2019-12-23 - Feline Housekeeping

Miao! (Meow!)

The people that were in the loft are gone when the cat wakes up from his nap. It's the first time it's been alone inside this loft apartment cage. Granted, it's a pretty cozy cage, but given the stray life this cat has been living, without the influence of the man around and hours passed since the pair have been out...

Natural stray cat instincts take over.

First, it checks the boundaries of this apartment cage. It walks around the edges and jumps on windowsills to walk the lines of glossy stained wooden ledges, looking out at the snow. It can feel the cold seeping through the window. Maybe it doesn't want to be out there right now, this is fine.

The cat posts up watch a while in a windowsill, then it sees another cat outside. It wants to go tomcatting or fight the cat for coming near his favorite warmth and food spot, naturally, so it stands, arches his back, makes an angry face (actually it just looks like that), then stalks the windowsill. When it can't get out of the glass after some pawing, it decides to climb the curtains to see if there's another way.

The curtains are thin and the claws get purchase to climb before the cat skids right down with sliding, ripping the curtains on the way down.

It tries again. It tries on that side, then the other side to climb the curtains to get to the top curtain bar to see if it can find a way out or post up with a better vantage point.

RIP RIP RIP!

With the curtains destroyed, he hops back onto the windowsill. The orange tabby cat is gone. Time to move on.

You know what's nice? The couch. The cat stalks over to the back side of the furniture frame and prepares to leap up to take a nap again on the top line of cushions, but after all that curtain ripping, you know what's also nice? Upholstery.

Rearing up instead of jumping, he decides to sharpen and stretch his paws and claws by digging them into the upholstery on the back of the couch. He gets a good shredding in after a lot of snags and decides he likes doing that just as much as napping. There's fun things to shred here and there's no lady or man here to distract him from getting a good time in.

They left one of the side table glass lamps on. There's a little moth flying around at the bulb under the glass panes of the antique stained glass piece.

You know what else is fun? Moths.

Cat decides he wants to play with the moth since he's done with the couch now, leaving the ripped upholstery behind. With a leap, he's on the end table and taking a batting paw up under the glass lamp panes, trying to catch it. It's just a little moth, though, this is about the vigorous activity of the hunt, not the catch.

Bat. Bat. Bat.

CRASH!

Oops. It fell. No more moth. But that sure was a scary noise! The cat leaps from the end table to the coffeetable when the lamp falls and breaks on the hardwood into decorative stained glass pieces and the light goes out. The lady left a coffee cup on the coffeetable for the cat to find and sniff down inside. Did she leave anything in there? Smells like... ew.

There's a little dark liquid at the bottom that smells bitter and the cat doesn't like that, nor does it like the cup very much now! Batting a paw, it knocks the cup off of the table on principle to spill coffee on the floor rug before the cup rolls to catch on a handle. It didn't make a scary noise. The cat liked that noise a little, though, maybe, because it knocks off the glass jar vanilla-cinnamon candle that's on the table too. Boo, doesn't break. Neither does the remote control or the folded newspaper the man was reading in the morning when it knocks those off next.

That's okay, though. The cat likes paper! Jumping down, it starts to have a merry time with shredding that newspaper all over the rug. Then it gets hungry because fun is a lot of work. Maybe a nap. No wait, food. Nap? Food. (But nap...) Food!

The people left him food in a big bowl and it's more food than he can actually eat at once, but he eats it all anyway, because as a stray, you fill the hump when you can fill it. It's a matter of street principle.

Then he's thirsty. He could drink from the water bowl there next to the food, but you know what sounds nicer than that? The sink in the kitchen is on a slow stream drip to make sure the pipes don't freeze and he likes moving water much better than water puddles.

When he turns away from the bowl feeder, it makes a noise and drops more food into the bowl automatically, which is SCARY! Leaping onto the bar, it plows over a flower vase to knock it to shatter on the floor with water, dirt, and some red and white winter poinsetta blooms that the lady just has sitting out for some reason. Eat that? No wait.

Tail twitching, it looks back at the scary food bowl and it's FULL again! What kind of witchcraft...

Oh look, it's the sink over there. It gets a drink for a while while sitting in the basin on one side and hovering with hang to the drip side, head tilted sideways.

Then because there's more food now, it cautiously approaches and eats until it pukes. Then it pukes again over on the corner of the rug because it seems like a nice place to puke. Maybe he'll eat that later. Nap? No wait.

It sees toilet paper dangling in the open door of the bathroom after puking and it wants to unroll it and shred it and drag it all over. So it does.

Then it looks for more neat stuff, which really just involves walking around on surfaces all over and knocking things over and down.

But at least it uses the litterbox. It likes the litterbox. The cat feels it's necessary to kick half the litter out when finished.

When the hell are these people coming back? Maybe it can dart the door and get out that way when they open it.

Oh wait. He was going to nap. The middle of the bed seems nice. It'd be better if the sheets were a little shreddy too. So it does that.

That's how you fluff a space.

Zzz. Zzz. Zzz.

The apartment is a mess after he repeats the exploration/fun/nap process a few times during the long winter day when the people are away.

And the cat looks angry even when asleep.

But maybe this cage isn't so bad?