Kitty Caper #1
When people decide to decorate for a given holiday, they’re usually concerned about what their child/children or dog might do with said decorations to hurt themselves. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I”m really worried that the cat might get maimed/sick from the holiday decorations.” I’ve heard, “the damn cat climbed the Christmas tree again,” or “stupid cat knocked over Aunt Flos crystal vase when I put it out on the table with the roses in it.” But never, “I’m really worried that the cat might suffer fatal injury from the halloween decorations.”
People, I’m here to tell you, you need to worry about that cat. Cats are sneakier than dogs (and most children) and they have hunting instincts. When they see something they want, they’ll go after it without mercy until it is theirs.
That said, my cat Pele (the boy cat) usually has the attention span of Hockey Fan when his ADD is at its worst. He’ll poke you and prod you for a good petting and then the second you move your hand to scratch him between the ears, he runs away. He’ll hook your lip with a claw in the middle of the night and then, when you realize you’re going to have to wake up and give him some attention or he’ll never leave you alone, he walks haughtily away to his bed, where he curls cutely up and goes to sleep, while you toss and turn and sigh. I’ve seen Bettis, the girl cat, wait for an hour of a spider that had crawled under Hockey Fan’s computer, to emerge, at which point she proceeded to torture it with vigor, but Pele sat there for about three seconds and then went off to find his next misadventure.
Thus, I figured the Halloween decorations were safe.
I’d made a nice little spooky autumn tableaux with those gel things that stick to the window. Usually, I put them on the front door, but since it was pretty warm in the Pacific Northwest until last week, we’d been leaving the glass part of the door part way up so that the cats could sit in the screen and I didn’t have enough space for my lovely leaf, candy corn, and spooooooky cat display (the Happy Halloween letters were hopelessly mangled and the ghosts seem to have vanished). We have a huge picture window in our living room that faces the street, and I figured that the trick-or-treaters would be able to see it the welcoming decorative scheme and know that we were open for business (we had a grand total of 4, by the way). It looked great with the pumpkin lights and so, I figured we were ready for Halloween.
Over the next few days, I started to find the gel things scattered across the living room. Hockey Fan and I couldn’t figure out how it was happening. They were too far away from the window to have fallen off. Some of them were still super sticky. We figured that, maybe, the ghosties were out early this year. And then, one Saturday morning, we were out on the front porch, unloading our bags from the Farmer’s market, and saw Pele, standing on his hind legs on the windowsill, very patiently biting, licking, and teasing, one of the gels from the window. He carried it to a spot far away from said window and promptly began chewing in it.
Of course, then he threw it up. He’s not the world’s brightest cat and I think he swallowed some bits before we got to him.
I removed all of the gels I thought he would be able to reach. He’s a pretty big furball, so I just left them along the top edge of the window, out of what I thought was his range. Well, he found a way.
He even ate the spooky cats. Cannibal.
So please, when you’re decorating, think of your kitties too. They seem to really enjoy the texture of these gel things, and though we were lucky, and just had to clean up some cat barf, I imagine that if they ingested a lot, far worse things could happen to furry friends.
