31 Comments on “Small Observation”

1. *galump galump galump galump galump* <- sound of kitten charging around house in the grip of a full-strength bout of Crazy.

   *whine* <- “Why aren’t you up and playing with me? You’ve been asleep for three whole hours!”

   *shufshufshufshufshuf* <- sound of kitten sniffing your face at extreme close range, just before licking your nose with its sandpapery tongue.

2. Frisky Kitten is on patrol guarding against dangerous things hiding under blankets.

   Who knows what might be lurking under there? Must protect John & Krissy!!!! ATTACK!!! GOT IT!!!

3. You humourless troglodite.

   Just kidding. PURRR PURRR PURRRR PURRRR

4. Tosh. You’re just not hugging it enough.

   No, tighter.

   Tighter.

5. Heh. I have a ten year old cat who has become inexplicably frisky at night. Big cat. Long hair. Loves faces. Result? Hairballs! No Sleep! Then the mid size kitten gets involved. Pandemoneum! On the bed! At 2am!

6. Try having 6 cats and a brand new kitten that adopted you, not the other way around.

   It was the typical “He followed me home, can I keep him?”

   at three am two cats have nightly freak-outs, right on time. You can set your clock by it, and of course, everyone else has to join in.

   Seven cats, 3am, their nightly freak-out goes like this:

   “Thump thump thump CRASH!” “What was that?” “Just the living room lamp, go back to sleep.”

7. My two occasionally engage in snarling, fur-flying cat fights under our bed at 3am. That’s always fun.

8. Know what’s equally annoying? A 15 lb. cat with a relatively “normal” (i.e., “human”) circadian rhythm who likes to sleep ON your feet and, despite vigorous nudging and outright kicking, Will. Not. Move.

9. To continue from Peter’s post:

   *ShrkShrkShrkShrkShrk* <- “How strange, this door appears to be closed. As I recall, it will open automatically should I scratch continuously below the handle for ten minutes or so.”

   *SkuBUMP, skuBUMP, skuBUMP* <- The sound of (a) carpet and (b) fabric covering an expensive new bedframe being utilised as a convenient midnight scratching medium.

10. This is why every cat my family has owned, from the time I was a wee lad, spent every night either outside or locked in the basement. My wife and I don’t have a basement now, but we do have a spare bedroom, and in the cat goes, every night.

    K

11. So, burly neighbor plowing at 2:00am is cute, but playful kitten at 2:30am is not.

    Interesting.

12. The burly neighbor’s antics do not involve needle-sharp claws (or maybe the do, just not on me while I’m trying to sleep).

13. Hypothesis: every cat on the planet went bat-shit crazy at 2:30 am.

    Add me as a second data point. The youngest (still a kitten) went fucking crazy and got the other two just as riled-up.

    Nothing like the three-car freight train of cat chase going right over you while you sleep.

14. As far as I can tell it’s entirely due to one of two as as-yet-unproven but fairly well-documented factors of the feline anatomy: Either their innate ability so see invisible demons (they are defending the world between 2 and 3 AM) or the little known gland in their brains that produces hallucinogens between 2 and 3 AM and makes them think they see invisible demons.

15. It may be part of his long term revenge cycle for the recent de-naturing.

16. Is it something like this?:
    

    My cat has learned the ever-entertaining trick of jumping on the BACK of the bedroom door, so that it slams shut, in the middle of the night (quite scary, especially when mid-dream). In retaliation, we now prop the door open with a brass bird doorstop.

17. Dan @ 13: I think you are right – one of mine (I have 4) jumped on the bedside table and managed to set off my alarm about that time this morning. I got up, went to the bathroom, went downstairs, wondered why the coffeemaker wasn’t done and started it, THEN looked closer at the clock on the microwave and realized it was 2:36 rather than 5:36.

18. Patina the Catina has Psycho Kitty Fun Hour between about ten and eleven, just about every night. She attacks the carpet a lot. When she just got here, she would attack the vicious blanketmouse, which was fun because her claws weren’t long enough to reach my foot, or my hair, which was slightly more painful. Now she just wants under the blankets, just to check, before she curls up next to the pillow.

19. Don’t have the link, but if you google the name “John Wick” you should soon run across John’s work “Cats” on domestic felines and the evening crazies.

20. Oh, does that take me back.

    Once upon a time, I had three cats – Copper, Jazz, and Ariel – all of whom loved me to pieces, but hated one another to varying degrees.

    They would all sleep with me at night. They’d carefully position themselves so they couldn’t actually see one another: say, a cat against my ribs on the left, a cat by my shoulder on the right, and the third cat between my knees.

    Naturally, I was Not Allowed to Move. At all. All night.

    Because if I did – If I, say, moved a leg that was cramping, or an arm that had gone numb – that meant the cats might catch sight of each other, which would lead to Feline World War, which was usually fought on my stomach.

    Now Ariel’s the only one left, the others having gone to Kitty Heaven. My nights are much more peaceful. But I admit I really, really miss the Multi-Cat Nightly Crazies.

21. My 13 year-old cat has recently taken to trying to touch my face during the night with her paw. Last night she was just at the right angle where her claw hooked into the upper part of my nostril.

    Of course, my instinctive reaction was to pull back immediately, thus turning me suddenly into Jack Nicholsen in Chinatown.

22. My kitten discovered window ledges this weekend. However, she hasn’t quite mastered the fine art of getting on to them when the window blinds are closed. So, as mentioned above, while chasing invisible-to-human demons at 2:30 Sunday morning, she managed to get caught and flip out, causing me to wake up and flip out, etc.

23. We once experimentally determined that a 4-year-old human wielding a feather toy and a 4-month-old Maine Coon cat achieved exhaustion at about the same time.

24. Our recent addition, a foundling Tortie, is a TARDIS cat. Cora’s a dear little fluffy thing on the outside, but she’s much, much bigger on the inside. F’rinstance, her favourite toy is the waggy end of my Spoodle. It moves; it is an Enemy Of The People and must be subdued. Her second favourite toy is poor Lily’s spanielly ears. A distant third is any toy Lily is playing with, but Lily regards this as fine fun, so that’s OK.

    When Cora gets the Full-on Stupids, usually between 3 and 4 AM, she has been known to declare the pendant light in our bedroom, conveniently located over the bed, a flying menace. So she tries to kill it, using our sleeping bodies as a launch pad.

25. I love cats, but boy kittens can be a pain. I am so happy my cats are in the main sequence.

26. We have a male kitten too, and he’s shut in the kitchen every night. He screams for my attention on and off though.

27. My dear cat likes to come charging into the bedroom, across the bed itself, and up into the bedroom window, regardless of what might be in her path (like me). Being I’m up at 3 in the morning, she settles for crashing on me at 3 in the after noon. Her calvary charge sounds rather like the ones from every movie involing horses running in the same direction combined into one little furball

28. My cats are well over 10 years old and not kitten-sized at all. Too lazy to move most of the day. And at half past five they go galumping through the house, crashing into doors and running over every item weighing less than them, i.e. about 15 pounds.

    Crazy. Just crazy.

29. Kicking a bothersome cat… priceless!

30. Had a kitten like your black and white. Used to come in and lick the top of my head at night. Had to evict him and close the door.

31. Yeah, we’ve been employing the “close the door” strategy for the last few days. Seems to be working.