Category Archives: Cat

Cat, choice and accountability

Life with Sparky: Catch?

Sparky picks up one of his toys, shakes it, and jumps on my lap.

“What do you want, Sparky?” I ask.

After a while he take his toy and leaves.

Another day, Sparky brings a toy to my lap once more. I chat with him and ignore the toy. He gives up and jumps down with his toy.

It happens again.

Sparky brings me one of the mouse toys I bought for him. I pick it up and shake it, making the bell ring.

Sparky watches.

I toss the mouse toy across the room.

Sparky leaps from my lap and chases the toy. He picks it up and drags it back to me, dropping it on my lap.

So I pick it up and and toss it across the floor in another direction.

Sparky chases after it, wherever I toss it, and brings it back to me.

Sometimes he drops it and watches it fall on the floor. He stares at the mouse until I bend over and pick it up.

It finally hits me (yes, I’m a little slow). Sparky likes to play Catch!!!

Who ever heard of a cat playing catch? Dogs play catch, not cats!

He’s brought me that mouse or another every day since then. It’s become one of his favorite games.

Catch. With a cat. Who would have thought?

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Cat, Challenges

Life with Sparky: Attack

It’s evening.

I’ve been writing for a few hours. Quietly lost in my mind.

Sparky has slept on my feet for the last hour, keeping them warm.

Suddenly, he wakes up and starts to bats around the back of my hands.

I’m sprinting. Trying to write as many words as I can in 20 minutes.

He doesn’t think I need to be writing. He thinks I should play with him. He bats at me, then turns toward my foot stretched out on the footrest of my easy chair.

He starts chewing on it!

Sparky! Leave me alone.

I push him away and continue to type words into my computer. I’m trying to get lots of words written. There are people I write with who can write twice as many words as I can in 20 minutes. I’m trying to keep up.

My foot is attacked again. Claws and teeth out.

Sparky! Stop!

I push him away again.

He thinks it is a game. He attacks my feet, I push him away. Sometimes he spins away backward, usually landing on his feet. He knows I will push him off, but he comes back for more.

He sits on the footrest and pokes his head beneath the blanket I’m using in an attempt to hide my feet from him. His claws poke me!

Sparky! Not now! I’m writing.

I guess attacking my feet is better than walking across my computer, pushing on keys and changing a manuscript I’m trying to prepare for publication. Nothing like odd letters showing up in the middle of the book because the cat decided he needed to walk across the keyboard.

I’ve had it. He won’t leave me alone.

“Where is that spray bottle?”

I filled a bottle with water when Sparky attacked a small grandson yesterday.

My husband picks it up and sprays the cat. Water doesn’t hurt him. It is a warning.

He stares at us.
Washes his face.
And walks away.

I’m no fun to attack when I spray him.

We’ll see if he attacks me tomorrow.

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Cat, Challenges

Life with Sparky: Little Things

Little things have become more difficult since Sparky came to live in our home with us.
Things like walking down a hall without being tripped,
searching for something that fell on the floor,
or putting clean sheets on the bed.

Each week as I tug the sheets off the bed to wash them, Sparky is right there with me,
examining each sheet,
wondering why it is moving,
and racing to catch the drooping ends as I carry them to the washing machine.

He’s curious.
He’s spunky.
He’s feisty.

I get that.

But when I return later, with clean sheets to stretch across the mattress, it is a different story.

Sparky loves dark places.

When I toss the sheet up so I can pull the corners around the corners of the mattress, there is a lump in the middle, chasing after the loose ends.

Sparky crawls under each sheet as I try to spread it flat across the bed.

Then comes the quilts. He lies on the top sheet and lets me spread the warm quilt and the bedspread quilt over him, leaving a nice lump on my otherwise smooth bed.

He’ll slide out from under the quilts in time to chase the edges of the pillow cases while I stuff pillows into them.

At last, the bed is made. It looks smooth and ready for me.
It must look good to Sparky, too. He’s laying in the middle of it.

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Cat, choice and accountability, First Matriarch

Life With Sparky: Another Toy

A package lies at my door when I open it.
The package I’ve been waiting for!

I dance inside with it and set it on my sofa, surrounded by grandsons and …
Sparky,
Who sits on the back of the sofa.

I carefully slit the tape and open the box.

“What is it Grandma?” my grandsons ask.

Before I can lift paper or anything out, Sparky leaps into the box and curls up.

“My toy. My box.”

It’s Mine!

I lift him out and reach into the box, barely able to grab out the intended prize before Sparky reclaimed the box.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. I gave him a box when he first came to our home. Cats like boxes. I have found him in boxes, under the area rug, beneath beds, inside blankets, even inside the bathroom sink. He loves to snuggle my feet and keep them warm down at the bottom of the bed, under the covers. (No judging allowed! My son let him do it when he was tiny.)

You think you want to wash you hands?

It is no wonder that when my computer arrived he claimed the box it came in.

Another toy for Sparky.

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Cat, Challenges

Life with Sparky: Screens

Sparky lies calmly on my lap, sleeping.
Until the phone rings.

It’s my daughter and grandson, calling on FaceTime.

Sparky hears the sound of people he doesn’t know and investigates. He looks in the front, he looks at the back. He doesn’t understand where the sound comes from and who are those people she is talking with?

When he first arrived, he would sit behind my computer. He liked the warmth of it.
But he’d hear my fingers bouncing on the keyboard and peek around.
His paws crept around.
And then, he’d pounce on me!

Later, he decided my keyboard is the place to sleep. He likes to lay on the keyboard close to the screen where he can change the pictures. Before I got a new computer, he managed to turn on the music almost every time.

I never did.
I’m not sure I knew where to do that.

Worst, he thinks his path into the room should include jumping onto my chair, walking across my keyboard, then on over toward Jack. Sometimes, he stops to sleep on Jack’s feet. Other times, he bounces off to play with his toys.

The problem is he always changes the document I’m working on. And when it’s taxes or a book, it can really cause problems. I’m learning to pick up my computer when he jumps up.

It was a big problem when he bumped the power cord out of my computer, and everything went off.
And I lost everything I was working on.
Because the computer battery died.
Good thing my new computer came!

Sometimes Sparky focuses on our television. It sits on a stand. He likes to jump up in front of the television and look at the picture.

He walks around it.
He knocks off the modem …
And the router.

Suddenly we don’t have internet service again!

Sparky!

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