Tag Archives: Maggie

A house is not a home without a resident nag

A question, Pets, , , , , ,

Maggie, the little girl cat, looks sweet and loving, and she is.  However, there is a dark side to her personality.  She’s a nag, a terrible nag. Fourteen pounds of fur and she controls my life.

When she wants me to sit down and pet her, DSCN0438she tells me–loudly and insistently no matter what else I may be doing–my duty is to leap to my feet and obey. When her water bowl is nearly empty, she searches me out–not hard in my small apartment–and gives me a hard time, screeching at me until I follow her.  Then she wants me to pour the water from above so she can lick a few drops as it goes by.

Yes, Maggie knows exactly what she wants done and how I should do it.  I must be a great burden and disappointment to her.  I hate hearing her ME-OWW!  because I know somehow I’ve failed terribly.  Listed below are some of the things I say to her when she demands I do what she wants me to do.

MAGGIE:  Mee-ooowimages

JANE:  Hold your horses. I have to answer the phone.

or “Just a minute. I have to check my blood sugar.”

or “I’ll be right there. Let me finish typing this word.”

or  “Hold on, I have to scoop the cat box.”

or  “Keep your furry little pants on, I’m eating now.”  or “I’m sleeping now.” or “I’m pottying now.”

images“Be patient.  I have to call a friend. . . Okay, I’ll feed you first.”

“In a minute. I have to load the dishwasher.”

Or get a glass of water or clean up the kitty vomit (usually from Scooter, Maggie’s big, furry brother) . . . or . . . so many things.

What Maggie says after I explain the delay:   ME-OWW.

Who nags you? I’d love to hear.

 

Cats do NOT understand NPO

Pets, , , , , , ,

check up 2Yesterday, I took the cats to the vet in the middle of the night.  Actually, it was seven-fifteen but when one is retired, one forgets  anything happens that early.   They went in to get their teeth cleaned and have  a locating  chip implanted.  Because this is done under anesthesia–who’d want to clean the tiny but sharp teeth of an awake cat?–the kitties couldn’t eat after midnight.  And their not eating wasn’t really NPO–they had a bowl of water–but really fasting.  They did not like this whatever I called it because THE FOOD BOWL WAS GONE!

When the veterinarian said a year ago that  Scooter was getting fat and I should take his food away at night and not allow him to graze, I thought, “Has she ever had a cat?”  Oh, she’s a wonderful doctor but if Mr. Scootter, who considers himself the king of the word, doesn’t have food at night, he makes sure no one (meaning ME)  has a minute of sleep.  So, normally, I feed the cats in the evening and take the bowl away in the afternoon.  But last night after I took away the food bowl, the entire night was motion and noise–nudge, nudge, nudge–purr, cuddle, cuddle,  and ME-OW!  Finally in what I could tell was deep frustration,  he placed his soft little paw on my cheek, stared mounrfully into my puffy, blood-shot eyes and said, “Why are you starving the Scooter?”empty food bowl

Because I foresaw this problem, yesterday after dinner I explained to Maggie and Scooter that they wouldn’t have food after midnight.  They didn’t listen and they don’t have watches.  I know they didn’t listen because they never do and because Scooter ignored all the  explanations I reminded him about after every one of the fifty times he woke me up.   Now Maggie may be hungry but she allows Scooter to approach me about that prolblem.  She saves all her nagging for telling where I should sit so I can scratch her tummy.

No, cat do not understand NPO but they are so worth a little lack of sleep.   They’d just better leave me alone tonight.

A message from our cats: Don’t worry about what you look like

Musings, Pets, , ,

One thing I’ve learned from my cats:  they don’t care what they look like.   They don’t stand in front of a mirror and pat down a stray hair or cover their faces with makeup to blot out features they don’t like.  No, what they look like is, well, what they look like.

Scooter has a face that makes people laugh.  He makes me smile every time I see him.  He has a Groucho-like moustache.  Scooter believes he’s is the greatest, most wonderful, most handsome creature in the world and the fact that people laugh at his face doesn’t bother him at all.  He is THE cat and rules this 1200-square-foot apartment, his world.

On the other hand, Maggie has a round little tummy and a fairly large backside.  She’s not fat.  She just carries her weight a little low.   George always said that she looked like a cookie jar when she sat.  She does, a cookie jar with lots of room for goodies on the bottom.   And she doesn’t care at all.  Does not care.  She believes me and purrs loudly when I tell her she’s the most beautiful female feline ever.

I got a haircut three weeks ago.  A bad haircut.  It looks great in the front but it’s very short in the back.   I have hair that’s both fine and straight as well as wirey.  The back of my head looks like a roof with very badly laid shingles or, perhaps, a thatched roof with all the straw escaping.  My hair sticks out all over and it’s too short for me to fix.  I’ve tried gels and mousse but, once they dry, the gelled hair doesn’t hold and sticks up and out even more.

For that reason, I’ve adopted the cat’s point of view.  I don’t care.  I can’t see the back of my head so I’m going to ignore the mess and  believe that I look really terrific.

Besides, hair will grow.   In a month or two, it will be long enough I can get a hot roller in there to tame it.

For the time being, I’m avoiding mirrors.   

It is Friday, right?

A question, Celebrating, Church, Musings, Reading, , , ,

I have confessed previously my inability to have even the slightest and most hazy idea what day it is.   On Wednesday evening–I knew it was Wednesday because the cleaning crew comes on Wednesday, one of the few markers of time in my world–a local news anchor said, at the end of the broadcast, “Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday. “

If you don’t think that messed me up!  I searched for that morning’s newspaper and figured since the only one I could find was Wednesday’s, the next day would probably be Thursday.  I checked the guide on the cable and dashed through programs for today and tomorrow until I got to SATURDAY–then counted back.   Then I checked on the icons on the Mac screen–further proof the news anchor was wrong.  It gave me a feeling of smug satisfaction.

Not that it really makes any difference.  My daily schedule is get up, read the paper, write, swim, read a novel, watch the news with meals inserted at the right times.   Add church on Sunday.  My most important activity is–according to Maggie and Scooter–petting the cats and spoiling them but because that comes at whatever time they demand, it’s not written in the schedule.

I remember back–oh, so many years ago–when I was young and chanted, “TGIF”, looking ahead to a weekend stretching ahead empty and full of  adventures.    When I got older, the adventures didn’t hold as much appeal and, besides church, I spent six hours on Sundays grading papers and doing lesson plans.   That made weekends not nearly as tantalizing.

All of which leads to these questions:   Do you  cherish your weekends?  Why?  What do you do–or don’t you do–that you look forward to?

Cat Grass: a love story

Family, Holidays, Pets, , , ,

I’ve mentioned what wonderful presents George comes up with.  For Christmas, he gave  the cats a Chia cat grass planter.   Please note:  this was not catNIP.  Scooter has what we in the family tactfully call a “catnip problem.” 

Once the grass had grown to three inches, we put it on the end table and took pictures.   First Scooter, then Maggie–because she is never allowed to do anything before her brother has checked it out–investigated the grass and sampled it.  They truly love cat grass. 

However, Scooter is not a neat eater.  In the last picture, here’s what the end table looked like once he’d pulled his share of the cat grass out.

Why do we have these creatures?

Pets, , , ,

On Sunday, I posted on Facebook about finding cat vomit under a piece of newspaper and asked, “What’s worse.”  Turns out there are a LOT of animal-related poop and vomit stories out there and my friends shared many.   On the Facebook post, I added a picture of our big, handsome boy cat, Scooter (on the left) because he’s just to darned cute.

But I may have blamed the wrong cat.

Yesterday, I tossed the clean laundry on the sofa and folded mos of it.  I left George’s T-shirts on the back of the sofa for him to fold.   That is also the favorite napping place of Maggie, the fat little girl cat.   Sadly, Maggie (to the right) is a one-person feline.  She adores me but isn’t as fond of George.   Sometimes when she’s sitting next to me on the love seat, he’ll tickle her feet.  She really hates that.  She threatened vengence–but who knew?

This morning, George went to pick up and fold the shirts and discovered–well, if you had to guess, based on my previous Facebook post, what did he discover?   Yes, cat vomit.  It had to be from Maggie because that’s her place.   And that makes me wonder who left the other offering.

Please forgive me with my constant harping on this subject.  I hope this is the end of it.   If George will leave Maggie’s feet alone, I think  this will solve the problem.

But probably not.