Carol’s Cat Chronicles

Volume 6

“A Day In Kitty World”

Since we are not actually in the breeding phase yet, I thought I would just take you through a day and tell what it is like living with five cats.

Let me explain that we are just getting into the cattery business.  All five of our cats live in the house with us.  We do not have a separate building or cages in the garage full of cats.  And to be honest, I am so new to this that at this time, the idea of having a set up like I just mentioned saddens me.  We are so close to our cats that they are part of the family now.  If we grow to the point that we have to start housing cats in another area, I will feel strange, because those cats will no longer be “pets” as the ones are that we now have.  At that point, I will probably keep some of the original cats in the house anyway, especially Dixie, since she is my favorite!

From late October, when the Pixie-bobs were intermingled with the Ragdolls, until Christmas, all the cats ran together in the house all the time.  The Pixie-bobs are a lot more energetic than the Ragdolls, so those two played together and tried to coax a Ragdoll into playing now and then.  We thought that Dixie and Scarlet would become buddies, since they are close in age and the youngest.  But Dixie has always been sort of a loner.  She liked to sit back and watch Scarlet play with either Savannah or Rhett.  Then, when she thought they were almost tired, she would jump in and play for a while with some of the others. 

By Christmas time, both males had discovered that they were indeed males and became interested in the females in ways that were not playful anymore!  That was when we had to start separating the sexes.  So now we have scheduled times when either the boys are out or the girls are out of the cage.  Everyone goes in a cage at night, the girls in our room and the boys in the cage that we moved from the kitchen area to the sunroom. Although night-time is when cats are ready to really do some serious running and playing, they have been pretty agreeable when we decide it is time to go to bed.  The girls might sit in their cage and stare at us for a while, but they eventually give it up and lay down!  The Pixie-bob male, Rhett, is the most vocal cat in the house.  When he is ready to come out of the cage, he is not shy about “telling” us, “Hey, I’ve been in here long enough – I want out!”

So my normal routine for a day is to get up and let the girls out of their cage so that I can clean the litter box and fill the food and water bowls and clean up the cage.  The girls are normally out until about noon and then they trade places with the boys in the sunroom.  This room provides lots of sun and a view for them, and the cage out there is nice and roomy.  As soon as any of them go into a cage, they simply find a bed to nap in.  Around dinnertime, we do another switch and let the girls out again.  And this goes on all day at various times determined by their behavior.  If Rhett is driving me crazy by doing too much snooping, his time is UP!  He does not understand the word “NO” so he sometimes has to forfeit his “out” time.

We keep several litter boxes around the house.  At one time I had six litter boxes and five cats.  But when we decided that the sexes had to be separated, I did a little “reducing”, leaving one box in each cage, one in the sunroom and one in the hallway of the house, making it a total of four boxes.  I scoop them everyday, so to make the rounds, it takes me about 30 minutes to do.  If I am doing the ones in the cages, I also give the shelves a “wipe down” while I am there, as well as refresh the food and water bowls.  All the cats love to watch me do this and cannot keep their noses out of the boxes as I clean them!  You would think that they would know what that stuff is by now!  And as soon as one is clean, of course someone has to go in and check it out to be sure I did it correctly.  It is the same with the food bowls; as soon as one is filled, someone starts to eat, like I have been holding out on them or something!

When the girls are out, they usually play together for a while.  When I can,

I get out the old “fishin pole” and we play with that as well.  Savannah is so wild when we do this that she scares me…she jumps so high that I am afraid she will hurt herself.  Scarlet seems to figure out right away that the best place to grab hold of the thing is from a high position.  So I have Scarlet up on the couch or audubon and Dixie and Savannah chasing it on the floor.    This makes for a very eventful playtime.

After their playing, the girls usually find a spot in which to curl up and nap.  One of their favorite places is the spare bedroom, since no one goes in there very often.  When the boys are out, I can always find Blake right smack in the middle of the pillows of that bed.  And Rhett likes a chair in this room that I have filled with throw pillows.  However, most of the time, Rhett likes to follow everyone around when he is out of the cage.  He likes to keep tabs on us, so he doesn’t miss anything.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that living with these five cats is relatively uneventful at this point.  We all exist rather “harmonically”.  The most stress of the day is when it is time to trade places with the boys and girls in the cages, because our boys are “ready for some action”.  I try to make this transition as quickly as possible so the boys do not get too frustrated! 

In my next articles, I will discuss a situation that came from “left field” and is going to throw us into a whole new ballgame…