The cat and dog wars
Cats obviously make New Year's resolutions. Since 2008 started, cat has decided she will Reclaim The House. Since the dog arrived, cat has tended to keep out of her way, but now she's begun to come into the kitchen again and march about in front of the dog's nose. Cat comes downstairs with me now first thing, having worked out that when I open the kitchen door, the only thing on the dog's mind is getting outside, doing the fastest pee on record and shooting back in again to get breakfast. So, I open the door and cat marches in, under the dog's nose. You can see the dog's reaction; every day - "It's the cat! I need to chase it! But I need my breakfast more! Darn!"And when I cook in the evening, cat has taken to coming in and perching on kitchen table B. (We have 2 kitchen tables in the kitchen at the moment. We brought the other down from son's room over Christmas so we had space for everyone to eat. And there the kitchen table has stayed. Son assures us he has cleared 4 little spaces in his room for the table to go back into. OH refuses to move table back until there is more than 10 square inches of space on the floor. I have now blitzed the fug-bound teenage hell, but there is another problem. If there is a surface free in our house, something is instantly put on it. Kitchen table B now holds an empty liquidiser box; an empty telephone box; several large boxes of books I have bought but done nothing about; a large pile of business receipts; a large plastic box I need to return to a friend, and several of those strange bits of crud you acquire at Christmas. So it may well be that kitchen table B is still with us at Easter, by which time we will have ceased to notice it.)
However, I digress. Kitchen table B gives the cat an ideal vantage point to watch me cook, so I have the dog pinned to my legs at one side of the kitchen block, and cat poised on the other, and I feel strangely vulnerable. The dog won't tackle the top of the block if I'm there, but the cat will. The moment I turn my back I can feel the cat plotting her next assault. Of course the obvious answer is to move Kitchen table B back whence it came....
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Therefore the kitchen is declared off-limits to the cats.
I've got them trained to the point where I can work in there with the door open, and they'll sit just outside, watching. I don't rely on them not sneaking in if they think they can get away with it, so I don't leave the door open if I'm settled in another room.
I caught Skffle yesterday, standing on the threshold with her neck stretched right out as she peered inside. I said her name in warning tones and she promptly hurried off, looking guilty.
Still doesn't stop their fur getting in though.
He has an uncanny ability to appear if I am cutting meat or skinning a chicken, even if he has been fast asleep in the airing cupboard in a different part of the house. A cat's sense of smell must be amazing.
Poppet once temporarily lost the whiskers on one side of her face oweing to getting too close to the scissors during the rind-cutting action. I doubt if she learned her lesson though.
I love the story of the bacon scissors! My mum had a cat with missing whiskers as it used to sleep on the hotplate of the cooker & lost them when a gas ring was being lit!
Winnie - is your cat In Charge of you too?
Fiona - ours appears when she thinks I should be cooking, even if I'm not. SHe's definitely a cat who runs to a strict timetable, which is a pity really as I am quite the opposite.