Chocolate Mint vs Jingles

Jingles is part of that 20-30% of cats that are immune to catnip. We didn’t think to test Nimoy before she took off, so when/if we can get her furry little butt back, I’ll toss her in a bush of catnip. She's already borderline insane, I can't wait to see what she'd be like high. Anyway, while Jingles doesn't care for catnip, and The Girl has grown chocolate mint and spearmint in the garden for years, this last week Darth Jingles suddenly noticed the mint. Sort of.

The Girl has sprigs of mint growing in pretty little bottles to pass on to friends. These are chocolate mint, if you care at all. Also, catnip is in the mint family. I imagine you see what's coming. 

She had them in her bathroom window, up out of the way where no cat ventures so they weren’t an issue. But one rainy night when Jingles was in her room comforting her with cat-like reassurances that she doesn’t need another cat and we should just stop looking for the one we lost, The Girl had her mint in her window for some undisclosed reason. It probably had something to do with her brother.

Anyway, this cat walks by and through the chocolate mint in my front flower beds nearly every day without paying attention. Celery (our adopted stray) does too - no notice of it, other than a passing appreciation perhaps that it’s a decent place to hide. By the way, mint is advertised as a great ground cover. Why yes, it is! It also covers the lawn and the chocolate mint has launched an attack on the juniper that used to be nearly two feet away.

Back to the other night. Jingles wanted to look out the window and brushed against the mint. I should mention the mint barely has any smell until you touch it. Touching it is what releases the scent, and wow!. This plant engages in chemical warfare. So when Jingles brushed up against a tender sprouted leaf - the young plant released a puff of a sort of mint smell. (Other people say it smells like mint, I personally think chocolate mint smells a bit like a nice strain of marijuana, but that’s me. Wishful thinking perhaps.)

Back to Jingles. She brushed against the mint, stopped, sniffed, squinted, sniffed more, brushed against it again, sniffed again, and settled down to make herself comfortable by her new best friend. The Girl was in giggles when evil kitty wrapped a protective paw around the bottle and nuzzled the plant. The giggles ceased with the experimental nip. Not that it mattered, Jingles isn’t a vegetarian and this didn’t change her opinion on the subject. One nip was enough to satisfy her curiosity and she resumed the occasional whisker-brush to keep the scent coming.

I don’t know how much scent one small cutting can produce, but The Girl rotated through her cuttings so each had a chance to be fondled by her cat. It wasn’t so they’d keep producing the aroma for Jingles, she just wanted to be able to tell her friends when she presented them with their new little plants that each had been personally approved by pure feline evil. Now we have to hold each up to the idiot cat for some attention and hope they survive. I can totally see Nimoy eating them. I suspect The Girl had the same thought because the mint bottles are back in her bathroom window - with the bromeliad - out of sight/reach while we wait for the return of the little idiot who took off a few weeks ago. The Girl is content to keep Pokemon-ing and looking for the missing feline. Maybe she should take a sprig of mint with her.

How catnip gets cats high:

http://www.seeker.com/how-catnip-gets-cats-high-1792496502.html

The Bromeliad - Sock Debacle

It’s a hellish day and I’m getting little done. The Boy is off at a friend’s house playing marathon games of something and being virtually violent and mischievous. Good for him that it’s somewhere else. The Girl left this morning on her first adult adventure, aside from her first job which she now believes is the worst job on earth. Not really, there are lower paying jobs out there that expect you to do even worse things, but hers is menial with inconsistent hours, no benefits, minimum wage, and management sucks. It’s a good first job because she can only go up from there.

Anyway, The Girl soaked her tiny bromeliad before she left and put it in my bathroom window where it would get filtered sun and would dry slowly so it wouldn’t get root rot. She’s trying to be a good mommy to her little bromeliad. Except she hasn’t been a good mommy to Nimoy, who in a fit of jealousy as soon as The Girl left, absconded with her rival. I noticed quickly (thankfully) because the cat doesn’t normally run through the house carrying something green and spiny.

First, let me say I’m really too old to chase a cat. Cat herding is an idiom, not an actual occupation, and I would suck at it if it were real. Second, let me remind you that this particular cat is an idiot. Once she realized Grandma was chasing her, and unhappy, she doubled back and ran under The Girl’s bed. Okay, she’s cornered. Except I don’t have any kids in the house who can crawl under the bed and won’t for hours to days. I have no idea when The Boy will decide to come home, (It’s a weekend, in the summer.) and The Girl won’t be home until late Tuesday night. I have a responsibility to that bromeliad. Maybe the cat. I’m not sure how Nimoy will fare if she eats the bromeliad.

We have a supply of those stupid grabber sticks that my mother-in-law uses to pick up things that fall on the floor. In theory they’re supposed to be used to grab things that are out of reach on shelves, but they don’t really support any weight and are useless for that. Anyway, the grandkids always play with hers, and break them, so Hubby saw some and bought twenty so we always have one in the car when we go visit for family gatherings to replace the broken one. They can’t keep extras at their house or the grandkids would break them too. Personally, I vote break the grandkids, but Hubby tells me I don’t get a vote and his sisters agreed after hearing their precious babies might be disciplined for something. For once, I needed one of the gadgets.

So I lay on the floor for a half an hour pulling things out from under The Girl’s bed. Now in fairness I should say The Girl’s room is generally the tidiest in the house. Her OCD is phenomenal. Nimoy, however, prefers her bed to hide socks under, and I was discovering why The Boy seemed to be wearing the same socks for days on end. I thought it was my imagination, or that maybe he really did have more pairs with that odd pattern than I thought; but no, he’s apparently running low and didn’t feel the need to tell anyone. Nimoy likes The Boy’s socks best. I can sort of understand that, the cat has a thing for smells, and The Boy’s socks … you can see where I’m going with this. No excuses anymore, not that he offered any, The Boy will start changing his socks again!

That was the beginning of my Saturday morning.

Finished with the bromeliad-sock debacle (the bromeliad was finally retrieved, clinging to a sock, looking none the worse for wear, and placed in a slightly safer place to get a little filtered sunlight, don’t worry about it) I turned my attention to lunch. Except now Hubby was missing. Huh. I looked around, found two whiny cats – one pouting because she perceived she was in trouble (true) and one pouting because she wanted to go outside and no one would let her (sort of). Does a ‘not true’ and a ‘true’ balance out to zero or what? In cat terms it equates to whining.

Jingles wanted to go out: true from her point of view. No one would let her: true from everyone’s point of view. All her humans knew something Jingles didn’t: Rain. I suspect Jingles was at least somewhat aware of the concept because she’d been out for days and came home early yesterday afternoon. I thought it was because she sensed bad weather on the horizon and wanted to be in, but clearly not. Bad weather was here and she wanted to go out during the eye of the storm. But she was beggy, and whiny, and manipulative, and I caved and let her out because I’m a pushover. Then I stood at the door waiting for her to change her mind.

We had a little black kitty-loaf on the steps for a bit, not because the sidewalk was wet so much as the neighbor’s golden retriever was out playing ball. When Sookie plays ball, she uses the entire cul-de-sac. Since Sookie’s owner, Mr. Patient, offers to mow almost all of our yards in exchange for being able to keep the trimmings, we all let Sookie romp on our grass for her occasional ball games. She doesn’t leave any little presents and is on good relations with kids and cats, so why not?

Now I say Sookie is on good relations with the cats, but the cats are occasionally unaware of this. Darth Jingles is skittish about the large golden retriever. She has a very standoffish policy about dogs. Usually. Sookie was dyed purple briefly by the neighbor’s children last summer and Jingles found that entertaining enough to suspend her extreme personal space policy, but when the dye wore off her graciousness did as well. She also played a perverted sort of whack-a-mole with the Chihuahuas behind us and a couple doors down. They dug a hole under the fence and she sat on the other side and whapped them as they stuck their noses through. It was awesome, until the owners fixed the hole, damn it.

So Sookie was playing ball, and the ball occasionally landed in our front yard, and Jingles crouched and bristled whenever the dog came to retrieve it. No hissing or running home to Mommy though, and the dog didn’t notice the little shadow by the mint bushes. Eventually Jingles took an opportunity to slink through the mint and evergreens and away from the safety of the front porch so I closed the door. It was cool enough out that I threw open some windows and started lunch in anticipation of Hubby being home eventually. After a few quick texts, I discovered he was running errands. Then I discovered Jingles in our living room window, on the ledge outside, watching me. Huh. Apparently it was a safe place to watch the dog play ball. Also, I need to wash the screen. Add that to the to-do list. Click photo, on to lunch.

Hubby came home, had lunch, and left to help a neighbor. Then Jingles came in – furious at having been tricked into going outside in such miserable weather. She’s not talking to me now. I closed some windows because it’s now raining again, and broke up a cat fight because Jingles is in a mood. Yay – trapped inside with a bitchy cat and something for her to pick on. I shouldn’t have succumbed to her whining and let her out in the first place.

Text from The Boy: he outlasted his friends, they fell asleep, and now he’s bored. He wants me to come pick him up, also he wants coffee so he can stay up longer. I considered that. If I give him coffee, he will stay up now, but then he’ll probably crash hard in early evening and sleep all night so I might get something useful from him tomorrow. Hmm. I broke up another small cat fight on the way out the door. Of course The Boy couldn’t have come home a couple of hours ago when I was lying on the floor pulling his socks out from under his sister’s bed? At least I know he’ll claim Jingles and take her to his room for the rest of the day. No more cat fights. No more peaceful weekend without the kids either.  

Misnamed Cats (And The Box Of Judgment)

The renaming of cats that began in December has continued, and it’s becoming absurd. It started with The Girl rechristening Darth Jingles as Darth Huffy because she’s in a snit about the new kitten, Nimoy. Nimoy is Star Trek based instead of Star Wars, so she was briefly renamed Jar Jar. It should have stopped there, but it didn’t. The Boy got in on it, offering up alternative monikers for his cat as Darth Grumbles, Q.T. McWhiskers, and Remington. Nimoy has gone through Winky (After the Harry Potter House Elf or more likely the derivative of Tinky-Winky from The Girl’s once favorite TV show: The Teletubbies. She’s now embarrassed about this obsession, as well she should be). Nimoy was briefly Nermal (grey tabby in the Garfield comics) also and I almost wished that one had stuck. Swinging to the weird again, the kitten passed through monikers such as Lemon Drop, Meringue, Yelly-bean (because she’s still so vocal), Stupid, Sweetie (as in “Hello, Sweetie,” the catchphrase of River Song from Doctor Who. I’d be good with that one too.), and Tiny Cat. Sadly, Tiny Cat is the one that’s most common now.

This kitten is going to have some serious identity issues. Well, she would, except I suspect she’s too dim to realize what’s happening. As you can imagine, she doesn’t answer to any name, but then again, she’s a cat. Felines aren’t known for coming when called unless there’s food involved. 

The Girl has also taken to gushing about the adorableness of her kitten. There’s no point, she’s a kitten and therefore adorable by definition; waxing poetic about it doesn’t accomplish anything. Regardless, we get daily plus statements about how The-Cat-Formerly-Known-As-Nimoy, or (^><^),  is ultra-special in some way. Well, special as in the unflattering implications of the adjective perhaps… Yes, Nimoy is special. Aside from that, frequently heard remarks go like this:

The Girl: Look at the markings on her face. She’s like a tiny cheetah.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: Her stripes are really pretty.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: And look at her color – she’s not gray and she’s not brown, she…camouflage.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: Those tiny pad on her paws, they’re so cute. And her teeth and claws are dainty but sharp.

Me: Yes, she’s a cat.

And so on. Actually The Girl is tired of me pointing out her kitten isn’t really special in any way, any positive way, so she’s started directing her observations elsewhere.

The Girl: She’s so sweet. Look at the way she bats at my nose.

The Boy: With her claws out, yeah, sweet. My cat’s better.

The Girl: She loves sleeping on the back of the chair and snuggling my head.

The Boy: Again: claws. My cat’s better.

The Girl: And she’s not a picky eater. She eats dry cat food or moist. Even the dry no one else likes.

The Boy: And she has semi-permanent gas, fantastic. My cat’s better.

Do you see a theme? She’s turned her attention to Hubby recently, who has a chronic habit of humoring her.

The Girl: Look, she’s –

Hubby: Uh-huh. (Continues typing on computer without looking or paying attention.)

Now Jingles responds to her Girl’s doting over the kitten differently. Very differently. As in ‘if looks could kill’ sort of different. To be fair, if The Girl or The Boy aren’t involved, Jingles is learning to tolerate Nimoy. (Nimoy is still the kitten’s official name, I just haven’t heard it used recently.)

We’re seeing a lot of cat wrestling now. Cat wrestling as in two cats wrestling each other, not as in someone dressed as a cowboy and roping cats. Oh, wait, that’s cat wrangling. Part of the problem is having two cats. Another part of the problem is we have only one “Box Of Judgment” and both want to sit in it and gaze with ultimate power over the household. FYI, the “Box Of Judgment” is a cardboard box that lays on its side and moves around the family room so it can be in the worst possible place at any given time. There is power there.

Anyway, Jingles pins Nimoy easily, I think that’s a given considering she’s three times the kitten’s size and weight and an accomplished hunter. So Jingles pins Nimoy, whaps her a couple of times on top of her head, then sits back to wait. Nimoy lays there on her back and sizes up the situation. Does it cross her mind that things are not in her favor and she should – just as a passing thought – be submissive to the irritable shadow hovering over her? Not usually. Nimoy reaches up tentatively as if to whap Jingles back. She’s yet to make contact with that ploy, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. As soon as she reaches up, Jingles quickly whaps her three times, then sits back to wait again. It typically takes several rounds of this before Nimoy decides it’s not working out in her favor, wiggles away, and scampers off. At some point she’s going to learn not to push Jingles over the line between playing and irritability. Unfortunately, Nimoy’s earned the name change to ‘Stupid’ (through pure observation), so it might take a while for her to learn to stop baiting the dark, cat-shaped shadow who rules this house. At least it’ll be entertaining while she learns.

                                                       

Feline Showdown

Here’s the thing about cats – you introduce a new one to the house and it starts a minor war. I feel like our cats are modeling their conflict after the 100 Years war. It’s overly pessimistic of me, but I’m not seeing much progress in their attitudes on the situation.

So I kept Jingles inside all day yesterday to force her to acknowledge we have a kitten: Nimoy. Is that not the best name ever for a kitten? She’s a gray tabby with medium length hair that I’m praying will be shorter as she matures, but have a sneaking suspicion will fill out and she’ll be a cat with long hair that we have to brush to keep it from turning to feline dreadlocks. *takes deep breath after horrible run-on sentence*

Anyway, I kept Jingles inside. The cats have met face to face a few times, but thanks to humanoid intervention, bloodshed has yet to ensue. I’m concerned that they will meet without one of their humans nearby and then there’ll be a problem. Hence my attempt to gain a feline peace treaty, or at least form a lasting truce.

So they met. There was growling from Jingles, and stunned silence and wide-eyed caution from Nimoy who moved tentatively to the protection of my side after being cornered by the fireplace when The Boy plopped himself down with Jingles in his arms.

I should probably take a moment to describe the relative qualities of the contestants in yesterday’s competition for … whatever they were trying to convince the other of. Nimoy is a 2 ½ pound ball of fluff that meows as loud as a car alarm when lonely (all night, also like a car alarm). Her attempts to communicate can be heard in every corner of the house (but not through headphones if she’s downstairs and you’re upstairs with the door closed). Jingles is a sleek and muscular 8 pounds of furious, cat-shaped angst. There really is no contest here about dominance, which was the reason why The Girl has a kitten instead of a cat. I would rather not wake to a cat fight under my bed at 2 am (again) when the cats run free at night. At the moment, we’re keeping them separated with almost pathological desperation.

What did each cat communicate yesterday? I don’t speak cat. However, from what I could tell, Jingles sent forth a concise “I don’t like you” vibe. Nimoy responded with “I’m harmless.” Jingles rebounded with “I still don’t like you.” Nimoy edged to my side, widened her eyes, and proclaimed she was “cute.” To which Jingles responded with “I will cut you.” About that time, The Boy got tired of sitting on the floor and took Jingles back to his room.

I should also point out Hubby’s role in the feline dramas. Jingles blames him for everything bad that has ever happened to her. Everything. Even if Hubby is the one who saves the cat from – oh, say the time The Girl tried to give her a bath, it’s still his fault that The Girl had the idea in the first place.  Jingles knows Mommy (me) wouldn’t do anything so unforgivable as bathe her, and I know she understands the kids are our offspring, so The Girl clearly got that obnoxious tendency from Hubby (it’s how genetics works) and therefore it’s his fault. Until now, The Girl has never been held responsible for her own actions. Neither has The Boy, but his widespread immunity holds.

Now let’s look at Nimoy’s view of Hubby: He has a beard. She likes his beard. It’s fluffy. *bat, bat, bat* Not a big thinker, that one.

While Jingles has declared my pillow to be her new nighttime bed, it’s usually only on the outside edge, away from Hubby, or along the top. I’m really glad we have a king bed so there’s room for the three of us. I added another pillow just for her, on the edge of the bed and shored up by the nightstand. She’s good with this arrangement because I make an effective barrier between Hubby (who is seriously in trouble for this kitten nonsense) and her. As a rule, Nimoy isn’t allowed in The Boy’s room, or mine. I see this as allowing Jingles a couple of safe havens that are hers to allow her to escape the obnoxious furry car alarm and depressurize before she kills something. (Jingles hunts, Nimoy can’t hold onto a ribbon.) So it was a really bad situation last night when Jingles precedes me up the stairs into my room, to find the door was open, and Nimoy was curled up on her pillow!

Jingles jumped up on the bed and froze, staring at the naughty fluffball. I shifted the laundry to one him and grabbed Jingles in the other arm before something unfortunate happened, and began yelling for The Girl and mentioning phrases like ‘child endangerment,’ ‘call feline social services,’ ‘custody battle,’ and ‘going to be grounded’ before starting to count backwards from ten, in German.

Note to parents out there: if you really want to freak out your kids, don’t just count – do it in German. The language itself sounds angry so it really adds punch to those numbers.

The Girl showed up, rescued Nimoy, and I made a big show of changing the pillowcase for Jingles. It’s going to be a long winter.

Sea Kittens and Snuggle Sharks

I woke this morning, like I do on many weekend mornings, to the cat being tossed on the bed and The Girl scampering away before Darth Jingles could gather herself to give chase. As usual, by the time I rise to see what’s up (as if I didn’t know) all I see is a splayed-legged black cat in the middle of the bed and the retreating backside of my eldest offspring.

Jingles looks at me, a look of complete disgust with the situation. Hubby snores and she grants him a passing glare. I check the time: 8:45 am. All right, I got to sleep in a bit. Everyone in the house has a cold, and I’m starting to feel the effects myself, so I wasn’t really ready to get up.

I look at Jingles and try to decide if she’s going to let me roll over and go back to sleep. I decided it was worth a shot. Long story short – I was wrong. She was willing to let me go back to sleep, but not able to. She prowled around the foot of the bed for a moment, which I expected. I figured she’d find a nice place on the down comforter – her blanket because it smells (I imagine) like baby ducks = prey – and then settle down. It’s her spot, therefore she should like it. No. She circled like a restless tiger. Then she found my feet, but didn’t attack them amazingly enough, and followed my leg upward. All right, so she was heading for another favorite spot – the back of my knees.

She landed there and perched for a while, long enough for me to almost fall back to sleep. Then she decided to move up to the small of my back. Fine. Almost asleep again, she turns on the purr motor. What? Why? Whatever, fine. Concentrate on going back to sleep. Now. No, wait, she’s moving again – and takes up position on the pillow beside my head.

Okay, just no. Sweetheart, I love you, but no purring in mommy’s ear. I pick her up and pull her in front of me, snuggling her in my arms. Right, back to sleep. Scratch the cat behind the ears, then back to sleep. Let her get in a better position. There you go. Right there, with her nose tucked up under my chin. Jingles, I’m trimming your whiskers when I get up. And knock off the purring. Right, scratch behind the ear – no, sweetie, I can’t scratch under your chin, it’s under my chin. There’s a logistical problem with my arm doesn’t move that – oh, you’re going to move again to make it easier. Thanks.

And so on.

Somewhere in this long, drawn out, not-being-able-to-go-back-to-sleep process, I decided Jingles could be classified as a snuggle shark. This shows you how my sleep-deprived mind works. That naturally made me remember years ago when PETA decided they could get people to stop eating fish if they made over their image. The fish, not PETA. They devoted a website to this venture, and it was so absurd of course the news picked it up and helped them along. They proposed rebranding fish to be called “sea kittens.” True.

This flitted through my mind as my own little snuggle shark decided to start attacking my feet after all. I mean, I doubt Jingles would really care about it either way if her tuna were labeled sea kitten, she’d still find it a tasty treat and beg for it on a regular basis. And I vaguely remember mentioning this ill-conceived idea to the kids in a moment of weakness, to produce the expected outcome: The Boy asking for sea-kitten sandwiches and The Girl giggling while she took a marker and crossed out “tuna” on the cans in the pantry and wrote in “sea kitten” instead.  Eventually that blew over and things returned to normal, just as my morning settled down as soon as I let snuggle shark outside to search for more suitable prey. And now I’m up, so I may as well get some things done.