At least once a day, my cats make me laugh out loud with silly things they do. Poppy, Smudge and Polkadot are three stray cats rescued as kittens. Poppy is a laid back cat and not remotely graceful. Even though she is almost three years old, she still acts like a kitten. She regularly trips over her own paws and falls off countertops, because she’s not looking where she’s going. If she runs around the top of her cat tree too fast she will fall off. Luckily she doesn’t hurt herself; she just straightens out her fur and jumps right back up; and then falls off again. Usually, two unexpected trips to the ground are enough to convince her to find a new playground; preferably at floor level.

When Poppy is in my arms she goes completely limp; she doesn’t even try to stop herself from falling so I have to fully support her like a new-born baby. When I carry her over to a surface, she won’t jump out of my arms; I have to pour her out of them. She is liquid fur. Poppy is very gentle. When Aspen, our large Belgian Shepherd dog, gets too close, she smacks him with her jellybean pads, not her claws. But he doesn’t even blink because it’s like being hit with a cotton wool ball in slow-motion. And when Poppy is hunting outside and tries to catch shrews and mice, she forgets to use her claws, and the critters always get away. Poppy only seems to use her claws to climb trees. She’s learned not to climb up too far, by falling off.

Luckily, Aspen is very gentle with both cats. He hasn’t had a chance to meet Polkadot yet because she is extremely shy. Polkadot lives outdoors and sleeps in our garage. She’s been living outdoors for 10 years because she is afraid to come into the house. She runs away when Aspen goes outside so Aspen probably doesn’t know she’s a cat and not a strange, white blur. Polkadot is a true scaredy-cat. I saw her chasing a leaf one day, but she got a fright because of the sound of her feet on the ground, and in her mind the leaf became the thing that was making the noise and scaring her; so she jumped away from it hissing, and puffed out her fur. Then while she stood there trembling, a gentle breeze blew a blade of grass that just barely tipped off her leg. She became airborne. We didn’t see her for the rest of the day.  Polkadot is so tiny that she looks like a four month old kitten even though she is ten years old. We rescued her when she was only 6 weeks old. She looked like a tiny ornament when she sat still because she was only 4 inches high. She is a white cat with perfect circles of black fur. One day she was cleaning herself with her back to me and her head tucked in, and until she moved I thought she was the kids’ football. 

Aspen loves to follow Smudge and Poppy around. He stands right over them; wagging his tail and sticking his huge nose down onto their heads, inhaling their lovely cat smell. Poppy tolerates it for a few minutes, but when she walks away from him, it’s like she’s been to the hairdressers; she has a wet head, her ‘hair’ is combed and flattened down, and gelled neatly into place. Sometimes he uses more gel than usual and her head is somewhat …crispy. I prefer to pet her later, when she’s had time to restyle it.

Eight year old Smudge is bigger, stronger, wiser and much feistier than Poppy, and she will hiss and smack Aspen with claws and teeth bared if he sniffs her for more than two seconds. But Aspen is fantastic at jumping sideways to avoid those swipes. He sometimes jumps before she even thinks about swiping; but then his jump gives Smudge a fright, which makes her swipe at him anyway. Maybe he’s a bit psychic?

Smudge is a little moody. Some days she runs up to Aspen and rubs up against him, winding her way around and through his long legs, purring and meowing ‘hello’ like he’s her best friend; while he stands there completely bewildered and unsure of what’s happening. Other days, she actually spits at him just for looking at her. One day, she even growled at him. I never know cats could growl until Smudge came along.

Smudge had an accident three years ago – she fell out of a tree and her tail got caught in a branch and they both snapped in half. The vet that looked at her x-rays said she had never seen a cat with so much muscle-mass. Smudge climbed trees better than a monkey. She had to have her tail amputated though and there’s only a little stump left, but she’s fine. Her tail was so big and heavy, it actually affected her running when it was gone, because her weight distribution had changed. Her stance was altered because more weight was now on her front legs. This resulted in bigger muscles in her chest, so now she looks quite macho and struts around looking for trouble. She looks so tough … until she runs. Her adjusted stance and puffy, little tail now make her look, and run, exactly like a rabbit. A cute, fluffy, adorable, black and white rabbit, with cat-sized ears; but don’t tell her that.

In the beginning, Aspen tried so hard to get Poppy and Smudge to play with him; but he only knew how to play as a dog.  Cats don’t know what  a play bow is; they don’t bark when they are happy; and they definitely do not wag their tail for good reasons. Aspen learned the hard way that dogs have very different boundaries to cats; in fact, dogs have no boundaries; because cats have taken all of them. Aspen would bring his heaviest bone over to the cats while they were sleeping on the wooden floor, and drop it loudly beside them to entice them to play. No matter how many times this happened, he always managed to look surprised when the cats leapt into the air and bolted down the hall, screaming. But that never stopped him from playing the chasing game they had just started. Sometime he would bark in glee as he ran after them. The noise of his claws on the wooden floor, just added to the fun atmosphere. After I’d peeled one cat off the ceiling, and coaxed the other out from under a bed and gave them treats; they’d be fine.

Luckily, Aspen is a clever dog and he realised very quickly this type of game just got him a timeout, so he doesn’t do it anymore. In fact, he doesn’t play with them at all now; and funnily enough, the cats are much friendlier to him. Go figure.