Gizmo’s always been the silent type. Except for a little squirrel-esque chatter with her sister, she doesn’t say much. The only exception is when she’s carrying around one of her “babies”.
She’s never actually had kittens. The very first day the vet tells me a pet is old enough to be fixed, I’m there at 8am with pet and checkbook in hand. But we had a soft, smushy ball of some sort and a long time ago she started carrying it around in her mouth, making little kitten crying sounds. The ball became known as “Gizmo’s baby”.
Then Mini the dog came to live with us and killed Gizmo’s baby. It was very sad.
But Gizmo loves to play Mommy to crying faux-babies, so she’s adopted other things to be her kittens. Most notably—the soft, orange darts for the Nerf guns. And she learned after the shredded ball incident, so she takes her mewling Nerf dart babies and hides them away in a safe place. A very safe place.
Somewhere in my house is a nest of at least fifty Nerf babies. Meanwhile, the kids are left to fight epic Nerf gun battles…with three darts.
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What a riot! We have a new puppy (6 months) and after 4 months of living together the cat is FINALLY starting to show herself around these parts again. This is causing much angst for the dog.
We put our tree up yesterday and that exuberant collie tale is more than the tree can handle, so we blocked off the living room with old baby gates. The cat of course things we have done this create a sanctuary for her. She hangs out on the love see and bats her tail while the dog whines and dances on the other side of the fence.
I’m sorry, but it is true, cats rule, dogs drool!
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Zoe does — or did — this with Chase’s stuffed toys, carting them downstairs from his room with the accompanying meows and depositing them in the middle of the room for us to find the next day. So we were never sure if they were her babies, or her kills.
The best, though, was hearing the meow one day and turning around to find her lugging, his bendy knee tightly clamped between her teeth, a Kermit as large as she was. How she got the thing down the stairs without tripping we’ll never know.
Since the stuffed toys are out of her reach now, she, too, has gone the Nerf route, since we now find Tristan’s blue Nerf balls in odd places.
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We had a female Jack Russell terrier/Beagle cross about ten years back. She was an absolute doll because she retained a puppy beagle face all her life…and a terror because she had the “rip apart everything in sight” jaws of a young Jack Russell. Wood furniture, aluminum cans and bic razors were her chew toys of choice.
She had a fascination with cats, having been raised with my twelve-year-old house cat who would have absolutely nothing to do with her. This turned into a real problem and a source of tremendous amusement when an abandoned, pregnant female cat from the apartments behind us showed up on our doorstep.
Being a tremendous softie, I fed the poor thing and she decided the flowerbed behind our house was the perfect place to drop her brood. And then…they learned how to “mew”.
That crazy dog decided they were HER kittens, and would steal them from anywhere in the yard the mama would hide them. And not by picking them up by the scruff, oh no. She would grab a front leg very gently in her mouth and inch by inch slowly drag them to our door.
The oddest thing was that as the kittens aged they became very used to their second mama and would roll over on their backs and stick out their front legs so she could haul them away. No, maybe that isn’t the oddest thing. That would be the mama cat allowing the dog to take the kittens with nary a hiss and then stealing them back later in the day.
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I’m so glad mine isn’t the only animal doing this! Sometimes I have guilt that I didn’t let her really have her own babies. But kittens? Gah! Then I would have guilt when I couldn’t keep any of them.
And, Jewell, I can’t believe your dog and the mama kitty had a more amicable custody arrangement than most of the human parents I know! That’s so funny and cute!