And seeing a how, based on two decades of observations about how Sharon* is affected by weddings, my guess its that I will more make our to my trusty laptop tonight.
So have some pictures of our kitten, Destructo, age 8 months, I a picnic basket.
Why he went in, I have no idea, but he did NOT want to leave.
* Love of my life, light of the cosmos, SHE WHO MUST BE
OBEYED, my wife.
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How I constructed the cat-trapinator, the video
How the motion detector works
My readers may recall my travails with RP the Cat.
Well, I have finally defeated RP, an animal with a brain the size of a walnut, using my allegedly superior brain.
In my first encounter with RP, as a kitten about 2 years ago, when we caught her in a “have a heart” type trap.
We brought her in, and when she was released, she ran around the basement at relativistic speeds, and then she beat me up, and ran up into the basement suspended ceiling.
She found her way out of the house the next day, so I chalked it up to experience, until, a couple of months later, when we got our new cats, she started venturing back to eat their food.
Sharon* told me that the cat was going in and out of the house, but I was dubious until until I caught it on time-lapse video.
Well, the other day, I got a frantic call from my wife: RP had lured Destructo into the ceiling, and she and kids had to rescue him.
So, I decided to get serious about catching the cat.
First, I used a bunch of wire ties to attach the have a heart trap to the travel cage we used to transport Lavi and Tudza when we moved from Texas to Maryland.
Then I put food, water, and a catnip sock in the cage, and we took to locking our cats, Meatball/Mousetrap and Destructo in the bathroom in the evening.
Unfortunately, this did not work. RP was too smart: She stepped over the trigger plate of the trap.
So, I had to figure a way to detect her, and trigger the trap.
First, I bought a remote controlled electrical outlet for twelve bucks at Home Depot.
I plugged my Dremel tool into this outlet, and then tied the business end to the trap plate, so when the power goes on, it triggers the trap.
Then borrowed my Son’s phone, and installed Motion Detector Pro, which uses the camera as a motion sensor, turned off sleep mode for the phone (It’s under development in settings), and put it on top of the cage.
I then tested the motion detector using our cats, and it worked.
Finally, I got myself a Ustream account, put the Ustream app on my phone, and used my laptop’s webcam to stream an image of the cage to the web.
Well, at about 2:00 am Saturday morning, I got the text, and I looked at the video, and the cat was there, so I hit the remote, and headed downstairs.
Much to my surprise, I had caught the cat, so I removed the trap from the cage, put a tray with some kitty litter inside, and went to bed.
Now we have to decide what we do after she gets spayed (she has already had 2-3 litters).
In the short term, we are trying to see if she is amenable to being adopted.
If not, we find her some place far away where she can live as a barn cat.
So, by using more computing power than was available to the Apollo program, I finally managed to catch the cat.
And there was much rejoicing.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Though my cats are relieved to be out of the bathroom
Our cats are locked in the bathroom with food, water, and a cat box
The trap is armed, and baited with wet food, dry food, and catnip.
I still think that RP is going to find a way to embarrass me.
Wish me luck.
Took me the whole evening to get the apparatus together, and since my prime blogging spot is near the trap, I am signing off.
The regular reader(s) of my blog may be aware of my travails with RP the feral cat.*
The short version is that we caught her in a Have-a-Heart trap, and brought her in.
When I let her out she freaked, and ran into the basement ceiling, but not before biting me and giving me puncture wounds through oven mitts.
The next day, I saw her outside, so she figured a way out of the house.
When we got our cats, RP continued to come into the house somehow, and eat our cats food. (Video here) We still haven’t figured out how she does that.
A few weeks after that, RP fell out of the ceiling, and I caught her, and she peed on me and clawed the hell out of me. (I did not blog on that particular affront to my already limited dignity)
I even made a cat shelter outside in the vain hope of giving her an alternative to going into the house. No such luck.
Well, this morning, I got a call from Sharon†. RP was in the house, and had lured our kitten Destructo into the ceiling.
The kitten had gotten stuck (or maybe just confused)and was panicking, and my wife and kids had to reach into the suspended ceiling to get him out.
While this was going on, RP was watching with what my wife describe as smug amusement.
It’s on. It is totally on.
I’m halfway through cobbling together a trap made from the cat travel cage and the aforementioned Have-a-Heart trap, and if it works, we will either try to tame the cat, or take to a shelter and get it the f%$# out of our neighborhood ……… and my house.
I do realize that I have been channeling Robert Redford playing John Dortmunder in the 1972 film, The Hot Rock
Dortmunder: Not me. I’ve got no choice. I’m not superstitious. And I don’t believe in jinxes, but that stone’s jinxed me and it won’t let go. I’ve been damned near bitten, shot at, peed on and robbed. And worse is gonna happen before it’s done. So I’m takin’ my stand. I’m going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me.
Considering my record with this cat, I can only conclude that the chances are remarkably good that it will get me.
There is a part of me that fears I am so going to get killed or maimed by this f%$#ing cat.
*RP stands for Rodentia Phage, or Ravage and Pillage, or maybe just RP. I don’t know for sure, but it is a cat, so it does not come when it is called.
†Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Destructo is getting old enough that it’s time for him to be neutered.
He’s already sprayed once.
So,tomorrow morning, he goes under the knife.
At midnight, he goes into the cat run, because he is supposed to have nothing to eat after that.
Kaw-oot!
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No expressions of murderous intent ……… Yet
As a part on our wars against our cats flea infestation, we gave our cats a bath.
They were clearly unamused, but remarkably cooperative.
I needed neither band-aids nor styptic pencils.
Last night, I noticed some fleas on Destructo, so tonight, I got some flea and tick spray from the pet store, and sprayed both cats.
Meatball seemed to be relatively flea free, but when I wiped Destructo’s face with a cloth moistened with the spray (as the instructions say), about a dozen fleas crawled out of the fur on his face.
Shudder
Remember when I asked for help naming our new kitten?
Well, it turns out that I did not need to.
Yesterday, I discovered his name.
We were packing to go to an SCA (medieval recreation) event, and the kitten was sitting on our comfy chair.
My daughter Natalie put down a quiver of arrows on the chair, and the kitten promptly began chew on the leather case.
I scowled at the cat, and barked the following instruction to my Daughter:
Natalie, get the arrows away from DESTRUCTO!
There was a brief stunned paused from the assembled family, and then we all looked at each other, and we realized that we had named the cat.
There was much rejoicing.
OK, you remember the kitten, right?
He’s soooooooooo kawuuuuuutttteeee!!!
Well a couple of days after we got him, he chewed through the micro-usb cable my daughter uses to charge her phone.
Well, today, it was her ear phones.
Somehow I do not think that the warranty applies.
Maybe I should name him Nyarlathotep.
Unspeakably evil, but he can appear attractive when it suits him.
Kitteh playing games
Kitteh finds this interesting
Kitteh in box
Another Paparazzi? I vant to be left alone.
Ready to take a nap anywhere
Meatball is unamused by all of this fuss
Yes, crowd sourcing. As my son said, “Crowd sourcing is sooooo 2013!”
In any case, there have been two suggestions made from family members. Sharon*, has taken to calling him (yes, he is a Tom, at least until he is old enough to get neutered) Annoying Kitten, and then started using the initials AK, which I then suggested adding -47 to, in homage of Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov’s most famous contribution to the world of military arms, so she has taken to calling said cat, “AK-47”.
I have two problems with this: First, it does not suit the cat. Cats are less assault rifles than they are stilettos. Second it seems that naming a pet after a weapon has a potential for accidental weapons discharge.†
Natalie, on the other hand, has suggested, “Mr. Snugglypuff,” because ……… well because she is a 15 year old girl who is a theater geek. (And also, because he looks so cute, but a monster lurks behind the fur, a monster with teeth, and claws, and bent sense of humor.)
I am a firm believer that one does not name a cat. Instead, one discovers the name that a cat already had, and I do not believe that either my daughter nor my wife have captured his name.
So, what do you think that we should call the cat.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†I had a discussion with a Vietnam vet, Peter Meeledy, about how a dog named “VC” nearly started a firefight among his unit, because, well, when someone shouts “VC” in 1969, you tend to shoot first, and ask questions later.
We just got a kitten.
We never found Hummus after she ran away.
This is an as yet unnamed male, about 3 months old.
The runt of the litter.
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We’ve been trying to use a “have a heart” trap to catch Hummus (shown).
Today, we caught two cats at the same time, but they were just some feral cats from the neighborhood.
One looked a bit like Hummus, but wasn’t her.
Unfortunately, in the process of checking it out, I got a bit scratched up.
Hind claws, so it smarts a lot.
A new study has revealed that cats are merciless killing machines cutting a wide swath through indigenous wildlife:
For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.
In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.
The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes.
Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and an author of the report, said the mortality figures that emerge from the new model “are shockingly high.”
I loves my cute little black hearted merciless killing machines.
They are so cute. Squeeee!!!!
No, I have the chain saw, not the cat.
As you are probably aware, one of our cats, Hummus, has gone missing.
We believe that she is hanging with the local feral cats, who use a heavily overgrown area that sits on a space between our back yard, and that of our back yard neighbor. It was created by an easement for phone lines.
So, at a minimum, I needed to clear the heavy growth on the slope leading to our fence, the unused area acts as a sort of a reservoir, hence the use of a chain saw.
It’s so much fun starting a small two stroke motor, let me tell you.
One of put cats, Hummus, has gone missing, and we are scouring the neighborhood.
If you see this cat, please contact me.
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No, I don’t mean a house of prostitution, I mean a house for cats.
You may recall that I have a bit of a cat infestation.
We have still been unable to figure out how the cat is getting in, so I’m attempting to provide an alternative place to escape the weather.
The first floor overhangs the basement by about 2 feet, so I’ve used some plywood to make a shelter, where we can set out food, and the feral cats in the neighborhood can shelter there.
Hopefully RP, the cat that has found a way to break into our house, will find this a suitable alternative, and stay the F%$# out of my house.
(on edit)
I added a picture of the little cat shelter. It’s not painted, but the cats don’t care.
Also, as to the folks that would argue that my making a cat-house would be giving into terrorists, all I can say is, “Welcome to life with cats.” It is what it means to love cats.
Light posting. It’s my 18th (!) wedding anniversary.
Here is to women with poor taste in men everywhere.
Have some pooties, specifically Hummus using an antique desk as a lair:
I know that I don’t normally blog about work, but I had a bit of an adventure today.
I was sitting at my desk, when out of my drawers (let me rephrase that, my cabinet) jumped a 5 lined skink.
People have gotten glimpses of it for the past few days, and it jumped out (down actually) onto my desk.
I yelped (OK, maybe it was a shriek) but manged to corner it, and we got it into a cup, and one of my co-workers has taken it home for his kid to keep as a pet.
Certainly got the blood moving.