Things to do with a cone
When our cat arrived some months ago he came with a lot of baggage.
Apart from the cat himself we inherited a travelling box, a blanket, a collar, a lead, a shit box, several boxes of food, a bag of litter, a feeding bowl, a scratching pole, several toys and a nasty temperamental streak.
Of all of the above, the only things Cat seems to be using are the blanket, the feeding bowl and the nasty temperamental streak. The furniture is his substitute for the scratching pole, the garden is his general toilet [thank God] and the rest are just stashed away just in case. It was when I tried to put his collar on that I discovered his nasty temperamental streak, and my finger took the brunt. I haven’t tried since.
For those of you dying for news on my finger, I finally pulled off the damaged nail and my finger now looks weird. The new nail that had started to grow as a replacement seems to have stopped half way which means I can never resume playing the guitar. The sacrifices I make…..
Anyhows, Cat has become very pally with the dog, which is sadly not reciprocated. Penny tolerates but does not play. As a result, Cat sometimes becomes bored, yet refuses to play with his toys. The only one he ever showed a slight interest in was a little plastic ball with a bell inside it. A game with that lasts about half a minute.
When Cat gets bored then he starts annoying the dog. One of his favourite tricks is to suddenly stand upright on his hind legs [and he’s a very long cat] and holds his two front paws up like a letter Y. He then launches himself at Penny. Penny of course has become wise to this so the instant she sees the Y she dodges and Cat falls smack on his face on the floor. Sometimes she’s too slow though and this large mass of fur lands on top of her head which scares the shit out of her.
Cat was annoying me the other evening. He was obviously bored and had had enough of the garden, with eating and with sleeping so he was out for some mischief. Penny was lying in her armchair so was out of reach. Out of frustration I threw a pine cone at him. There are always pine cones lying around the place as Youngest Granddaughter likes to play with them in the garden and tends to bring them indoors [we have thousands of the damn things off our fir trees].
So the pine cone bounced off the wooden floor just in front of Cat’s nose [just where I aimed] and he went ballistic. By chance I had discovered his new favourite toy.
He pounced on it; he patted it; he kicked it; he jumped on it; he pinged it off the walls and sent it scittering around the floor at high speed. It was like one of those air-hockey things as the floor is wooden and the cone just flew along with the cat in hot pursuit. It kept him amused for about half an hour.
He lost it in the end under the washing machine and peace resumed.
I wasn’t bothered as we have an abundant supply in the garden. I have brought in my own little supply and any time the cat gets bored I just chuck one at him.
It’s amazing the fun you can have with a pine cone?
Not just cats nor pine cones. I am constantly amazed at the wonder and ‘mileage’ Granddaughter2 (2.25 years old) gets out of a dirty leaf, mouldy acorn or stones plucked from the wayside. Infact my jacket pockets now have more gravel in them than the neighbour’s drive. “issh habba A shtonn!” (she’s still working on the whole separating languages thing).
Mind you even an acorn so covered in botulism that even a Norfolk Squirrel would turn it’s snout up at it cannot compare with almost magnetic draw of a puddle which looks as if it contains every single virus known to mankind up to and including ebola : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B51GRtWSrHe0SnRsQ2Q5Y0M5UlU
Ah yes! Stones. The front area here is covered in gravel, pine cones and dog shit. I regularly find stones around the place too, as she brings them in by the cupful. I give her a cup of juice – she drinks it and promptly fills the cup with gravel. I’m waiting for the dog shit to start arriving.
Splashing around in raw sewage is good for a child. It greatly enhances the immune system. I bung the grandkids out into the back yard every time the drain backs up.
It greatly enhances the immune system.
Yeeeah….one slight downside to that approach: As good modern parents Youngest Dwarf and His Good Lady consulted the Jamie Oliver Bumper Book Of Pukka Baby Names before christening the poor wee mite . So we have always called Granddaughter2 “Squirrel” (in Alemannic German cos that’s how we roll) . Now I think a pet name of ‘Typhoid Mary’ might have been more apt.
Pine cones are natures’ Lego at night. Stand on one of those bad boys in the dark with bare feet….
Hah! I make sure there are none placed on the line between the bedroom and the jax.
“Hah!”, smirks Cat, “that’s what HE thinks …”
😉
How about a laser pointer?
That’s not a bad idea. I used to amuse one of my previous dogs by reflecting the sun off my watch onto a wall. It used to drive him insane!
Pedantry perhaps but pine cones from fir trees?
Fir? Pine? Trees! Coniferous……
Well do you have both in the pleasure grounds or just the one conifer species?
I’ll second the laser pointer. we have two, one for me and one for the wife. We have the bit of fun tag teaming the cats now and then (read: driving them crazy). We can get 3 out of 4 banging their heads together but the senior cat (female), as you say, couldn’t be arsed.
I found it’s also fun to beam the neighbor once in awhile.