Gypsy

Gypsy

      Last night, I was minding my own business, playing my bevy of Facebook games, when Gypsy, who had been snoozing a foot away on the pink towel-covered Kit-n-Box stretched-walked over to my lap to finish catnapping. Whenever she lies down on my lap after being on the ‘Box, I say something to the effect that she has come all the way over to my lap from the Kit-n-Box. Gypsy purrs her response to my comical statement. 

 

By far, Gypsy is the cat who purrs the most (and the loudest) in my household. While I’m typing this paragraph, she is on my lap, purring and kneading. Because of her sharp claws (and my unwillingness to trim them), I always have a towel on my lap when Gypsy comes to visit, so, here and now, she is contentedly lying on my lap, trying to get comfy as she pushes herself so that she is right up against my left arm; she prefers to rest her head on my left arm.
 

 

     Gypsy will turn 13 years old on August 3rd. I adopted her in the spring of 2001 from a classmate (during my graduate studies years). My classmate rescued Gypsy from a neighbor who treated her poorly. As a result, by the time Gypsy turned six months old, she had already had a litter of kittens because of the neighbor’s mistreatment. My classmate rescued Gypsy afterwards. I think the cruel neighbor had already gotten rid of Gypsy’s kittens, but I just don’t know the specifics there (and I’m not sure I want to know). My classmate paid the vet costs, and Gypsy was spayed and had all her required vaccinations. She told me she could not keep Gypsy and was looking for a good home for her. Then, she asked me if I wanted to take Gypsy home. When it comes to cats, I’m a pushover, so I told my classmate that I would adopt Gypsy.

     I remember the day I brought Gypsy home. My classmate and I met in the parking lot of a toy store that was right off the expressway (easier to meet there than try to find my classmate’s home). I brought along Moky’s cat carrier (sans Moky), and Gypsy rode quietly home in the carrier. When I put the cat carrier on the floor of my home, Moky sniffed at the carrier and then at Gypsy and hissed and growled. He was not very happy to have to share me with Gypsy. I put the cat carrier in my bedroom and closed the door. I wanted Gypsy to adjust to her new surroundings without Moky’s presence. Then, I let Gypsy walk out of the carrier. I laid down on my bed, and Gypsy jumped on the bed and snuggled up next to me. We napped together for a while.

     After that first day, Gypsy tried to play with Moky, but he usually didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Moky made it a point to circumvent Gypsy whenever he had to walk from one end of the room to the other. Gypsy would bat at Moky if he came near enough to her, and she seemed to enjoy teasing Moky just to get him to whine. She still does that on occasion. While Moky is trying to jump down from my desk, Gypsy swipes at him. I usually tell her that Moky doesn’t need her help.

     Gypsy is also the cat that sleeps the most. A well-known fact about cats is that, on average, they sleep about 16 hours a day. That is definitely true of Gypsy. Her favorite sleeping spots are the plastic bin by the living room window, the L-shape part of my desk, the Kit-n-Box, the old backpack, the bottom shelf beside the computer desk, various spots in my bedroom, on my lap, and next to me while I’m sleeping. Daytime hours are snoozing hours for most cats, but Gypsy sleeps all hours of the day and night. When she’s awake, she’s eating or using the litter box or frolicking with the other cats, but her waking moments are just that – moments. Generally, most people think of a catnap as a short period of time, but if I measured a catnap based on how long Gypsy sleeps at any one time, I’d say a catnap is anywhere from three to five hours. I’m willing to bet that a catnap is longer than what most people think it is.

 

      Gypsy is self-entertaining. After Gypsy has a snack or sip of milk (lactose-free, of course), she walks upstairs and runs in the hallway. When I hear her footfalls (pawfalls), I think that more than one cat is up there, that maybe she’s chasing Stormy, or Stormy is chasing her, but when I survey the living room and I see both Stormy and Moky, I realize that only Gypsy is making all that noise. I’m amazed she can make that much noise because, of the three cats, she is the smallest. Her small size does not hinder her ability to make a lot of noise. She has these bursts of energy that cause heads to turn (mostly mine). I have no doubt that the catnaps fuel her runs. 

      Gypsy is sometimes mischievous. She enjoys teasing Moky and Stormy, and she welcomes a chase and sometimes initiates that chase. She can be very silly and playful. She gets this look in her eyes when I play with her. This look is different than the feed-me stare and definitely different than the sleepy look. When I move my hand in front of her or touch her tail when she is in a playful mood, she looks downward at my hand, and I can tell that at any moment, she’s going to bat at my hand. When she becomes silly, she is often lying down and putting her front paws over her head. When she is in a box (Gypsy loves boxes!) and in a playful mood, she will turn around in the box. Sometimes, I tap on the outside of the box because I know it will make her turn around in it. She uses her back paws to start the process, and she will turn around several times in the box. It’s quite a hilarious sight to behold.

      Sometimes, Gypsy likes to play with the Crazy Circle or the catnip ball. The Crazy Circle is a round plastic toy that contains a ball that cannot be removed by the cats. When the ball is batted by a paw (or my finger), it runs around the circle until it stops on its own or until a paw (or finger) stops it. Gypsy plays more with the Crazy Circle than the other two cats do. the catnip ball is kind of a heavy ball that’s a little bigger than a golf ball. It is made purely of catnip. The ball’s surface is very hard, but it can be picked apart by the cats. Occasionally, I find bits of catnip that I know came from that ball because the pieces I find are hard. When Gypsy attacks the catnip ball, she bats at it and chases it (typical cat behavior).

     Like Moky, Gypsy talks, but, according to the vet, this is normal for older cats. She talks to me when she wants me to give her a snack, and she talks to me to wake me up from my night’s sleep so that I will feed her (usually breakfast). She also talks to herself. Usually, when she mutters to herself, she is waiting for me to feed her. However, I’ve noticed, too, that she talks a great deal upstairs while I’m downstairs. I imagine she is complaining that the litter boxes are dirty, so I do my best to keep them clean.

     Unlike Moky, Gypsy’s meowing is soft. Moky bellows while Gypsy softly squeaks. Still, I answer her when she talks. Normally, Gypsy’s meows are soft, but when I take her to the vet, she has a special meow she reserves just for the ride over. This meow is much different than her normal voice; for starters, it’s louder. This meow is anxious and worried. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she knows, in her head, that it can’t be good because we never go anywhere except to the vet (with the exception of moving her from my old apartment to my newer one). Like Moky, she is quiet on our return home. Unlike Moky, Gypsy only meows on the way to the vet. Once we get into the office area, she is quiet again. I think she is still anxious and worried, but she’s not vocal about it like Moky is.

     When I had to take Moky, Gypsy, and Stormy to the vet for their FLV tests last November (2012), my friend helped me. She rode in the car with me. The three cats, in their respective carriers, were in the backseat. My friend told me she had no idea that Gypsy could make the loud meows she was making on the ride to the vet. I reassured her that Gypsy makes these same sounds each time I take her to the vet. As far as cats and people are concerned, anxiety and worry make everyone talk differently.

     Gypsy is my moocher. She is the cat that stares at me when it’s nearly time to eat. She is the cat that will sit directly in front of me while I’m eating a meal or a snack, stare at me, and open and close her mouth (I call it the fish-mouth method because she opens and closes her mouth ever so slightly like a fish does when it is breathing) in anticipation that I’m going to give her a piece of whatever I’m eating. Most of the time, I don’t share my meals or snacks with her. However, when I’m eating roasted chicken, I do usually give her a few tiny pieces of it (all three cats get some of that chicken).

      Gypsy has a built-in meal clock. Like clockwork, she comes to me or sits nearby and stares at me when it is almost supper time. She doesn’t utter a “word” or do the fish-mouth thing; she just sits and stares until I notice her. Sometimes, she lies on my lap and purrs. At this moment, I am reminded of a saying, “There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.” Sometimes, that saying is true, especially when I think of Gypsy’s meal clock.

     Gypsy is a patient cat . . . to a point. Don’t we all have patience to a point? When she’s waiting to be fed, she is fairly patient about the wait. Sometimes, she falls asleep while waiting for me to feed her. Wow! That’s true patience! I realize that not very many people would consider falling asleep to signify patience, but I think that is what sleeping is, in this respect; if we can fall asleep while waiting, we are continuing to practice that patience in a less troubling way. People who have lost patience become troubled and irritated. There is no sleeping for impatient people because they want whatever it is now. Occasionally, my cats lose their patience with me. When Gypsy tires of waiting and wants something to be done, she bugs me by pawing me and meowing her concerns. If she can wait, she does so quietly.

     Gypsy is the middle “child” in my family. She is perfectly content to live with me and her siblings, and I am perfectly happy to oblige. Even though her nemesis is Stormy, she doesn’t mind Stormy lying next to her. When the two of them are fighting, it doesn’t last very long. They, for the most part, get along with each other. I think Moky does like his sisters even though, at times, he seems irritated with them. I guess we are just one medium-sized happy family.

Moky

Moky

      Moky is the oldest of my three cats (14 years old as of May 28th of this year). He has a few quirks that define who he is. One quirk confirmed by his doctor is talking (meowing for those who don’t have pets). Ever since Moky was a kitten, he has talked. Most cats do not talk very much. Recently, a friend sent me an ÜberFact about cats and meowing, “Adult cats only meow to communicate with humans – They rarely meow to other cats or animals.” I think Moky is the exception to this rule. Moky talks. He talks to me, he talks to the other two cats (Gypsy and Stormy), and he talks to no one in particular (upstairs in the hallway). His talking to the other cats is usually when Gypsy tries to grab at him. He is whining then. Maybe that would be considered talking to me because I’m usually in the room when Gypsy swipes at him. When we first moved into our newer apartment, Moky often went upstairs and talked, but no one was up there (no humans and no other cats). He still, occasionally, goes upstairs to talk.

     Often, when Moky verbalizes, he doesn’t care who hears him. This is especially true when I take him to the vet’s office for his annual shots and checkup. He “sings” to me when I pick him up, put him in his carrier, take him out to the car, strap him in (I use a seatbelt to secure the carrier on the car’s seat), drive to the vet, take him out of the car, walk in to the vet’s waiting room, sign him in, sit down waiting for Moky to be called in to the examining room, walk into the examining room, and wait for the doctor in the examining room. He continues to talk while the doctor is examining him. About the only time he doesn’t meow is while the vet is giving him a shot (or two). He is also quiet on the way home. That’s probably because he realizes that the visit wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. His memory is short because the next time he visits the vet, we go through the same old routine of Moky talking, whining, and singing.

     Another idiosyncrasy Moky has is that of batting box flaps. When I lived in the older apartment (pre-April 2011), the living room window had vertical blinds. Moky often batted at those blinds. There are no vertical blinds in this current apartment, so he has only box flaps and the occasional loose piece of paper sticking out from a pile. Moky enters what I call a trance when he encounters a box flap (open box lids). He bats continuously at the box lid until he tires of it or until I say something to him to snap him out of his trance. Sometimes, I purposely set up a loose piece of paper because I know he will bat at it with his paw. This trance he goes into amazes me sometimes because he’s the only cat I’ve ever had that has done this. Several years ago, I researched autistic cats because he was displaying a common characteristic of autism. I didn’t find anything and chalked it up to Moky just being Moky.

     A third eccentricity Moky possesses is that of scratching everything but products made for that purpose, and there are plenty of scratching posts in my humble abode. His favorite pluckable item is sneakers. I used to let Moky pluck my sneakers when I came into the apartment (usually after getting home from work). This became a routine for him. When I bought new sneakers, I decided not to let him pluck my shoes, but I kept the old pair. I would put my hand in one of the old sneakers, and he would wholeheartedly scratch it (the sneaker, not my hand). His second favorite scratching object is any one of my rolling backpacks or suitcases. As a matter of fact, I keep an old rolling suitcase in the downstairs hallway just for him. As for the rolling backpacks I use for work, those are covered with a beach towel so he won’t touch them (except to maybe walk on them). I’ve discovered, through the years, that if I put a towel or sheet on objects I don’t want Moky to pluck or scratch, he will not touch them (out of sight, out of mind).

     Moky is afraid of the noise plastic bags make when I shake them. When Moky was knee-high to a grasshopper, he became curious about the contents in a plastic Wal-Mart bag that was lying on the floor. I had just returned from grocery shopping at the local Wal-Mart, and I placed many of the bags on the floor. As is most common for cats, his curiosity got the best of him, and he sniffed at a bag and poked his head through one of the bag’s handles. When he tried to pull his head out of the bag, he couldn’t. He panicked and took off running with the bag around his neck. His head was through the handle, but the bag was not over his head; it was hanging around his body like a necklace as he was dashing around the apartment.

     When I heard the ruckus, I shouted to him, “Moky, what are you doing?” I poked my head out of the kitchen and noticed he was standing on the table by the living room window, and on his body was one of the Wal-Mart bags that had earlier been lying on the floor. I had my hands full of canned goods and ran to him. By then, he was on the couch, panting. I dropped the cans onto the couch and grabbed Moky. I had to pry his claws from the back of the couch in order to hold him. I removed the bag and cuddled him, telling him everything was okay. He was quite the scared kitty.

     Since that time, whenever he is getting into trouble, I shake a plastic bag near him so that he stops the trouble-making. Bubble wrap is equally terrifying. When he is doing something he should not be doing, I grab a sheet of bubble wrap that I keep near my desk. Sometimes, all it takes to make him stop misbehaving is grabbing the bubble wrap because, to Moky, the sound is the same as that of a plastic Wal-Mart bag. I shake plastic bags or pop bubble wrap bubbles when he misbehaves because squirting him with water is useless.

     Moky welcomes water squirted at him. Before Moky became my cat, he lived with my friends. They bathed him when they thought he was dirty. In my opinion, cats do not need to be bathed because they can do that themselves. By the time Moky came to live with me, he had grown accustomed to water so whenever I needed to discipline him, I couldn’t squirt him with water.

     Sudden loud noises scare animals, so I don’t make it a habit to make those loud noises when I’m around my cats. When I have to empty the plastic-bag-lined trash cans in the apartment, I move the cans away from the cats so that when I shake out and open a clean trash bag, they don’t hear the loud sound it makes. The only time I make loud noises, such as from shaking plastic bags or grabbing/popping bubble wrap is when Moky is being mischievous. He is not always misbehaving; usually, the requisite NO! suffices.

     Moky is a “mama’s boy.” He loves to be near me. Just a moment ago, I couldn’t find him. I searched his favorite hiding places, both upstairs and downstairs, yet he was nowhere to be found. Then, I remembered a new spot he likes – on the bottom shelf of the bookcase near my computer desk. After traipsing all over my home, looking for the elusive Moky, I bent down and peered into cat eyes staring back at me, saying, “I’m right here, Mommy. Where did you think I would be?” He’s catching up on his late afternoon Zzzzz and is, as always, near me.

     Usually, he is sprawled out on my desk while I’m playing games on the computer. When he approaches the desk, he stops and stares at whatever is on the desk – the spot where he lounges. If I’m typing on the keyboard, he will stand next to me (on the other part of my L-shaped desk) and stare at that keyboard as if doing so will make it disappear. When I push the keyboard under the monitor stand, Moky walks to that empty spot and lies down. 

     Moky loves water, and, at times, he doesn’t seem to think he gets enough of it. At night, my choice of beverage is ice-cold water that I keep in a frozen drinking glass (one of those keep-it-in-the-freezer plastic glasses). I have had to make a koozy for this container because Moky tries to lick the condensation on the outside of the glass that the cold water creates. When he can’t lick the condensation on the outside of the glass, he tries to drink the liquid inside it. I have to keep a lid on my glass at all times because if I don’t, he will take that as an invitation to drink from my glass. 

     He’s quite the funny cat while he’s lying on my desk. He moves himself as close to my glass as he can get. Perhaps, he thinks I can’t see him slowly moving toward that glass. He slowly lifts his paw and tries to flip up the lid that sits on my water glass (sometimes, he uses his nose to hoist up the lid). I tell him, “No, Moky.” He then puts his paw down and waits a bit until he tries it again. If I’m in a good mood, I just keep saying, “No, Moky.” If I’m in not such a good mood, and I’ve uttered several negatives at him, I finally have to yell at him to stop. Mostly, though, he makes me laugh when he tries to flip that glass lid. When he realizes he cannot drink from my glass, he gets off the desk and goes to the kitchen to drink water from his fountain (yes, my cats are spoiled).

     Moky has other quirks that make him unique to me. I’m sure other people have cats that behave similar to Moky. After all, he does behave like a typical cat, for the most part. Moky has been in my life since August 1999 – when he was a mere three months old. For a year and a half, he was the only cat I had, and he relished all the attention I gave him. When his sister, Gypsy, came into the family in April 2001, Moky’s jealousy reared its ugly head, and he was not very happy to share my love with another cat. However, I love Moky and his sisters equally. That will never change no matter how many quirks my cats have.