Not the Cat from Hell
Woman in the Middle | June 29, 2014Someone in the house (no one will fess up) found the TV show “Cat from Hell” on Netflix and added it to our queue. Eldest Daughter and I love that show! Cat, cats and more cats! It sure makes us appreciate our cat Blackie a lot more. He is such a good cat, and the only problems we have are related to things like tummy troubles and hair balls, typical cat things and certainly not Blackie’s fault.
One of the things that Jackson Galaxy, the cat behaviorist on the show, usually recommends to tame the problem kitty is more play time to help burn off energy. After, oh, 20 episodes or so I was feeling terribly guilty that we don’t play with Blackie very much. That being said, Blackie sure doesn’t act like he has any excess energy to burn, as can be seen by the following photos.
The other night I was giving him his bedtime snack. Right there on the shelf was one of those cat toys that consists of a stick with a long string and some little something on the end to delight the cat. I picked it up and flicked it around on the floor. Blackie gave it a look. After all, it was moving around at his feet, how could he miss it? He showed no intention of grabbing or pouncing on it at all. I stepped up my efforts, and really started swirling that thing around in front of Blackie. I made the little fishes on the end of the string dance! Blackie looked at the toy and then looked at his bowl, and then the toy again. It was obvious that he was putting two and two together – the movement of this toy was somehow connected to why food was not appearing in his bowl. He wanted the food and the toy just needed to go away.
I remembered why we don’t play with Blackie a whole bunch. Blackie has never been a big one for play. If we are lucky we can get him to play for, oh, 60 seconds or so then he loses interest. Blackie would rather sit by a window and watch the world go by. He loves an open window where he can feel the breeze in his face. He loves to snooze the day away in a variety of favorite spots. The stick with the string and the toy on the end? Not so interesting.
Meanwhile, I have gone back to not feeling guilty. I don’t play with Blackie because he doesn’t want to. But I do provide food and medicine and chin scratches and lovely places to sleep and watch the world go by, just what my cat from heaven, not hell, needs and wants.
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