Conference misery::feline_v1

    That remindes me of TiJai (R.I.P.), the Siamese neuter that allowed
    us to love him for 20 wonderful years.  If his favorite visitor
    ignored him he would jump on the counter, open the breadbox and
    climb in ..."I just dare you to ignore me any longer ...and see
    what I think of next!".  Everytime we left him alone we would come
    back to find a sock (I never could fiqure out where he "stole" them)
    just inside the door.  Once when we went camping for a week, his
    favorite visitor stopped by for her twice daily visits to tend to
    the three kitties' needs (meaning hugs first, everything else later)
    to find the kitchen floor a disaster.  TiJai had opened the lower
    cupboard, opened a box of oatmeal and (I'll never know how) opened
    a bottle of Kirsch (sp).  He had then run back and forth through
    them and mixed them all together!  Yuk!   His sister, Sheba, once
    ran the length of a room with one front paw landing on a baseboard
    I had just painted white.  One paw left prints across the floor.
    She never did this before or since... how did she know?!!
    ...and there was the toilet tissue that was unrolled out into the
    kitchen and around the kitchen table three times ...None of them
    ever admitted to that, but I swear they were smiling! ...and TiJai
    never would let me (attempt to) sing. He would cover my mouth with
    his paw and extend his claws just the tiniest bit and hold them
    there until he was sure he had made his point!  Gee, I sure miss
    him, but I've got a hundred stories like these that I'll hold in
    my heart forever......     Thanks for bringing them to mind again..
    
    Linda
    
    

    RE .1
    
    That was Hilarious..  Give us more.
    
    Sandi (Lightning's, DejaVu's & Thunder's mom)
    
    

    I agree.  Let us here more.
    
    We just moved to Maine and get settled and it was time for Smokey
    to become less of a man than he once was.  For the past three weeks
    he had either been reading the wrong type of magazines or "his time
    had come" .... I picked the latter choice.
    
    Now that he is not home, Bandit who was an adult when he came and
    he was just a ball of fluff hissed and spat and hid.  Now she hunts
    all over the place.  She is not using the litter box and in a new
    house with plenty of boxes, I have not found here new choice.  I
    will be glad when smokey returns.  He is also being declawed - he
    has 8 toes per foot and I never saw claws that could grow so quickly
    which is why he is gone for three nights.
    
    Moving and cats does not agree.  I put up a waterbed with 6 drawers
    under it and had to rescue each cat once.  They had sneaked in before
    I could shut the door and were SO clever, I did not know they had
    done it.  Any newly opened box or open drawer ready to receive items
    is fair game.
    
    Again thaks .2 for the stories.
    
    Cathy, Bandit, Smokey

    TiJai learned to open doors ..."How else are you going to find out
    what is on the other side"!  He would stretch out and wrap his two
    paws around the door knob, then push up with one paw and down with
    the other ...and the door would open..  Neat, hunh?  Wrong!!!!!!
    
    I'll never forget the day the youngest of my three sons started
    school. Once he was on his way, I visited my neighbor whose daughter
    was also attending her first day at school.  We consoled each other
    about our "empty nests" and congratulated each other on how neat
    our homes were going to stay, now that the kiddies were occupied
    for a while...   Fat chance!
    
    Twenty minutes later I returned home to find that TiJai had opened
    the bathroom closet door. With tooth and claw "at hand" he attacked
    the unopened 25 pound bag of kitty litter which then poured out
    onto the bathroom floor. At this point, the three of them, TiJai,
    his sister, Sheba and his neice, Sity (Sigh-tigh) discovered a half
    dozen foil packages of powdered egg mix I had bought for an upcoming
    camping trip. They shredded the foil (without ingesting any, thank
    God!) and scattered the powdered egg over the litter. 
    
    Now, if someone told me about this, I probably would doubt it, but
    I was there and saw it with my own eyes..   The three of them, with
    TiJai in the lead, would run around the kitchen table, sprint the
    length of the kitchen, and then slide through the egg/litter mixture
    like children on skates.  Then they would scramble lickity-split
    back around the kitchen table only to repeat the whole process again!
    
    To this day I'm not quite sure if my collapse into tears was unbridled
    amusement or hysterical laughter....     
    

    Good Lord!  That sounds unreal!  How long did it take you to
    clean that up?
    
    E.T.

    Linda, those stories were a riot!!  My neighbor has been dying for
    a cat, but as the story usually goes, her SO isn't ready for one.
    
    Guess what breed she wants?  Siamese!  I told her from what I knew
    about the breed (which isn't much), they are loveable little terrors
    and extremely intelligent...she'll get a kick out of your stories
    -thanks for sharing them.
    
    /Roberta
    

    This isn't really a temper tantrum story but Linda's note reminded
    me of it.  We used to buy our 50lb bags of cat litter and then just
    rip a whole in the top of the bag and leave it leaning against the
    wall in the laundrey room.  Never again!  One of the cats must have
    knocked over the bag or something.  Ken and I came home from work
    to discover the floor of the laundrey room covered with litter.
    Well, that wouldn't have been so bad, but the cats must have thought
    that we had decided to convert the whole room into one giant litter
    box because there were puddles and piles everywhere!

    Fortunately for me, that is not my "end" of the cats and Ken had
    to clean it up. ;^)
    
    Jo
    

    to:
    
    E.T.	You're right, it does sound unreal ...you had to see
    		it to believe it!  I got the mess cleaned up and returned
    		home from buying a new bag of litter just in time for
    		the two legged "nestlings" to arrive home from school!
    
    Roberta	Yes, Siamese are smart... TiJai was very different in
    		looks from "today's" Siamese ...and wasn't "within the
    		standard" back 22 years ago when he was born... but
    		he was something special to all who knew and loved him.
    		I haven't lived with any of the newer, more exotic looking
    		Siamese, But, I like to think that, although very different
    		in looks they have the same wonderful temperament...
    		Though, of course, there could never be another "T"!
    
    Jo		Oh, no!  Wall to wall litter box.  Lucky us for having
    		husbands that "aid and abet(sp)" in our passion for
    		the little demons...  It sure helps at the rough times!

    I am blessed with two "old-style" Siamese, Charm and Niniane.  Niniane
    is a smart little kitty.  I can *see* her thinking sometimes.  I
    don't know how many times I've put everything I can think of out
    of reach in the basement and said to myself, "there, that should
    stop the mischief," but no, she find something else.  As in,
    
    If I go away for more than two nights, they both poop just outside
    the litter box as if to say, "Mom, you should stay home more often
    and catch us doing these things."
    
    Niniane has figured out how to open the cabinet door in the kitchen
    where I keep her cat food.  If I don't feed her fast enough when
    I get home, she will walk over to the cabinet, look at me, open
    the door just so far, and let it slam shut (magnetic catch).  She does this over
    and over until I feed her.  How did she figure out it was annoying?
    I don't know!    
    
    Niniane shredded the first five or ten layers of ten new, plastic
    wrapped rolls of paper towel I had foolishly stored in the basement.
    Not enough to trash the entire roll, just enough so your guests wonder
    why your paper towels have teeth marks.  However, the unwrapped
    roll I have in the basement to clean up in the laundry has remained
    untouched lo these many months.
    
    Charm will not eat "people food" you place for her on the kitchen floor.  Charm will
    only eat leftovers that you leave on the kitchen counter and forget
    to put away immediately.  I came in one night to find her nose deep
    in a pan of macroni and cheese.  Ever see a Siamese face coated in cheese
    sauce?  Major loss of dignity. 
    
    I covered an entire support pole in my basement with carpet remmnant
    and sisal rope, even rubbed catnip in it for good measure.  They
    still insist on scratching the wooden support posts for the cellar
    stairs.  I'm going to go feed them one night and the stairs will
    fall down.  I think it's a plot.
    
    Smart?  Definitely!  Talkative?  Certainly!  Exasperating?  Entirely!
    Fun?  Every single moment!!!!!
    
    Mary-Michael

    Don't they just make life interesting, though!  I thought I had
    finally figured out the answer to my scratching post problem. Every
    time TiJai went near it I would *scold* him.  It worked like a charm.
    It was years before I figured out that my scolding wasn't tricking
    him into using the scratching post ...actually his using the scratching
    post was tricking me into scolding ...as in *attention*!
    

 My two "foreign" devils, Munchkin and Kali Mutu (16-year-old Siamese), 
each let us know how they feel about everthing!  Mutu is very vocal, but 
has a true vocabulary, and gives the dirtiest looks!  When she needs to 
take some medicine for her arthritis, you'd swear she had lock-jaw -- it 
takes two of us to give this 7 pound cat a pill!  She also unlocks 
doors, which one of her daughters taught her how to do on a visit.  She 
returned the favor by teaching her daughter to open a cigar box to 
remove the pipe cleaners that are stored there.  To this day, it's her 
favorite toy, and insists on having a new one each night.  To see her 
play, running up and down the hall, tossing the pipe cleaner around, 
you'd never believe she was 16!

  Munchkin is a real baby, especially since he developed diabetes a 
couple of years ago, and now has arthritis in his hind legs.  He likes 
to play the "dying Siamese (not swan)" with me, and his two 
"grandmothers".  Over Memorial Day week-end we were in Washington, 
visiting my husband's sister and her husband.  My in-laws were cat 
sitting in N.J.  Munch went up and down the stairs all week-end long, 
never complaining, but as soon as I walked in the house, he sat on the 
bottom stair, looked at me, and came out with a "Mmm, Mmm" (his dying 
Siamese voice)!  He also was shut up by accident in a bathroom for a 
whole day, and had torn up the toilet paper, pulled down the towels, 
pushed off the stuff on the back of the john, ripped pieces of veneer 
from the inside door, and took bites out of the soft toilet seat!  I 
guess he got his point across all right!

  I wish the people who determine what the Siamese breed looks like 
would not have such extreme standards - the new ones remind us of a 
cross between a Kangaroo and a Greyhound!  Forgive me if I've offended 
any of you who have the newer Siamese.  I'm having a hard time deciding 
on what breed to have next.  The closest to the old-style Siamese is the 
Tonkinese, but I also like Burmese, Abys, and the British shorthairs 
(They have a face like Munch's), but I really can't see living with 
cats who don't talk -  it's nice having someone answer you all the time!

Regards,
Joan
 

    re: .11
    
    I saw several adds in the latest CAT FANCY magazine for "apple
    headed" siamese, which is the old type.  If you'd like, I'll
    try to remember to bring it in and send you the breeder's names.
    
    Karen, Tristan and Tenzing.

    re: 11
    
    Hang in there - maybe someday!  I have two apple heads and I
    don't think I could do a greyhound type.  I've gotten a little
    used to seeing them from all the shows, but.....
    
    E.T.

    re:11
    
    I have two apple heads myself, and I don't care much for the newer
    "sleeker" Siamese.  When dry, they tend to look like my Siamese
    do when they're wet!  My 9 month old was from an apple headed litter,
    and was reasonably priced.  There are quite a few people breeding
    them around, at least in New England.
    
    I have one that plays "neglected Siamese" with me!  You wouldn't
    mind but she weighs about 14 lbs!!!  Hardly neglected, that lady!
    
    Mary-Michael, Niniane and Charm

    re: .11
    
    Found the ad -- 
    
    CALLENDER CAT'S.  Old-time "applehead" Siamese.  Champion and supreme
    grand champion bloodlines.  All colors.  240 Portier Rd., Ponchatoula,
    LA 70454; (504)386-9257.
    
    I thought there were at least two, but they were from the same cattery.
    I'm sure if you look around you'll be able to find breeders in your
    area who are still breeding the old style siamese.
    
    Karen, Tristan and Tenzing.

    RE .11
    
    If you like a cat that talks and looks like the old type Siamese,
    you might want to try a Snowshoe.  Some (without snow) look just
    like a siamese and others (with snow) have lovely white feet and
    an inverted white V across their face.  They are also very people
    oriented and curious about their surroundings.  They are a bit larger
    than the siamese, between 10 and 14 lbs.
    
    Jeanne, Cali and Sam