Bringing Party Favors to Hell

Last weekend the kidunit and I were at PetSmart and saw a kitty drinking fountain that was a new design, very slim, and quite inexpensive.  We'd always wanted to get one for the cats but were stymied by the fact that all the ones we'd seen were all too big to fit in the space where they like their water dish (in the bathroom between the toilet and the wall, yes, we've tried moving it other places and they don't like it), but this one was a lot narrower and we figured it would fit, so we bought one, took it home, and it fit in the space just fine and once hooked up was a lot quieter than we'd thought it would be, so yay!

Now, both our boys are complete wusses.  They freak out at the slightest change to their environment (OMG a piece of paper!  OMG a wrinkle in the bedspread! OMG your PANTS!!  OMG the pizza guy!!!) so needless to say they were a bit weirded out by the fountain at first.  But after some encouragement they both were eventually persuaded to drink from it and we thought all was set.  Oddly, Riku (the gray one in my icon) who's normally the more skittish of the two was the first to accept the new dish.  Probably because he likes to drink out of faucets so running water was a Good Thing. Sora on the other hand was Very Suspicious of this new device, no doubt some sort of Fiendish Human Plot.  He took to sitting on the toilet staring down at the fountain like this:

(You can just barely see the edge of the fountain down on the floor between the toilet and the furnace grate. And yes our bathroom is a hideous shade of turquoise.)

You may notice in the above pic that we have a covered toilet-paper dispenser. This is because when he was a kitten, Sora used to play with the TP, unrolling it and shredding it so we installed the covered dispensers in self-defense.  Once he outgrew his fixation with TP, we got a little... lax... about putting the cover down (see below).  You see where this is going, right? 


We went to bed that evening thinking all was hunky dory, because both kitties had, if reluctantly, drunk out of the new fountain.  When I woke up the next morning I could hear the fountain making a lot more noise than it had been the night before.  I just figured it was low on water, and got up to go fill it.  And proceeded to step into a huge puddle. ARGH!!!!

Apparently one of us had left the TP cover up, and to express his displeasure with this new Infernal Device, Sora unrolled about half the roll into the fountain which made it overflow and clog.  The floor was wet, the bathroom rug was soaked, it was a complete mess.  I cleaned it all up, dug the wet TP out of the fountain, discovered he hadn't actually managed to break it, and reinstalled it.  Needless to say, since then we have been very careful not to leave the cover up on the TP.  Sora still spends quite a lot of time lurking on the toilet seat staring at it, but he is actually drinking out of the fountain regularly now, so we have hopes he'll eventually stop trying to destroy it.  All I can say is it's a good thing he doesn't have opposable thumbs. ;D

(Sora, grumpily getting a drink from the new fountain.)

Last week when bluster was visiting, we had an amusing incident. Our younger cat, Sora (see picture below) is sweet as can be, but a huge klutz. He's always falling off things and knocking things over. He also has a box fetish. If there is a box anywhere in the house it is his box to play with and chew on and hide in and generally chase around the house unless it's bigger than he is, and even then he'll try.

Anyway, bluster drinks diet Coke and she had brought one of those refrigerator packs of it, and since I didn't have room in the fridge it was sitting on the floor of the living room. There was only one can left, and Sora decided to play in the box. He chased it around and dove into it headfirst, and eventually got intrigued by the strange cylindrical object rolling around inside it. I noticed he was pawing at the can but didn't think anything about it until we suddenly hear this FWOOSHyowl!!!soundofsmallbuffalo(kitty)runningaway and the can is on the floor spraying diet Coke EVERYWHERE and the cat is two rooms away under the dining table with his tail puffed out to at least six inches in diameter, dripping diet Coke from every surface and licking his chops with the most disgusted look on his face. Upon looking closely at the can, we could see the very obvious claw-marks, and the single puncture-hole and about half an inch away, an almost puncture hole where he'd tried to pick it up in his mouth to get it out of the box. (I would supply a photo but the can is too shiny to get a good picture of.)

For the rest of the evening he eyed the Coke box mistrustfully, but being a cat of very little brain, the next day he'd forgotten all about it and was playing with the box again. This time, thankfully, empty. All I can say is thank goodness it was diet. If it had been the real kind it would have been a lot harder to get out of the carpet. :)


The Culprit

We picked up Sora this morning. He loves to nuzzle, he's obssessed with it (marking us, I expect) and also has a very cute squeaky mew. Riku is massively annoyed by this intruder. He won't get within 3 feet of him without growling and hissing. Sora doesn't seem very intimidated, but is keeping his distance though he's obviously curious and wants to make friends, so hopefully that will happen as Riku settles down. Here are a few pix of the new baby, and a couple of the old baby just to be fair. :) Most of the pix were taken with my my phone, so they're not the greatest.

Sora, face shot. Unfortunately you can't really tell that his eyes are about the color of Kham's sleeve.
( all the others cut to spare those on dial-up )