{"id":715,"date":"2010-01-10T09:56:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-10T16:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=715"},"modified":"2025-11-05T10:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:05:49","slug":"cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Cats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dogs are nice… but I’m a cat person because they’re pretty self-reliant, soft to the touch and like to cuddle.\u00a0 When I was a young adult, as soon as I could I got a kitten.\u00a0\u00a0 The first time\u00a0I was in an apartment that didn’t allow pets so I tried to get away with it.\u00a0 Buster was an adorable little American short-hair that was given to me by that guy who gave me the “Kiss that turned off my brain”\u00a0 I had to eventually give him back (the kitten and the guy!) when the landlord found out…but I loved that little scamp.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When my friend asked me to get an apartment with her, the plus side was she already had a pet so I’d be able to get one also.\u00a0 So I agreed and I picked out a beautiful tortiose-shell black and gold kitten I named Killashandra (after my favorite Anne McCaffrey character) and called Shandra.\u00a0 She was a kick ass cat.\u00a0 Looking back, Shandra was my wild side manifested in a feline.\u00a0 Well… if you’d fixed me so I wasn’t into sex anymore.. LOL! <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When she was young I tried to train her with a squirt bottle to stay off the dinning table.\u00a0 It worked for about a week until she learned that it was just water.\u00a0 One day when she jumped on the table, I gave her a warning and showed her the bottle and she just looked at me.\u00a0 (Sometimes she’d jump down at sight of the bottle but usually it took the squirt to get her to move.)\u00a0 So I squirted her and got her right in the face.\u00a0 And she just took it, shook her head and gave me a look that said, “Yeah…so?”\u00a0 That was when I gave\u00a0THAT up.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

She was also not allowed on the piano because she wasn’t declawed like my roommates Persian.\u00a0 We were half-assed about the table but diligent about the piano.\u00a0\u00a0Yet Shandra like chasing the Persian.\u00a0 But the Persian never left the safety of the piano.\u00a0 So one day I was lying on the couch (set up in the middle of the room facing the T.V. which was against the wall… with the piano behind the couch against the other wall) and I noticed Shandra walk past me with a long string in her mouth dragging it behind her as she walked.\u00a0 It dragged almost 2 feet behind her. \u00a0 I watch her as she circles the couch with this string several times.\u00a0 Then I catch Belle (the Persian) and notice SHE is also watching the string…but she’s watching the end not in Shandra’s mouth.\u00a0 Suddenly Belle leaps off the piano onto the string which Shandra immediately drops and chases Belle back into the bedroom.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I was floored.\u00a0 I’d never seen a cat use a lure on another cat!\u00a0 I was so proud of my smart, determined kitten!<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I was single during this time in the apartment with my cat.\u00a0 And in an apartment cat’s have litter boxes.\u00a0 So one night I bring home an interesting prize and we’re getting busy in my bed.\u00a0 The roommate is crashed behind her bedroom door but I leave mine cracked so the cat can leave if she needs to because I don’t want to stop what I’m doing!\u00a0 When our energetic efforts are over he removes the condom and asks where the trashcan is.\u00a0 It’s at that moment I realize my bedroom doesn’t have one.\u00a0 So I tell him, “Toss it in the little box, I’ll get it later.”\u00a0 Because I’m tired!\u00a0 Hello…energetic efforts here!<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, so we’re cuddling and I notice Shandra has gone over to the litter box.\u00a0 She takes one whiff and begins to bury the condom!\u00a0 I can just hear the fastidious cat grumbling obscenities about us to herself!\u00a0 We lost it laughing and I spent days retelling that funny to everyone.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Shandra became an amazing half wild cat.\u00a0 I’d trained all my cats to come when I made a certain loud noise by giving them a Pounce treat\u00a0whenever I made it.\u00a0 When I moved to my house and took Shandra and my second cat Piemur (another favorite character from a McCaffrey book) they became outside cats and that noise would bring her running for food or medicine or whatever.\u00a0 But she loved being outside.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Once, I watched her in my neighbors back yard just sitting in the middle of the grass cleaning herself.\u00a0 A jay bird flew by a little close so I stayed to see what would happen.\u00a0 The jay flew back even closer and I surmised it was trying to pluck fur off her to line their nests.\u00a0 And she seemed oblivious… ah but this was my smart, now grown up, cat.\u00a0 At the third fly by Shandra leaps into the air, claws reaching, body twisting and turning and just barely misses that jay bird.\u00a0 She must have leaped 5-6 feet!\u00a0 Again… I was so proud!<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"shandra\"<\/span>I was proud<\/span> until on Mother’s Day she brought home, in the early am hour of 6, a live bird in her mouth.\u00a0 It sounded like a jay as she plopped it onto the robe I’d left on the floor.\u00a0 Yet without my glasses I could barely see it.\u00a0 I’d quickly\u00a0scrambled to get the live bird away from the, now two, circling cats.\u00a0 I\u00a0grabbed the robe off the floor, bird inside,\u00a0and went to the open bedroom’s back exterior\u00a0door (which I kept open because I didn’t have a cat door and I had no sense of danger.. stop judging me!). <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u00a0 stood there wondering what to do with this screaming bird in my robe with the two cats meowing their suggestions at my feet when the bird decided it was outta here.\u00a0 It leaped out of my robe and tried to fly away but it made it only as far as UNDER the car.\u00a0 Both cats scampered after it and I just closed the door and went back to bed.\u00a0 No feathers were ever found which was sad because from what I could see it was a brilliant gold with black markings.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Shandra lived a long time and I saw her less and less through the years until finally when I married and moved to San Antonio I couldn’t find her to take her with us.\u00a0 She never came when I walked the neighborhood making my call to her on the day we drove the moving van across country.\u00a0 But she’ll always be the coolest cat ever.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dogs are nice… but I’m a cat person because they’re pretty self-reliant, soft to the touch and like to cuddle.\u00a0 When I was a young adult, as soon as I could I got a kitten.\u00a0\u00a0 The first time\u00a0I was in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}