Time to pick on the cat

There's no better time like the present to be distracted a little by dogs dressed up as humans. But first, a recap on this past week for what an incredibly emotionally draining one it has been for many Australians:

• Two of our own blog community are burying and celebrating the lives of their dear loved ones today and my heart goes out to them - Lori from RRSAHM and Lulu from Unperfect Life, both of whom have surely felt the bottom of their worlds fall out this week.

• The floods in Queensland are receding but not after annihilating our Sunshine State. And now, Victoria is being hammered by heavy rains and flooding has already begun to cause damage. I hope no more lives are lost. Not this week.

Victoria is under there somewhere... at least 50% of the state experiencing rains again today

• And in the middle of all this outpouring and shock, much closer to home yesterday we shouldered our personal memories as we quietly celebrated the 7th anniversary of our firstborn baby girl, Ellanor, who entered the world what feels like almost a lifetime ago. It was a strange mix of emotions.

So now, I admit it, I'm in need of a bit of a shaking off of this heaviness, just for a moment. 

Click away now if you don't want to join in, but I've got to do something drastic. It involves a story of a cat, too many dead birds, a daughter who's discovered dogs behaving like humans and me displaying my obsessive compulsive tendencies by finding her more and more vids of exactly that just so I can soak up her infectious belly laughs.

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After months of dreading coming home to find what had been left on the doorstep by our cat who, going by the condition of her prey, is some kind of crazy ave lobotomist, I decided it was high time to do something about this cat of ours. She has lost two collars, three bells and my patience for her.

I discussed with Steve whether we should just get her a massive bell, but decided that would look ridiculous. We also floated the notion that perhaps the birds in this area are just a bit slow off the mark, or perhaps simply dumb or inquisitive - maybe they think the bell means dinner, we wondered. Well... I suppose it does in a way. In a ... not alive for them in a few seconds kind of way. But it didn't help us find any answers on how to stop our cat being so darn bird-unfriendly. She needs something bigger than a big bell to stop her, I said. She needs a... a doorbell! 

Rather than call me unhelpful, Steve considered the possibility of attaching a doorbell to the cat's body, one that was wired to permanently "ding-dong", thereby alert any of the dumb slow birds to get out of her away.

Instead, though, I took MacGyver's biggest fan to the nearest pet store and together, we weighed up the options. None of the cat collars looked to have adequate... bell-ringage. We knew with this wily one we would need, like, the Notre Dame of bells. And they just don't make them like that.

However..... then we discovered this! The cat bib!

And doesn't this cat look proud  (img: catgoods.com)

Made from wetsuit fabric, supposedly your cat can groom, walk, pounce, run and generally still be the happy-go-lucky nagger to be let in/out, whinger for food when it's just eaten puddytat it always was. Just without the killing of the birds bit.

So we tried it on Tabby. And she's hated us more for it ever since. In fact, mostly she's been sitting sulking on the front doormat. Surrounded by tufts of leftovers (you know, feathers, a bit of matted plumage, some entrails, etc.), she has just huffed there. With her fetching purple cat bib to keep her company. Yeah, yeah, sucks to be her and all that. Steve is concerned she'll get beaten up by the neighbourhood cats for being a dork. Too bad, I say.

When we looked out the window a bit later, Tabitha had gone. Hooray! we said to each other. Perhaps she is going to be okay with it after all. We had both been wondering what she would be thinking of the bib and why we were being so cruel to her. I entertained the image of our vindictive little pussy cat going around the gardens with her bib hoiked around behind her neck, pretending to be a superhero and using it as a cape as she went right on hunting and catching and killing. But when I asked Steve if he'd seen any villains lately that looked suspiciously like a black cat with a score to settle, he said he hadn't.

To be honest, we half expected to see Tabby step deliberately up to the kitchen window with a knife, a fork and a dead bird and a look that said, "This is much more civilised" as she used her bib as a proper napkin.

None of that happened. Instead, this morning I got a message of another kind. A laundry floor strewn with cat vomit. So that's what she thinks of her cat bib.

And as for the dogs dressed as humans?  This is funny AND educational:






This post is dedicated to Lori today. The FYBF blog hop is currently being guest hosted by Kristin at Wanderlustlust...