Catnipped Kitty

Sorry for the long wait between posts.  Between working two jobs, dealing with a legally insane feline, and trying to actually have a social life, it's been a hectic couple of weeks.  But now I'm back, complete with a brand new Apollo tale for you!

Like most cats, Apollo absolutely loves catnip.  He's got a few catnip toys that he still frolicks with, even though he's had them for months.  If they were mine, I'd already  be bored of them, but he seems to love them.  Putting catnip in toys isn't enough for him, though, so we also have a little baggie of the fresh stuff to put on the floor, in boxes, on toys, or on the cat so that he can get Catnipped to the Max on special occasions.  Apollo eats and licks it right up, and promptly spends the next 20 minutes all giddy, relaxed, and laid back.  Well...correction.  We HAD catnip.  Until Apollo found our secret stash.

We're still not entirely sure how he pulled it off.  We went out grocery shopping, and when we came back, the living room was in a bit of disarray.  Somehow our charming little animal got the catnip down from the very top shelf in the living room.  Mind you, this isn't a little 2 or 3 shelf deal.  This is an almost 6 foot high bookshelf, stacked to the brim with books.  I imagine he could smell the catnip on the shelf, got pissed at having to wait for us to get it down for him, and just bodyslammed the side of the shelf to shake it until the lightweight baggie fell gracefully onto the floor.  After getting the catnip within reach, he promptly sank his teeth and claws into it and ripped the bag to shreds to get out the goods.  It was sprinkled everywhere, and ground into the carpet.  That means that not only did he eat it off the floor, he rolled back and forth in it to get the catnip good and stuck into both his fur and our white carpet.  And since he rubbed it into his fur, vacuuming didn't help a whole lot because no sooner would we do a pass with the vacuum than Apollo would sit down, roll some more, and sprinkle out some catnip he had stashed under his collar.  Such a charmer, isn't he?

Luckily, I don't think there's any sort of "kitty catnip overdose."  In fact, the whole ordeal made Apollo much more pleasant to deal with.  Rather than being the angry, bitey, and eager to claw little kitty that we get to tolerate on a daily basis, Apollo became the sweet, laid back, and groggy little stoned cat that he becomes after eating an entire bag of the Nip.  He napped all day, his eyes were all red and squinty, and upon us returning home, he promptly went into the sink and passed out for the entire afternoon. 

Do you have any idea how adorable a cat passed out in the bathroom sink is?  Sure, it wreaks havoc on the plumbing, as we found out, when all the little Apollo hairs work their way through the pipes.  And it's certainly unpleasant to find Apollo hairs plastered to the sides when rinsing toothpaste out of your mouth.   And it's incredibly inconvenient to need to wash your hands and have a cat laying there and guarding it with his life, swatting and biting at anyone who comes near.  But it is one of the darn most adorable things I've ever seen Apollo do.  So there you have it, visitors.  If you ever come to my apartment and want to win Apollo over, just bring him some catnip and let him go to town with it.  But if you have the audacity to try to use what Apollo is convinced is his bathroom, you might be better off using the kitchen sink to wash your hands.

Apollo the mighty "Sink Guard"

Not only does Apollo think the sink is his, he also sometimes commandeers the toilet.

Next entry in the Apollo saga...he actually likes water!  To hold you over to the next post, here's a video to prove it.

The Potato Disaster

We recently had a bit of an apartment disaster.  No, the roof wasn't leaking, and we had power.  This was a feline created meltdown.  All because I didn't make mashed potatoes.  I bought a sack of potatoes a while ago with grand intentions of cooking all kinds of delicious things.  I took them home, put them on the bottom shelf in the pantry, and promptly forgot that they existed.  Fast forward a couple weeks.  The potatoes had gone bad, but since they hadn't moved at all, they didn't smell and we didn't notice...

But apparently Apollo did.  And being the helpful little kitty that he is, he decided to point it out for us.  Somehow with his little kitty body, he managed to drag the sack of potatoes out from the bottom shelf and into the little entryway/kitchen storage area.  As soon as the potatoes had been moved, they released their disgusting stench.  Now, most cats would give up at this point.  They would decide they've done enough work for the day, and that it's about time for a nice, hearty nap.  Apollo's a determined little thing, though.  So he went above and beyond with the potatoes.

He not only moved them from the pantry, he moved them throughout a better part of the apartment.  Apollo started with dragging them into the little hallway that leads to the bathroom and bedroom.  When he lost interest in that region, he went ahead and headed back to the kitchen and of course brought his new best friend Sacky (yeah, I just named some rotten vegetables, what now?) along for the ride.  Apollo marched his way across the kitchen, and ended his journey right in front of his food dish. 

I was not the one to witness the horror of this first.  The boyfriend had that distinct honor.  He came back from an 8am lab class to find potato juices in paths winding throughout the apartment, an overwhelming smell that could be detected from the outside hallway several apartments down, and a cat sitting proudly by his kitty dish and Sacky, screaming about what a brilliant job he has done rescuing us from bad food.  So instead of a snack and a quick shower, Matt was greeted by the harrowing task of starting clean-up duty. 

Even after arriving home a few hours after the potatocalypse, it was still a grisly scene.  The distinct smell was definitely still there.  There were some lovely carpet stains (that luckily came out relatively painlessly thanks to the magical pet stain remover liquid I found at Target!) that needed scrubbing.  Even though the laminate floor had been supposedly mopped twice, it was still quite sticky. 

I spent a good two hours sprinkling baking soda everywhere, vacuuming, mopping, febreeze-ing, sniff-checking, re-mopping, disassembling the vacuum that somehow got potato bits lodged into it, and hollering obscenities at the kitty who was following me around the entire time, yelling about how it was definitely 2pm, and getting close to dinnertime.  Everything was sparkling clean, and it finally looked acceptable.  The smell was still lingering, and did so for a good day and a half until the cup of baking soda in the pantry finally worked its wonders.

I'm still questioning how the hell Apollo was powerful enough for this feat of strength.  He is a big kitty, but a sack of potatoes is pretty darn heavy!  And certainly a bit awkward for a cat to drag, carry, wrestle with, or whatever else that Thing did with it.   I would also like to know what the hell possessed Apollo to do such a thing.  Why couldn't he just leave it be and tell us when we got home?  It's days like this that I think about how innocent he looked at the shelter, and how much of a terror he's turned out to be.  But through all of his evil escapades he still manages to look adorable, so of course we keep him around and try not to think about his next stunt.

I did not manage to get a picture of the potato disaster.  And I'm sure it wasn't pretty and you wouldn't want to see it anyways.  So instead, here's a lovely pic of tiny Apollo lounging in a pot full of cacti.  And yes, he did try to take a bite.