Have My Cats Sprouted Thumbs?

Earlier this week I came out of the bedroom just after six in the morning, as I do every workday, following Misaki who bursts out of the bedroom in a whirl of fur. (I'm actually not kidding about fur - she's blowing her coat right now, which means fur everywhere.)

For some reason she ran over to the corner of the coffee table (the picture below is a weak re-enactment), sniffing at something. Thinking maybe one of the cats had been sick during the night and not wanting Misaki to "clean up," I followed her over to check it out.

She was sniffing the base of one of the table legs (in this pic it would be the one furthest from the camera). There was something small there, so I picked it up and found this.

It took me a minute to figure out what it was: a nut that holds the frame of the table to the legs. Both the frame and the legs are steel and each leg is attached to the frame with four bolts and nuts (the below picture is an upside down look at each corner). That may sound like overkill, but the top of the table simply lays on the frame and is made from a solid piece of slate; it's freakin' heavy.

But now that I knew what the item in my hand was, I was confused. How did it come unscrewed from the bolt? Each of the other fifteen nuts were screwed on tight. The table hadn't moved in a couple years and in that time no one has ever messed with the nuts and bolts. Misaki will sometimes curl up under that table, but not at the corner that was unscrewed (in the picture above it's the corner to the left side of the image). Plus, she doesn't sit and paw at random things.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one other tidbit. See, I didn't even find this nut under where it came unscrewed. No, instead it was nestled at the base of the another leg three feet away.

In the absence of any other explanation, that only leaves these fiendishly clever little felines.

Sera and Moochie: "What do you want?"

Did my cats really do this? Did they figure out how to unscrew a nut that at one time was tightened with a wrench? And how long have they been working on this? Was it just one of them, or a team effort? And what were they trying to accomplish?

So many questions, so few answers. Maybe, perhaps, the biggest questions of all are these: Should I be worried? What are they going to unscrew next?

If you don't hear from me for a while, it might be because the cats unscrewed my office chair and I collapsed. They are pretty sneaky...

The Faces Of Nip

Our local Fox station here in Portland occasionally does a feature they call "Meth Watch" when talking about local drug busts. By now you may or may not have seen something on the internet called the "Faces of Meth" created by the Multnomah County Police Department to show the effects of meth use on arrested users with before and after photos.

This is not that presentation.

Instead this is the Faces of Nip, a short documentary on the use of catnip by three Bengal cats who live in the MyNWX home, meant entirely as comedy. And while it IS comedy, there may also be something to be learned about nip use among felines, so some may also consider this a case study. (And not only are there pictures, but making its debut here on the blog is video!)

In the following video one Bengal - let's call her "Lilo" - shows the effects of nip use on a seemingly normal feline. After use of nip she proceeds to act erratically, at times even kicking herself in the face repeatedly. It ends with an epic loss of balance, surely nothing any self-respecting feline would want shown to the world. Oops. (The video is two minutes, eighteen seconds.)

The following photos are stills from the same nip high. As you can see, Lilo has lost all sense of staying vertical. Instead, she rolls around on her Royal Meow cat castle, rubbing her body in copious amounts of dried nip.

Then she proceeds to attack the nip, to pounce on it, like it's a living thing. One can only presume in her altered mental state the nip is moving. Or maybe it's talking to her. It's really impossible to know.

Lilo soon has a buddy join the party. Just for the sake of differentiation, let's call her "Sera." Sera prefers simply to ingest the nip orally, skipping the rolling around routine. She claimed to have an excellent recipe for "brownies." When offered, we declined.

In this photo Sera appears to be having a serious staredown with a piece of nip. The nip must have lost, because the scene ends with Sera skewering the leaf with a claw and taking it down in one bite.

Lilo continues to act like a crazy kitty, but now another Bengal - again, just for differentiation purposes we will call him "Moochie" - joins the party. At this point Moochie takes the slow and steady approach to his nip use, marking him as a veteran user. Lilo is overly aggressive with her consumption, leading us to believe she is new to the drug and hasn't yet found her personal limits.

Lilo's actions are so erratic, leading the veteran nip user to give here the classic "What the hell is wrong with you?" look. This is a look commonly given to new users by the grizzled vets, and the reason for it is why so many veteran users tend to shun newbies. The new users are unpredictable, sometimes violent, and prone to overuse.

Moochie, now feeling like he has to watch everyone, keeps an eye on Sera. She seems to have eaten half the stash, meaning there is no limit to what she may do; literally every avenue has to be considered as a possible next step for her. Climb curtains? Slash the chef? Jump off the balcony? Swing from the chandelier? At this point nothing can be ruled out.

Moochie, it turns out, despite his veteran status, gets a little mean when using. He starts fights, even with the young users like Lilo. These lead to intense physical disagreements and sometimes blood can be shed.

As much as a veteran claims he can monitor his own use and stay under control, the following pictures prove that is not the case. Here Lilo responds to a whack on the head from Moochie. Check out the eyes of Moochie, which are decidedly not chill. Isn't nip supposed to calm cats down?

After the fight with Lilo, Moochie retreats to the the safety of the Royal Meow cat castle. This is good for him, because in addition to nip turning him into an angry user it also makes him paranoid. From this spot in the room he can see everything and his head jerks around at every small noise, real and imagined.

So what did we learn today? We learned that nip, much like other recreational drugs, has different effects on different users. Some get crazy, some get hungry, and some get mean and paranoid.

These are the Faces of Nip. You have been warned. Continue your nip use at your own personal risk.

The Bengal Blog

When I created Misaki's World (or, ahem, when she told me to create it) on tumblr I did it as a test to see how it would go. I wanted to see if people would be interested in seeing pictures of Misaki.

Well, of course they were. But here's what else I noticed.

I periodically interspersed pictures of the Bengals in there, but the likes and comments Misaki's pics received rarely extended to the cat pictures.

This did not surprise me. Why? Because when I first started learning about Shibas a while back, I found plenty of blogs chock full of people impersonating their Shibas, talking about their Shibas, posting pictures of their Shibas, and offering advice about living with and training Shibas. Just Google Shiba blog and you'll see what I mean.

But Bengals? Not many, not many at all. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Are Bengal people just not as tech savvy as Shiba people? Not into the social networking and sharing of cute pictures? Or are Shiba people just crazy inclined? I don't think it's a Shiba-specific thing, because I can find plenty of blogs keyed around other breeds as well (though maybe on the crazy about your breed scale, Shiba owners are probably near the top).

Misaki also wasn't all that thrilled about sharing her little piece of the internet with the cats. She told me she has to share the house and her people, and the internet is indefinitely huge, so why can't they have their own slice? She asked her tumblr followers, too.

In the end, I decided to do it, so here you go. The internet's newest Bengal outpost is the boringly named Three Bengals!

Three because there are of course three of them. I promise to keep it filled with plenty of pictures of these crazy and adorable kitties. Mostly crazy.

And now, dear Misaki, you no longer have to share.

Bengal Fight: A Pictorial

There is a lot of feline-on-feline violence in this household, but for the humans it's pretty damn entertaining. Most of the time we can't capture it on film because we just never know when it will happen, and by the time we grab the camera the cats are either interested in what we are doing or have already pissed each other off enough to run off.

The other day I managed to get some fight digitized. In retrospect grabbing video would have been better, but the pictures turned out okay.

This fight stars Moochie and Lilo, the two spotted Bengals. Since Sera was not involved no claws were used and no blood was rendered. Moochie is the larger one, at about 19 pounds over twice Lilo's size. Still, she doesn't back down.

The scene was on top of this cardboard box that shipped me a new dry erase board for the office. Our cats love the cardboard, and this just happened to be right next to the couch. The glass edge in each picture is the from a side table where the camera usually rests. I tried not to move too much while getting in position so as not to distract them.

Take it away Moochie and Lilo!

Lilo was on the cardboard first, but Moochie decided she needed company. Lilo was not pleased by this decision.

Aren't those spots on Lilo's belly cute?

Moochie is significantly stronger than Lilo and it only takes one paw to put her in her place.

Despite the size difference Lilo has no compunction about clocking Moochie in the side of the head.

Feinting is a key talent in the Bengal fight. Here Moochie is feeling her out, like a boxer throwing jabs that aren't necessarily meant to do any actual damage.

Lilo attacks! Check out the look on Moochie's face as he gets smacked.

Moochie and Lilo may not use claws when they fight (Lilo doesn't have any and Moochie seems to understand this), but biting is routine.

Now Moochie is getting a little fed up and going on the offensive. Check out Lilo backing up, losing her place on the cardboard.

But she won't back down easily. Here Lilo rises up on her back legs to use both front paws to smack at Moochie.

That last move by Lilo was the winning one. Moochie backed off and left, leaving Lilo as the Queen of the Cardboard. For now.

Just another day in the MyNWX household, full of violence and wrestling for control.

The Cats Want More Attention

Over the past few months quite a bit has changed at the MyNWX household. Wifey is taking classes at home to prep for a career change and I'm doing a lot more writing. Both of these things mean we spend a lot of time upstairs in the "office" - the third bedroom that has two PCs, printer, desks, and bookcases set up.

For a writer, this is where the magic happens. Or something like that.

With online classes one has to be fairly engaged while being on the computer, so that means hands need to be free to type and click as needed. This is not compatible with having purring kitties on your lap, which is quite the favorite pastime of all three of our fuzzy little bundles of joy. We found ourselves repeatedly pushing away the cats so we can finish various things. And no, they aren't happy about that at all.

The office also has a baby gate on the door. This initially was placed so we could watch Misaki when we first got her, so we knew where she was while she acclimated herself to her new home. Keeping the cats out of the room at the same time is just added value.

Of course, here's the thing: The gate is only two-and-a-half feet tall (just like this one, without the fancy modification), so the cats could easily scale it if they liked, but they haven't. Not sure why, but we aren't going to go out of our way to show them how either.

Hey! Open up!

Now, instead of coming in and jumping on our laps, the cats are forced to lay elsewhere in the house for hours on end while we get our work done. This does not make for happy kitties. Partially because they are Bengals - who really are dog-like pack animals - and partially because they are cats who presume to have access to anything they want at all times, they have not reacted well to this shutting out.

Moochie will lay down outside the gate and chatter at us, though he - the most needy of them all we thought - actually handles this better than the other two. He ends up taking over the top of the kitty tower and sleeping for hours. However, he also is the cat who loves to curl up on the couch while we watch football. With less football watched this season he now aggressively demands attention anytime we do sit on the couch. With his strong claws we always put down a blanket layer and many times now he doesn't want to wait for it. And he doesn't sit still, pushing into our face for petting (and sometimes at the expense of a plate of food - calm down boy!).

Sera is a little more needy, she who would like us to think nothing ever bothers her. She will come to the gate, mew once, and wait. If we fail to let her in she mews again, louder. This will go on until she yells or we let her in. See, the gate is a great idea, but it's not soundproof; with our kitties soundproof should be a requirement. When Sera comes in the only place she wants to be is Wifey's lap.

Lilo becomes very angry. She doesn't ask to be let into the office - she demands it. Her demands aren't quiet like Sera's, but instead start angry and get angrier. Her incessant yelling inevitably gets her what she wants. It would be nice if there was a way to train a cat to not yell as much or as loud, so if anyone out there has ideas please share. Her voice carries throughout the house, so confining her anywhere isn't going to do it.

Why won't anyone listen to me?

If we still choose to ignore her, Lilo will go into the bathroom - which shares a wall with the office - and rattle the bathroom door against the springy doorstop. Yes, it's annoying. If that doesn't work she'll start throwing things on the floor. If we left the toilet paper out of the cabinet she shreds it.

Lilo is not a cat to be ignored.

I suppose it would be one thing if she came into the office and quietly curled up to sleep, but she doesn't. She has to explore. She has to help Wifey with her studies. She has to bounce from lap to lap, to see which one is better (always ends up on Wifey's). She has to sniff and annoy the dog if Misaki is in the room. She licks every single piece of paper she can get her tongue on; raking the rough kitty tongue over paper produces a horrifying sound.

Mom needs help with her studying.

At least she stops yelling when she comes in.

Purr Purr Purr!!!!

Hey, wait. Why are you taking pictures of me?

Turn it off paparazzi!

I feel a little bad for them. I mean, we've always been pretty interactive with the cats, and because of the things we do now - the studies and increased computer time - we are shutting them out. And they are angry, lonely, and sad about that. I get it. I completely get it. And we do feel bad about it.

One may think cats should be able to handle something like this on their own, since cats usually are solitary animals. Plus, they have each other, so it's not like they are completely alone. And they have toys and cat trees, plus full run of the rest of the house, so it's not like they are being closed in an empty room.

This is part of the demand of owning Bengals, though - if you did the research you knew this going in. They need their people. They view their people not only as part of their pack, but the focal points of the pack. If their people aren't around, they will get sad - and they get overly excited when we are back or again available (hence Moochie's enthusiasm when we do sit down to watch some TV).

Misaki doesn't seem to have many issues with this, but then again she gets the gate opened up for her whenever she appears. She also sleeps on her own chair.

Bengals are smart cats, but asking them to understand this is a bit much. I'd like to say we are doing it to provide them with a better life - like any parent for their child, I suppose - but they are so spoiled already I can't really make that claim. We are doing it for a better life at some point (for us), if it all works out, but hopefully they will be able to adapt to our changes.

And we just have to remember to focus on them a little bit more when we aren't working on the computers.

Lilo Likes to be Squished

Have you ever tried to pick up a cat in your arms and squeeze it real tight?

If so, do you have the scars to prove it?

Most cats in my experience don't really liked to be picked up at all. When I was little our all-white kitty did not like to be picked up - he'd dig in with those back claws and push off whatever body part he could.

Lilo looking to get down.

I had a Siamese when I was older, and she only liked to be picked up when she was in the mood. She did not wear any kind of sign when she was in this mood, so it was really a crapshoot on whether I'd get purring or need to go get the Neosporin. My sister's cat, a black and white, usually didn't care.

Now, our Bengals, they are a whole different story.

Sera would prefer if you never take the initiative to pick her up. She will sit on your lap when it suits her, not on your whim. If you choose to go against this, you will bleed. I have the scars to prove it. I'd also like to say I've learned, but apparently I believe at some point she will mellow out and start acting like your normal, run-of-the-mill alley cat, and let me carry her as I wish. By definition this is insanity, expecting a different result than every time previous, but there it is.

Moochie is a mixed bag. Half of the time you will pick him up and he will push his way out of your arms and right back to the floor. Generally he is good about using muscle to do this rather than claws, but he has his moments. If he is willing to be held, there must be motion involved. If you stand in one place he will get down. If you carry him around the room in circles he's cool with that. Occasionally you may even get a light, ragged purr, but he's not one for big purrs in general.

Lilo is a completely different story. Then again, she's a little odd sometimes anyway.

Just chillin'.

Since she has no claws Lilo has learned she pretty much just has to roll with the punches. If her brother or sister or mom or dad want to pick her up or move her, she knows that's pretty much what's going to happen. I can pick her up just about anytime and she'll lay casually in my arms. I can even flip her over on her back, all four legs up in the air, and she'll lay there and let you rub on - even blow on - her belly.

The real crazy part is what happens when you squeeze her.

Unlike roughly every other feline on the planet, Lilo LIKES to be squished in your arms. She purrs purrs purrs like a crazy kitty. And the harder you squeeze, the louder she purrs.

Tighter!

At first I thought maybe she didn't like it, and that's why she was purring. I remember reading - I wrote a thesis about human-cat communication in high school - that cats don't only purr when they are happy, but they purr during other instances of extreme emotion, such as fear or anger. The purring in those instances is in an effort to calm themselves down, to comfort themselves, in order to allow them to react to the situation calmly.

We are just about positive that's not the case with Lilo. If you stop squeezing her, she'll open her eyes and look at you, wondering why you stopped. Then you squeeze her again, she smiles, and purrs begin anew.

Lilo curling the paws.

One of her favorite things is to be in the middle of a hug. One of us will pick her up and then the other will give a huge with Lilo cuddled up in the middle, and she purrs loud enough to be heard across the room.

This isn't normal, right? I mean, who heard of a cat that likes the stuffing squeezed out of her?

Feline Fight Night 2010

When our cats wrestle it can be quite disturbing. For one thing, they don't all seem to be playing by the same rules.

Lilo doesn't have claws but does use her teeth. Until she came into the house the other two never used teeth - now they do. Of course, she is routinely the instigator too, despite being half the size of Sera and a third of the size of Moochie.

Moochie, just chillin' on the table. Lilo, starting stuff with a push to the shoulder.

Moochie respects the fact Lilo doesn't have claws so doesn't use his own when wrestling with her. Sera respects nothing.

Lilo threatening a punch and bite.

Moochie, not to be outdone, using his claws a little bit.

Moochie won't use excessive force with Sera; she has no compunction about attempting to slash a throat with her own razor blades.

Despite the fact Misaki gives numerous growls as warnings and bares her teeth when the cats get too annoying, they pay her no mind. They honestly don't seem to think she is a threat to them in any way whatsoever, despite the fact she could bite them if she wanted (but she won't, because she's a good dog).

Misaki guarding her vast array of toys, daring someone to come close.

It's funny, also, how the fighting starts. It almost always begins with excessive cleaning of one cat by another.

Moochie cleaning Lilo's head in the sun.

Moochie licking Sera's ear. See who else is an instigator?

And evolves into this.

Sera does not look pleased at all.

Sera getting ready to turn the tables and draw blood, which she does quite often.

Of course, sometimes there are simple confrontations, but in the oddest of places.

Moochie causing trouble in our bathroom.

Moochie attacking by his bathroom. Isn't Sera's tummy pretty?

And sometimes, one of them will just kick back, crack open a cold one, and watch the show. As Mom and Dad in the house, that's what we do.

Lilo is the bump under the blanket Sera is pouncing on. Misaki just watches, patiently waiting to get her blanket back.

Moochie stretched out and batting at Lilo while Sera calmly waits for an opening.

Sometimes they will just choose to wrestle or menace a foreign object all on their own. Scary.

If those squirrels were this ball, Misaki would eat them all up!

With the level of violence in this house you would think they grew up playing Resident Evil. Maybe it's all the rap music.

Royal Meow Spoils Our Royalty

Earlier this month I did a post extolling the virtues of the new cat castle we bought our Bengals from Royal Meow. Now, being the proud Bengal owner I am, I noticed Royal Meow had a section on their website with a gallery of various happy kitties on their Royal Meow merchandise, and I thought: "Hey, why shouldn't our cute little guys be on there?!"

So I dutifully emailed the link to Royal Meow, thanked them for a great product, and offered up any of those pics for the gallery if they were so inclined. I didn't in the least anticipate or expect what happened next. (As always, click the picture for a full-screen version. Also, depending on your browser settings, clicking it again could make it even larger.)

Royal Meow emailed me back and thanked me for the blog post and then asked if my cats, the destructive Bengal beasts with the vicious claws, would like to become product testers. In exchange for a brand new scratching post all they asked was if I could document how our kitties used it and any wear and tear it incurred over the next year or so. After talking it over with the house royalty, they agreed. Their only caveat was I would take all the pictures, the attempting to capture and do them justice with video, do any photo/video editing necessary, and write all the blog posts.

They don't ask for much. Well...I guess I do all that anyway, so I agreed.

A few weeks back Wifey and I picked up the post and brought it home to some very excited kitties. Two new toys in the span of a couple months?! Yep, pretty spoiled I'd say.

The post - very solid, very good sized.

Here's some basic details about the post:

1 - The post itself is 36 inches tall and 7 inches in diameter. The top is carpeted and the entire 36 inches of height is tightly wound with sisal rope.

2 - The base has carpet that matches the top, is 1.5 inches tall with a 24 inch diameter. It's not round or square, but cut into a shape similar to a three-leaf clover.

3 - We left the tag on it because, well, they are cats and they like to bat at things.

One thing I really wanted to know was why did Royal Meow offer this to us? I mean, I'm sure I'm not the first person to write about them in a blog, right? As it turns out - and what Wifey and I suspected - is Royal Meow was intrigued by the Bengal aspect. Bengals - as moderately hybrid cats - are larger on average than a regular house cat, more active even later in their years (our twins just turned eight, the other we don't know her age), and have claws that can be particularly vicious, as I've documented here before and have the scars to prove it.

As a reminder, this is what they did to the last post in about two or three years.

These cats are simply going to put more wear and tear on a scratching post than the black and white or the Siamese I grew up with.

I suppose since this is an experiment/analysis I should also put in some details about the subjects:

1 - Only two of the cats - the larger ones, Sera and Moochie - have claws. Lilo was declawed before we adopted her. She will still use the post like she has claws, but I'm guessing as far as wear and tear analysis for a scratching post goes, we have two cats.

Lilo is cute, but she won't do any damage to a scratching post.

2 - Our cats are indoor only. This means they won't spend any time working their claws outdoors and we greatly prefer they don't do it anywhere else in the house either. They don't really listen, but we encourage them towards the posts anyway.

3 - They will have access to the post almost around the clock. The post is currently in the living room, but on the weekends we put them in the spare bedroom at night. If we don't, they bang on our bedroom door at 7am, which is not acceptable. Seriously, they do. They hook one of those claws under the door and shake it - it's quite loud. And freaks me the heck out when it wakes me up.

I guess that about covers it. So over the course of the next year, I'll periodically do a post about the cats and the post, looking to see what kind of damage - if any - they can do. Royal Meow is also hoping for some video; my Nikon camera has video capabilities so recording shouldn't be an issue, and Blogger allows for the posting of video. I just have to work through the process.

Here's some pictures of the cats checking out their new toy. Moochie is the larger spotted one, Sera is the marbled cat, and Lilo the little spotted one.

Moochie got to work on the post immediately, Lilo sitting on top or not.

Sera politely waits her turn.

Any scratching post we get is going to have to support the 19-pound Moochie, who throws his weight around like a sumo wrestler. I thought this string of pictures adequately displayed that. I should note the post so far hasn't moved at all, even with the force created by Mooch throwing himself onto and pushing himself off from the post.

Moochie scratching low, arching his back like he used to have to do on the other posts he has had.

Hmmm...I can get a little taller here...

Full extension! Well, sort of...he could probably stretch a little bit more if he really wanted to...

And climbing! The post shakes a little, but still holds his weight and force it creates with no problem.

Sera seems to really enjoy the base of the post, which doesn't surprise us since she's the one most likely to scratch on the carpet.

Then Wifey had a good idea. She noticed the cats also like to scratch while having their paws flat, rather than always standing up to scratch - what if we leaned the post on it's side? We tried it out and the post was still very stable. Here's a few pictures of that.

Lilo, as per usual, must sit on top of everything. This includes books, the treadmill, and of course, the keyboard.

Sera is still in love with the base, even off the ground.

Moochie simulates climbing the scratching post while being nice and lazy.

I didn't get any good pictures of the two with claws standing on top of the sideways post and scratching, but it did happen. More to keep in mind for next time.

That's it for now...we'll see if they manage to do any damage before next time, and I'll work on the video. Questions or comments, drop them in the comment section below!