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...

Moochie Wanted A Walk

Most of the time when we go to take Misaki for a walk the cats barely raise an eyebrow. Moochie and Sera have no desire to go outside and while Lilo would like to, they generally stay away from the front door.

Not the other day. I called Misaki over to put on her collar and leash. As usual, she took her time, but Moochie raced over, rubbing on legs and talking like a madman (this is normal for him). Misaki just shakes her head and huffs at him.

Then I had this great idea - why not put the collar on Moochie? I had no idea if he would go for it, but I told Wifey to grab the camera, just in case. The next time he rubbed on my shin I dropped the collar over his head (the collar is way bigger than his head).

At first he seemed a little surprised.

It wasn't Moochie's first experience with a leash. We actually bought cat harnesses and leads for him and Sera way back when we first got them. Moochie doesn't mind the harness, but he doesn't do well being led around by the leash, even just in the backyard - he still goes where he wants. Sera...well, we got the harness on her a couple times - yes, blood was drawn - and she freaked out, throwing her body around the room and bouncing off walls until we finally took it off. Lilo loves it.

Then Misaki had to come over and check out what was going on. After all, it was her leash. She kept sniffing and sniffing at the leash and at Moochie.

Mooch decided to walk around a bit. The weight of the collar didn't seem to bother him too much, but then again he's an 18-pound beast of a Bengal cat. Everywhere he went Misaki shadowed him.

This is Misaki finally very, very concerned. She was told we were taking her for a walk, and now the cat is wearing her collar and leash and she isn't going anywhere. I believe she is trying to work her Shiba Mind Control on Moochie to take off the collar.

Right after the previous picture, he just about did. I didn't have a tight hold on the Flexi-lead - just enough to guide him because I didn't want to yank on his neck. Cats, as those of you that have had them probably know, aren't very receptive to being tugged on.

I'm not quite sure what happened, but Moochie suddenly freaked out and took off, yanking the Flexi out of my hand. The handle hit Wifey in the leg, bounced around the couch and off the glass side table, hit the wall, and finally wrapped itself around a chair leg as Moochie ran for refuge by his scratching post.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but his tail is fluffed out huge - you could have cleaned a bottle with that thing.

After he calmed down I took the collar off of him and he was fine. Misaki huffed like crazy though, because she didn't appreciate her collar being shared with her little bro.

So if you ever get bored and have a cat, throw a leash on him and see what happens. Have your camera ready.

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.

Moochie Plays the Ham

If I followed Moochie around with a camera all day long, just about every resulting picture could tell it's own story. I may not be able to properly interpret that story because most of the time he's on another planet, but still...

So the other day Moochie is sitting on our laps (yes, both laps) while we watched TV, one elbow on Wifey's shin like he was bellying up to the bar and ordering a round of Four Horsemen or a Black and Tan. It was cute, so I grabbed the camera and just started clicking. He rarely sits still so every picture was different, especially with various zoom levels.

Then he yawned. And I clicked. And that's how the greatest picture of Moochie ever taken happened:

Moochie now, at age eight and a half.

Click on that one to make it fill your screen. Click it again to zoom to the max level. Check out those fangs! And not only the fangs, but those tiny teeth between them on his upper jaw - I'm not sure I've ever seen those before, let alone got a picture.

Moochie definitely doesn't look like anyone I'd buy a used car from.

But is this really the craziest Moochie picture? Check out this one below, from when he was still a kitten and not long after we brought him home. This one made a calendar we did a few years back.

Moochie as a kitten, less than a year old.

What was he doing? I have no idea. It looks like he's trying to clean his chest with his tongue...but I don't know.

He's a weird kitty.

Which pic is crazier? Vote in the comments!

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.

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.

Mooch Prefers "Exotic Model"

Here at the My NWX household we think our kids are pretty damn cute. Of course, we don't think that nearly as much as they do themselves.

And while Misaki, Sera, and Lilo all have their moments of being unabashedly proud of their prettiness, when it comes to outright fawning over themselves none of them hold a candle to Moochie. Not only is Mooch a classic narcissist, convinced the world is here to serve the purpose of providing him with hands to rub his body, but we're pretty sure he's the feline equivalent of a pin-up boy.

Check out these bedroom eyes.

We call Mooch our Big Pimp. He's always lounging around the house with a look on his face that says you know you want to love me, and even if you don't want to I'm so damn irresistible you can't stay away anyway. Basically, if he was human, you'd have to buy his photos in black plastic bags, and they'd be behind the counter at 7-11.

He doesn't care where he is either. Anyplace is ready for his soft luxuriousness.

If Moochie could, he'd be getting spots in rap videos like this one from Jigga himself - Jay-Z's Big Pimpin'.

Or maybe this one, Hypnotize by Notorious BIG.

On occasion Mooch can even share his spotlight with someone else. He seems to have taken a shining to Misaki, as much as she isn't that thrilled with him rubbing on her muzzle and yelling in her ear. Still, it's pretty damn cute when he cuddles up to her anyway.

They make quite a striking pair.

But it's not all fun and games for the self-proclaimed most beautiful being on the planet. Sometimes our little boy would rather be a diva than make love to the camera.

And sometimes, when he thinks the camera is off and allows himself some quiet time to sleep, the camera can snatch images his agent would never approve of showing on the internet. If Moochie ever really becomes a famous cat model, this is the kind of pic you'd see on TMZ.

Oops. I suppose we all have images like that in our past we want no one to see. Unfortunately Moochie is still a cat and therefore does not have thumbs, so he can't properly work the mouse to delete images off the hard drive. Doesn't mean he doesn't try - sometimes we catch him on the internet Googling himself. Or maybe he's looking up kitty porn. I just hope he can spell, because the last thing we need is cops at our home because Moochie can't spell "kitty" correctly and logs on to the wrong websites.

But in the end, it's hard to disagree with his self-assessment of pure cuteness. Would you look at that face? It's one that knows his cuteness level, it's confident, and those eyes - wow. Those eyes say you know you want to love him up.

Gotta go. Duty calls.

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.