Prison Dramas, Bands and Ouija Boards - the Excellent Cats audition, sing and plot

[TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne]

Our feline overlords have so many current strings to their joint and several bows.

Auditioning for Series One of The Prison Cat, forming a band, and continuing to plot against their enemies by means of their Ouija Boards - will they even have time to sleep now?

YelramBob: that’s the size of the spiders we get here. The warm weather makes them big.
If you take them outside, they just come in again. What you do is suck them up in the vacuum cleaner. If you feel guilty about it, light a candle for their soul.
My mother, auntie, three sisters, two cousins and me captured a huge huntsman once and kept the vacuum going until dad came home. He was appalled we expected him to empty it. I think mum left the vacuum outside overnight.
None of our cats will kill spiders. Hugely disappointing.

Argh Gizmo's ladder still hasn't arrived.

I had such a job getting out of the house today and keeping them both inside but I managed it.

Amazon have been hopeless.

They claimed it would be delivered yesterday, even though it hadn't even been dispatched.
🤣

Goodness, how have I survived all this time without a heated blanket.

I've ordered my first one today based on MN posts, a big heated sherpa one. Do I need to prepare myself for something extraordinary?

I hope that isn't sarcasm, as mine genuinely is one of my favourite things. I'm also glad to see you are still here after that flu thread. I saw the powers that be were merrily deleting "mean" comments and threatening to ban people!

I'm going to have a very pissed off Tobias by the morning. It's check up & blood tests day tomorrow, so the prep is starting very shortly.

Much reduced supper for them tonight (less than half a pouch shared)

When he's gone into their bedroom for any reason I will shut him in there with a small saucer of tuna laced with Gabapentin. No other food in there though of course the room will still have the usual water, litter tray, beds & toys etc.

Give Girlcat more supper - just because he's got to be a) drugged and b) mostly starved because of blood tests in the morning, no reason for her to go without.

In the morning I'll sneak in & check whether he's actually eaten the poisoned tuna during the night and if so replace with more of the same. If not, try replacing it with Asda extra tasty chicken shredded up with more Gabapentin. Yes he can be stubborn enough to starve himself despite having virtually no supper, to avoid being drugged! Keep him very firmly shut in the room.

Make sure the thick leather gardening gloves are to hand and take them & the crate upstairs for when Annie gets here for the wild tiger wrestling session.

They're just so warm and snuggly, and even when it's slightly nippy but not quite heating on temperature, the blanket is just enough to warm your cockles.

No, I mean it.
It arrived this afternoon and I'm sitting under it right now.
It's lush.

Ooh yes, I was expecting the ban hammer after that thread.

Toad has turned into velcro. He's never been this consistently affectionate. He's going to be cross when I go away again tomorrow 😬

Argh! Taken me until now to get him into their bedroom & shut in - bloody suspicious feline! So that's over 3 hours after the most miniscule supper ever. Girlcat is happily munching away on the rest of their supper now I've added that to the bowls, and topping up on her favorite kibble (the anti-hairball one of course, the most expensive I get).

@Allergictoironing I really, really hoped you have survived and everyone is back home relatively unscathed

I must have missed that flu thread (assuming it's now been deleted), probably because I was ordering something delightful. Apparently it's on it's way. With Evri 😩

I'm struggling to keep up with threads because Mumsnet on my phone is absolutely rubbish and freezes all the time. The app doesn't freeze but it doesn't seem to let me place mark (unless someone knows a way).

Snowcat is being really annoying at the moment because she gets needy in the night and then sits outside our bedroom door and miaows continually until I come out. The bedroom door is open and there is nothing to stop her coming in and curling up on the bed if she wanted to be close to me, but she won't come into the room at night (she sits on our bed all the time in the day). She has occasionally done this in the past, but the last week or so it's been happening several times a night.

I've tried ignoring her, but she keeps miaowing and eventually starts scratching the carpet. It wakes DH up and then we worry she'll wake the kids up too. The downstairs is mostly open plan, so we can't just shut her in the kitchen (I could shut her in my study, but she doesn't really like that room so it feels like a drastic punishment, and Stripey would also be upset to be separated from her sister. Stripey is a little angel who gets all her zoomies out the way by 11pm then rests quietly in her cat tree all night and doesn't make a peep)

She definitely isn't hungry - I've gone down to check and there is still dry food in the bowl (which she prefers). She just wants attention and a bit of a fuss, and rolls over and purrs at me. But if I go out to see her, she's learning that miaowing in the night is a brilliant strategy.

Last night I tried carrying her into our bedroom every time she did this and putting her on the bed to see if she would settle down there. She immediately jumps off and leaves (then a few hours later she comes back and miaows on the threshold again). Maybe if she doesn't like our bed and she learns that miaowing means being taken there, she'll stop doing it though!

That thread has been deleted, the OP has deregistered, and I still have absolutely no sympathy for people with rampant health anxiety.........

I'm such a bitch.
🤣

Allergic, did you and Annie escape unscathed?
Did Tobias even get to the vet's?

@stormsandsunshine

she sits on our bed all the time in the day
Not to state the obvious but neither you or DH are in the bed when she uses it during the day. I also bet neither of you sleep like quiet, immovable logs that she'll trust not to squish her, therefore I suspect she's shouting at you to get the hell out of her bed 😂 Can you put another cat tree just inside or maybe a snuggly cat bed on the floor near the door? She obviously wants the bedroom but doesn't want the humans ruining it either. You might have to lure her to her new nightly sleeping area with some treats for a few nights but she should hopefully settle into the new routine fairly quickly.

What browser are you using on your phone? I think some people use a different one just to access MN because of all the adverts slowing it down. Try safari or opera. I use opera on a samsung tablet and it's waaaayyyyy better than chrome.

That was a bit of a disaster of a morning.

To start with, Tobias escaped from the room when I opened the door a crack to check on him, took me half an hour & chicken to tempt him back in. He then ate only a very small amount of the fresh tuna laced with Gapapentin - at least he'd eaten the entire lot last night.

Bit of a pain to catch, he wasn't charging around or anything but wedged himself under some racking in the corner of the room & hung on for dear life.

He WAS very good at the vets, just lay there in the scales pan & leaned into me scratching his head & neck while we talked. She took him downstairs to try to get bloods done, but when we came back he'd let her shave his neck but no more. They couldn't fully sedate him because he'd eaten a bit in the morning, in case he threw up (standard practice there).

So we now have a dilemma. To get the Gabapentin in him, the only way is in his food. But he can't eat for 12 hours before the full sedation, so there's no way I can get him drugged up in the morning. The 2 options are either get him drugged with Gabapentin in the early afternoon so we can get him to the vets before 5pm that day. He would then stay there overnight (not attended overnight there) so he was there & ready for them in the morning. The other option is drug him & shut him in the bedroom the night before the appointment and between the 2 of us not let him escape & catch him with less gabapentin in him.

The safest way to ensure all goes well would probably be option 1, but that would be much more distressing for him as at least at home he's in his own bedroom with familiar beds, toys, smells etc. He would also be gone nearly 24 hours as opposed to just a few if he was at home overnight.. Girlcat would also get quite distressed at him being gone for that long, she's quite unhappy as it is with him shut away overnight. I would also find it rather upsetting him being away in an unfamiliar place that smells of vets & meds overnight.

The risks of option 2 are if he escapes again in the morning, or we can't catch him as he's much less drugged than normal. There's a number of mitigations we can take around that - shut every door in the house so even if he gets out of his room he can only go in the hallway & stairs. With 2 of us we should be able to chivvy him into a corner. I can also block off the bottom of the racking in their bedroom.

I think we need to go for option 2.

@Pixiedust1234 the funny thing is, though, if I go for a lie down during the day, or take a book upstairs and read it on the bed, she will come running in to have a lie down on the bed, either by my feet or even snuggled in under my arm, and she has even done that if DH and I are both resting on the bed. A couple of times I've actually fallen asleep with my arm over her and she just lies there like a big pillow. So she doesn't seem to have an issue with us being in 'her' bed as long as it's daytime.

I think her favourite sleeping area of all during the day is under DD1's sofa (in her bedroom) which is also accessible at night. But both cats prefer the downstairs of the house at night as it stays much warmer than the bedrooms. After she's lured me out and said hi, she trots off back downstairs for a few hours, I assume to rest on one of her preferred downstairs sleeping spots. (Interestingly she has no interest at all in getting DH out of bed - the important thing is that I get up to say hello to her. She likes him perfectly well but it's me she's attached to. Which makes me think it's about her wanting a cuddle rather than wanting her space back.)

100% Option 2 Allergic.
It would really upset him to be kept in.

I’d go for option 2 too.

Couldn't see the lovely vet Cathy when we picked him up as she was in back to back appointments, but was told she'll email me later. I'll definitely reply with an Option 2 decision; we've had discussions about stress for a cat with his type of past before now so I doubt she'll try to persuade me otherwise.

Good chance he may need x-rays as well as blood tests. He occasionally has an "interesting" wheezy cough we talked about, similar to a hairball cough but despite him shedding well he isn't much of a hairbally cat (unlike Girlcat, who is the goddess of hairballs). We're going to have to check for lungworm probably. I'm also a bit worried that he's put on a little bit of weight but only on his stomach area. And I don't mean his belly either, his stomach is sort of sticking out to the sides and quite firm when I stroke it. From above his outline is straight all the way until you get to the back of the ribs then symmetrical bulges either side, then suddenly goes back to the same width as the front half just short of his bum & back legs.

On the plus side he was praised for how thick & lush his coat is getting over time, which is a general sign of good health. I really just don't know whether to worry about him or not!

@Allergictoironing I think you need a pig driving board 😹! We used to do the same, shut all doors, confine in a room with fewest hiding places, wear log fire gauntlets. Now she’s 19.5 years old it’s a more sedate operation, although she still has the power of a slippery octopus when she wants to get free

If you think a paltry board that high would stop him jumping over it, possibly via the chest of whoever was holding it with claws fully extended to get a good grip, you have another think coming!

I spent hours when we realised his "issues" with being caught looking for the perfect protective gloves. Ended up with a pair of leather gardening gloves that he's not managed to put his claws through yet but are flexible enough to get a good grip.

I see your slippery octopus and raise you with with the slipperiness of a threatened hagfish. One of Annie's is very slippery & wiggly too, but she's much smaller & lighter, and not nearly as strong.

Ah yes, I was just thinking of the doorway blocking part. These are the ones we have

According to the tracking on Amazon, Gizmo's ladder has reached Airdrie.

It will allegedly be delivered on Monday.

Gizmo is really looking forward to my receiving it. He's currently hiding because I got the SNBT out and hoovered the whole house.

One of my friends has just got a Roomba. Her cats hiss at it but neither has got up the courage to attack it yet.