Sparkle Gets S-P-A-Y-E-D!

My human finally brought home a decent toy—it’s called an “Alpine Scratcher.” It’s not nearly as cool as a real cat tree, of course, but it’ll do for now. Frankly I’m beginning to think my human’s kind of cheap—she has yet to bring home any cat item that costs more than fifteen dollars. But whenever I try to complain about this, she points out that as a purebred Somali cat, it wasn’t exactly cheap to bring me home in the first place.

The Alpine Scratcher is supposed to belong to all of us. Binga, naturally, has tried to commandeer it. The corrugated scratching surface has catnip scent on it, which makes her even more cranky and possessive than usual. Binga makes a poor drunk.

I find the catnip interesting, but not particularly special (I’m told grown-up cats like it better than kittens). What’s far more exciting to me is the cutout in the side with the dangling toy. That’s really fun.

As usual, Boodie only gets to play with the Scratcher after Binga and I are done.

This is the second Alpine Scratcher my human has bought. The first one came and went before I was around—she had it when Binga was a kitten. Believe it or not, Binga was small enough to crawl in the hole!

Apparently the first one got trashed by a neighborhood cat who had a real catnip jones. He used to come over, drool all over it and eventually it fell apart. That was at my human’s old house.

Although Binga and I are getting friendlier, I still haven’t warmed up to my human’s boyfriend. You really can’t blame me, though—for one thing he smells like that big, loud Sushi dog. For another thing, he works at a vet clinic. A couple times already, he’s stuffed me in that horrible cat carrier and taken me there. The latest time he took me, I got spayed and that was really no fun. Then, the day after I came home my human turned me every which way, trying to get a picture of my shaved stomach. That was rather annoying.

She made up for it, though, by letting me play with the feather duster.

I thought about the spaying thing for a couple of days and decided that if I’m old enough to be spayed, I’m old enough for adult cat food. Besides, the Nutro Gourmet chunks taste way better than the plain old Nutro Max Kitten. You can even tell just by looking.

My human disagrees with this and insists I have to be a year old before I get the Gourmet chunks full time. I won’t be a year old ’til June—that’s so far away! But I am really starting to grow up. My hind legs are starting to fluff out, just like a grown-up Somali. Well, almost like a grown-up Somali.

Judging from the way Binga behaves, being a grown-up cat involves a certain amount of trouble making. Misbehaving and acts of minor vandalism are rewarded by lots of attention. So I’m working on that. My first real attempt was to knock over the Alpine Scratcher.

Binga explained that I was doing it all wrong, though—”You do it to the humans’ things, not your own toys!” Live and learn, I guess.

»February 2003