MonsterPaw has never forgiven us for adopting DogSpot. Not at all. She has withdrawn to the top floor of our house (which is actually half a floor since our living room has a cathedral ceiling) and I've had to move all her gear like the litter box, food and toys upstairs. She does not venture nary an extra toe of hers downstairs since the frolicking white puppy came to live here. She does occasionally sneak down to peer around when the dog is outside, but at any sign or noise of the pup, kitty-cat jets back to her own zone. It's not that she's actually afraid of the dog. She just doesn't like her. On the occasions that the dog ventures into the cat's space, our sweet and quiet feline becomes a ferocious tiger all spitting and hissing. DogSpot is actually quite a-feared of the snooty one.
To complicate matters, MonsterPaw needs a rabies booster shot because of the bat visit we had a few nights back. My brilliant mind needed yet another thing to worry about and I decided that there might be the most remote chance that the bat could perhaps, maybe have been in our house with the cat while we were camping. Mind you, we have seen absolutely no signs of this, but one needs something to fret about. I'm not one to leave well enough alone, so I called the vet and scheduled a booster shot just in case. Turns out that MonsterPaw is also overdue for her distemper, so it all works out.
Except that since she has been living upstairs, she apparently isn't getting as much exercise as she used to. Which means she's gotten fat. Now she doesn't fit into her little kitty kennel anymore. I didn't think this would be a huge problem because she is monstrously nosy. At any sign of an open door, drawer, closet or bag, she sneaks inside to investigate. I planned to set the little crate on the floor, have her crawl inside for a look then, BAM!! I'd shut her inside. Except that we were running late and I didn't have time to humor her neurotic skittishness around new things...meaning she was taking to long to check out the crate. Little Chic and I discussed the least traumatic route to lure her where we needed to get her, even entertaining the idea of putting some cat nip inside to bait her. I quickly rejected this idea as our last experiment with the weed caused a night full of romping and wild behavior and not a wink of sleep (and not from the humans in the house.)
I decided to take the capture into my own hands and I did something she really doesn't allow--I picked her up. She's affectionate in her own way, but she calls all the shots of lap sitting and petting and such. If you make any move yourself, she doesn't like it. So she didn't like it. She liked it even less when I started stuffing her furry head into the crate. That was no problem since her head is no chubbier than it used to be. It was her belly that was filling the mouth of the crate and her legs were kicking, squirming and scratching along with a pathetic noise that I suppose was to be a meow. I got the clever idea to put the crate on end and put her in rear-end first. She obviously has her mother's hips, so her butt was no better than her belly, and her legs were sprawled straight out refusing to be shoved into the box. I even resorted to dismantling the box, holding her into the bottom half and trying to crash the top on to keep her inside, but alas, she escaped that too.
After about 15 minutes of the struggle, I had to call the vet and admit that my stubborn cat would not go into her crate and apparently I'm going to have to buy a bigger one. I doubt they were hugely disappointed at the cancellation because this would be the same cat that crawled into an open space in their ceiling last year, causing them to make a hole in the bathroom wall to get her out. Meanwhile, the cat sulked around the bedroom for the next half hour, highly insulted that I tried to take charge of her bodily whereabouts. As for me, I escaped with ego intact, but a stomach full of battle scars. But she better watch it, because next time I'll win.
To complicate matters, MonsterPaw needs a rabies booster shot because of the bat visit we had a few nights back. My brilliant mind needed yet another thing to worry about and I decided that there might be the most remote chance that the bat could perhaps, maybe have been in our house with the cat while we were camping. Mind you, we have seen absolutely no signs of this, but one needs something to fret about. I'm not one to leave well enough alone, so I called the vet and scheduled a booster shot just in case. Turns out that MonsterPaw is also overdue for her distemper, so it all works out.
Except that since she has been living upstairs, she apparently isn't getting as much exercise as she used to. Which means she's gotten fat. Now she doesn't fit into her little kitty kennel anymore. I didn't think this would be a huge problem because she is monstrously nosy. At any sign of an open door, drawer, closet or bag, she sneaks inside to investigate. I planned to set the little crate on the floor, have her crawl inside for a look then, BAM!! I'd shut her inside. Except that we were running late and I didn't have time to humor her neurotic skittishness around new things...meaning she was taking to long to check out the crate. Little Chic and I discussed the least traumatic route to lure her where we needed to get her, even entertaining the idea of putting some cat nip inside to bait her. I quickly rejected this idea as our last experiment with the weed caused a night full of romping and wild behavior and not a wink of sleep (and not from the humans in the house.)
I decided to take the capture into my own hands and I did something she really doesn't allow--I picked her up. She's affectionate in her own way, but she calls all the shots of lap sitting and petting and such. If you make any move yourself, she doesn't like it. So she didn't like it. She liked it even less when I started stuffing her furry head into the crate. That was no problem since her head is no chubbier than it used to be. It was her belly that was filling the mouth of the crate and her legs were kicking, squirming and scratching along with a pathetic noise that I suppose was to be a meow. I got the clever idea to put the crate on end and put her in rear-end first. She obviously has her mother's hips, so her butt was no better than her belly, and her legs were sprawled straight out refusing to be shoved into the box. I even resorted to dismantling the box, holding her into the bottom half and trying to crash the top on to keep her inside, but alas, she escaped that too.
After about 15 minutes of the struggle, I had to call the vet and admit that my stubborn cat would not go into her crate and apparently I'm going to have to buy a bigger one. I doubt they were hugely disappointed at the cancellation because this would be the same cat that crawled into an open space in their ceiling last year, causing them to make a hole in the bathroom wall to get her out. Meanwhile, the cat sulked around the bedroom for the next half hour, highly insulted that I tried to take charge of her bodily whereabouts. As for me, I escaped with ego intact, but a stomach full of battle scars. But she better watch it, because next time I'll win.
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