Brother from Another Mother - Totally!

Arwen (aka Freaky Cat) had one litter of kittens. She ignored the nice basket that I had set up for her time of lying-in, opting rather to give birth in Kalene's sock drawer. That was quite a surprise for Kalene when she got back from camp! 

Freaky Cat and Brandi never did learn to get along, but one of her kittens formed a cross species friendship that was quite amazing. Here is Jethro - Brandi's Brother from another Mother:

 Brandi sniffs out this new little creature ...

And decides that it can be a friend.
Soon they were the same size.

I have never seen a bond like this between a cat and a dog.

  Jethro groomed Brandi ...

They even snuggled up together to sleep.


Unfortunately, Jethro got hit by an SUV and died. Brandi was quite distraught. For days, she just sat at the top of the stairs, waiting for Jethro to come up the stairs. 

We have had two or three cats since then, but they all treated Brandi like a dog. In my next blog, I will share the difference between cats and dogs. 

Okay, The Dog Can Stay

I still don’t like dogs, but Brandi proved her worth late one night (actually, early one morning) in January of 2011. Here is the blog I wrote back then:

We forgot to lock the front door last night. It was a bad night to have been negligent. Good thing Brandi our Shih-tzu/Poodle Watch Puppy was on duty.

In the wee hours of the morning, a prowler in our neighbourhood broke into a home on our street, and stole cash and beer. He then went on to other homes, including ours. We woke up to the sound of Brandi barking her little puppy head off.

My husband, Derek, went to investigate. Our front door was standing open, and a lone figure wearing a hoodie over his head was walking down the street. Derek called the police.

It turned out that the police were already out looking for this fellow. In Canada, it isn't so easy to elude police on foot in the wintertime, since they can just follow the footprints in the snow. Unfortunately, this subject was able to dodge the officers by cutting through a busy gas station parking lot. Our phone call got them back on his trail, and they quickly caught up with him.

Brandi is so friendly and loves to greet everyone who comes to our door. I have often said that if a burglar ever got in she would lick him to death. I am glad to be proved wrong. A burglar did come to our door and her barking scared him away.

So I take back all of my “I don’t like dogs” rants. This one can stay. I am still a cat person, and I love our two cats, but I rather doubt if either of them would have scared away an intruder. They just sit on the window ledge and groom themselves.

You! Human! I Want Out! From the blog of Freaky Cat

The cold Canadian winter had finally come to an end, and the balmy week or two of summer had not yet begun. It was, as the humans say, spring. The humans finally opened my door to the outside world, but then they put this wire mesh over my door, once again making me a prisoner inside their home. I must find a way to get back outside.

Hey, You! Human! Removed this mesh from my door. I want out!

 Once again, I am forced to take matters into my own paws! There must be a way past this wire mesh and this wall of green. This green stuff resembles grass, but it neither smells or tastes of grass, It must be a plot of the humans - a trick for making me believe that I am outside. They fool me not!

 You are evil. I am Freaky Cat, and I will get out!

Let me Out!

I have seen the human use this device to get out - how does one use this to open the door?

 Victory at last! I have broken through the wire mesh door! I am Out!

. Out is nice. This is real grass!

Okay, that is enough of Out. Now I want back in.

#$%&* Meow! The humans have replaced the wire mesh over my door!

Hey! You! Human! Yes, you there, tap tap tapping on that little silver box thingy! Let me In!

They are evil, these humans. I will find a way. I am Freaky Cat! I got Out, and I will get back In!

Bwahahahahahah! I am Freaky Cat, and I am getting back in!

Ah! Yes! In is nice!

Freaky Cat Meets a Cute Little Fluff Ball

In the second year of the reign of Arwen, aka: Freaky Cat, there came a little white fluff ball to invade her majesty's reign of terror. The little fluff ball, aka: Brandi the Cute Little Puppy Dog, had no knowledge of the evil feline world or the maleficence portending any who dared to invade her majesty's personal space. Here, for the entertainment of those who dare, is the bloggage of Freaky Cat. 

I am Arwen, ruler of this land, High Queen of All That Is. You may take my photograph. Yes, you - human. You may take my photograph, and then fetch my dinner. 

What is this fluffy white creature, and what is it doing in my dining hall?

Cute? No, I am cute! This odious fluffball is repugnant!

Adorable? No, this fluffball is neither cute nor adorable! I am cute and adorable. Focus that camera on me!












You, stay down there.This dining space is mine!

Humans! Remove the fluffball from my presence!



































It is still here. Must I take matters into my own paws?

Come here, little Fluffy Fluffy...

Why do you look at me like that? Cats cannot pick up hammers!

Now, the little fluffy is asleep. Good Fluffly Fluffy! I am Arwen, the Freaky Cat. I am very sneaky, no?

I was not going to anything to the sleepy little fluffball. 

This Cat is Freaking Evil!

I said at the end of the last blog that I would tell you what happened when Freaky Cat met a little white fluff ball named Brandi. But I thought maybe I should introduce Freaky Cat a bit more first.

Like I said, the kids had named her Arwen, but except for the pointy ears, she bore little resemblance to her elf-queen namesake. I called her ‘Freaky Cat’ and she reigned in our home for about three years. 

There are some things that cats do that annoy their owners, but these are just the nature of the beast. If you take a cat into your home, you need to be aware of normal cat behaviour, and if you don’t think you can put up with it – don’t get a cat!

Freaky Cat was a normal kitten. She and her siblings (Aragorn, Legolas, Sarafina, and Bob - the kids let me name the last one) would chase each other around the house, and sometimes they would knock things over. We let them get away with that, because kittens are cute. Besides, most of our breakable ornaments were broken by the first few cats we had. 

Normally, kittens settle down when they are about a year old. We get them ‘fixed’, and they become fat, lazy housecats who love to snuggle, and that is a good thing.

But when Freaky Cat was two, and we had long since given away the other kittens from that litter, she was still acting like a kitten. A kitten on steroids.She didn’t just scratch the furniture. She devoured it.

It seemed at the time that she had a personal vendetta on me. Other cats would get off the table as soon as I started to reach for the water spray bottle. Not Freaky Cat. She would just sit down on the table, scrunch up her face while being squirted, and then lick herself.

 I tried adding lemon juice to the water, and then vinegar. She would just scrunch her face a little more, and wait for me to get up. If it took me awhile to get up, she would sit on the table and lick her butt. Evil, pure evil, I say! As soon as I was up, she would run away.

Freaky Cat was also the most destructive cat we ever had. Her favourite game was to knock things off shelves. Especially breakable things. I think she enjoyed the satisfying crash when things hit the floor. When she wanted me to get up in the morning to feed her, she would jump up on the dresser, and just start batting at things while maintaining eye contact with me. 

We have one of those tall lamps with three glass shelves in the living room. I had a pretty little porcelain vase on the top shelf. I don’t know what I was thinking, silly me! She knocked it onto the floor. It made a lovely crashing sound on the laminate flooring. Later, I put a cute little wooden vase on the top shelf. She knocked it down. On the way to the floor, it hit the bottom glass shelf and shattered it.

She also stole socks. Seriously. My socks are in the top drawer. She would open the bottom drawer with her paws, and jump into it.  From there, she could open the top drawer, grab a pair of socks in her mouth, and run off to hide them. She would never perform this trick with a camera rolling.

Do you believe me now, that this cat was evil? She was just lucky that she was so cute, and that Hubby and I are such softies when it comes to cats.

Weird Cats

My family has had a lot of cats. A whole lot of cats. Around 40, I think.  We can figure out what year an event or change took place by which cat or cats we had at the time. The word ‘cat’ can function as a unit of time for us.  A typical conversation at our house might go something like: “Hey, when did we buy this couch?” “I don’t know - maybe three or four cats ago...”  

I don’t know if our home attracted weird cats, or if living in our home brought out the weirdness factor in our pets. (The kids are weird too, but that’s a whole other blog.)  We had one cat who would chew my hair to wake me up, and another who would ring the doorbell when she wanted to come in. Our cats had odd parenting habits, and always found strange places to sleep, like this kitten who fell asleep on a branch of the Christmas tree.

Our first cat, Squirt loved to play with mice. We were living in a house trailer on an acreage in the country at the time, so she had lots of little mousy playmates. Squirt was a generous pet. She would bring her new friends into our bed at night so that we could play, too. We gave her to a family with an upholstery shop. I'm sure she found lots of playmates there.

Here is a picture of one of Squirt’s friends. Sorry the picture is a bit blurry; I think I was jumping up and down because my hubby was holding a MOUSE!!!

We kept one of Squirt’s kittens, a beautiful fluffy haired beauty named Muffin. Kalene was born during this cat’s reign. Kalene loved that cat, visa versa – not so much.

Muffin apparently had a standing appointment to do something outside somewhere at 5:30 am. She would wake me up by chewing on my hair. Whatever it was that she needed to do outside every morning at 5:30 didn't take very long to accomplish. Five or ten minutes later she would be howling to get back in. 

Mittens had some very strange parenting tactics. When she was weaning a litter, she would get a wet dishcloth, bring it back to her kittens, drop it beside them, and leave. I have no idea what she expected the kittens to do with the dishcloth. After we gave away her kittens, she would run around the house with a dishcloth in her mouth, mewing pitifully. I felt so sad for her. We took her to the vet so she wouldn't have to go through that experience twice a year anymore. We still kept finding dishcloths under beds and couches for a while, though.              

Sasha would ring the doorbell when she wanted back in. The first time she did this, I was sure that the neighbour children must have been playing a trick on me. I answered the door, and saw only our cat sitting on the step. After a few more times, the scratches on the door frame confirmed that our doorbell ringer was definitely feline. Hubby moved the doorbell higher up, and the scratches in the door frame got deeper. 

You could always tell what TV show the kids were into when a litter of kittens was born. We kept one of Sasha’s kittens. The kids named her Arwen, but she was nothing like her elf-queen namesake. Neither ladylike nor genteel, she preferred rather to run like thunder around the house, leaving cat scratches on the furniture, railings and on whoever she chose to use as a feline launch pad. I called her Freaky Cat. One of Freaky Cat's favourite things to do was to jump up onto a shelf, look back at you, and then, while maintaining eye contact, she would reach out a paw and knock something breakable onto the floor. I was not overly fond of Freaky Cat.

In my next blog, I will tell you about what happened when Freaky Cat met a little white fluff ball named Brandi...