Spidercat

We are blessed with many a cat toy in our household. This includes 2 huge pieces of our own furniture that mum dubs the ‘cat trees’. These are great for both climbing on, and clawing. The idea being, that if we sharpen our claws on the cat trees we don’t sharpen them on the couch.

This generally remains true in our household, as there is nothing quite like the feeling of stretching out and grabbing hold of that carpeted column and letting rip. However, sometimes clawing furniture, whether mum’s or our own, isn’t for the purpose of keeping claws sharp and trim but purely for attention seeking. In these circumstances I find the couch is a much more worthy object as there is always a reaction.

When clawing the couch, one must wait until mum is in direct eye contact and then slowly engage the claws, so the sound of claw on cloth literally ‘pops’. Sometimes, when in a play frenzy, Sylvie or myself scoot along the floor pulling ourselves along the bottom of the couch with our claws, which also obtains the desired attention. More often than not, I just apply the slow claw release, which emphasizes the popping sound (and a curt yell or clap from mum to stop).

This morning, however, I applied a new technique: the Spidercat. I did a circuit loop running around the lounge at high speed, and ended up on the couch for some claw popping. However, instead of claw popping from ground level, I managed to gain enough momentum to suspend myself midway on the couch, looking like I was defying gravity. When mum went to tell me off, she couldn’t stop laughing. Spidercat was a winner.

Prof. Griff

Figure 1: Diagram of Prof. Griff applying the Spidercat technique to claw popping.

Layering the Love

It is important, and I can’t stress this point enough, that your human mum and dad have constant reminders about you, even when they are not home, or you are sleeping in some private hidey-hole.

I find one of the best ways to accomplish this is to sleep on clean laundry, or all manner of clothing if you are lucky like me and have messy parents who leave items strewn around the room.

This is a situation where mum just can’t win, no matter what colour she wears. I’m a caramel colour so my fur shows up on anything dark, while Kinky’s black coat covers any light coloured item like magnetic dust.

Sylvie wins, hands (or paws) down, though. She’s silver, with each blade of fur white at the base and black at the tip, so no matter the outfit she leaves a fine, furry layering of fuzz that is impossible to remove.

You will find, with persistence and perseverance, that the fur will eventually coat the washing machine, so even ‘clean’ items that come out from a deep spin cycle already have fur inbedded in them, before we even start the laundry basket snoozathon.

This really reiterates the point to the human folk: What’s theirs, is mine. And, all things look better covered in fur. (The loose, dissociated kind, not the animal pelt kind).

Prof. Griff

Figure one: Prof. Griff demonstrates the art of rolling - to evenly distribute fur along the garment or blanket.

Figure two: Prof. Griff takes part in a clean laundry snoozathon, so items have been fur-ified before they are able to be worn or used.

Figure three: Asst/Prof. Kinky shows that one doesn't have to wait for a clean laundry run to attempt to fur-ify clothes.