Heat wave with cats.: seanan

Heat wave with cats.

My part of Northern California is currently experiencing its first really serious heat wave of 2011. I know better than to whine about this too much; by this point in the year, in a normal year, we'd be on heat wave three or four, and temperatures would be trending substantially higher than they are.

That being said, Thomas is only eleven months old, and this is actually the first really serious heat wave of his life. My house has air conditioning, but it doesn't run twenty-four hours a day, which means that it can get warm inside during the gaps. (Never dangerously warm. I am a good cat owner who does not bake her babies. But there's a big difference between "springtime cool" and "what is this shit?", especially when you've been genetically designed to go tromping around in heavy snow, mocking Jack Frost for his inability to nip at your nose.) Alice and Lilly are quietly miserable, but Thomas? Thomas is distressed.

Monday night, I got home from a hot, sweaty day at work, and promptly jumped into the shower, because sometimes, that's the only solution available to you. The Maine Coons thought so, too. In short order, I was joined in the shower by both Alice and Thomas, who splashed around in the water, got thoroughly drenched, and then took turns sitting on the plug so as to create a puddle for the other to swim in. Yes. My cats cooperatively filled the bathtub in order to have swampy funtimes.

After our shower, they squelched around the house like extras from Sigrid and the Sea Monsters until I chased them down and toweled them off. I think they're still annoyed about that. Sadly, their inability to understand "don't walk on keyboards while wet" is why they can't have a wading pool.

Heat wave with cats. It's going to be a long July.

...go 1 level up... Expand

archangelbeth

June 22 2011, 21:08:06 UTC 6 years ago

New comment

After watching a bit of that, I am struck by the fact that if you crossed Siamese and Maine Coon, you'd get cats who sang in the shower...

(Typical conversation at our house: "MEOW!" "What's wrong, Friskie?" "MEOW!" "Is Timmy in the well?" "MEROW!" "Are you Siamese?" "MYOW!")

alicetheowl

June 22 2011, 21:30:51 UTC 6 years ago

That's Herc, too. He's a black mutt-cat, with a fair helping of Siamese. Apparently, there's something my housemates have dubbed, "the Herc alarm." Every day, after I've left for work, he walks around the house, miaowing loudly into every single room to check if I'm there. Anyone who's there who isn't me get miaowed at even louder, and then stalked out on.

I was both amused and horrified to learn of this behavior.

June 23 2011, 00:50:33 UTC 6 years ago

Sounds a bit like our Dickens! Who will yell about things like his clearly Siamese mother, and who seems to wander around complaining when HIS human (our kid) is at school. Or in bed. We apologize to him that his human isn't available to lick, and he goes off to sulk.

trialia

June 23 2011, 13:44:11 UTC 6 years ago

Hee. My Gemma does exactly the same thing, only she doesn't stop meowing when a human not hers is around, she just stands in the hallway and yells her head off until she realises I'm not just outside and I won't be back soon... Or so I'm told. When I come home at night she's usually sitting in my kitchen window and we have a bit of a meowed conversation through the window before I head indoors, and she runs to the door to meet me. :)

June 23 2011, 14:16:53 UTC 6 years ago

It freaks Herc out if I talk to him through a window. Outside-world people are scary, even if they're me. We've worked through it a little, what with the windows that open out onto our nice, big, porch, and that I'll sit and read on the porch swing, but he'd much rather I were sitting where he could climb all over me.

Log in

Heat wave with cats.

Error