Friends of Ding Ding

Dingers doesn't have a Facebook page, not is she on Catster--but that doesn't mean she doesn't have friends. She is now friends with Hercules, a carrot-loving Papillon who lives in Pennsylvania; Marlin the cat, who lives in Delaware; and Lola, who gave Dingers some very delicious freeze-dried salmon treats for Christmas. Although Lola loves the salmon treats very much, and I think she would probably have preferred to eat them herself. Lola lives in Boston, and she will soon have to share her apartment with a new baby.

Ding Ding Meets Her Match

In our ongoing effort to teach Ding Ding some basic manners we have come to depend upon this squirt bottle. We first tried the spray bottle we use for ironing, but it produces a mist. The mist didn't faze her. This bottle produces a much stronger stream of water, and she doesn't like it at all. All I have to do is pick it up, and she either doesn't jump up or if she's already up, she gets down. I guess this is progress--she knows she shouldn't be on the counters, and we have a way to enforce our wishes. But I'm pretty sure if we're not here she wouldn't hesitate to roam where ever she wanted.

The higher the better

Ding Ding is the first cat I've owned who loves to climb. She likes altitude both inside and outside, and the thinner the branch the more she enjoys "going out on a limb."

A very bad cat

I have accumulated a number of photos documenting Dingers' bad habits, and since I have not been a very diligent blogger I am making up for lost time today. One photo illustrates the pleasing contrast (if you don't object to cats on counters, which I actually do) between black and white fur and granite countertops. The other photo documents a new and annoying behavior--table top resting. In this particular photo, Roger was trying to eat breakfast. It should be noted that she never did attempt to scarf his English muffins, although I'm not sure that makes up for her being on the table.

The loneliest cat in the world

When we went on vacation in September Ding Ding stayed behind. She was visited daily by Kate, who feed and watered her. She also took some photos to document how lonely Dingers was.

Winter has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and this has been a bummer for Ding Ding. You see her above, enjoying her vacation home in the San Juans. Now she wonders every day if she will be able to go outside at all. Molly Bloom, our cat pre-Ding Ding, was a true native of the Northwest. She didn't mind if it was raining, or if she got wet. Dingers does. This is a problem for her humans, because she is still very energetic as cats go. We find ourselves putting her outside simply because we need a break from her antics. When she was little we could burn off her energy by throwing newspaper balls for her to fetch. She still likes for us to throw the balls, but she doesn't retrieve the way she did when she was a kitten. This means less exercise and a living room covered in small wadded up pieces of newsprint. And less energy expended in acceptable activities means we spend our time fending off attacks on newspapers we are trying to read, chasing the cat off the counters as we try to cook or clean-up, or having to pick up papers she has deliberately pushed on the floor.

We know we have been lax in training Ding Ding. I can only say that we were totally unprepared for the cat we now share our house with, and we haven't yet figured out how to get through to her. Suggestions from more disciplined cat people would be welcome.

Offline but still busy...

Fans of Ding Ding will have noticed that she has been offline for most of the summer. But that does not mean she has not been busy. Dingers had her first encounter with a deer while visiting Lopez Island this summer, and although she was terrified at first (who knew there were animals that BIG out there?) she quickly realized that she was able to intimidate the deer despite the rather significant size differential.

Then in September Ding Ding was The Loneliest Cat in the World for a week when her humans took a vacation and left her behind. Gasp. And in the care of a Stranger. The Stranger likes cats, always a good thing in a catsitter, and documented Ding Ding's anguish and desperation in photos. We will post those pictures next time. And we promise not to let more than two months go by.