Alanz Eyes

My cat’s great!

January 5th, 2005 - Posted by Alan Howard

I love my cat.  She's gorgeous.  

What I like is that over the past year she has learnt I'm boss.  Most cat owners say that their cat is the boss.  Not in my case.  For the first 6 months of our time together, she was the most frustrating and intolerable thing I've ever had in my life.  But we both survived the experience.

My patience has been rewarded.  The past 6 months has been where she's been the most malleable, and has not only accepted the conditioning I've persisted with during her first 6 months here, but accepted further conditioning over the past 6 months.  She's now a happy, healthy and contented cat who pretty much does what she's told, and doesn't demand anything.  Let me give you some examples….

When she's hungry, she will sit there next to me and say nothing, but from the way she sits there, I know she's waiting for something.  So I get up and get her something to eat.  She doesn't stare at me or meow, she waits until I'm ready.  If I actually don't realise she wants to be fed and don't get up, she'll go and lay down and sleep for a while longer.

When I wake up of a morning, regardless of the time, she is happily laying there on the bed with me.  She doesn't wake me up during the night, and she doesn't demand my attention or to feed her.  She understands the routine.  When I actually get up out of bed, that's when she can expect something to eat.  No sooner.  So I might lie in bed waking up, and she'll be laying there purring, snuggled up next to me, until I get up.

If she wants to go outside, she'll wander around aimlessly, so I get up and let her outside.  If she scratches at the kitty litter, I jump up with a clatter and she runs to the door.  Hehehe.  I do that to discourage her from using the kitty litter, and it seems to work mostly.  Sometimes she needs some encouragement to go outside, especially if it's cold and windy.  She doesn't complain when I gently push her out the door, and she sits there trying to shake the rain off, but then she runs off.  (It's raining heavily now, but I put her outside to go do her 'stuff' before bed.)

When she returns from her outside excursion, she pulls this metal strip at the bottom of the door, so it falls back with a bit of a clatter.  It tells me she wants to come back in.  I let her in, and she makes this funny meowing sound, like she's really happy to be back and happy to see me again.  She always stretches and scratches her claws on the carpet inside the doorway.  I think that's a good sign.

She never demands, or complains.  She accepts.  I'm also 'smart enough' to know that by having the kitty litter box available for her to use inside, she doesn't need to wake me in the middle of the night.     So most of the time it's not used, but sometimes it is.  That's fine by me.

It's a lovely feeling to wake up in the morning and open my eyes to find her laying there next to me, and she starts purring when I wake up and she snuggles up close.  There's a real feeling of love and appreciation.

She has to follow me around, everywhere.  She can be asleep in the lounge room while I'm on the computer, but if I get up to get a drink, she'll follow me into the kitchen, and sit there watching what I do, and then follow me back to the lounge room.  If I go to the toilet, she'll do the same thing.  If I have a shower, she sits on top of the washing machine in the bathroom until I'm finished.

My cat's great.

Entry Filed under: Pre-2006