SLEEPING BEAUTIES?

If you like animals and have been lucky enough to discover Pawnation.com, you’ll probably have read about this picture.

Seems that Purina Friskies decided to find out exactly what cats do in the house when the owners are not home. I think we all suspect that a lot of sleeping goes on. So to prove this, the company put little cameras on the collars of 50 indoor cats; these cameras were set to take pictures every 15 minutes. Pawnation put these pictures on their website – and I’m here to tell you that I almost laughed myself silly over them.

The picture above was taken by a cat as he or she passed “Brutus.” Just thinking about the cat walking past this dog makes me laugh.

The photos showed that cats really do have an active life even in the quietness of a house empty of humans. If there were other animals in the house, those animals showed up in lots of photos, which means the cats were probably socializing.

And what the pictures showed was that these cats didn’t sleep nearly as much as we thought they did.

The organizers of the study didn’t think to ask me what my opinion was. I could have told them just what cats do when their owners are away. In the Loma Linda apartments where I lived right after I retired I had a little cat sitting service. I went once or twice a day to feed and play with the cat or cats at each apartment, according to what the owners wished. The apartments were close together and it was just no trouble to go from one to the other. I didn’t do it to make money; I did it because it was fun!

No two cats were alike. Some were friendly. Some were skittish. Some were sweet little things and a few were just awful!

“Callie” – a young female tortie – did not like for her family to be gone. In the 2 days I watched her she upended a rocking chair, pulled all the afghans and throws off the furniture and onto the floor, knocked all the knick-knacks off the top of the television set, and bit me on the ankle while I was preparing her food.

In two different apartments I took care of cats that I never laid eyes on – Priscilla was in one apartment and Biff and Henry were in the other. I still have no idea what they looked like. I had to check the cat box to determine that they were alive and well.

I cared for Sammy – a long sinuous young male with a wonderful disposition – who paid no attention to the Cockatiel that went in and out of the cage hanging in the living room. I never went in that apartment without expecting to see cockatiel feathers scattered throughout with no body to be found.

Chrissy, a beautiful Persian, was a dumb blonde. She thought very highly of herself and pretty much posed and primped whenever I came into the apartment to feed her.

Another cat named Trixie, a sweet little thing in a two cat household, made it her mission in life to pull all the linen out of the linen closet every time her mom went away. Those closet doors didn’t close very tightly, so finally Jerry engineered a little shim which wedged the door tightly closed, much to Trixie’s dismay. She was a brat, but oh so very charming. When the owner had to move and needed to find a new home for the little one, we gladly adopted her and she now is our sweet Squeaky.

One lady had two old cats, both requiring a dose of medicine every day to keep from getting constipated. The owner had a tube of something she bought at the pet store – like fish-flavored Vaseline - and every morning I had to squeeze one inch of this stuff on my finger and let Peaches lick it off. Then I had to repeat it with Oscar. They loved it. Since my own cat Tigger was having the same problem, I bought a tube of it for him but he refused to lick it off my finger. So I held his mouth open and squeezed it up against the roof of his mouth. Usually cats swallow it without a fuss. However, Tigger wasn’t going to have any part of it. He gave one mighty huff/sneeze and I ended up with a big blog of oily, fishy goo on the front of my blouse! So that was that.

Each time I walked into an apartment I could tell how the cats were entertaining themselves. Excepting for Oscar, who was really old, none appeared to be sleeping very much.

The pictures that the cats in the Purina study took from their little “hidden cameras” certainly show that they didn’t spend their time snoozing either. You can have a good laugh if you go to Pawnation.com and search for the Purina Study.