Bird watching

After reading Animals Make Us Human, I realized we need to do more to get our cats moving and using their brains. Otherwise, much as mischievous toddlers, they tend to find their own destructive entertainment.

We didn’t have any bored cats in Kansas City but our house was also three times bigger with three floors all accessible by the cats. Plus that house had a lot of windows looking out into the yard. We had a real yard with grass and trees so the cats saw plenty of birds and squirrels and even the dog. Here we have one floor that’s 1/3 the size, a stairway that leads to a blank door, and only three windows in the entire place. I’m sure they’ve been visually deprived. Outdoor living is not an option for me—I had a cat get quite sick from being an outdoor kitty (he picked up something from another cat) and he ultimately died. I’m just not willing to take the risk. Plus we live in urban Boston and if the rats didn’t get them, the cars or dogs would.

So I looked online and found a couple of websites with suggestions for providing a more stimulating environment for cats. We have always done a few of the suggestions (toys, the cat tree, the water fountain for example), but some were new to us and were inexpensive enough that I gave them a try.

The ping pong balls have been a dud so far. Neither of the boys were interested in them in the bathtub and they’ve only half-heartedly batted at them elsewhere. Jeanne suggested putting the balls in our catnip container (thank you again, V, for the catnip) so they are in their dry marinade. We'll try again in a few weeks.

I’m considering making a forage box although I’m not excited about having bits of kibble underfoot.

We keep their toys in a basket and had been putting the truly treasured ones away at night. We still put away the noisy ones (those that have bells or make rattling noises), but we leave the Velcro strips (Wally's absolute favorite toy in the universe) and the brightly colored fur mice (Eddie's favorite but they must be bright—he prefers orange or hot pink) out at night. The basket doesn't have a lid and they will go get their toys out, sometimes by hopping right in the basket to find exactly what toy is required. The basket isn't all that big, so as you might imagine, it's full of cat at that point.

And I got a birdfeeder and a stand on Friday and put it up. The birds didn’t notice it until Saturday and it was a hit with the birds and the cats. Unfortunately because it was on a stand, it got knocked off sometime Saturday night and broke into unfixable pieces. So we got a second feeder and hung it under the deck above us. It’s working beautifully except that it leaks massive amounts of seed onto the patio below. In turn that’s attracted squirrels which are not my favorite animal and I know the rats will be there too. So we need to figure out how to stop the seeds from just spilling out like crazy.

This video is condensed down from about five solid minutes of filming where the boys did exactly what you see here. They are enthralled by the birds and run from the window to the back door (all glass) to carefully watch the birds. I really love it when they engage their butt wiggles.

The new water dish

A few weeks ago, Chloe had some accidents outside the box, which is completely out of character for her. We took her to the vet who found nothing wrong with her kidneys or overall health. But the vet couldn't test her urine because he couldn't get a urine sample from her. He said that she might have started going outside the box because she wasn't drinking enough water, which could make her urine super concentrated which in turn would be painful to pass. So he suggested we look at ways to increase her water intake.

All three cats are on the fussier side regarding water and will drink from the water bowl when I first fill it and put it down. After that, they prefer the water left over in the tub from our showers. In the interest of better cat hydration and accident avoidance, we ordered a Cat It water fountain which got here last night. The slight hum you can hear in the video is the water fountain; it's very quiet and the water doesn't make any noise. We put it in the bathroom since the floor in there is slate tile. The boys can splash away and not ruin anything.