Have You Seen A Cat Play Fetch?

It's been a while since I did a cat update post, I think. And if it hasn't, well, I don't care because I finally caught this little cutie on film playing fetch! There are two things Sam loves: being scared by absolutely everything and fetching up things.

See that hair tie in that picture? He most likely stole it from my hair stuff drawer and then cried until I played fetch with him. He'll play fetch with just about anything. My hair ties, tiny pieces of plastic he digs out of the trash, cat toys, and his newest favorite is the Nerf darts from Dan's birthday dart gun.

[Sidenote: I'm still trying to get the hang of taking video, so please excuse the fact that the camera rotation is all sorts of crap.]

And just so I'm not playing favorites, here's Rusty playing with the cat teaser.

Yes, I am a crazy cat lady and don't care at all. They're too cute for me to care.

State of the Baby Boys

Rather than sit on the top of the couch like a normal cat, with the direction of the couch, this is how Rusty sits.

It's adorable, but this is why we can't have nice things.

Also, with my new camera, I finally have some good pictures of Sam. He's no longer a twitchy blur. Photographic evidence of his cuteness.

Yep, officially a crazy cat lady.

Cats with Hair

Sometimes, I wonder what my cats would look like with long hair. I don't know why. I just do. In spite of the fact that they're boys, I think my cats could pull off some flowing tresses.

Well, I finally got bored enough to actually see how it would look. No, I didn't purchase tiny wigs. I just put some of their pictures in one of those online hair stylers.

I always pictured Sam with a little bob, kind of like Uma Thurman in "Pulp Fiction". The closest I could come was Katie Holmes.

And for Rusty, I really pictured him some fabulously feathered 70's layers, like Donna from "That 70's show". I settled for some Julia Roberts long layers.

Am I the only one whose brain thinks about things like this?

This is why I love my family

Because I can ask them to take ridiculous pictures with me. For basically no reason.

It really looks like Kingsley is doing his impression of "The Most Interesting Man in the World".

I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I shouldn't because I'm a cat. Stay thirsty, my friends.

If I had any sort of prize, I would turn this into a caption contest. But if you leave a good one, I would probably be so happy that I would go out a buy a prize and send it to you. I'm just sayin'...

Happy Election Day!

Image Source

After months and months of being innondated with propaganda, today it ends! Yay!

Also, today is the first time I will actually voting at the polls, rather than with a mail-in ballot. Due to some confusion over my address, I'm up bright and early with my notes on how I want to vote.

I'm actually kind of excited to vote at the polls. It's the same polling place my parents voted at when I was a kid. I would play on the playground out front while they voted and now it's come full circle. I feel so grown-up!

Halloween 2012: Part 1

Again, I'm not a crazy cat lady. I swear! However, my sister did have all these kitten costumes sitting around from when her cat was a kitten (she is a crazy cat lady), so I had to try them out on my cats.

These photos really demonstrate the personality difference between Rusty and Sam. Rusty is so chill that he let me dress him up...

...with a bow tie!

...as a flower!

...as a submarine!

He was just so cute! I can't say he was the biggest fan of the costumes, but I think they just confused him more than anything.

Sam thought the costumes were the greatest thing ever, as long as they were on Rusty. He just followed him around, trying to figure out what had happened to Rusty. But the second, and I mean the split second, I put the little bow tie on Sam, he freaked out and had a kitty panic attack. So, there's no pictures of Fancy Sam. Sad.

And Things Got Bloody Remarkably Quickly

This whole story takes place over the span of about a week. It went from "neat anecdote" to "Oh my god! What is Happening?!? How do I stop this?! There's so much blood!" in two twists I did not see coming.

Friday: Dan was working in the garage on his off Friday (lucky duck gets every other Friday off). While he was working, I'm not sure if he heard a rustle or just looked up and saw movement, but he spotted this:

Can you see it? If you can't, try this one:

It was a bobcat.

Bobcats in general aren't a big deal in Arizona. They are a danger if you've got small dogs or outside cats, but for us, it's kind of just a rarity to spot one. It's an "Aww, cool! A bobcat!" moment and we got on with our lives. 

Tuesday: I was at home alone, after getting off of work. I was getting ready to work out before Dan got home and some movement caught my eye.

This bobcat was definitely comfortable in our backyard. I assumed it was the same one that Dan saw and now we knew this bobcat was determined to stick around for a while. Like I said before, no biggie. The cats didn't even notice.

Tuesday, thirty minutes later: In the middle of an intense Jillian Michaels DVD in the living room, movement caught my eye again, but this time, I wasn't as calm. This time there was A LOT of swearing for two very important reasons.

Reason #1:

This bobcat had kittens. And as cute as a pair of bobcat kittens were, it means you do not want to mess with mama. With just one bobcat, you can pretty easily scare it off, but with a mama and kittens, there's now the possibility that she will feel the need to defend them and that could get ugly fast.

Reason #2:

They were heading for Turtle!

I panicked. I didn't know if desert tortoises are prey for bobcats (they are) and I didn't know if he was out of his house (he wasn't) because it's not like he can outrun them. My split-second reaction was to just bang on the windows to try to scare them off, but that failed to work. I armed myself with my bat-day baseball bat and was about to head outside to try to scare them off a little more forcefully, if necessary.

Luckily, that was when Dan arrived. Between the two of us, we were able to scare them over the wall, but not before noticing that there were actually three kittens, not two.

Thursday: this was the bad day. When I walked through the door to the house from the garage, the cats were there to greet me at the door. Usually they don't, but I just thought they were being cute or maybe they knocked something over and were playing innocent.

As I walked into the kitchen, I quickly saw what was wrong.

The family had decided to take up residency on our back porch. It took me a couple of days to notice, but if you look at the right-hand side, you can see paw prints where they must have scared the bejesus out of my kitties. I won't post some of the pictures I took, but they also decided to have a messy dinner there. We also noticed later that they had used our jacuzzi as a litter box. That's just rude.

And because they were more comfortable now, it was harder to scare them off. They hung around the backyard and near the guest room long enough for me to get some great pics.

My husband was a champ and cleaned up the mess once they left.

Fortunately, Turtle is safe and they have only been back once since this incident. One of my realest fears at this point is that I'll walk around a corner, not paying attention, and get between her and her kittens. That would be bad.

The easiest solution we've heard off is to pee around the backyard to mark our territory. I'm surprised that Dan is as reluctant as he is to pee around our backyard. He has my permission, so just do it! Otherwise, I will and odds are I'll end up getting cactus needles somewhere you never, ever want cactus needles.

My Ideal Kitty

I know this one's an oldie, but a goodie.

This kitty is everything I want in a future kitty: he makes weird noises, doesn't freak out because he's got a collar on, eats grass, and is just plain insane.

Then again, I think any kitty I have will eventually go insane.

All the Best Mommas are Lionesses

If you haven't heard this story yet, be ready to get emotional. A photographer was taking pictures near a vertical cliff when he spotted a lion cub that had fallen below the lip of the cliff. Its little legs couldn't get it back up the cliff face so his mommy came to the rescue.

Images Courtesy of Daily Mail

And she even cleaned him up when she got him back. I bet my mom would do that too! But she's a rock climber so it'd probably be easier to get down to me. Climbing back up with me in her mouth may prove challenging though...