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.

Little Hoodlums

Sometimes I think our cats will forever act like teenage kids. They rough house like frat boys, chase each like it's the most natural thing in the world, do things that make us think they are using hallucinogens, and play pranks on each other.

Sometimes they play pranks on us. These are not funny.

Invariably they happen in the middle of the night and wake us up, which is so not funny when we don't get enough sleep as it is.

The other night, about 2am, they decided it would be funny to just bang on the bedroom door for literally no reason whatsoever. Their food bowl had been filled right before bed and their litter box was freshly scooped, so there was no reason to get our attention.

Moochie: What should we do to Mom and Dad tonight?

No one was breaking in. The house was not on fire. There was no gas leak. No thunder and lightning was happening to scare them.

Nope, these little devils, specifically brother and sister hoodlum duo Moochie and Sera, decided to pull the cat equivalent of ringing the doorbell and running away or calling a home and hanging up without saying anything. How did they do that?

Our secret plan, not yours.

Let's set the scene. As a reminder, it's 2am. Also, the door to the bedroom is closed because if it's open the dog can't relax and sleep. Plus, the cats would be on the bed, likely on Wifey's side, and they make the bed very warm - so to allow everyone happy sleep they get the run of the house at night.

Two cats move to the outside of the bedroom door. If one were awake they would hear them whispering to each other, likely encouraging one to make a move. I know this is Moochie and Sera because Sera is the brains in the pride and Moochie will do anything anyone tells him (well, except Wifey and I). Plus, claws are required for this, so Lilo can't be of service - and she wouldn't mastermind something like this.

Sera tells Moochie to do it.

A spotted paw reaches under the bedroom door, upside down so when the claws extend the grip the door rather than the carpet. There is plenty of room to snake that paw under, because one day a long time ago Ruby was left in the room with the door closed and tore up the carpet and padding underneath. We haven't fixed it, yet.

No idea what Dad is talking about. We're sleeping.

The claws extend, gripping the door. Moochie pulls the door towards him. It stays latched - we haven't found a need to actually lock it yet, not until one of the cats grows thumbs - but there is enough space around the latch the door moves, banging against the doorjamb. One shake, two shakes...repeated shakes.

Wifey jerks awake. I, apparently, am too tired to wake up. Likely my REM sleep was disturbed on some level, but not enough to find consciousness.

The banging lasts only a few seconds, but it's more than enough.

Still sleeping...

Sera says something, quietly, and Moochie stops. Then the pair chatter, gradually louder. I can just imagine what they are saying.

"Do it again!"

"No, I don't want to get in trouble!"

"Why stop now?"

"We should run before they yell at us!"

"Pansy!"

Sound like two kids at a door ringing the doorbell, preparing to run? Sure does to me...not that I would know by experience or anything. As far as you know.

Then two sets of paws run away, claws digging into the carpet for traction. They can be heard galloping up the stairs, seemingly as heavy as a full-grown mountain lion.

Isn't this how it starts? Do I need to nip this little burst of nuisanceness in the bud? Are they headed down the wrong path? Next will they be tagging fences, dealing weed in the park after dark, and stealing cars? Should I be worried?

We're just cute. Nothing more than that. Move along.

I have my eye on these two...they are not to be trusted.

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!



Taking Away the Color

Black and white photos never used to excite me, but I think that probably is because I didn't take the time to enjoy them. There is something about the removal of color from a picture that takes away the distractions (ooh - pretty colors!) and lets the viewer take in the imagery, to appreciate it more. I think - and this is by no means a professional opinion - you tend to notice the setting and contrasts so much more, the parts of the picture that make it artistic.

Our Nikon has this sweet feature where you can turn on B&W for whatever setting you have, then when you click to take a picture it will save two images - one in color and one in black and white. It's amazing how some pictures don't really catch your eye in color when the color is gone they really jump out.

Plus I like how these sometimes turn out like surveillance photos, like we caught the kids doing something bad. We probably did.

So here's a few, one of each of the kids, on a day where I'm just really tired and don't want to write too much. Besides, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? By that calculation this post is quite productive.

Ruby, the Akita, probably yawning because we bore her. Misaki does this too.

Lilo, sleeping on the TV receiver.

Sera, playing with a catnip mouse on the floor. Looks like we interrupted her and she's waiting for us to go away.

Moochie, in mid-crazy on a cat tree that doesn't fit him anymore. Not sure what he's looking at, but it's sure not the camera.

Misaki, not quite sure about what's going on at the moment. Her look says she's putting up with it, but would rather not.

HAPPY FRIDAY!