Category: Talore

Long Weekend

I’m going to start trying to break up my posts by topic, since I realized that I had Talore flagged for nearly every post I’ve made so far.

With the long weekend I had an extra day of keeping Talore awake during the day, and she didn’t wake me up all weekend or this morning. Unfortunately she slept all day today and has been wanting to play non-stop since I got home. I even caught her stalking my feet a little while ago. Not helping is the fact that she misjudged the toy on the elastic string and caught it with her nose over the weekend, so she’s been rather reluctant to attack it. I’m worried that I’ll be woken up very early tomorrow morning.

I didn’t manage to record a video of Talore attacking anything over the weekend, largely because I spent most of the daylight hours reading and don’t have great lighting for a video at night. I did find another potential subject for videoing though. One of the new toys Talore has makes bird noises when it’s moved. When I stick it in a box Talore fights the box until she manages to get it open and get the toy out.

I finally got around to buying cat food today. I’ve been low for a while, but last night I had to tilt the bag to get a full scoop). The pets mart I went to didn’t have the medium sized bag of food like I got before, so I ended up getting a 15.5 pound bag of cat food. I’m pretty sure that will last Talore a very long time. Unfortunately, this bag is less scent-proof than the medium sized bag and Talore has already chewed a couple small holes in it despite there still being food in her bowl.

Talore was happy to see me when I got home (like always), but after she sniffed at me and got her nose shocked by static electricity she wasn’t quite so thrilled. I get the feeling that Talore isn’t going to appreciate my carpet in the winter considering I could hear static crackling from across the room when she was rolling around on the floor.

New Toy

Talore has been given a few new toys, but the one that gets the most attention is a plastic mouse with about inch-long fur everywhere except the nose. It rattles, and it’s attached to the end of about four feet of elastic cord.

If you notice, Talore has chewed through the cord twice so far trying to keep it from being pulled out of her grasp. She’s also severely dented the plastic body, but she hasn’t managed to chew the head off (or leave a mark on the head besides holes in the ears) despite working on that a good bit.

I’m pretty sure the elastic is what makes it so entertaining. When I walk around my apartment with the other end of the elastic in my pocket Talore catches it and lets go, causing it to fly at me, then she’ll try to catch it again nearly while it’s still in the air. She also responds very well to me sitting still bouncing it back and forth. I’ll try to get a video this weekend when I can get natural lighting to film by.

I’ve also been very surprised at how well Talore is able to grasp it with a single paw. I haven’t trimmed her claws recently and they’re probably the sharpest I’ve let them get since I got her. With that advantage she can snag the toy with one paw, and once she’s caught it and adjusted she can hold it (not pin it to the ground) with one paw while I stretch the elastic a good bit. She did get stuck where she couldn’t let go of it while I was pulling on it once, but generally it looks like she’s trying to hold it.

I haven’t managed to find somewhere that I can hang it where Talore will attack it on her own yet. She’s rolled around on the floor a bit with it when I wasn’t pulling the string, but if it’s hanging she doesn’t even notice it. The closest I’ve come is when I shut the bathroom door with the cord going under the door, then pulled the cord tight. Talore spent a while pulling at it, but eventually she pushed it under the door out of reach. Watching her flail around under the door with claws out was entertaining, but after a few tries at that she left.

Cat/Roomba battle?

When I got home today the roomba had failed to make it back to it’s charging dock. When I went to look for it I found a couple things conspicuously not where I left them: a pot holder was on the floor (Talore normally doesn’t jump on the counters in my kitchen) and the laundry basket was on it’s side and mostly emptied. The roomba was stopped near the laundry basket, but didn’t have anything jamming it and had no obvious reason for it to be stopped. I’m guessing that Talore was trying to walk on the side of the laundry basket to evade the roomba, tipped the basket over, and pushed the button that stops the roomba, but I have no way of knowing if that’s actually what happened. The roomba also had collected very little in general, but there was far more cat hair on one of the sweeper brushes than I’ve seen there before and I cleaned that last night.

Over the weekend I attempted to keep Talore from sleeping all day like she seems to do while I’m at work in the hopes that it would cause her to sleep later and not wake me up. I was reading Cryptonomicon most of Saturday and every time it looked like Talore had fallen asleep on my desk I would get up and either pet her till she was awake or sit back down with her in my lap where I could pet her. She got a little sleep in her window seat, but for whatever reason she didn’t sleep there for long.

She still woke me up Sunday morning, but it was by walking across me to get back to the bookshelf that she sleeps on instead of meowing at me. I tried to continue keeping her awake Sunday afternoon, but she woke me up this morning in a mood to attack stuff. I think that was because she was hungry (her food bowl was empty), so I may start filling it at night instead of in the morning.

I’ve been planning to get a water pistol to shoot at Talore when she claws at the cushions on my furniture since just telling her “No” and glaring at her doesn’t stop her for long, but I couldn’t find one at wal mart today. Over the weekend I got a cup of water to flick at her when she starts clawing things. The first thing she did was drink a noticeable amount out of the cup, then go to sleep next to it. Apparently it’s convenient for Talore to have a cup of water on my desk since over a fourth of the cup has been emptied by her. The first time I managed to hit her with water she leaped three or four feet from the couch. The next time I tried she watched me flailing trying to fling water that far from the chair I was reading in for several seconds before I managed to hit her, but she did leave the sofa.

Talore has been playing with the feathery toy by herself (tossing it in the air and dragging it around), but she didn’t at all appreciate it when she somehow managed to tie the thread the toy is attached to around her tail. She got up to leave it and it followed her, which prompted another attack on it, but the next time she tried to run from it. She also tied her back legs together with the thread some time later and didn’t appreciate me rolling her on her back so I could untie her.

I discovered I had one of those large plastic bubbles of air that they use for packing flat things in boxes, so I thought I’d see if I could get Talore to pop it. She poked a few holes in it, but it’s probably a good thing that she didn’t actually burst it because when I did so she ran and hid under my bed for a while.