Day 4: Can cats talk

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 4: Can cats talk

Oh dear, it’s only day four and I’ve already hit a bit of a snag … I can’t think of anything to write about.

At times like these, I turn to my cats: Charlotte, Holly, Halley, and Greyson. Cat lovers will agree, our fur kids are a constant source of inspiration.

Take Greyson for instance. He recently celebrated his first birthday and with it, he developed an appetite for wallpaper.

Don’t for a moment think that the poor thing might be hungry because I can assure you that he’s not. Greyson, along with the others get wet food for breakfast and dinner and they have a constant supply of dry food to snack on during the day.

So why does Greyson go for the wallpaper? Just to be clear, he doesn’t eat it, he merely tears off pieces and then spits them out on the floor. First, he attacked one of the walls in the bathroom, then he moved on to the kitchen and finally had a nibble in the living room.

See for yourself …

Shortly before his first birthday, Greyson also found his voice and he’s been using it ever since. For the longest time, he was a quiet cat, his Toronto Cat Rescue foster mother described him as a Zen kitten. When there’s nothing Zen about him anymore.

He starts in the morning, practicing his vocal cords with a series of meows. Once warmed up he goes quiet.

Then he starts again in the evening. He talks to us, he talks to the other cats, he even talks to the walls. Now that creeps me out. He will sit by a wall, look up and start a flood of ‘words’.

Sometimes it gets so bad that we have to shut him up with a firm ‘Greyson, enough!’ He will go quiet for a while and then start again, talking to another wall.

When Greyson isn’t talking to walls, he tries to climb them. He will sit, calculate his move, and then jump as high as he can, front paws outstretched. Of course, he’s not going anywhere as he slides right back down. That doesn’t discourage him though, he’s a firm believer in … if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Which he does. Over and over again until he gets tired.

And when he gets tired, he curls up, or rather drapes himself in his favorite spot. This has been his favorite spot ever since he was a kitten. Once again, see for yourself.

When he’s awake, Greyson is a rather curious cat. Lately, he’s taking an interest in potato peeling, dishwashing, and laundry. When he sees me taking the potato bag out of the cabinet, he wants to see what I’m doing. 

When I fill the sink with water he will come and stand by me and let out a loud cry. That’s my cue to pick him up and put him near the sink. He’s afraid of the water and the soap bubbles, I can see that, but he will sit there and keep an eye on me.

The same with laundry. When I fill the machine with clothes, water, and soap, he wants to see what’s going on. When I pick him up he’s not just scared, he’s terrified, but cranes his neck to see. In the meantime, I’ve learned that a safe distance is of great importance to Greyson.

When I first pick him up he lets me know … a little closer, please. A step closer and he cranes his neck to see better. Closer still and he starts to squirm. One more step closer to the machine and the message is clear … that’s far enough.

Can cats talk … you bet they can, you just have to know how to listen.

A scary event

Many years ago, when I still lived at home, Monday was laundry day. Mom had a manual washing machine, struggled with buckets of water and wrestled with wet items to get them into the spinner. By the time she was done, the kitchen was flooded and in addition to laundry she had to mop the floor.

When automatic washing machines became popular she didn’t hesitate, she was going to get one of those wonderful machines. A representative from Primus came to our house and the following week a gleaming new washing machine was delivered and installed.

While the machine was top of the line, mom’s washing skills were not. Having washed manually all her life, an automatic washing machine proved to be a challenge. There were so many buttons and dials. With the machine came a manual of course, but the book being the size of ‘War & Peace’ she didn’t bother to read it. She would learn as she went along.

As such, she accidentally put one of my wool dresses in the machine and must have set the temperature too high because the dress came out several sizes too small for my frame.

Last week history repeated itself. Well, sort of. I’ve been doing laundry with an automatic machine all my life and know about temperature control, but I can’t control the temperature, which is exactly what happened. The pipes in our condo building are to blame.

Even though I had programmed the machine to wash with lukewarm water, every now and then the cold water in the building shuts off and is replaced with hot water. When someone wants to wash his hands, or fancies a drink of cold water, this hot water business is merely an inconvenience, but during laundry time hot water only is a disaster.

Just ask my favorite black jacket. It went into the machine a size 7 and it came out … something fit for a child. I flipped, I absolutely flipped. When I looked at the label it stated ‘100% pure wool’. Yeah well, that explains why it shrunk, wool hates hot water.

I toyed with the idea of holding the building responsible, but if they denied responsibility, how would I prove that it was the building’s faulty pipes? I find this a scary event. This water confusion can happen again and again.

 

How was your weekend?

Upon greeting, people often ask “How are you?”, while on a Monday morning, the question changes to “How was your weekend?”  Do they really want to know, or are they merely being polite? 

Assuming that you care about my health, let me recapture my weekend in a nutshell.

Saturday was laundry and cleaning day.  I popped a Tide capsule in the washing machine, added a load of shirts and towels, poured in fabric softener and pressed the “ON” button.  Nothing happened.  I pressed the “ON” button again.  I jabbed at it a few times more but the machine stayed stubbornly quiet.

"Stupid thing, what's the matter with you?" I asked.

No response, which is was a good thing because if the machine had spoken I would have run for the hills.

And then I noticed it ... the door wasn't closed.  Once I pressed that firmly into place, a gently whoosh of water indicated that the washing cycle had started.

While the washing machine did its thing, I was going to do some vacuuming.  A task not to be underestimated, because the vacuum cleaner weighs a ton.  It almost requires a trained bodybuilder to move it from here to there.

I was halfway through sucking dirt from the carpet - all the while swinging to the beat of Jennifer Lopez - when the machine suddenly stopped.  Hold on Jennifer, we seem to have technical difficulties.

I check the "ON" button, I checked the bristles, I peered in the dirt container ... everything seemed to be in order.  So what was the matter with this thing?  Ah, the electrical cord had come unplugged.  That ought to do it.

When everything was clean and tidy I fired up my laptop for some writing.  32 emails awaited me.

Junk, junk, more junk, a message from the UK informing me that my email account had won 32 million Euros, a blog entry about how to be a better writer (must get to that later) and ... ah, a message from a friend who was kind enough to have a look at chapters 1, 2 and 3 of a new story.

I do say "Chapters 1, 2 and 3" because the story held six chapters at the time, but chapters 4, 5 and 6 were not quite approved yet.

After I read the edited chapters - much better this time around - I did a "Save As" and clicked the file name.  OMG !!! too late I realized that I had just saved over the entire document and chapter 4, 5 and 6 were now gone.  Stupid, stupid, STUPID!!!  All that work for nothing.

Finally Sunday night arrived.  This unfortunate weekend was almost over.

When it got a little chilly, I got up and closed the balcony door.  Don't ask me what I did, because I still can't get my mind around it, but in the process I managed to squash two of my fingers.  A scream of pain, followed by holding of the damaged fingers.  And damaged they were.  Not only were the cuticles on both fingers bleeding, they rapidly began to swell to the extent that the knuckles disappeared.

As you can see though, no real damage was done as I can still type.

How was my weekend?  Well, let's just say I've had better.