Apollo's Many Playthings

Apollo is still a kitten. He's roughly the size of a sea-monster, but he's a little over a year old and still has his kitten pants on. Which means any time he isn't passed out in weird places (such as the sink, the backrest of my chair, or somehow managed to wedge himself through the narrow 4 inch opening under the bed) he is most likely hopped up on energy and ready to play. He has a few typical kitty toys, but his favorites are the less than normal ones. He does have little mice, a chirpy bird, and an endless supply of balls that he occasionally pokes at. He's even got a crinkly kitty tube that makes a ton of racket every time he walks in it. Apollo loves that one. If we're watching a movie, the instant the quiet part starts is when he starts racing back and forth through the crinkle tube, or starts marching around on his crinkly Santa hat (which we got for $1 on the 90% off X-mas clearance racks!). It almost seems like he plans his playtime in the loud crinkly tube for the quietest moments imaginable.

Apollo is a huge fan of laser time. The instant you pick up the laser, he is in love with you. Apollo will faithfully chase the laser up the side of the couch, into the window blinds, up the side of a wall, and into the bathtub. He runs so fast up the wall, it looks like he's briefly hovering. And he doesn't just give up after a minute. He will keep going as long as that evil red light keeps shining. When you stop, he even knows who's powering the thing, because he will run right up to you and poke at the laser until it is turned on again, or until he flops over and falls asleep. It is extremely adorable to watch, and it also gets him running for 15 minutes straight, which is hopefully helping to slim down his beefy waistline. If someone told me 10 years ago that my future would involve worrying about the weight problems of an obese feline...I would definitely not believe them. But here we are.

This cat finds easy amusement in the apartment. He really doesn't need any of his toys at all. I've caught him playing with popcorn kernels, bits of cereal, rice (both dry and cooked), milk rings, sponges that he dragged from the tub, socks, my watch, clothesbaskets (both full and empty), my shoes, my pants (both while I'm wearing them and when they're on the floor), my little cacti, rolls of tape, a USB drive, his food dish, my bike pedals, and even his kitty litter box. Yeah, that last one's pretty gross. He just digs around in there like it's a sandbox, and gets his face all filthy from sniffing around. At one point, he even kicked the litter around so enthusiastically that there was used kitty litter stuck to the walls, which took 40 minutes of scrubbing to fully clean off. Which is why we now have cardboard “shields” surrounding his litter box corner.

Of all his playthings, though, his favorite one is us. Apollo has elaborate plans to lure us into being attacked. He's always waiting around corners to lunge out at us at opportune moments. And for a big guy, he's got quite a lot of spring in his step. Apollo is easily able to launch himself up to waist height. If we aren't walking around enough, Apollo will wait in a corner, and make the most pitiful meow-ing sound I've ever heard come out of an animal. It sounds as if he managed to get himself pinned under the bed, or got deathly injured, so of course we run to see what's wrong. Which is the point where he launches himself at warp speed towards the unsuspecting person's face, and runs off with his tail all poofy and his back arched and ready for more action. I don't know what is worse, the fact that he keeps trying to trick us like that, or the fact that it keeps working. Apollo also thinks bedtime is actually tackle time, and spends as much time as possible dive-bombing feet, grappling onto legs, chewing on fingers, and burrowing through pillows to get to the face we are trying to hide from him. Yet one more reason that he is locked out at night. There is no need to be terrorized by a cat all night. He may think he needs midnight playmates, but Apollo has proven countless times before that he's capable of making friends with a box or a bread crumb and does not need extra evening stimulation.

Apollo in his crinkle tube

 

 

Playing with one of his real kitty toys, instead of a random thing he found on the floor

Bonus kitten pic!  This is from the first week or so I had Apollo, back when I was living at the parents' house.  Clyde had him cornered.  About 5 seconds after this picture, Apollo launched himself at Clyde's face.  Clyde proceeded to half run, half tumble down the stairs, and then snorted and hissed for a full minute before storming off.

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

This cat loves to destroy my stuff.  His favorite thing to ruin:  plants.  I am a pretty lousy gardener, and I do not need his help killing off plants.  But he seems to think it's his duty to assist me in that task.

I have a slowly growing collection of mini cacti, all bought on various IKEA trips.  Two of them are smooth, one is fuzzy, and one is spiky.  And Apollo is fascinated by all of them.  Within 30 seconds of placing them on the window sill (the lone sunny spot in the apartment), he was up next to them to investigate.  Sniffing wasn't enough, because he proceeded to poke at, chew on, knock over, and wrestle with each of the cacti throughout the day.  Seriously, why would you bite a spikey cactus??  What part of sticking spines into your little mouth is a good idea?  And only my cat can get into a fight with a cactus.  And lose.  Squirting him with water did not stop him, nor did yelling, clapping by his ears, or grabbing him by the scruff and knocking him off the window sill.  To this day, each one still has its own battle scars and teeth marks, and all of them are missing varying amounts of soil.  He finally doesn't knock them over constantly, but it's still a weekly occurrence.

I also got a pretty curly bamboo plant.  I figured the maintenance for it is almost non-existent, so it would be hard for me to hurt it.  But no worries, Apollo stepped right up to the challenge. I placed it in the window, for lack of anywhere else to put it, and then left for an hour to run out to the store. Within that short amount of time, Apollo managed to bite into almost every leaf, and even completely destroy  several of the leaves by tearing them apart.  My bamboo looks like it has barely survived a small hurricane.  I now have to choose between leaving it in the window so it can actually get sun and have it be completely defoliated, or put it on a high shelf to keep it safe but unable to get much light.

I tried to do one thing.  All I wanted was something green and living and pretty in the window, and this cat just took over and decided that anything he can fit in his mouth is part of his own personal salad bar.

Apollo the mighty cactus ninja

My poor little bamboo stalk.  All the leaves are shredded or bitten into!

Just Let Me Sleep!

During the day, Apollo is a reasonable household companion. Even with his incessant demands for more food, he's fairly pleasant to be around all day. But at night, he's one of our worst nightmares. I discovered this very early on, when his “2am Freakout” tendencies started to show a few days after bringing him home, and have occurred every night since then. Apollo acted calm and sweet when I was getting ready for bed, and even curled up on the corner of my blanket. I had no way of knowing I was laying into a trap. I hit the lights, pulled up a blanket, and sprawled out. About 5 minutes later, I felt dagger like claws clinging onto my foot with an impressive vice-like grip, and little kitten teeth gnawing on my ankle, much in the same way a wild hyena gnaws on its prey. Even through the blankets, he managed to leave some battle scars on me. In my semi-groggy state, I tried kicking and squirming, but Apollo just held on for the ride, and somehow managed to stay attached to my limbs, even after gliding through the air in my mad fit to get him off. To fully free myself, I had to wiggle through the blankets while avoiding his little paw spikes, stand up, and wrap Apollo in a blanket so that I could eject him from my room without doing further damage to my arms.

He got launched into the hallway and a door slammed in his face before he could dart inside for round two. Indignant about this injustice against him, he pounded on my door, stuck his paw under the door trying to shake it open, and leaped repeatedly up at the doorknob until he was absolutely certain that he couldn't break in again. Disappointed but not defeated, he marched down the hall to try it on my Brother's closed door, and then downstairs to the open door of my parent's room, much to his excitement. I learned the next morning that he pulled the exact same routine. Act all sweet and innocent, and then go for the kill. And this wasn't just a once every week or so habit for him. This occurred every. Single. Night. Which is how he came to be locked out of my bedroom, every single night, for about a year and a half now.

Even after all this time though, he hasn't forgotten his goal. Every night, it still takes a massive search party to find where Apollo is hiding. He knows when it's getting close to bedtime, and while we're busy getting ready, he plants himself in hiding spots that are incredibly difficult to get him out of, in hopes of being allowed to stay with us overnight. The very center of under the bed, the far back corner of the closet, and hiding stealthily on the windowsill behind the blinds and curtains are all excellent hiding spots for him. We've even tried to let him stay with us about a dozen times, usually out of defeat when we can't possibly hope to reach him in his hangout of the night. And every time, it's ended badly for us. He stays in his hideaway just long enough for us to almost fall asleep, and then he silently emerges, so that the impact of him landing on our feet is enough to send us into shock. Then, groggy, in the dark, and sometimes bleeding, we have to capture the little bugger and hoist him out the door.

Now that we know better than to believe his “innocent eyes,” we try to wrangle him out of the room an hour or so ahead of time, to make the process a bit easier. In turn, Apollo sits directly outside the door so that he can try to sprint inside the instant the door cracks open. And once we go to bed, he stays there. We've got an old box with a blanket in it that has been taken over. The blanket was just there because I couldn't reach the top shelf to put it away, but now it has officially been claimed as his little kitty throne, and I don't want to imagine what kind of payback the kitty will come up with if I take it away now.

Apollo has his cushy little spot to hang out all night, but apparently it's a rough deal for him, because right around 7am, he realizes that he is starving, and that we are doing him a terrible evil by not putting food in his belly right that instant. So he desperately tries to paw and claw his way through the door, and even tries to shake the doorknob by standing up on his hind legs. It's like he knows how that doorknob works, he just can't get his paws around it. He makes this terrible racket for about 5 minutes straight every half hour or so until one of us finally gives in or has to get ready for the day. He charges in when the door opens, screams at us, and prances into the kitchen, looking back every two steps to make sure we haven't wandered off the path from his food dish. Waiting for the food to reach the dish is too long for him, so Apollo tries to eat the food from the falling stream of food as it falls into the bowl. Then he goes to town on the fresh pile of crunchies, and stuffs them into his mouth with such vigor and excitement that he has been nicknamed “The Steamshovel.” And apparently standing up is too much to ask of a little kitty, so half the time he sprawls out on the floor, and pulls the dish towards him, or scoops out a few pieces at a time with his paw, and eats them off of the floor. Honestly, I question every morning how he was so busy all night that he needs food that urgently. But then again, since he's locked out every night, I don't witness his 2am Freakouts, so maybe he really was that active. For all I know, he runs a marathon every night, just sprinting laps and tackling toy mice.

Apollo on one of his lazy mornings.  Note the food scattered all over the floor, which he shoveled out with his paw.  And don't mind the pot behind him...we gave him a wind-up tugboat from the dollar store to poke at.

Kitty's box throne, where he awaits our presence (or just our food) every night

Kitty's about to get famous!

Apollo settling in for his first night home

Apparently Chipotle bags make great kitty forts

Hi!  My name's Lisa, and I'm the owner of a jerk of a cat named Apollo.  He's a 1.5 year old, 16 pounder, orange tabby cat.  Yes, he's adorable, yes he has his very cute moments, but don't let that fool you.  He is a huge hassle to deal with.  Every day, we (we being myself and the boyfriend that I live with) come across a new trick he's pulled, a new stupid habit, or some other ridiculous thing that we didn't think any cat would do.  I've got stories about him that surprise even seasoned feline owners.  So keep tabs on this site, and you'll get to hear all about his apartment antics.

Instead of starting out with a recent tale, I'll just describe his personality, and how we came across this lovely little heathen.  I got him the beginning of last summer at an animal shelter.  I had finally graduated college, had a decent job for the summer, and decided that a kitten was exactly what our house needed.  At the time, I was living at my parents' house, and in addition to the proposed kitten, we had 3 other cats.  I figured it would be great, he would have playmates and/or companions to hang out with.  So we headed out to the shelter, and we found this adorable little kitten passed out in a little 3 year old's arms.  He squeaked at us, sprawled out in our arms, and was the calmest little guy there.  We thought he was perfect.  We took him home, set up a cozy little bed for him, and renamed him Apollo, since we thought it was a bit more fitting than the name Sprucer they had given him at the shelter.  He was a little sweetheart the entire night, curling up on everyone's lap, poking at feet, and even sleeping in a little ball on my pillow right next to me all night.

His act didn't last long.  Come the next morning, his wild side emerged.  I woke up to a full body kitten face tackle.  At 7am.  On my only day to sleep in.  So he got nudged out my door, and he promptly went and did the same thing to every other occupant in the house.  Apollo's new favorite hobby was waiting around corners for people, so he could use his spring-loaded sneak attack on people.  It's pretty impressive, he could reach up to your waist.  And he didn't just jump, he grabbed on.  These attacks weren't limited to people either, as the other 3 cats were his pretty much constant unwilling playmates.  Instead of sleeping through the night, he also developed the "2am Freakout," which surprisingly comes at almost the exact same time every night.  He gets twitchy, gets very hyper, and attacks anyone and anything he can find.  This included faces, feet, doorknobs, desk chairs, sleeping cats, squeaky toys, and anything else he comes across.  Thanks to this awesome trait, he was and still is locked out every night from the bedroom.

For the most part, he's kept up this same personality.  Apollo is a bit bigger (OK, fine, he's colossal), but he still acts just like he did as a young one.  Since then, he's moved out away from the other kitties into a lone kitty apartment (for the time being, at least).  Due to his impressive weight gain, he's now on diet kitty food and has limited feeding times.  Which means his entire day revolves around eating, or begging to be fed.  To make up for attacking other cats and other people, he attacks anything he can find, from my cactuses to sponges he finds in the bathroom.  Apollo seems to develop new habits or quirks on a daily basis, and provides me with an endless supply of stories and tales of his most recent adventures.  And by following this blog, you'll get to hear all about them!