Holyrood Cats

For reasons that escape me, this blogs pictures of our cats are very popular. In a shameless attempt to get more hits, Linux & Things presents:

The Cats of Holyrood, Kansas

Taken on a recent visit. Note that slight resemblance to our cats. These however, are only about eight months old, though the black one has already had one litter.

In Case of My Untimely Demise

You've met our cats ( here, too).

The white one has it in for me. If I shuffle off of this mortal coil under suspicious circumstances, he did it.

Follow:

We've had these cats since before we moved to the current house. In the old house, they were well behaved. That is, they never got in anyone's way as we walked around the house.

The old house was a large Levitt Cape Cod with a finished second floor. To go from upstairs to downstairs you went from a bedroom or the bathroom into a small alcove, and then proceeded down the stairs. The walls of the alcove were close-in, so you could always catch yourself if you tripped at the top of the steps. A cat in front of you had just better get out of the way.

Our new house is a "raised ranch," with the stairs out in the middle of the living room. If you trip, there's little to stop you except for a banister which is possibly made out of something resembling wood. The cat immediately saw his chance.

When I head down the steps, the white one likes to follow — well, not exactly follow. He starts from behind me, true, but he then runs in front of me. Very close in front of me, so that I have to stop. The more I'm carrying, the finer he cuts it — for laundry he gets within a foot, if I'm holding a computer he gets within six inches or so.

Today, I was heading down the stairs. As I came off the landing, I instinctively stopped, one foot in midair, waiting for the cat to come by.

He wasn't there. I almost lost my balance and crashed through the front door at the bottom of the stairs.

He's trying to kill me.

Cats On Porch

Update on our cats. You've seen them before. If they seem more nervous now, it's because they share the house with:

• Two dwarf rabbits
• Two rats
• Two fish
• One Ball Python
• One mouse (formerly known as "snake lunch," upgraded to pet)

Well, Maybe a Cookie

OK, it appears that cats lack the gene to taste sugar. [Washington Post, registration required, if you don't know about bugmenot.com it's not like I didn't tell you.] That's right, house cats, lions and cheetahs (Oh! My!) all lack the gene, or, at least 247 "letters" of it.

Now, one of our cats eats roses -- I would have thought because they were sweat, but apparently not.

Pecking Order

The funny thing about these pictures is that the black cat outweights the white cat by about five pounds, yet we never see the white cat groom the black cat. When they were kittens, the white one was bigger than the black one. Plus, he's always had a more aggressive personality (translation, the black cat is scared of his own shadow). So the pecking order established in childhood remains.