posted on March 7, 2001 04:10:33 PM
Last night when I got home from work I heard a frantic knocking at the sliding glass door. I peeked out and saw my husband there, beckoning for me to let him in. "Kabu locked me out!" he explained, referring to our little 8-month-old tabby cat. Apparently he'd gone outside about an hour earlier and the cat had leaned on the bolt which locks the sliding glass door at the bottom. Hubby said both Kabu and his brother, Kazu, just sat there on the other side of the glass the whole time, looking at him, until I came home and let him back in.
posted on March 7, 2001 07:11:10 PM
Hi All! I don't know if everyone would consider this funny and unfortunately I wasn't at home to witness it, ( only the aftermath), so this is really my husbands story. We live in a regular 60's ranch house..with an added on front porch. You have to go up 3 steps to get to the porch and the front door. We also have an all glass storm door. When the weathers nice we like to leave the wooden door open and our two dogs, Reba, the bloodhound, and Roscoe, my big, black bear, like to sleep in front of the door on the tile floor. The front door opens into the living room and one of the previous owners thought it would be "neat" to put up a half wall, to make a walkway to the kitchen, with an opening in the middle. In other words effectively shrinking my living room and making it almost impossible to arrange furniture. So..you walk in the front door-go around the half wall and there is a large picture window.
Sorry that was sooo long but I was trying to set the scene. Now here's the story. I had gone to run errands and my husband was the only one home. He was in another part of the house watching tv. The dogs were sleeping in front of the glass door. This was early fall/late summer and we always get ALOT of religious solicitors around this time of year, (I won't name the religion, don't wish to offend anyone). Two older ladies in dresses came up to our door...couldn't see the dogs..I guess until it was too late. The dogs were startled out of their sleep, jumped up and started barking. Reba, apparently, ran around the half wall, jumped at the picture window, and ended up with her head and one paw thru one of the glass panes. By the time my husband got to the front door...all he saw was the backsides of these two ladies high tailin it down our driveway!! They must have thought the hounds of hell were after them! LOL
Reba didn't even get a scratch...and of course when I got home I had to turn around and run to the home improvement store and buy a pane of glass. I always MISS the good stuff!
Rainybear...maybe you'd better hide an extra key outside somewhere...just incase there's a next time!
posted on March 7, 2001 07:28:34 PM
My dog totally embarrassed me last week.
I take my kids to an outdoor skating rink every day. It's located in a nice park so I take the dog along and play with her in the park while the kids skate. Well last week was messy weather and the park was all muddy and sloppy so the dog was quite a mess after her run. I decided to go into the skating building to get some wet paper towels to wipe off the dog before she got into my car. For some reason, she panicked and was afraid to go into the building with me. I had her on a leash but she pulled away and ran out into the parking lot. Out there, a woman had just loaded her kids into her car and was getting in the drivers seat. My dog ran and LEAPED into her car and up on her lap!!!
I almost died of shame. That dog was SO muddy and you should have seen that poor woman and her clothes. I could hardly speak when I saw the mess. All I could do was pull the dog out and apologize over and over. I offered to pay to clean her clothes and even the car.
As it turns out, she's a dog lover and thought the whole episode was funny. Wouldn't let me pay for the cleaning so I ended up getting a gift certificate for her and gave it to her next time I saw her. I thanked my lucky stars that she was so good-natured about it.
posted on March 8, 2001 08:00:30 AM
Here's the set up, I have a pug, a bassett and a cat. The cat tolerates the dogs, but hasn't warmed up to them yet after 4 years, she also antagonizes them something awful. The basset loves to chew paper. She shreds anything that finds its way to the floor or coffee table. We learned pretty quickly not to leave anything important laying around. The pug is FAT and SMART.
I would come home from work and at least twice a week I would find that any paper type things (magazines, bills waiting to go out etc) that had been left on the kitchen counter were all over the floor and shredded. The only thing I could figure is that the cat was jumping up there (a big no-no in our house) and knocking the stuff down for the dogs to chew, thereby getting them in trouble. One day, I walked around the corner into the dining room to see the FAT PUG DOG on the kitchen counter!!!! I yelled something not repeatable here and the pug JUMPED across a 3 foot span from the counter to a side chair we had in the dining area, sat down on the floor and sheepishly tried to look as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It turns out that the pug was trying to get the cat and the bassett into trouble!
Geesh, and I thought only humans had sibling rivalries!
posted on March 8, 2001 01:50:33 PM
I have a male orange tabby named "Lucky" that adopted me last summer. He kept stealing my 7yr old's stuffed kitty so we bought him his own "teddy". He drags his teddy around, wrestles, plays with it and on a regular basis we've even seen him mating with it. And yes..... he's nuetered. Don't know if they'd let me put a pic on......
posted on March 8, 2001 02:05:33 PM
Maybe not yee-ha funny, but, I hope, mildly amusing:
My panama amazon parrot, Leo, has a pretty good vocabulary. When someone's leaving, he almost always says "bye-bye" as they're on the way out, usually several times.
Once a friend of mine, who was familiar with Leo's exit routine, was leaving and stopped to say "bye-bye". Leo was silent. Despite repeated prompting on my friend's part. He finally gave up, walked over, and opened the door. At which point Leo screams "SHUT THE DOOR!". (I got him when he was 5; I didn't even know he knew how to say that).
One thing that always gets the twilight zone music going in my head involves laughter. It seems to be pretty common with parrots -- they laugh appropriately at jokes. I suspect it's something in the inflection leading up to the punch line. But whatever it is, if someone's telling a joke within earshot of Leo, he's typically the first one to start laughing. Very creepy sometimes.
-gaffan-
posted on March 8, 2001 03:48:37 PM
We have a shepherd/lab mix named Katie. At the time this happened we also had a 110lb german shepherd named Scooter. A few years ago Katie and Scooter were in the backyard playing. After coming in Katie was shaking her head and we heard her jaw clicking. We rushed her to the vet, thinking her jaw was broken. When our vet opened her mouth, he asked us if she had any dental work done recently. When we assured him that she hadn't. He then nonchalantly told us, that she had a crown on her back tooth and it was keeping her from closing her mouth. A few days earlier my husband had lost a crown and had set it on the dishwasher. Somehow it fell off. She picked it up and somehow lodged it flush onto one of her back teeth. Which explained the clicking noise and why she was shaking her head and trying desperately to close her mouth.
posted on March 8, 2001 08:00:03 PM
When my kitty was about a year old she was watching TV(something she did often--she liked basketball). There was a show on about bats(one of the camera angles made it appear as if the bats were coming right out of the TV)....She was watching the bats swarm around when one came swooshing right over her head--She took off fast as she could around the corner. After a few minutes she starts making her way slowly back to the TV(watching it like a hawk mind you)-she had almost reached her "spot" when swoosh--out came another bat...poor thing scrambled out of the room and hasn't watched TV since(she's almost 4).
posted on March 8, 2001 08:46:02 PM
Had a wonderful cat named Duffy, multiple purrsonality, thought he was human sometimes
he thought he was a dog. He loved HIS people and figured where they went he should go too. Duffy was always in by dusk and didn't go out again til after breakfast.
When we 1st moved to the country we would go outside after dark to listen to the crickets and other woodsy sounds and look up at the stars. We were careful not to go too close to the woods being aware of wild creatures, ie: racoons, skunks etc.On one particular night I felt something furry rub agains my leg & jumped a mile. It was Duffy. He had pulled open the sliding screen door (which I had left unclocked) in order to join HIS people.
Next night locked the screen door, enjoying
the moon & stars & once again an unexpected
warm furry scared the beejeesis out of me.
Oh, screen door locked, well Duffy just
pulled a corner of the nylon screen out of the door frame. Hubby built a framed hardware
cloth device about 3 feet high and slipped
that on the inside of the screen. Then when
we went out we were serenaded by Duffy's version of harp playing!! He really was a
wonderful character cat who kept us chuckling
for 20 years with his antics.
posted on March 8, 2001 10:19:53 PM
Our dog Gunther has a fit if we go out into the backyard without him. I mean it is his yard after all and he needs to protect it and his people, right? One night DH and I needed to look at something in the backyard and we didn't want Gunther to interfer. So we went out without him and shut both screen and regular door. He had a major tizzy and kept jumping up on the door and rattling the blinds.
We started to go back inside and the door wouldn't open. DH and I look at each other like, "Why did you lock the door??" Then we both look at the window and there's Gunther on his hind legs looking back at us. Then the realization dawns on us, he'd locked the deadbolt in his tantrum! All the gates are padlocked closed, but the front door was unlocked. Our fence isn't easy to climb either. But we found something for hubby to stand on to get over and went around the front to let me in. There's nothing funnier and more humiliating than being locked out by your pet, right RB?
posted on March 10, 2001 01:12:13 AM
I just love these stories, what a hoot! Come on you guys, surely you have more...
Ok, I have another one. This is the incident that my mom said sounded like an episode of I Love Lucy. Here we go:
We got a visit from a Kirby vacuum salesman. He comes over, goes through his speal and did a really good job since we decided to buy it (we didn't plan on it, just wanted the shampooing ). Well, part of the deal for him to come over was that he would shampoo 2 rooms worth of our carpet. We were still training Gunther, so believe me, it needed it!
We got done with everything and while the salesman was doing the 2 rooms, DH had to run out for a few minutes. I was a little nervous about being here alone with the guy, but DH wouldn't be gone long. So there we were and the salesman's crew shows up to pick him up. Now I'm even more nervous because there's about 5 guys in my house. So they start loading up his gear while he finishes up. Next thing I know, one of the crew knocks on the door and says the back of my house is on fire. Now mind you, I'm already nervous so I'm thinking to myself, there's no way. He says, "I'm serious!!!"
I go to look out the back door and sure enough, there's a fire right behind the house, just outside our fence. My jaw drops open and everyone starts scrambling. We all run out into the yard and are trying to look over our 6 1/2 foot fence to see what was on fir. Meanwhile, one of the guys has a cell phone and he calls 911. Turns out there was a car in the canal behind our house on fire. Keep in mind at this point in time we had 4 indoor cats and a puppy in the house.
We all hung out in the yard for a bit to watch the firemen do their thing. So we all troop back into the house and I notice the front door is wide open! I go to shut the door and see hubby in the driveway. He wasn't even all the way out of the car and his jaw was hanging and he had the most dumbfounded look on his face. When he left all was quiet and dark. He comes back 10 minutes later and he can see the flames behind the house and fire engines everywhere.
About this point in time I hurriedly explain to him what had happened and that the front door had been left open for who knows how long. We run back into the house. First one we see is Gunther, all crashed out right where we left him (he was maybe 10 weeks old and you know how puppies sleep ). Then we started the cat search, of the 4, three were already hiding when the guy first showed up. We found 2 of the 4 and freaked. The poor guys were so apologetic and offered to help start searching. So about a half dozen of us start combing the area with flashlights. Mind you, the fire engines were still there and one of the ones missing had never been outside without supervision.
Well, we combed the neighborhood for about an hour or so, the guys apologizing the whole time. We finally decided that we weren't going to find them until things died down so we told them to go ahead and leave. The salesman felt horrible about it and asked us to call him the next day and give him an update. After everyone had left and all was quiet, we searched the house again.
We found one of the two in the boxspring of the bed. About a half hour later we found the last one behind the washer. Considering it was Buddy (our huge Maine Coon), we were astonished that he could even get back there! We had to move the washer for him to even get out. Poor thing, we just kept hugging and kissing him and crying, he just had that cat "what the heck is all the fuss about???" look on his face.
I must have told that story for 3 weeks and everyone who knows me and my cats just roared about it! I do now, but I sure didn't then! Oh, and we did call and leave the salesman the message that we'd found them all
*edited for clarity, it's late!
~^~ Born again flower child ~^~
[ edited by mouseslayer on Mar 10, 2001 01:15 AM ]
posted on March 10, 2001 03:46:13 AMMouse Wow what a difference a few
minutes can make. Can you imagine all those
babies saying to themselves, No Way am I
going out in all that noise....hidey, hidey
hide. (They knew a safe haven when they
found one)
posted on March 14, 2001 10:55:45 AM
I don't know what is going on in his little kitty brain but my Maine Coon Cat, Tigger, is doing the strangest things. I had just finished cleaning the kitchen floor and I spot him run from his dish to under the kitchen table where he dropped 3 Friskies Dental diet pellets on the floor (how he can manage 3 whole pellets is beyond me these are big)...then he proceeded to crunch them and of course leave crumbs. Ok, I love him I'll just clean that up again.
Now I am getting my lunch and he is forlornly mewling and watching with those big eyes of his...so I concede and pour a tablespoon of milk into a very small bowl. He sits and sits and sits....8 inches away from the bowl. Then very tentatively extends his left paw and dips it in the milk. By the time he gets it up to his face he has liberally sprinkled the clean floor with milk. I have a placemat under his food but because he is sitting sooo far away it is doing no good. Here is my Big Tig[wish I'd had the camera ready for the show but who knew?
edited because I can't speel!
[ edited by zilvy on Mar 14, 2001 11:15 AM ]
posted on March 14, 2001 11:58:45 AM
Pets are so funny.
Zilvy, Tigger looks like such a sweetie! I love Maine Coons. One of my cats, Sunshine, is (we think) part Maine Coon:
Cats are so funny with their food sometimes! My younger tabby cat, Kabu, can be endlessly amused by batting and energetically pursuing a piece of cat food around the kitchen floor. His joy only ends when it ends up under the fridge or the dishwasher... there must be quite a collection under there by now.
posted on March 14, 2001 12:11:55 PMRainyBear Your sweet Sunshine definitely looks like there is some Maine Coon there. What a pretty kitty! How many do you have? So far I count 3 gorgeous cats. Are these all indoor kitties? If so, you must have your hands full with keeping up with kitty fur. I groom Tig every day, when we had 4 kitties at one time I enlisted my husband in assisting. Mouselayer and I were laughing about the problems with the computer mouse and cat fur...seems the kitties like to congregate near the 'puter.
posted on March 14, 2001 12:27:32 PM
Zilvy, you counted right -- we have three kitties. After we moved into our house just over a year ago, I went to the animal shelter, ostensibly to get a dog, and returned with the big ball of furr you see above. The people who had dropped her off at the shelter said she was two years old, but the vet said she's at least eight. Sunshine is very shy and doesn't like to be handled much. She even turned around and bit me when I was trying to keep her on my lap during the adoption process! She's usually pretty gentle, but not afraid to express her displeasure when she's tired of our company. She doesn't like my husband at all unless he has a comb attached to his hand.
She had lots of mats in her fur when we got her so I think she must have been neglected. When they put her "under" to clean her teeth at the vet's, they shaved off her matted fur, too, and she came home looking like some kind of strange poodle. The picture above was taken the day we got her. Right after I took the photo she bolted because she doesn't like the click of the camera.
We got Kabu and Kazu as kittens a few months ago and they're just as sweet as can be. Sunny doesn't like them but she has adjusted admirably. We recently got a tablecloth for our dining room table and I'm learning that tablecloths and cats are not compatible! Every day when I come home from work the tablecloth is halfway off the table. I yelled at Kazu when he jumped on the table this morning, then I felt so bad because he cowered on the floor with his little ears back, then went and hid behind our veritcal blinds. I *still* feel guilty.
Sunny is mainly an indoor cat but she also goes out a few times each day. The kittens are indoors only, and I'd like to keep it that way, but my husband is used to indoor/outdoor cats and he wants to let them out when they get older. I'm really fighting that! They're my little babies, and I'm especially protective of Kazu.
posted on March 14, 2001 12:35:10 PM
I don't know what your location is like, we live in the country on a cul de sac, with woods on 3 sides. Our kitties used to be indoor/outdoor....but now with the development of the area the wild creatures, ostensibly, coyotes, are being crowded into our area, they must be kept indoors. Even tho cats can climb trees and coyotes can't, a domestic cat is no match for a feral carnivore. This is witnessed by the many posts for missing cats and dogs on our telephone poles in the area.
posted on March 14, 2001 12:56:03 PM
If I lived in an area with predators, no way would *any* of the kitties go out! But I live in the 'burbs and the only "wild" critters there are the crows.
Our street is pretty quiet, too, and not a main thoroughfare, so the only people who use the street are my neighbors. Sunshine is pretty savvy about the outdoors. I would worry about the little ones, though, so I hope hubby never wins that argument.
posted on March 14, 2001 07:57:46 PM
Ok, I have another one, The Bassett Hound (Blossom) was a holy terror when we got her, but those big sweet eyes.. she got away with murder and she knew it! (Still does BTW)
It was tax time and my hubb insisted on doing the taxes in front of the TV. After he was done he left the stapler and box of staples on the coffee table. We retired for the night thinking nothing about the staples and the bassett. I got up the next morning, stumbled out of bed to let Blossom out for her morning 'duties' and stopped dead in my tracks... Strewn all across the floor, from the family room, through the foyer, through the dining room, were hundreds of staples! I immediately checked Blossom's mouth, there were no staples or signs of injury, so I thought "phew, that was close, I guess she didn't swallow any of them.." That afternoon, after I got home from work, I decided to call the vet (we were on a first name basis by this time because of Blossom's exploits). He suggested we drop by for an X Ray. The vet brought the picture into the exam room and clipped it up on the light... she was FULL of tiny little staples! From one end to the other! There was nothing the vet could do but tell me to feed her as much as she could eat and wait a week to see if they passed.
The following week, I returned for the follow up X Ray, the Dr took her back to take the pictures while I waited. About 15 minutes later, he came out with one poopy rubber glove, held out his hand and showed me a dime and a quarter. The vet said "Well, the staples are all gone, and I've got good news for you, your dog makes change!"
posted on March 14, 2001 08:19:45 PMZilvy, yep! Her bottle cap (another incident in the long list of incidents) cost us 1000.00 to have removed.. that was on 4th of July weekend, I was playing a gig with my band the day she had the surgery.. man talk about being a nervous wreck! I figure all totaled that she has cost us about 4K so far!
posted on March 14, 2001 09:24:13 PM
OMG, PIMP sugar2912! That story had me howling! After of course the squirms and the ouches I was thinking I freaked out one night when we got home to discover that Gunther had eaten some of my mom's Nicorette. I had to call the animal poison control line and they said we got lucky, he didn't eat enough to cause death! If he'd had just a few more pieces we would've had to take him to emergency. But I was a nervous wreck all night watching him like they told me to!
posted on March 15, 2001 04:52:02 AM
I was just thinking back on all the things my Blossom has eaten.. here is a partial list,
My left shoe, taupe high heels
My left shoe, red high heels (va va voom!)
The hooks on my bra (two or three times)
A twenty out of my purse
My purse
Entire package of Heartguard (called vet, nothing serious)
A packet of silica gel (called poison control)
At least 27.53 in change (see above post)
Staples (see above post)
Bottle cap (hinted at in above post)
Her food dish
A ten out of my sister's purse
My couch
The garbage (we keep it in the laundry room now)
26 bread ties
The cat litter (we keep in in the laundry room, behind a baby gate now)
My electric bill, check enclosed, stamped and ready to go.
3 phone books, finely shredded
Countless newspapers, magazines and junk mailings, finely shredded
Guitar picks, unknown quantity, they just disappear...
Things she has tried to eat but was foiled:
Beer cans on the coffee table
Roofing nails
Undergarments (naughty doggie!)
I'm sure there are more, but I have lost track by now. Anyone considering a bassett, they are the sweetest most lovable things on God's earth, they are also stubborn and strong willed. They will own YOU and they will know it. They will also eat anything they see, possibly because their noses are always so close to the ground. She has outgrown most of her badness (she's 5 now), so hopefully the list won't get much longer!
posted on March 15, 2001 06:33:25 AM
At one time I had 2 dogs and a cat. Whenever the one dog or cat would get into the garbage my old dog would bark and bark to let us know that the other dog or cat was in the garbage. A lot of times my cat would get on the table and my old dog would bark up a storm. He wouldn't shut up until we would come and correct the situtaion. And at times it would be while we were sound asleep at three in the morning. In his last days he couldn't walk anymore. And he would wake us up three or four times a night barking for us to just help him up and move him. I never could believe how smart this dog was. We had him for over 15 years. And I still think about him often. He was my friend.
posted on March 15, 2001 07:19:25 AM
DearSideslam
I feel for you not having a warm fuzzy or a happy dog...do you live in a situation where you are not allowed to have one or the other? It sounds like you really need a little one to share your love with. Goldfish certainly don't sound like they would fill the bill, have you thought about bringing a new pet into your life?
Edited to add:SugarYou have quite an investment in Blossom--your "Golden" Bassett!
She certainly will help you achieve house beautiful status (you know that perfect never lived in look they use in those kind of magazines?) I mean you can't afford to leave anything out that she might get into!LOL
posted on March 15, 2001 07:29:48 AM
LOL Zilvy! I don't have 'house beautiful', I have all my junk way up high now!
Forgot to put on the list, 3 of my hubb's baseball type hats, including his coveted corderoy Bears cap from the year they won the championship!!
posted on March 15, 2001 08:38:45 AM
A teacher was retiring after 30 years of teaching, so each child
decided they wanted to bring her a special retirement present. A
little girl who was the daughter of a fine chocolate dealer brought
her a box full of fine chocolates.
A little boy who was the son of a florist brought her a big bouquet
of flowers. Another little boy who was the son of a fine liquor dealer
brought her a big box that was sealed, and it had something leaking
from the bottom of the box. The teacher said, "I bet I know what this
is!"
She tasted some of the juices that were leaking from the box and said,
"I bet this is some wine!"
posted on March 15, 2001 09:07:16 AM
when I worked in a dental office we would have the inevitable visits from people with their dentures in pieces or missing altogether because the dog ate it.
It became one of my regular instructions when a patient was leaving for anyone with dentures or ortho retainers to keep them out of the dogs reach. They smell too good for them to resist.
All the gates are padlocked closed, but the front door was unlocked. Our fence isn't easy to climb either. But we found something for hubby to stand on to get over and went around the front to let me in. There's nothing funnier and more humiliating than being locked out by your pet, right RB? 
~^~
Come on you guys, surely you have more...
Born again flower child 
Big Tig[wish I'd had the camera ready for the show but who knew? 
I freaked out one night when we got home to discover that Gunther had eaten some of my mom's Nicorette. I had to call the animal poison control line and they said we got lucky, he didn't eat enough to cause death! If he'd had just a few more pieces we would've had to take him to emergency. But I was a nervous wreck all night watching him like they told me to! 