Reason My Cat is a Jerk #34: She Rubs Her Face on Stuff

I have been told it’s perfectly normal for cats to rub their faces on stuff. They walk up and suddenly rub their cheek on the corner of a wall or a piece of furniture. It looks kind of strange, but ok, every cat I’ve ever had has done it. It’s just one of those cat things. Apparently, it’s supposed to release some gland that feels good to them or something. I let them be.

BUT.

This is gross.

This is the spot where Pants rubs her face on the wall every single day. It’s about a foot off the ground, or about Pants-height, and it’s this oily black stain that she’s left from rubbing her face in this one spot too much. I don’t know if it happens because of the oil in her fur, or something that comes out of whatever gland she’s scratching, but it’s there, and it’s gross.

Now, keep in mind I repainted this wall in August. There had been a stain that we washed off every few months before that, but it was perfectly clean and face-free when I was done with it. In four months, she’s managed to leave her mark on my nice fresh wall all over again.

This is not the only place she rubs her face. As I type, she’s rubbing it on the leg of the desk I’ve working on. You can’t see a nasty gray stain on the desk because the wood is dark, but I bet it’s there. Just one more disgusting little way of reminding me that my cats are set on doing things I don’t like.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #33: She Won’t Move out the Way

My cats don’t think they’re the center of the universe. They know they are.

Jezebel knows that all I ever want to do is pet her all day long. Pants assumes that I buy nice things so she can shred them. Jezebel treats me like my main job is to feed them the food that’s owed to them.

But Pants has taken it to another level. Pants has decided that it’s not even worth bothering to move when I want to get by.

See, our apartment has a hallway. It’s not very wide. When a cat sits in the middle of it, there’s actually not a lot of room to get around them. Which of course means that Pants seems to end up there a lot. When she was little, she used to at least attempt to get out of my way when I came toward her, because I was big and wore shoes and could crush her. But by now, she’s figured out that I don’t actually want to hurt her. So she just doesn’t move.

When I try to get by, she’ll sit there, staring up at me, daring me to push her out of the way. I can’t, of course. So I have to dance around her, and she’ll yawn and just do everything she can to let me know that she just doesn’t care, because she’s a jerk.

Reason My Cat is A Jerk #32: She’s An Attention Hog

So here’s the thing about Jezebel. She LOVES attention. She would be perfectly happy if you did nothing but pet her all day long. She would revel in it. Soak it up.

Pants? Not so much. She really wants you to pet her, sometimes. When it’s convenient for her.  Usually when she’s hungry or you’re in the chair she wants to sit in or you’re sleeping. Not Jezebel. She wants you to pet her and scratch her and love her all the freakin’ time.

I love this cat to distraction. But occasionally I want to do something without having her butt in my face. So sometimes, I’ll leave her and walk into the other room. Big mistake.
She’ll sit and cry for you until you come pet her. I’ll be in the living room trying to work, and she’ll be hanging out in the kitchen, whining and whining. She won’t give up until you get up and actually come in and pet her.

(Naturally, she won’t come to you. You have to go to her. Because she’s like that.)
I suppose, like most things, it’s really my fault. I never should have let her train me like this. The first time she whined and I responded to it, I taught her that being annoying was an effective way to get my attention.

But she takes it to a whole different level.

The thing is, when she’s whining for you, she just sounds so pathetic and sad and, well, frankly, annoying, that I eventually give up and go in and pet her so she’ll stop crying. And the moment she actually sees you walk into the room to pet her, her little fuzzy face just lights up. She is SO happy to see you. It’s completely adorable. Which means that you want to make her happy.

A friend once saw it happen and remarked that I’d been summoned by my cat.

I prefer to think of it as making my little jerk of a cat happier than she’s ever been, at least since last time.

My Cat is a Jerk On a Shirt

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Also available in puke.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #31: She Steals My Clothes

Last week, I came home to find this:

That’s a dress I wore in a wedding once. I was the maid of honor. It was a beautiful wedding, and a nice dress.

Pants somehow found it and had to check it out.  And apparently, she liked it so much she decided to do it again and again. This is apparently Pants’ new thing. She suddenly and uncontrollably loves to go under my bed, pull out all my fancy dresses, and sit on them.  I shove them back under, and she pulls them back out. It’s happened half a dozen times so far.

See, I have a bag of old bridesmaids dresses and gowns leftover from college formals under the bed. I will probably never wear any of them ever again, and they’re not in style anymore, and I probably wouldn’t even fit into them anymore, and yet I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I’ve tried, several times. I’ve actually put the whole bag into the “donate to charity pile” and left it there for months, and then for some reason rescued it again. There are some good memories in that bag: Weddings of dear friends and roommates; the purple dress I bought for ten bucks at the thrift store without even trying it on; the brown dress I wore for the formal with the guy I pretended I didn’t like who later became my boyfriend. They’re just taking up space under my bed, but I somehow can’t bring myself to actually get rid of them.

Here she’s admiring a black one I wore to a friend’s formal work party when I was just out of college. It was quite nice. Pants agrees.

(Please note Jezebel down there in the bottom right corner, watching me curiously.)

Here’s what I came to another day. In this photo, you can see the purple  dress, the black dress, and the garbage bag she tore open to get to them, as well as random other crap from under my bed:

And in this one, you can see a close-up of how she’s managed to shred one of the dresses:

Now, Pants is a diva. She loves to be the center of attention, and she’s prissy, and she’s a total snob, and you somehow love her for it. If she dressed herself, she’d wear stilettos and tiaras every day. She probably just gets my clothes out because she wants to wear pretty dresses. I get that.

But what I don’t get is why she has to ruin them. She has to be doing it on purpose.

My husband thinks she likes the way they sound when they crinkle and can’t stop herself from clawing at them, but I know better. I know it’s all part of her plan to slowly and methodically destroy everything that’s important to me.

10 Reasons I Am Better Than My Cats

1. I have opposable thumbs, and can therefore do amazing things like open doors and prepare my own food.

2. I am bigger than they are.

3. My brain is larger than a golf ball.

4. I can throw them across the room. They cannot throw me across the room.

5. I don’t lick my butt.

6. I don’t lick my sister’s butt.

7. I have a whole blog about them. They don’t even know how to type.

8. I have never scarfed my dinner down, puked it all up, and then eaten the puke.

9. I have never missed the toilet.

10. I love them to distraction no matter what kinds of crazy things they think up to torture me, which is definitely more than they do for me.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #30: She Whines For Food and Doesn’t Eat It

I’ve mentioned a few places that Pants is a picky eater. This is probably an understatement.

Some days, she loves tuna. Other days, tuna is the most disgusting thing she’s ever tried. For the longest time, all she would eat is Friskies Turkey and Cheese flavor. Now she often really likes turkey and cheese, but sometimes she absolutely hates it. There’s no predicting what she will like when.

The one thing I can predict is that she will whine and whine and whine for her dinner, and then, as soon as she gets it, she will take two bites, turn up her nose, hike her tail, and wander off to the other room, clearly annoyed by you and your pitiful effort at feeding her.

For a long time, I worried that she was going to be malnourished. And she IS quite small, weighing in at just around six pounds. But then I realized that it’s not like she doesn’t eat. She usually does go back to it eventually (unless she decides she randomly and totally hates the flavor of the day). It’s just that she’ll only take a couple of bites right when I give it to her. It’s like she has to make sure I know just how much she hates me and everything I do for her before she’ll finally deign to eat the food I provide.

The funny thing is, Jezebel is a huge pig. But she never whines for her food. She’ll wolf down a whole can of food and puke it all up and eat it again and not bat an eyelash, but she never does the whole meowing thing. She just enjoys the fruits of Pants’ labors. I think the cats have worked out some arrangement where Pants is the designated hunter/gatherer, and Jezebel is… well, I’m not sure what Jezebel does exactly, except eat the food Pants manages to sponge off us.

But somehow, Pants doesn’t seem to care about the food. She basically just cares about making me cater to her.

What a jerk.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #29: She Bites Everything

When you adopt a kitten, you know your life is never going to be the same. You know what you’re getting into. From the moment you are forced to confront your first bag of kitty litter, you understand that all of a sudden you care a whole lot more about cat pee than you thought you ever would. You are forced to acknowledge right from the get-go that in owning a cat, there will be some damage to your finances, your furniture, and your sanity.

I know that was all coming. I was prepared for that.

But I did not expect to have to fear for the safety of every piece of paper or shred of plastic in my apartment.

I totally underestimated the jerks.

See, Pants loves her some plastic. She loves to bat at it, and to walk on it, but most of all, she loves to bite it. I have a theory that she likes the way it sounds when it crinkles in her teeth, or the way it feels in her mouth. Maybe she just likes the fact that when she’s done with it, it’ll have dozens of tiny little teeth marks poked into it.

The truth is, I have no idea what’s really going though he little pea-sized brain. All I know is that if I leave a dry-cleaning bag or a grocery bag out, she’ll tear into it.

See how she really digs into this one here? She has to yank it, trying to get as much leverage as she can to inflict the most possible damage on that helpless bag.

Jezebel is the same way. She’s not so much into plastic, thank goodness (I know that odd little habit is going to end in a trip to the vet someday), but she loves paper. She will shred any paper she can get her grubby little claws on. The more important it is, the better.

Here we caught her in the act shredding the tissue paper that came with a pair of new shoes. She saw the brand-new box on the floor (she also has a thing for boxes, but that’s a story for another day), hopped right on it, and went to town. The paper in this box is not in any way important, just indicative of her jerky little habit of shredding anything that comes across her path.

(That’s my husband providing the commentary there at the end).

I don’t know why they do it or how to stop it. But I do know that the more upset I get, th emore they seem to love doing it. Because they’re complete jerks.

Reason My Cat is a A Jerk #28: She Pukes on Everything

I can think of very few things grosser than stepping in fresh cat puke first thing in the morning.

Stepping in cat pee, maybe. Poop, for sure. But cat puke has a special, ineffable quality that cannot be underestimated. There’s just something about the way the partially-digested food comes out in neat little lines, coated in slime, that’s pretty much the grossest thing ever.

I should know. Jezebel is a puke machine.

Now, Pants pukes too. Occasionally. She always seems so shocked by what’s happening, and so confused and embarrassed, that it’s almost cute when she projectile vomits. Jezebel, on the other hand, will puke and then, without even pausing, go back to her day. We come home to tiny little piles of vomit just about every evening. Often, they’re still warm. My husband and I both pretend we don’t see it so the other will have to clean it up.

It’s vile.

To her credit, Jezebel does try not to puke on things like rugs and comforters. I know this because I’ll come home and see that she’s tried. There will be a line of vomit trailing down my dresser (and once, into my open drawer), but it’s obvious that she tried to get it all over the edge. She puked off the side of the bed last week. A bit of it hit the side of the mattress, but the way it splattered showed she at least attempted to aim away from it. Which would be kind of sweet if it weren’t so completely disgusting.

Ok, Ok. Before anyone calls the animal police on me, please understand that I have tried everything I know of to fix the problem. I buy her food for cats with sensitive stomachs. I have switched up the kinds of food she eats. I have asked the vet about it. He said there’s not much you can do. Some cats just puke a lot.

The real problem is that she’s a pig and a half. She’s so concerned about Pants eating her food (an eventuality that has never occurred, as Pants takes two bites of her dinner on a good day) that she wolfs down as much as she can before Pants has a chance to get it. She’ll eat her whole dish, run off satisfied that Pants isn’t going to get more than her fair share, and then puke it all up five minutes later. I would feel bad for her if she didn’t completely bring it on herself. What a jerk.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #27: She Kills My Plants

You may have noticed that I don’t exactly live in a palace. It’s a one-bedroom in a not-particularly nice part of Brooklyn. It faces onto a “courtyard,” which means our windows look out onto our neighbors’ brick wall. We don’t love it, but it’s cheap, and there’s plenty of room for our cats to roam, and I have learned to distinguish the sounds of people throwing heavy objects out their windows from the noise of gunfire, so it’s been an educational experience.

The one thing we really lack is light. We’re on the third floor on a block (“courtyard”) of six-story buildings, and there are some trees between the buildings, so not a ton of vitamin D filters down our way. I don’t mind that much. We live very close to a big park, and I get out a lot. The main problem that we cannot grow plants. At all. Here’s a wee tomato I once managed to coax out of the soil in a planter by the window, and I considered this a major victory. I could almost garnish a salad.

Transition.

Hey, do you know what Jezebel’s favorite food is?

That’s right. Plants. Which means that even when I manage to get one to survive on big hopes and good wishes and Miracle-Gro, she still somehow finds a way to destroy it.

When we first got the little jerks, we had this wonderful hanging plant with long, gorgeous tendrils. Jezebel thought it was SO fun to swipe at those tendrils. She was still so new and so little and so cute I didn’t have the heart take swift action to stop it. That was a huge mistake. She took off a couple of leaves a day. She killed that one within weeks.

Then we tried to grow herbs. Oh man. There is nothing more fun than herbs. She couldn’t stop biting them, and swatting at them, and doing whatever she could to uproot them. Adios, basil.

And cut flowers? Jezebel can’t get enough.

When we bring some home, she has to get up on the table to check them out. And then they smell so good, she just needs to sniff them. Just a little bit. And then, oh man, if they smell that good, they must taste amazing! So she bites them. Just to check. And then, they taste so good…

These ended up with tiny little teethmarks all up and down them.

A while back, we tried to grow regular-sized (as opposed to wee) tomatoes on the fire escape. Those were done in by a rabid squirrel (seriously) who decided a tomato plant pot was the perfect place to build a nest. This is technically not the fault of my cats, who are indoor cats and utterly defenseless in the wilderness, and therefore couldn’t possibly have done anything to stop the squirrel. But they did love to sit in the windowsill and watch the squirrel and growl at him through the glass, which I can only imagine must have encouraged the ratty little thing. So that’s on them too.

We have two tiny little plants left.

These things are basically unkillable. Trust me, she’s tried. The other day I came home to find dirt all over the kitchen floor. She’d been digging in my pots. I don’t know what she was looking for, but I hope she found it.

If she were any other cat, I might perhaps see this unfortunate interest in botany as a sign of intelligence and broad intellectual interests. But seriously. I know better. She’s a jerk. When she finds something that makes me happy, she simply has to destroy it.