Gordon just needs some understanding

(Photograph by Samantha Rose)

Have you ever studied your cats behaviour and thought ‘What the hell is he/she doing that for?’  Well I have done this with all my cats and I am still doing it with Gordon to this very day.

It is as though someone, somewhere – perhaps Mother Nature who knows, has written a rule book for cats that instructs them to do the following activities that will leave their owners scratching their heads in confusion.

The after shitter-flitter

Many years ago I had a cat called Bruno who was a large black cat with an even bigger attitude to match.

Each and every time he went for a crap in his litter tray he would zoom around the living room like a mad cat.  Dilated pupils, full of energy and ready to pounce, he would run from one end of the room to the other whilst looking at us accusingly about nothing in particular.

My other cat at the time – Juniper would do something a little bit different and find a hard lump of her own turd and play ‘ball’ with it around the house and we would momentarily wonder what the noise was before finding her literally batting the crap out of her crap.

Now Gordon, well he just does the standard obligatory run around the house and make chirruping noises as he does so.

That is how we know he has taken a shit in his litter tray, when he starts to run across the living room, dining room before coming to a halt as he smacks into the dining room window and then looks embarrassed and blushes pretending that he totally meant that to happen.  It is at that point that we have to rush to the litter tray to pick up a man-sized shit and flush it away before the whole house starts to smell.

I – Will – Not – Be – Ignored

You can bet your life that if I have my laptop, iPad, phone, newspaper – anything at all on my lap, that Gordon will wake up from wherever he is sleeping, jump on my lap and use his big ginger boof-head to shove whatever is on my knee – off my knee.

It is like he has this special radar where he can just tell what I am doing and hey, it’s a perfect time to force me to give up my own time so that I can fuss him.

Gordon used to be very gentle in his approach and it started off as a gentle nudge and loud purring.  He has graduated to shoving his head under my laptop and with as much force as possible, trying to push it on the floor and has nearly succeeded as well.

‘Get that stuff off your lap, you don’t need that’ he growls and if I try and resist and keep the laptop firmly on my lap, he simply sits on it and that is that, having a large ginger cat on your computer kind of makes it hard to work if you know what I mean.

It is the same if I am reading or playing games on my mobile and the other day my husband and I decided to test the theory to see if it was me that Gordon wanted attention from or if he just hated us using appliances or simply taking away potential attention from him.

‘Give me the iPad’ my husband said the other day, ‘Let’s see what happens’.

Gordon was fast asleep on my lap as he had pushed the iPad from me earlier so there was no real reason for him to move.

Handing the iPad to my husband, he opened it up and started to play with it.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ Gordon demanded as he woke up so quickly that it was like he had been pretending to be asleep all along.

Spotting my husband clutching the iPad, Gordon jumped up and went straight over to Abdel’s knee and using his head, he shoved the iPad with a surprising amount of strength for an elderly cat and knocked it on to the sofa.

‘That will teach you’ Gordon said furiously and then quite suddenly fell asleep again.

Of course that theory had to be tested again and I took my phone and pretended to play a game on it.

‘You are determined to test my patience aren’t you’ the angry ginger cat growled and then slowly got up and went back to my lap to shove my phone out of my hand.

I was going to try reading a book to see if that would work but it was too much like hard work and went to take a sip of my orange and cinnamon herbal tea.  Did I say drink my tea?  Wear my tea more like because as quickly as he fell asleep on Abdel’s lap, he jumped up again and shoved his big fat ginger head under my cup, thus spilling half a mug of hot cinnamon/orange tea all over my pyjamas and made me smell like a ‘pudding’.

‘You naughty boy!’ I squeaked as hot liquid dripped down my chest, arms and legs.

Suddenly realising that he too had hot cinnamon and orange tea spilled over him, Gordon looked up at me as though I had personally poured it on him.

‘You my friend, are going to pay for that’ Gordon shouted and then jumped off the sofa shaking himself and flicking droplets of tea everywhere whilst muttering something about cats not liking citrus.

It’s very rock n’ roll to smash things

That is what Gordon tells me anyway and I believe him too.  He frequently sits on top of the counter or TV cabinet looking at us with his dilated pupils or ‘naughty eyes’ as we like to call them and stares at an ornament, or wine glass, mug, pen, phone charger and each time we say the words ‘Gordon no!’ he smirks at us and replies ‘I am not doing anything for gods sake!’ in a sulky ginger voice.

Then as we get back to the TV we will hear a ‘crash’ as whatever it is he was nudging, is now on the floor and Gordon is looking at us saying ‘I lied – deal with it’.

Let’s make a pudding (on you)

Gordon likes nothing better than to curl up for a cuddle (after he has shoved whatever appliance/book/beverage off your lap).

What is wrong with that?  Well nothing really except Gordon likes to ‘make puddings’ on you and kneads, digs and grips with his nails and looks so happy about it that he actually dribbles copious amounts of saliva and purrs super loud.

We tolerate it for a while but let’s face it, it hurts so there comes a point where you have to say ‘Come on Gordon, off you get’ and then place him on blanket more suited to this type of activity.

‘Bastards, you will pay for that’ Gordon growls again and yes once again I believe him because once we have evicted him from our lap, the cup, the bowl, the pen or the ornament will get it for sure.

Open door in case of emergency!

Every night is an emergency for Gordon and he is a regular outside our bedroom door while frantically digging it and shouting ‘Help, save me, save yourselves and your families, it’s an emergency, let me in!’

He is old and frail now and not as strong as he used to be but you can still hear him scrabbling at the door to be let in and his frail elderly voice shouting.  You have to admire him though because frail though he is, he can dig that door like a champion until we give in.

And we do you know – give in; and that is always a mistake because Gordon decides that now he is in the bedroom that he doesn’t want to sleep, he wants to chew my hair, bite my hands (yes really), knock my eye drops off the bedside cabinet, scratch the bed and chew the blinds.

Eventually he gets evicted into the dining room where we can hear him knocking things off the table and shouting that everyone hates him and it is because he is ginger.

An empty food bowl (or not)

Unless Gordon’s food bowl is full to the brim, then it is empty and if it is empty then the ornaments get it, the dogs get it and we get it.  Moral of the story is never have an empty food bowl – like ever and trust me when I say that a modest amount of cat biscuit does not constitute a meal, it’s not because it is basically empty – end of discussion.

The Exorcist in the form of a cat

Cat vomiting is the kind of noise that will wake you up in an instant, that will put the fear of God himself into you, that will make you move from one end of the room to the other in a matter of seconds – faster than the speed of light even.

I am talking about cats vomiting and it is a sound that every single cat owner knows and recognizes and is enough to make us all cry and cover our heads with paper bags and shout to the heavens.

Gordon is an expert in puking, it used to be just fur ball but now he is prone to acid stomach, he has taken to Exorcist style vomiting without any warning and one time even did it over my laptop, myself and Brutus (the bastard).

‘Bloody hell, what on earth is that?’ Rocky said as he looked in horror at Gordon who had done his projectile vomit over the sofa, myself, the coffee table and the wall. I was only surprised that his head didn’t spin round 360 degrees when he did it.

It took some cleaning and lots of retching on my part as I totally do not ‘do’ vomit, I hate it although human vomit is worse than animal vomit.

This Exorcist style vomiting always seems to happen when I am with Gordon and never my husband whom I suspect does not believe me when I tell him how far a belly full of cat vomit can reach, not to mention comparing it to the Exorcist.

Husband stopped disbelieving me the other week when he told me that while he was watching a late night movie in the living room (I was in bed early that night) and Gordon did a champion Exorcist vomit that hit the sofa, covered the (unread) newspaper, the coffee table, the patio doors and the cupboards.

‘It was awful, you were not joking when you said it was projectile’ Abdel said to me looking very pale as he described it.  ‘You were in bed and asleep, how come you didn’t hear it?’ He asked me as he looked positively traumatized by the memory and why did I not wake up to hear it? (or clean it).

Thyroid, liver, kidney and full health profiles/blood tests have been carried out on Gordon and it has been decided that he as he chews my bras, socks, my hair, towels, both dogs and whatever bits of crap get caught on our shoes – that he is in fact a cat with a liking and tendency to vomit.

I actually don’t know where Gordon finds half of the stuff that he vomits up, he sicked up some grass yesterday and he is an indoor cat and he shat out a cotton bud on one occasion but I still can’t talk about that without wincing.

The Christmas tree incident

One particular Christmas in London; Gordon ate some tinsel off the Christmas tree, I remember hearing him crunching on something and finding several decorations on the floor and seeing that about six inches of fine tinsel had disappeared and Gordon was licking his lips.

‘I think Gordon has eaten some tinsel’ I said to my husband.

‘Really? He wouldn’t do that surely?’ Abdel laughed and totally disregarded me for which he was made to eat his words much later on.

I went with my gut feeling and as an ex veterinary nurse, knew that we would have to wait for it to pass naturally through the bowels and hopefully not cause an obstruction.

I can’t remember how long we waited, I think it may have been the day after but I do know that we checked Gordon’s litter tray constantly waiting for this bloody tinsel to make an appearance.  We had to sit patiently by his litter tray and each time he would get in his tray, it was like waiting for a baby to be born and that poor cat looked ever so embarrassed as I got down on all fours watching his arse as he tried to go to the toilet.

‘Some things are private don’t you know’ Gordon growled at me.

‘Are you sure he has eaten tinsel?’ Abdel demanded as I made him watch it with me.

‘Quite sure, I am tempted to put money on it’ I said firmly and then took my position near Gordon’s ginger bum awaiting the birth of the tinsel.

‘Oh my god, I think it’s coming!’ Gordon yelled dramatically and then demanded some gas and air like some pregnant ladies do when they give birth.

‘Hold my paw’ Gordon said to our whippet Rema’ (Rema was my whippet that I owned at the time and was Gordon’s partner in crime.

‘Piss off’ Rema snapped, ‘It’s your own fault!’

‘I think it is coming judging by what I can see here’ I nodded to Abdel as Gordon’s anus started to wink at me.

‘This is silly, a complete waste of time, he has not eaten the tinsel’ Abdel said impatiently.

‘Wanna bet?’ I grinned, ‘Look at that!’

Sure enough, the silver tinsel was poking out of Gordon’s bum but not quite enough to get a grip and pull on it.  I was there armed with my rubber gloves at the ready and as soon as I could get a good piece of it, I grabbed it and gently started to pull.

Jesus Christ it was horrendous, with each tug of tinsel came a hard lump of cat turd stuck to it, it was like tinsel-turd Christmas baubles and had it not been so disgusting, it would have been funny.

‘I am having a baby!’ Gordon yelled loudly to my whippet that I had at the time.

‘Ouch!’ Rema winced and then carried on looking at Gordon’s anus giving birth to his own tinsel turd.

‘Oh my god’ Abdel said in awe/disgust/shock/horror – you can choose the emotion.

‘I told you so!’ I said smugly in response.

‘Oh my god’ Abdel repeated as I pulled the last of the tinsel out of Gordon’s arse.

‘Phew, thanks for that Mum, feel so much better now, won’t be doing that again’ Gordon grinned with relief as I placed the tinsel-turd into a plastic bag and sealed it for the rubbish bin.

‘I think we should take the Christmas decorations down as we can’t risk this happening again, what do you think?’ I asked Abdel who was still sitting there with his mouth open.

‘Oh my god’ he replied.

And to this very day when I mention that shimmering glittery turd coming out of Gordon’s arse, that is still his response ‘Oh my god’.

I will say though, that I felt quite proud getting that tinsel out of him in one piece and almost felt like calling the news or something that my cat did shiny shit but I didn’t though, just in case they didn’t believe me.

The End..

The Naughty Corner…

What kind of naughty things has your cat been up to? I would love to read your stories so please feel free to post them below, just so Gordon doesn’t feel alone in the naughty corner.

Samantha Rose (C) Copyright October 2015