i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘joxer’

I know these every day photos have involved a lot of cat photos over the last several photos. The thing is, I’m barely hanging on to this project. I often forget to take a photo until 11:00pm or 11:30pm, and then there’s not much left but to snap another cat shot. Just the fact that I’m remembering it every day at all is a big deal, even if the cats are taking over the series.

Joxer likes Rock Band, too.

I once read somewhere that the smartest cats learn that humans communicate through verbal means, so those cats start doing the same. That’s probably true, because I’m pretty sure my own anecdotal evidence would show that the smartest cats I’ve had have also been the most vocal. I think that the smartest of the smart cats, however, also learn to mimic the sounds the humans around them make.

Demon, for example, the smartest cat I’ve ever known, learned how to whine. He learned it from me, okay? I can admit it. I’m not proud. He did, he learned how to whine, and when he was really getting going good, at his absolute bitchiest, the intonation and pitch he used sounded just like me when I’m in a particularly petulant mood. He didn’t do that when I first moved in with him and Scott. He developed that trait over years.

Now Xena seems to have developed a certain vocal habit common to human children, and I cannot figure out where she would have picked this up.

Xena has two places she considers hers: the top of the cat tree and my desk chair. if one of the boys is in the former spot and I’m sitting at my desk, she gets quite put out. That’s when she decides she needs loving and she needs it now. She jumps in my lap, she gets cuddly, she becomes starved for attention. Is all of this really because she wants me to snuggle her? No. It’s all because she wants to annoy me so much that I’ll move and she can take my chair, because how dare I be sitting there when that chair is so clearly hers?

One morning a few weeks ago, I emerged from the Cat Free Zone to be greeted by Xena waiting for me right outside the door. As soon as I set foot in the hallway, she started in on me. Meow, meow, meow.. meow. meow, meow… non-stop, a continuous stream of loud, whiny meowing. As she bitched at me, she kept running a few feet ahead of me down the hall, then stopping to look back to make sure I was following.

When we got to the living room, she glared up at the top of the cat tree, where Goblin was sleeping peacefully, then turned back to me and let out a particularly shrill yelping meow. Then she glared at my desk chair, where Joxer was laying in equally peaceful repose.

Then it occurred to me: she was tattling. The boys were in HER spots, and she was not happy about it, so she was telling on them. With a great deal of outrage, too.

She followed me into the bathroom, and into the kitchen when I started the kettle. The complaining never stopped, though it took on a slightly more demanding tone as she realized I wasn’t going to do anything about her situation. When I finally made it back to my desk chair to scoop up Joxer and dump him onto the floor, the meowing got excited for a moment, until I sat down in the chair myself. She finally shut up and started sulking instead.

I think Xena may be the smartest cat ever. She not only learned that humans communicate through vocalizations, but she learned, all on her own, how to tell on others. Whiny and brilliant. I sure can pick ‘em.

I can’t believe they’re 7 years old already. Those of you who’ve been reading for a while – and I think there are one or two of you left – may remember how they arrived in our life. I don’t really remember life without them, but it doesn’t seem possible that they’re now considered older cats.

This is what they looked like then:

(the night they showed up, when we were trying to figure out what to do with them)

They turned from those tiny kittens into these monsters:

Those last two aren’t recent. I really need to get more recent photos of them and Goblin.

But 7, wow. Happy birthday, Xena and Joxer.

With a herd of cats as large as mine, having spots for them to sleep happily and also be active is important. Especially since we don’t allow them in the bedroom most of the time and would like to actually have some room on the couch for people to sit. As a result, a cat tree has been an absolutely essential part of life around here for a long time.

Unfortunately, not all cat trees are created equal. We were lucky enough to have two that lasted over 10 years between them. The last one, however, lasted mere months. It was expensive, but we thought it would be good, because it had one tall pole. Joxer is over 20 pounds and that’s not all fat: he’s BIG. One consideration that always has to be made is height, so that he can stand and stretch fully while scratching.

So this last one turned out to be a piece of crap and it fell apart quickly and it’s amazing Xena didn’t get hurt, the way she made it tip and wobble all the time. That left us in the market for a new cat tree, and I decided to look online instead of at Petco.

Why in the world did I never do that before? The prices, they are good! And the shipping, it is free!

After some shopping around, we settled on this model. That ramp was a big selling point, because Goblin is officially “geriatric” now and he’s pudgy enough that big leaps can be difficult for him sometimes, so the ramp gives him an easy way up. He couldn’t jump onto the crappy cat tree at all. The sisal poles are tall enough for Joxer and the smaller perch is perfect for Xena’s favorite scratching position, which is laying on a perch with her front legs stretched down the pole. That little pompom seemed silly and we weren’t going to put it on, but I decided to do it for the hell of it, and I’m glad I did, because Goblin gets his fat little butt up to that top perch and reaches down to play with the pompom.

This new cat tree is a huge success, and it’s built quite solidly. It gets the feline seal of approval:

Pay no heed to the messy bookcase in the background. Look at the cute kitties.

J is for Joxer, the doofiest cat I know.

I’ve written before about how sneaky Joxer is, and long time readers will probably remember the story of his arrival in our family, so I won’t mention that again. Instead, I’ll tell you what a goofball he is.

A while back, over a year ago, I saw this fabric tunnel thing at the pet store. Somehow, I have a knack of knowing what toys will appeal to which cat just upon seeing the toy in a store, and when I saw this tunnel, I turned to Scott and said, “Joxer will love this.” So we bought it and brought it home and set it up, and sure enough, within seconds of standing up the tunnel on the floor, Joxer came running from across the room and dove into it. The thing is, that tunnel is meant for normal sized cats, not the 20 pounds of feline maniacalness that is my Joji. As soon as he dove his enormous body into the tunnel, it collapsed, and it has never stood up properly again.

That doesn’t deter my boy, though. Since the tunnel won’t stand up for him to get his body into it, he just lays next to it with his arms stuck into it. (His loooooong arms, which earned him one of his nicknames: Longshanks.) Once or twice I day, I’ll set it up so it’s standing precariously on its side, beckoning for him to enter. That’s when he tries to get all sly and sneaky and to pretend he doesn’t care. He wanders around, acting like he’s not looking at it, while all the time his eyes keep darting over to it. 30 seconds later, he can’t take it anymore and he pounces. The tunnel collapses and he and it go sliding 10 feet across the hardwood floor from the force of his leap.

It’s a pretty damned funny sight to behold.

Aside from being doofy and sneaky, he’s also one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever known. He’s definitely a lover, not a fighter. We were really blessed the day he and his sister decided they wanted to live here.

Look at this cute little face:

You would never guess that behind that sweet face lies the mind and heart of a sneak thief. To Joxer, nothing is fun to play with unless it’s been stolen. One of his favorite activities is fishing on the coffee table. He walks nonchalantly over to it and sits down, looking out around the room, looking at everything except the coffee table. Then, when he thinks no one is paying attention, he casually reaches one of his long arms up the the top of the table, still while studiously looking everywhere except the table, and just starts moving his paw around, looking for whatever he can snag. Yarn, knitting needles, nail files, hair clips, my glasses… whatever. It doesn’t matter what he grabs, just that he gets something. When it hits the ground, he stares at his new prize like “oh! look at this thing that has fallen in front of me!” Then he tries to kill whatever it is.
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Demon
Originally uploaded by kendiala.

Apparently, that’s how long it takes a cat’s presence to fade for other cats.
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Joxer, under the tree
Originally uploaded by kendiala.

…the more cats are still lazy.

This photo was taken 2 years ago, but it could have been taken 2 hours ago.