This morning presented a splendid opportunity for a walk at the lake. Temperatures were cool but comfortable and there was plenty of sunshine.
Along the way, I stumbled upon several rock doves (Columba livia) lounging on the pier and nestled in amongst autumn’s leftovers now washed against the shore. I won’t post any photos right now because I’d rather post this video.
I walked out on the pier to get as close to the wildlife as possible. While I stood snapping photos and enjoying the pleasant morning, I noticed a particular male dove doing his little dove dance as he tried to woo himself a woman friend. I actually found it entertaining to watch. He busied himself with dancing and cooing and puffing up, and all the while she barely moved, although now and then she offered a slight nod as if to let him know he needed to keep going. And he did.
You can see a boatload of other birds milling about in the background and you can certainly hear some of them, but the dove’s sweet whispers can also be heard.
This whole scene went on for several minutes. I never saw the female give in to his charms, but neither did I see her chase him off as a peasant suitor unfit to meet her needs. For all I know, he’s still dancing at this moment…
You know how much Kazon likes to open doors—any door. Cabinets aren’t a problem for him, an ability he’s taught to the rest of The Kids. But more intriguing is that regular doors aren’t a problem for him either. Remember the laundry room door he so expertly opened so he and his sister could go inside and play?
What makes this talent so fascinating is this: Kazon’s just not a smart guy. He’s sort of a dumb jock. There are times he doesn’t remember his own ass when he jumps on something, and that usually leaves him dangling precariously with his front end on the target and his back end swinging in the wind.
His lack of intellectual prowess makes his skills with doors all the more mesmerizing—and unusual. Yet he is in every sense of the word an expert when it comes to opening them.
As I explained in the original post about this, “If there’s a doorknob, he understands what it’s for and will try to use it. If there’s a handle, he’ll try to grab it and pull it down. If it’s a cupboard door, he knows to use his front paws to pull it open far enough to get his head inside — followed by the rest of him.” I have been repeatedly amazed by him in this matter. I know he’s learned from watching people that doorknobs open doors and that handles pull down and open doors, and he’s put these observations to use in his own endeavors.
But he’s not always successful. And that brings me to this video.
I was doing laundry one day and he had been in the laundry room with me, but I made him leave when I was ready to close the doors and go about my other chores. What I didn’t realize was that he wasn’t done in there, at least not yet.
The moment I walked away, he proceeded to try his magic. You’ll see him reach for the doorknobs, try to snag the tiny space between the doors, try to reach under them for leverage (which is how he normally opened those particular doors anyway), and basically search for an easy way in. However, he wasn’t particularly serious about getting in there and gave it only half the effort he normally would. Eventually—and let’s be honest: probably because he forgot what he was doing or why he wanted in—he decided it was too much work and gave up.
Remember when I said Vazra was insane? I said that because, among many other reasons, he plays in the bathtub with gleeful abandon—but he’s playing with the bathtub and not in it with something else. Well, now I can show you the proof.
Both of these videos were captured yesterday morning. Keep in mind I had to lighten them since the shower area gets indirect incandescent light and doesn’t make for a good video environment. The color is also a bit off due to lighting and the surrounding surfaces. Nevertheless, both show Vazra doing what he loves to do when he goes in the bathroom: jump in the bathtub and excitedly chase invisible rodents.
Odd cat, that one.
The first video is thirty-six seconds long. You can hear Loki talking as he enters near the end of the clip, and then you see his tail cut through the bottom of the screen. He didn’t want to be left out of whatever fun was to be had.
The second video is thirty-one seconds long. Since by this time everyone was in the bathroom and because I was paying attention to the camera instead of who was doing what around me, I don’t know which fur person’s tail swings through the frame near the end of this one.
Vazra’s habit of entertaining himself with the bathtub is quite a sight when he really gets going. There are times when I laugh until I cry because he turns into a wild animal—and all while chasing insubstantial vapors sneaking about the shower, ghouls and goblins only he can see.
[Update] I’ve uploaded new versions of the videos and changed the embedded players above to point to the latest versions. The original MOV files I uploaded created an out-of-sync state with the YouTube audio and visual components, so hopefully uploading AVI versions of the videos has resolved that. I’ll have to remember this in the future. And another thing: the conversion from AVI to MOV (to lighten it) and back to AVI (to upload a working copy) has degraded the quality a bit. That’s something else for me to watch out for.
Both Kako and Kazon had terrible infestations of ear mites when I first adopted them (among several other problems). The damage to their ears was so extensive at an early age that they now have sensitive ears. But Kako’s are more sensitive than Kazon’s. In fact, she often cries out in pain when she scratches her own ears, and watching her try to address an itch in either of them is akin to watching the torture of a defenseless animal. It just hurts.
The most I can do to alleviate that suffering is to keep them as clean as possible through regular douses with OtiCalm, an ear cleaning solution that gently breaks up buildup. This, as you can guess, is not a popular activity, but I know it’s best for them and helps circumvent unnecessary pain and discomfort.
One of the interesting things about their delicate ears is Kako’s eargasms. Although sticking her hind foot in them to scratch an itch is a sure way to elicit painful cries, the same is not true when it comes time to bathe. It feels sickly voyeuristic to watch her hit that just right position that rubs an ear in heavenly ways.
This is never more true than when she lies on the ground and starts bathing with her front paws. If you’ve ever seen a cat cleaning in this manner, you know they lick their paw before using it to clean their face, ears, and other body parts. With Kako, however, the truest joy comes from her head resting on the ground against one of her ears. Each time she licks her paw, she moves her head, and that in turn rubs her ear into the floor. That, poppets, is obviously one of the greater joys she can experience.
The funny thing is this: very little bathing takes place except for the paw she’s trying to use to clean herself. You see, she becomes so entranced with the eargasm that she ends up licking the paw ad infinitum without accomplishing much with it. Instead, she just keeps moving her head back and forth to work her ear against the ground.
I suppose she has the cleanest paws in town because of this. They get a good working over no matter what pieces and parts are skipped in favor of the eargasm.
And when she finally gets that paw working against an ear? Well, bliss ensues. Usually, her entire body gets into the writhing caused by her ecstasy.
That is what you will see in this video. I caught her lying in front of the fireplace as she began to take a bath. I simply turned the camera on and let it record what actually happened. I did stop it right at the end when she stood up to scratch the ear she’d been grinding into the ground. Knowing what that would cause, I saw no reason to record it.
Note that Loki makes a brief drive-by in the background near the beginning of the video as he makes his way to the cat castle off-screen to the left.
