lying on the floor and a cat mesmerized by the kitchen skirting.

On the upside we now know that there is no rotting mouse corpse somewhere in the flat.

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two birds with one cat

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I’ve held back this information but Henry has moved up in the hunters’ world.   Last week he brought home two birds (not at the same time).  I praised him profusely, distracted him with a cat treat, and scooped up the birds.  Each one was unharmed, if badly shaken.  They were both juvenile sparrows.

I placed them outside in a safe place and while Henry was being distracted inside, they recovered their spunk and flew off.  I hope they learned their lesson.

Mhm… coming to think of it, they kinda looked alike.  … I hope it wasn’t the same bird on both days.  Because that would mean: I suck as a teacher.

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