“It sure is a cat, Daniel. Your eyes are functioning, and you’re still capable of recognizing simple shapes. Congratulations!”
Thanks for that bit of sarcasm, my overused joke device. Let’s move on.
Back to the picture. Seemingly nothing out of the ordinary, right? Just a regular old Internet cat.
But then…
…have you ever seen Django, one of my cats?
Yes you have, all I ever do lately is post pictures of him on all social media. But have you ever noticed how…
Are you seeing it?!
Do I need to draw you a crude diagram with awfully-clashing colors?
“No, we get it, please, God, don’t draw any diagrams please no don’t do it just don’t I beg you please…” ?!
Okay, here we go!
Also: Same number of eyes, ears, and—presumably—tails.
I believe I’ve made my point: This is the same cat!
Don’t argue, you know I’m right.
I have just accidentally stumbled into a picture of my own cat on the Internet. A picture neither I nor my wife have taken. How do we explain this?
Well, I have a few theories::
Someone has photoshopped Django into a random picture and tweaked it slightly to cover their tracks.
Django has a modeling career that I’m unaware of.
Django has an evil twin. Or…twist…Django is the evil twin.
I have finally lost what little sanity I had and am seeing things that aren’t there.
Ooooor…maybe this is a pretty common pattern among house cats, and if we look closely, it will become apparent that—while similar—Django and the picture cat do have easily distinguishable individual traits.
Naaaah…I bet it’s the “twin” thing. Definitely the “twin” thing.
I get lazy sometimes. Okay, often. All the time, actually.
That’s why all you get today is a lazy cat post, which isn’t at all like this post about a literal cat post.
What’s a lazy cat post? It’s a post where I let cute cat pictures do all the talking for me. The Internet has been using this same trick since its inception, so why reinvent the wheel? Right?
If you haven’t, there’s a good chance you’re not a cat. If you have, then you know how Django felt around one week ago.
Our cats, seeing as they’re cats, still haven’t grasped such concepts as “don’t scratch that”, “don’t play with that” and “don’t go there”. Anything with a “don’t” in it, basically.
This also applies to their repeated attempts at following us onto the balcony. Ever since Django and Pebbles became permanent residents in our apartment I find myself spending increasingly more time on the balcony. Occasionally I’m there to clean out their cat litter, but mostly I’m there to sob uncontrollably over the fact that it’s the only place left in the house where I can be alone and in peace.
After one of the regular cat litter cleaning sessions I was going back into the apartment and had to shoo Django away from the balcony door. What I failed to notice was that, while I was turning around with the litter box in my hands, Django ninjaed his way back to the door and placed his tail ever so carefully between the door and the wall, where the hinges are.
What happened when I closed the door cost me several years of my life and about 17 million nerve cells. Django let out a blood-curdling noise that is best described as “ten baby seals being bludgeoned to death by a shrieking opera singer”.
Here’s a picture of Pebbles looking cute to take your mind off that mental image
I frantically scrambled to open the door again. Django bolted into another room where he proceeded to hide behind the couch and send evil stares my way. Thankfully his tail was intact and he quickly recovered from the shock. We’re back to being friends, although I can’t rule out that he’s plotting to murder me in my sleep one day.
The next day we took both kittens to the vet to get sterilised and neutered, which is a mandatory requirement of the shelter where we got them. So, in addition to pinching Django’s tail in the door I am indirectly responsible for him losing his testicles. I really should start sleeping with both eyes open.
Both surgeries went fine. In the evening we were treated to a few solid hours of Django and Pebbles wobbling around the house and unsuccessfully attempting to jump onto furniture while still recovering from anaesthesia. They even attempted such extreme feats as eating in this semi-drugged state…with predictable results:
Nom-nom time AND nap time at once. Win-win!
Other than that they’re just kittens being kittens. Their play time is usually around 5AM, which you will notice is when the rest of us tend to sleep. How two little kittens manage to generate the noise-equivalent of a rampaging elephant herd will forever remain a mystery. A loud, sleep-shattering mystery.
To wrap up, here are Django and Pebbles in a rare moment of calm and tranquility (warning, the video you’re about to watch has an unusually high adorableness factor):
We’ve now had Django and Pebbles at home for almost two weeks. They’re everything you’d expect kittens to be: cute, cuddly, playful, too-curious-for-own-good. The lot.
However, I’ve been noticing some patterns in their behaviour. Patterns that hint at things not being quite right with these little cats. Yes, I’m afraid our two kittens are a bit…confused. I was going to say “stupid”, but I hear that cats can steal your breath, so I won’t be taking any risks.
Prior to their arrival we have purchased a bucket-load of different toys and other cat items. Some of these are used as prescribed, but the vast majority aren’t. It appears that Django and Pebbles are struggling to figure out the purpose for most of their stuff. Or maybe they’re just messing with our heads. It’s probably the latter.
What’s that? You want examples and you want them right now? Why yes, imaginary voice in my head, I can indeed provide you with the examples you seek.
We’ve built two little tents for Django and Pebbles to sleep in. We found two pillows that fit neatly inside the tents. We placed these tents in comfortable, out of the way locations, so that kittens could sleep in privacy. Here’s how these tents looked to begin with:
Did any sleep occur inside these tents? None. Instead they’ve been used for everything from ambush spots to hide-and-seek locations. At some stage a tent played the role of an advanced roller coaster – Django sat inside as it was being rolled down a small flight of stairs by Pebbles.
If you stay very very quiet, they can’t see you.
After a few days one of the tents was showing signs of wear-and-tear and had to be patched up by generous application of duct tape. This proved entirely pointless. This is how the “tent” looked earlier today:
Surrender now, humans! Repairs are futile!
Katka has also been lovingly growing some special cat grass for the kittens. She checked up on its growth daily, eagerly awaiting the day it could finally be given to the cats. The day finally arrived and Katka proudly placed the grass in front of Django. Django interpreted the grass’ demeanour as threatening and proceeded to defend himself. With fists. Or, more accurately, paws. Fawsts? Nevermind, here:
We also have a so-called “Scratching Wave”. Whoever manufactured this thing naively assumed that it would be used for scratching, as the laughably incorrect product shot demonstrates:
That cat is either glued in place or is made of papier-mâché.
I can confidently announce that neither Django nor Pebbles have scratched any parts of this product at any point time. They’ve already used the tent for that purpose. They do love sleeping on and under the “Scratching Wave”, though, so there’s that.
In short, our cats insist on using things for anything other than their intended purposes. Occasionally this works to our advantage, like when we had to weigh Django a few days ago. We figured we could use our kitchen scale to do so, if only we could somehow get him to stay inside a bowl while we placed it on the scale. We brought Django over to the bowl and carefully lowered him inside, ready to grab him should he try to escape. Apparently the bowl offered unprecedented comfort, because Django stayed inside of it for the next half hour:
It’s a vary naice. I like! High fiiiiive!
I don’t think I’ll ever understand these cats, but as long as they don’t start building sand castles out of their kitty litter we’ll be just fine.
I’ve just realised that this post inadvertently turned into Django tribute, with very little mention of Pebbles and absolutely no photos of her. Here’s one to compensate (with a bonus Django appearance):
It’s official: we’re getting cats. Plural. Two. Two cats. We’ll have two cats in the house soon. OK, I think I made it clear enough.
We’ve entertained this idea for a while now. Maybe a year or so. The timing was just never quite right. Considering our then-upcoming trip to Australia we didn’t want to leave young kittens with someone else for five whole weeks.
Frankly, we weren’t supposed to be getting kittens until after the wedding later this year, but I guess fate has a funny way of being used as a clichéd explanation for spontaneous decisions, whenever people feel there’s “a sign”. What a mess of a sentence, but I’ll be damned if I go back to edit it.
A friend of ours works at a cat shelter. It just so happens that she’s currently fostering four kittens and their mother, until the kittens are old enough to be adopted. Two of them have already been spoken for, leaving two “up for grabs”. Do you see where this is going? Good.
So let me cut right to the chase.
Meet the lady, Pebbles:
Miiiallo
And the dude, Django:
‘Sup, yo!
Do you know what this means? Apart from the obvious answer that “we’ll have cats at home”.
It means that I’m about to turn into “that type of blogger”. The one with occasional photo updates and wacky cat stories. Maybe even Youtube videos. That’ll be something new, right? They don’t have any cats on Youtube, do they?
Until we have a baby, that is. Then I’ll turn into the daddy blogger writing about poop and diapers. There’s so much to look forward to!
We don’t actually get the cats until late May. They have to stay with their mother until they’re at least 12 weeks old. However, we intend to visit them on a weekly basis to monitor their progress and gather embarrassing pictures for posterity.
While you wait for the wacky cat stories, may I suggest you check out a wacky “Kat” story about my girlfriend that I just posted on bytestories.com. Why should I be the only one being made fun of in my “memory lane” series?
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How about all of you? What are your views on cats, dogs and diaper stories? Are you a dog person or a cat person? Do you believe there’s such a thing as a “dog” or “cat” person, or are you, like me, simply an “animal” person? Are animals people? Was this way too many questions?
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