Teenage Cats

After dutifully awakening at 0330 hrs to get up and take the dog to the dog park by 0400 hrs this morning, I came home and went back to sleep on the sofa, surrounded by the menagerie. I awoke shortly thereafter as a cat claw dug a trough across my cheek and my kneecap was used as a launching pad for Dexter (who is fat and heavy) to ambush his sister from above. Yes, dear friends, the cats have reached the dreaded teenage years. They scream at each other, attack each other, attack me, Dexter punches Baby in the nose on a regular basis and their powers of destruction have amplified with their bigger size. They can now jump up on things they could not reach before. They have also attempted to make a coup of it and take over the house completely. Witness Dexter who I recently found sleeping smack in the middle of Baby's bed like it was a throne built especially for his highness:

Could you get all this white hair off of my bed please?

As the monsters grow, and Samantha seems to have recovered from whatever ailed her, I have finally decided it is safe to give her a new name. Showing far more decisiveness than I did with PB, I settled on Tabitha which was my mom's suggestion since she's a tabby. However, it has quickly morphed into Stabitha because it is her claw marks that have marred me for life no matter how many times I cut her nails. Dexter will remain because, well, it's perfect for him.

They will each be fitted with an embroidered collar with their names and my phone number in case they ever escape the Hotel California here and must be returned. I picked neon green for Dexter because that says it all. He stands out to say the least. His ever suffering sister and PB tolerate him patiently during his rampages of gangsterism.

At work, we call this unlawful imprisonment:

Dexter says, "I call this establishing the hierarchy."



"You see your honor? I was merely attempting to whisper sweet nothings in her ear."

Although Dexter's reign of terror extends to all of us, I have to admit the kittenzillas have fallen in love with PB and he with them. It is a love fest the likes of which I never expected. I am feeling kind of left out and I have been known to remind them that I still control all the food supplies. But it makes me happy to know when I leave for work that PB has company and a "job" to do watching over them.

Finally, almost a year later, PB suddenly has allowed me to walk him during the day light hours. It is still not a reliable occurrence but it does happen more and more frequently. We got here by my backing us up from total darkness into dusk by a few minutes each day so eventually we worked our way out of dusk into daylight. I stopped giving him high value treats on night time walks and reserved them for dusk and day light walks so those experiences were always as positive as I could make them for him and it seems to have worked.

And to my even greater shock, two nights ago at 0400 hrs when I got home from work and took him for a walk, he suddenly expressed a willingness to go a totally different route, something I have tried for months with no success. I never push him but I do continue to try it out every once in a while to test the waters. This time he went without a second thought. It was great for my mental health to see new sights after all these months and to have some variety in our neighborhood walks! We'll see if it lasts but it reassures me to know he continues to improve.

Now....if I'm really ambitious, I'll get out the clicker and try to clicker train these cats! If I don't post again, you'll know who won!