Cat-sized human sitting in water

We're getting used to having the small human around. He seems quite benign, and doesn't move on his own so it's easy to stay out of reach. He has his own toys, and we usually leave him to play with them although from time to time we manage to get hold of one of them. They don't roll as well as ours, though.

But yesterday something very strange happened.

Usually we're not allowed in the bathroom. I don't know why. There are lovely toys there; my sister is particularly keen on the rolls of tissue paper just waiting to be shredded. However the humans don't seem to be very happy when this happens. Every so often they go in there and close the door. I scratch outside but they hardly ever let me in.

But yesterday evening they opened the door, and then turned on the water tap in the enormous bowl that they refer to as a 'bath'. I was rather pleased; I have often had a drink from the smaller bowl in the kitchen (the one they call a 'sink') or the similar sized one in the bathroom.  Perhaps, I thought, I was now big enough to have an even bigger bowl to drink from.

But no - they kept removing me.  Then they stopped the water, so it wasn't very deep. It would have been quite tricky to balance on the edge and drink without falling in.  We didn't know what to make of this... yet it was evidently for us, as they put some brightly coloured toys in the water, and even a yellow thing that looked almost like a bird. Surely they were cat toys! Yet how could we reach them...?

Then something even more unusual happened.

The small human was put into the water! At first he stood up, then he saw the toys and sat down. He even started playing with them.  We did not know what to make of this situation. Should we try to rescue him? Or should we join him? In the end we just watched:

The normal-sized humans splashed water over him, and he didn't like that at all. He can make quite a bit of noise when he wants to, so we went away after that.  

I think this finally confirms that humans are totally crazy. 

How do they know?

My sister and I stopped sleeping in the nice round bed when we learned that it was supposed to be a cat bed. Somewhere, deep in our consciousness, is the knowledge that we are never supposed to sleep where the humans want us to. I feel there is a logic error here, as I very much liked that bed, but when the humans moved the furniture around they tried to persuade us to sleep in it again. Bad move. Perhaps when they've forgotten about it, we'll get back there again.

Then again, it was beginning to be a bit small.

Happily, we discovered a larger and almost as comfortable place to cuddle up when we take a nap:

This is not a cat bed; the female human sits in it sometimes, and refers to it as a 'bean bag'. We know about beans, the humans eat them sometimes and are careful not to let us have any. I suppose this is a bag for beans to sit in, but we've never seen any here. The beans usually stay in the kitchen.

Talking of the kitchen, I still like drinking water out of the taps, and hunting for interesting things on the work surfaces, but the humans don't like it and keep dumping me back on the floor, saying, 'NO Alex.' Something else deep within our consciousness is that 'No' for a cat means 'Not while we're looking'. So, not wanting to cause conflict or stress, I now usually limit my counter-top explorations to times when the humans are out, or occupied elsewhere.

But I begin to think they must be more intelligent than they appear. Sometimes they know exactly where I've been..

I wonder if there's a hidden camera.....

Cat-sized human

Life is never dull in this household. Just as we were getting used to the strange green thing in the corner, draped with balls and other toys, there was more disruption. The humans kept going in and out - shutting us in the house, as usual, so we couldn't follow them - and talking in excited voices.

Then one evening they started talking about 'airport' and 'flight'. Back when I was a little kitten, they told me several times that I was not able to fly. It was disappointing, though I gradually realised they were correct. Humans can't fly either - or so I thought. That evening, they seemed to be discussing humans who were flying. Very mysterious.

Anyway, they went out in the car - leaving us behind, again - and when they returned, there were two ordinary looking humans with them, and a small one. I think it's a human, anyway, although the noises it makes don't bear much resemblance to human language. Sometimes he (they refer to this small person as 'he' so I assume they are correct) tries to stand up, holding onto the humans. But he is very wobbly and doesn't seem able to balance. Anyone would think he was a newborn kitten, except that his eyes are wide open.

I went to investigate, of course, and to see if he could talk our language, as he didn't seem too competent in human. He reached out to me:

Fortunately the regular humans were there too, and stopped the small human from grabbing me. They have been trying to teach him to stroke gently. He seems to be mostly benign:

My sister isn't so sure, however. She's not as calm as I am, and she was a bit jealous for a while. Silly girl, I've told her that the humans don't like it when she tries to climb up their legs. But she won't listen.

However, a couple of days ago the small human was asleep on our female human, so Joan decided to join them:

She's still not keen on getting too close when he's awake, though. 

New hanging toys

Our humans must have read my post about the disappearing furniture. Things are much better this week.

First they put the house back to how it was, or mostly so:

There were still gaps where the sofas used to be, but at least the carpet and curtains were back, and the chair with our favourite bed. Except that they referred to it as a 'cat bed'. It seems they like us sleeping there. Hmm.  Time to boycott it and find somewhere else to sleep:

They say this is cute too, but I think we can deal with that.

Then they went out and came back with this interesting black thing. It's cat-sized, but I was suspicious because it looks rather like the purple noisy thing that they sometimes use on the rug:

I was right. They fitted bits of it together and then pushed a switch and it made even more noise than the other one used to.

Still, it came with a very nice box:

The next day, we were just settling down for a nice nap when we heard some of our old family arriving. Should we go to talk to them, we wondered? We decided against it. They are fun to play with, but it was quite noisy and we needed a nap.

Next thing we knew, our male human had arrived home, and we were feeling quite wide awake again. So we hurried downstairs to greet him, and shortly afterwards some more humans arrived. They shut us in another room for a while and when we came out again, what should we see but two nice new sofas!

Sofas are so wonderful for scratching. We were very grateful to the humans, although they didn't seem all that happy about us rushing to sharpen our claws... they can be so unpredictable.

No sooner had we finished admiring the new furniture when we noticed something even more exciting:

Toys! So many toys, temptingly hanging on a green thing that seemed to say, 'Climb me!' I don't know why we felt that urge, but it wouldn't go away.

First of all, though, we had a most satisfying time pulling as many toys off as we could, and rolling them around the floor. We tried eating the green parts - the humans called it a tree, but it was nothing like the trees we vaguely remember from our first home. It didn't taste good at all.

They kept picking the toys up and putting them back again so we could bat them some more... but, once again, human behaviour proved fickle: they seemed to be annoyed. It makes no sense. If they didn't want us to play with these balls and other toys, why did they keep hanging them up?

Later on, when the humans were busy with something else, we had another go at this 'tree' thing. We removed as many toys as we could and pulled it down:

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing thoroughly.

Disappearing furniture

Sometimes, the humans do very strange things. Just as we are beginning to think that perhaps they are more intelligent than we had assumed, they demonstrate by their actions that they are not. Rather the reverse.

Take this week, for instance. Quite out of the blue, they got it into their heads to start moving furniture around the house. They took the nice sofa - the one that opens into a big bed - and moved it out of the study. Then they said it was too heavy, so they left it in the living room until another strong human arrived to help - and carried it up the stairs to a room which they (confusingly) refer to as 'Tim's room'. Tim doesn't even live here and the door is usually closed, so we can't sit on that sofa any more.

Then they moved one of the living room sofas into the study. Well, that was fine, although it seemed rather a strange thing to do:

But then they started moving other furniture into the dining room, and pushing what was left to the far end of the living room. They even rolled up the rug. It left a big open space:

Perhaps it was done to make a nice area for us to run around in, as it's often a bit chilly on the outside balcony. It was a kind thought, but we quite like furniture, and jumping over things, and hiding. A big open space really isn't terribly exciting, and our voices sound rather different in there now, which is a bit disturbing.

Still, we tried to be grateful, and as we found a little ball under one of the sofas, we did chase that around for a while.

The next day, they closed the door to the living room and we were trapped in the kitchen/dining room area! We didn't mind - we usually sleep in the mornings - but it was rather mysterious. There were odd noises going on, and another human talking.

When they opened the door again, we raced into the living room, wondering what nice surprise was there for us.

And I have to say, it was a bit of a disappointment, although we tried to hide it. The humans do their best, after all. There was a sort of sheet in the middle of the floor:

It smelled quite interesting, but it wasn't warm enough to sleep on, and we couldn't move it because there was a strange heavy object holding it down.

Being the intelligent cat that I am, I quickly realised that this was a new piece of furniture, one expressly designed for cats - it would be too small for a human to sit on it:

Joan looked up at me, and she noticed something strange on the ceiling, so I had a look too. I think this must be some kind of secret sign but we have not worked out what it means:

She decided to join me on the new furniture; it was a bit of a squash but we fitted so long as we kept still:

However, when we started rolling around and playing, we realised that we were in danger of falling off:

So we got down. The humans must have realised that this wasn't a very useful piece of furniture, because later on it disappeared.  

Then, the next day, another human arrived. We were shut in the dining room area again, and when we managed to get out, we discovered that the sofa in the study had gone too: 

I don't suppose we will ever understand humans. 

So now, there's only one remaining comfortable place to sleep in our usual quarters: 

I hope they will realise that it was much nicer the way it used to be.