Scamperfight!
Posted on January 7, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
As with much of North America, around here it’s been single digits (Fahrenheit) and below for several days, which means the cats are spending almost all of their time indoors. As the days have ground on they’ve started getting crankier with each other, and so we have more-than-usual moments like this, where they tussle with each other, I suspect more out of boredom than anything else. Which is fun for the rest of us — look! Small predators fighting each other is adorable! — but I suspect increasingly less fun for them. The good news is the temperatures are going up above freezing in the next few days, so they can get away from each other again in the great outdoors.
I posted a small video of the Scamperbeats tussling on Twitter earlier in the day with the caption “Cue Star Trek fight music,” and I’m happy to say someone obliged:
We are all doing what we can to keep ourselves amused in the winter cold.
What do mean about this cold/freeze thing? The high today is supposed to be 69 (Phoenix, AZ) :)
Oh, that’s adorable! Thanks for sharing and giving a smile to the rest of us…
The shortest cat video I’ve ever seen!
It’s all fun and games until one improvises a cannon out of bamboo and things found lying around the arena.
Cats are little ninjas always practicing their moves.
Battle Cats. Best they spar against each other. The curtains could use a break.
I’m busy trying to figure out how to pack up some of this 34C heat we’re expecting today and send it to you….
My cat keeps looking for Heinlein’s Door Into Summer. When he feels the cold air, he acts as if he’s walking on ice.
Yes, we all do what we can. IN my case, that was driving down to Florida, where we’re going to be for the next 10 weeks. Ahh… .
Ditto, short, door into summer, and complaining to me that I should do something about this. Thaw is in the works, that should improve my standing.
I have to confess that I picture the appropriate music more as “Kung Fu Fighting” than Star Trek….
Sadly our two indoor cats are more into detente than play-fighting; we’ve had to break up a couple of fights where fur was being removed in tufts and there was the ‘Out of my yard!!11!!’ yowl.
I’d be tempted to boot their furry butts outside for, say, 15 minutes. They could run around like maniacs a little, and be much calmer (and busy washing) after they came back in, and then there could be naps.
I live in the city, so my 4 cats (Hector, Achilles, Poe, & Airy) are indoor cats at all times (though two of them are door dashers who escape outside with alarming frequency).
Hector & Achilles are a bonded pair, probably brothers, who have never even had a spat in the 3+ years since I adopted them.
However, at least once a day recently, from somewhere in the depths of the house, I hear Poe screeeeeeeeaaaammmm as Airy finally gets on his Very Last Nerve.
My sister-in-law had cats. She used to pick up two, hold them by her sides, then swing them together so they were face to face, then back to her sides, then together again. The third or fourth time she’d do this, they’d start hissing and scratching — not at her, who deserved it, but at each other. Getting to the end of that causal chain was one link beyond cats’ scope.
Had I the chops, I’da used the theme from Mortal Combat.
‘Test your Might!’
Twice this week I’ve had a bat come into my house to escape the cold. My cats are having nervous breakdowns about the existence of flying rodents.