Blatant plea for sympathy

For all your feline miscellany - any interesting stories, news or subjects that do not fit in the other sections.
User avatar
Ruth B
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 1998
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:31 am
No. of cats in household: 3
Location: Wolverhampton

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by Ruth B »

Making a bed is simple
Lift the cat off the bed, start to remove the bedspread, then lift the cat off the bedspread so you can get it off the bed, or if there are two of you, lift the cat and bedspread off in one move.
Take the cat off the bed so you can get to the duvet to get the cover off. Take the cover off the duvet and then make sure the cat isn't in the duvet cover before you put it to wash.
Lift the cat off the bed to get to the sheets so you can remove them. Fold each corner into the center of the bed while lifting the cat to the part of the mattress you have just taken the sheet from.
Get the clean sheets out and start putting them on the bed, remove cat from under the sheet and place them in the centre of the bed so you can pull the sheet tight onto the matress while they hold it down.
Get a clean duvet cover out and get the duvet inside it, remove the cat from the duvet cover, shake the duvet and cover to get it into the corners and lay it on the bed, remover the cat from under the duvet.
Take out a clean bedspread. Remove the cat from the duvet cover that they managed to get into even though you had fastened it shut with them sat on top of it. Put the bedspread on the bed so the cat can curl up on top of it, only to see the cat disappearing out of the room to go and sleep in a hammock.

In other news, Saturn had a really good day yesterday, 5 mice, including one that was very alive, while i was trying to run a role playing game online for people. It ended up staying in the cubbyhole under the stairs while we gamed and then I ended up taking every thing out only for the mouse to dash past me, so I had to move virtually every bit of furniture downstairs to try and find it, in the end I managed to herd it into the porch and then out the front door, it was last seen dashing across the road in front of the house. Fortunately today has been mouse free so far.
User avatar
fjm
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 1675
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 6:11 pm
No. of cats in household: 1
Location: North West England

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by fjm »

Spot on, Ruth! There was a discussion in the Guardian a few months ago about how frequently one should change bed linen, emanating I think from Australia. Someone piously posted that they could not understand why anyone would put off a task that only took a couple of minutes - obviously someone who had never battled with a kingsize duvet and cover and several "helpful" animals!
User avatar
Mollycat
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 2705
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:58 am
No. of cats in household: 1
Location: UK

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by Mollycat »

It's so good to have a safe space to share how mad we all really are. Of course we talk to them, how else would we answer their questions? Anyway, the way I see it, to an indoor cat our home is their whole world, so it properly ought to be set up with them not just in mind but as the central consideration. Ruth I laughed so much, it's not like that here though. Here it's just me waiting weeks to catch a moment when I won't disturb her. Boo used to wait until the sheet was on, then wildly hunt and pounce on all the imaginary colonies of little critters running amok under it.

Five mice with no teeth that is very impressive. Poor little things! Dave the black cat down the road is forever chasing Gilbert the squirrel. It's verging on a Loony Tunes chase. We also have the dogfox, the crow and the ducks who hang around together peacefully. Ducks that waddle about on the roof shouting at everything and everyone below. There isn't a pond for miles. Quackers?
User avatar
Ruth B
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 1998
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:31 am
No. of cats in household: 3
Location: Wolverhampton

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by Ruth B »

I live in the heart of suburbia, a little housing estate about a mile from the city centre, but also only a hundred yards or so from the back end of the Racecourse and the canal is just beyond that along side a disused railway line that has been turned into a 'country park'. Where he gets the mice I have no idea, but it does seem to happen like this, none for ages and then several in one day, i guess some get disturbed somewhere and he wipes out a nest. As for other wildlife, i have frogs in the pond most years, but rarely frogspawn, so I guess ours is the local bachelor pad, I've seen newts on a couple of occasions and lost fish to a heron that visited. We've seen a badger one morning just as we were going shopping just up on the main arch of the estate, and I've had a fox at the end of my garden once, as well as hearing what i think was one the other morning in the road outside the bedroom window. Lastly we are only about a half a mile from the local park so the geese frequently do the trip from the canal to the park in the morning and back again in the evening, we don't know quite what type of geese they are, but they tend to be referred to as Commuter Geese. Wolverhampton really is quite a green city and i guess it shows with all the wildlife we can see so close to the city centre.
booktigger
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 2664
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2014 1:36 pm
No. of cats in household: 3

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by booktigger »

Making the bed now is quite easy, it just means wait till Lucy gets up (which can take till lunch) and then wait for her to stop snoozing on the piled up duvet to make it. When I had Molly, you couldn't leave the bed a few hours to air, you had to take your chance, but then not race up the stairs so quickly you spooked her and made her run back on the bed!! she spent 90% of her time on the bed
User avatar
Mollycat
VIP Cat Chatter!
Posts: 2705
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:58 am
No. of cats in household: 1
Location: UK

Re: Blatant plea for sympathy

Post by Mollycat »

That is an impressive collection. Bristol is a well known fox city and some can be quite bold - I won't say tame - and whilst some coexist with pets there are several reports of cats and foxes just casually relaxing or even playing together. We're on the edge here, a large council estate nestles between the crossover of two motorways, a large shopping mall, and what was until a decade ago an airfield, now gradually becoming yet more car dealerships and overpriced shoeboxes passing as fit for human habitation.

The results of last year's wildlife surveys were surprising, I'm no good with birds but there is definitely a woodpecker, we see him occasionally in the tree outside the living room window. Various finches, tits, barn owl, and then there are frogs and newts including the highly protected Great Crested, not in my nearest pond but one of the other 3 on the estate. The man downstairs loves and feeds all the birds and animals (he named the squirrel Gilbert) and that's why they all congregate and tolerate so well. Except cats, he isn't keen on cats, though he would never harm one.
Post Reply