Humourous Cat Anecdotes, Part 3

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A little story I forwarded to one of your links about my cat. You said you would like to hear stories also. I hope you find it as amusing as I did.

In 1982, I bought a cat for my 100 pound Malamute puppy. He was left alone a lot, and someone suggested a kitty companion might be just the thing to help keep him amused while I was at work. She weighed about three pounds when I brought her home. I was nervous at first, but the kitty swatted him in the nose the first time he charged at her and they were great friends after that.

She did have one habit that drove him crazy. A 100 pound male dog is well endowed with testicles and a scrotum that tend to sway a bit when they walk. My cat would wait until the dog was about half way down the hall way, and then run like crazy and bat his scrotum, and duck into the nearest bedroom to hide. He was too big and clumsy to react as fast as she could. She thought this was the greatest sport in the world. She never hurt him at all....just antagonized him. He would growl and bark at her, but it never dissuaded her at all. I am sure she was quite disappointed when he was neutered. She lost her favorite "batting" toy. I wish I could have had a camcorder then. I just know I would have won the $100,000 grand prize. I have been waiting to tell this story to someone who might be able to use it. I hope you will.

Pat Wedzel
Dearborn Heights, MI

Murphy Does the Mad Squirrel Dance

We adopted Murphy from our favorite bartender at a local pub. Murphy was a teeny-tiny thing, the runt of the litter, and certainly not the prettiest one (she's a lovely tortie now, but she was sort of odd-looking for a while).

Here's how we picked her out: Our friend/bartender had adopted a stray, pregnant kitty. When the "peeps" were born, we were impressed at how hard our friend was trying to find good homes for them. We had recently lost our beloved kitty and had been debating on whether to adopt again. Well, this seemed like it was meant to be, so we visited to pick out a baby when the litter was eight weeks old.

They were all asleep on the fourth shelf of the linen closest where they were born. They woke up and were quite excited to see us. Except for Murphy. She sort of ignored them and us, jumped from that high shelf on to the floor, stumbled a bit from the far leap, and walked a distance down the hall. Then she sat down and stared at us and her littermates. The rest of the little guys were so cute, and very playful and rowdy with each other; Murphy was obviously a loner. I just had to go and pick her up. She was so tiny but she had this HUGE purr and she started washing my nose ...

Murphy really came out of her shell after we brought her home. She turned into a Wild Woman. My husband, who had never experienced raising a kitten, was quite impressed with her antics. She would arch her back, fluff up her tail, and dance across the back of the couch before taking a wild leap to run throughout the house. My husband called this behavior the "mad squirrel dance", because of how her tiny little tail bristled, looking like a squirrel's tail to him.

Stay tuned for the reason Murphy's purr is so loud and what happened when we adopted another kitten a few months later . . .

Hi Harold, Thanks for getting back to me and for posting my last anecdote. I have another! ( No, I don't have too much time on my hands . . . I'm just on vacation this week). Thanks! Why Murphy Purrs So Loudly When M. was just a teeny kitten, she would sit on the carpeted commode top and watch me get ready for work. She sweetly gazed at me and purred REALLY loud, almost as if she was forcing it out. It would start softly, build to a crescendo, then stop and begin again softly. It was just adorable. As M. grew older, she began having these wheezing, coughing fits from time to time. I took her to the vet and he x-rayed her chest. I was in the waiting room with M. when he came out and said, "I want to show you something. I've never, in my 30 years of being a vet, seen anything like this." M.'s x-ray revealed that she was born with a birth defect. Her heart was upside down *and* on the wrong side of her chest. The major artery going from her heart to her lungs was bent at an angle, almost kinked. The vet explained why that caused her to wheeze sometimes. The same effect, we theorized, cause her purr to amplify and gurgle a bit. And that's why M. has a very loud purr.

Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997
From: Adrian Gentilcore
Subject: Bad Kitty Stuff

My mother's dear friend Zelda Reber had some very unusual cats as well. She's gone now, but she was my mother's best friend for over 40 years and sort of a surrogate Grandmother to me, so this is sort of a remembrance of her and her cats, who were her only companions for many, many years.

Zelda had an calico cat named Fang who had a great fondness for Kleenex. Whenever a female guest arrived to visit, the first thing Fang would do is dive headfirst into the lady's purse and immediately fish out all the Kleenex and shred it on the floor.

Fang's other passion was playing with cellophane cigarette wrappers. I've heard that cats are not easily trainable, but Zelda had Fang trained to fetch and return the cigarette wrappers, sometimes for hours at a time. What was more, Fang was smart enough to deliver them to me upon command.