You see, even my cat loves electronics. The proof is in the photo.
iPads are good for cats*. They can play that one game with the fish in the pond and never actually catch a fish. Eleven is too old to have that hurt his self esteem, right? It would only give him hours and hours of amusement.
And me too. Also, it’s a justifiable expense. How can I possibly be operating a web business without an iPad to test websites on? For instance, this one looks awesome on an iPad. Or so I think…
Ah the many justifications of life. Who will win? The battle of indulgence verses sensibility wages on…
*What do you think of the capitalization here? Does Apple have a protocol for when you start sentences with “iPod”, “iPad” or “iPhone”?? Twenty-first century problems, man. I tell you.
He popped up right when we needed him too. A little bit of cat treat on my fingers was all I needed to get him to approach at just the right moment.
All in all, it was an amazing filming experience.
So, I said to Will the other day, “Let’s hitch our wagons to this star. We’ll become cat handlers, move to LA. Get Gus an agent. It’s our destiny.” What could be wrong with this idea?
He wouldn’t admit it, but Will loves the Guster. After so many guys told me that one of the cardinal rules of dating was never talking about your cat, I am evidence that the right person will put up with it, even participate, and grow to feel the same way.
It is a rare moment when my main man the Guster isn’t close to mind. He was close to mind yesterday as we wandered throughout the Oakland Zoo. I was entranced. Apparently–and I blame my parents– I had never been to a zoo. Perhaps my memory fails, but I embraced the zoo with a child-like glee. Maybe it was actually taking a full day off of work.
I thought I would have been saddened to see these animals in captivity, but instead they struck me as having a pretty good life. I understand they’re not as active as they would be in the wild, but they’re safe and many appeared to be having a really great time. Especially those Squirrel Monkeys. I’d really love to be a Squirrel Monkey.
I also pondered what animals my animals, the Guster and our roommate Shawn, would want to be if they were another animal.
Guster likes to lay around and wishes he could eat all day.
The Guster turned sixty-five last year (or 11 in human years). We might not have taken out the cat book and looked up his cat age if the occasion hadn’t brought with it an extreme change in his behavior.
He went from moderately annoyed by our antics to down right grumpy.
To commemorate his new lifestyle, Will found this awesome t-shirt at Thrifttown last weekend.
We put it on him to see if he liked it.
He didn't particularly.
But ultimately admitted that it makes a darn good pillow.
It turned out that Guster didn’t feel safe using the litter box because Shawn would attack him. What a little rascal! Gus resorted to my bed because my bed is shaped like a litter box and it smelled like me and the smell of me makes him feel safe. What a compliment!
Well, we’ve come a long way since that house divided, and these photos are proof:
At a crab feed this past Friday, my aunt and I pocketed some extra crab to take home to Shawn and the Guster. I was a little concerned about them getting the meat out of the legs. Do cats eat crab in the wild? I bet they’re pretty hard to catch. I know Gus would run in fear from those intense claws.
When we got back we tortured Gus by making him wear the bib for a photo!
The next day when Shawn and Gus were both around, we videotaped giving them some hunks of crab. They didn’t give us a lot of a material, but I saw a blog the other day that posted a video of a cat grabbing its owner’s arm a million times. If that can go viral, maybe two cats nom nom noming (did I use that right?) on some crab will also be popular? Who knows. Watch the video!
Last week I spent a full two and a half hours at the vet with my best friend, the Guster.
Gus is not a flexible fellow. He does not like traveling. It is a rare trip in the car that he does not pee in the cat carrier. Long ago I invested in a sturdy plastic cat carrier so that I could clean it out. Before that, he would ruin a cardboard carrier every time. That was both expensive and wasteful.
This time he really set a higher standard for boycotting the vet visit. He pooped on the way there.
That’s enough about that.
I was taking him to the vet because he has become very grumpy in his tenth year on this planet. He has trouble jumping, and he tends to whine when we disturb him. We’ve taken to calling him “Squeaky Old Wood” because his whine sounds like a creaky staircase. Read on…
Whenever the Guster is hungry he makes sure I know he’s serious. That’s why I made that brain map of how he thinks the other day. I’m not sure that got across how really and truly strange his behavior turns. Seriously, I think he would bite my face off if I weren’t marginally stronger than he is.
I made a video so that maybe you would help me decide if he really is that weird:
My cat, the Guster, Gus or Mr. Peabody, spends most of his time campaigning for food. Whether this means anxiously watching our cooking process, following my fork from plate to mouth, plate to mouth, or clawing at me while I’m working, it really seems to be the only thing on his mind.
Last night Will and I conceived of a brain map to represent this obsession. I imagine your cat might have a similar brain map, though if you were smart enough not to feed them wet food at all they might just go over and munch on their dry food everytime they noticed there wasn’t food in their mouths.
Believe me, I will never give a cat mealtimes again. They just don’t understand why mealtime isn’t right now all the time. Read on…
