From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Subject: Re: socks
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 92 09:53:12 GMT

In article <609.235.uupcb@ggcs.org> dave.yuhas@ggcs.org (Dave Yuhas)  writes:
>MP>>Try putting a sock over your cat's head for a couple of minutes.  It
>MP>>doesn't know where the hell it's at, and it just sits there.

>MP>What happenend when you took it off?  Did it attack you?

>MP>She was pissed and so was I.

><FLAME ON>The person who suggested this is a sadist.<FLAME OFF>

Flame?  As a practicing sadist (and practiced masochist), I see no
flame here.

I have a couple of plastic cups I give cupboard space just because
it's so much fun to put a blob of ice cream in the bottom, and let a
cat (usually Merlin, 'cause he's a PIG for dairy products and will
fall for it every damn time) get his own head jammed in.  But he sure
doesn't "just sit there" -- high-speed saunter till he manages to
knock it off or I see that he's starting to freak is more like it.

There's also a game I call "bumper cars"....  Take some cardboard
boxes, or laundry baskets, or something else that's tall enough that
the cat can't just stand up tall, get a paw under the edge, and
wiggle out.  Drop these objects, quickly, over two or more of your
cat-family, one per each.  Observe, laughing, as the cats motivate the
boxes around the apartment, bumping into chairs and getting partway
through doors.

There are two kinds of catpeople, I think -- those who only bottom to
their cats, and switches.  (A "bottom" is the person who gets hit,
gets hir bladder walked on at five AM, or tied up; a "top" is the one
holding the whip, peeing on the pillow, or locking the cuffs, and a
switch is someone who'll do either, from time to time.)  I'm a switch,
and so are my cats.  (_I_ don't pee on pillowa; I have hands, heh
heh.)

When I get an idea for a new form of feline torment, and grab the
necessary gear, I stalk through the house calling "arbitrary
harassment".  The cats KNOW that phrase -- "Oh, ghod, the people is
getting whimsical again, wanna hide?" "Nah, let's see what she's come
up with THIS time."  "Better you than me!"  And because they DO know
that way of giving fair warning, I know that any cat who doesn't want
to play will melt into the woodwork, hide behind the waterbed, or
become perfectly invisible in the shadow of the papasan chair.  If a
cat wants, however, to bet a little temporary discomfort in the worst
case against the possibility that I'll find something as fun as
wokking the cat, it'll be right out there, and I'll grab it up and DO
it.

Five minutes after cussypat has escaped the predicament of the day,
it's most likely that I'll find that cat in my lap purring.  Of
course, one of the things I've been working with, with Gandalf, is
getting him comfortable enough with being flogged that I can make the
opening scene for a short subject, "Pussywhipping".  And in that case,
he'll be lying in my lap purring as I hit my arm hard enough to make
the <crack> for the sound track and let the tails of the flogger trail
across his back.  Eventually, I'll be able to pet him with my smallest
whip while he squirms and purrs, and then it will be time to rent the
camcorder.  But right now, if he'll just purr while I scritch his
tummy with one hand and flog my arm with the other, that's good
enough.  I AM having trouble with step two, however, since he'd rather
hunt the whip and attack its tails than be quiet while I wave it over
his head.  But we'll get there.

Cats play practical jokes on their humans and on each other; I
consider it entirely appropriate to prank consenting kitties.  Sock on
the head?  Merlin would probably LIKE that one -- he occasionally is
seen running frantically around the house with a SHOE on his head,
because he just LOVES the smell of wjr's feet, and snuzzles as far
down into the shoe as he can - sometimes he gets HIMSELF stuck, and
he's figured out that if he lumbers around either I'll grab the shoe
so he can pull his head out, or he'll bump the toe of the shoe into
something and it will come off.  But he's so little bugged by it that
he doesn't even wear his tail as a bottlebrush.

Thanks for the great idea -- long as I use wjr's sock, Merlin will
likely be a WILLING "victim".  And if not, next time I'm running
through the house looking for a cat to hassle, he'll be under the
coffeetable, and I'll stop and hold the sock where he can get a good
whiff, and if he doesn't come out, I'll find another cat.

Oh, yeah -- "wokking the cat"....  Place a wok, in its ring, in the
middle of the living room floor.  Throw in a softie, like your oldest,
rattiest silk shirt.  Wait.  When the wok has been filled with a
sleeping cat, gently lift the wok, kick the ring out from under it,
lower the wok gently to the floor.  Wait a moment or two, so the cat
can, if it woke, doze off again.  Then SPIN the wok.  The expression
on the cat's face....

I once owned a plastic globe, about 18 inches across, that had been a
streetlight shade in earlier life.  When I would place one of the
kittens into this thing and start it spinning, the beast would quite
happily submit to being centrifuged till it was so dizzy that, when I
poured it out of the device, it would stagger about two steps before
falling over.  That was fun enough, but what REALLY sent me into the
gasping giggles was noticing, one day after about a week of this game,
that not only were Loki and Merlin sitting quietly by, waiting for me
to finish dizzying Gandalf, so THEY could each have THEIR turn but
that as soon as Gandalf could walk again after being spun up, he'd
wobble to the end of the line and patiently wait till it was his turn
for another ride.  My arm would be bruised from spinning that globe,
and the cats would look at me, when I finally didn't want to do it any
more, with a "one more ride" kinda look on their kittyfaces.  And this
was while they were so young I was still giving them bottles to
supplement the babymeat and kittenchow I had introduced as fast as I
could because bottlefeeding three of the monsters was getting WAY old.

Many cats like being picked up while they're sleeping in laundry
baskets, and spun around till they're pulling most of an extra G, too.
At least, almost all the cats I've lived with (and that's been a lot
of cats in the last twenty years) have enjoyed it, and refrained from
hopping out when, in a malevolently gleeful voice, I say "it's time to
play "SPIIIIN the CAT".

I had a kitten once, who observed that when the canopener sang the
foodsong, all the cats would run into the kitchen.  He found a point
where he could watch me work the magic food machine, and learned that
it only made foodnoise when you pushed the button on the top.

I am in bed with my PO (primary other), and we're not quite yet Doing
anything.  The canopener sings its song, and from all over the house,
salivating cats, kittens, and catlings swarm into the kitchen.  I
nearly fall out of bed getting a line of sight to the counter, but
there on the counter, feet proudly planted on the button, is a
two-month old catstard, grinning like a skunk.

If THEY can play practical jokes on other cats, practical jokes must
be OK by cat social rules.  If they DO play practical jokes on people
(and I had one cat I'm convinced _ENJOYED_ stampeding across the bed
while we slept so that we'd curl into a wabbly-protecting fetal
cringe), then I, by all the ghods and most ESPECIALLY Bast, will play
practical jokes on them.

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
STella%thelema.uucp@dec.com	Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian!