Cat Courtesy...

Blurb for today:
The mind of a cat is an inscrutable mystery.
Lewis Thomas

So, I have this cat. Well, actually I have two, but I'm just talking about this one for now. She's a pretty little thing, part Siamese and tortoiseshell, a combo dubbed a Tortiepoint in the Siamese world.

She has a history, but I don't know what it is because we adopted her from a Siamese Rescue organization when she was about two. She had herself some major issues when we first got her and it's taken awhile to help her work through them. She was as skittish as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and she went through every meal like a vacuum cleaner... she inhaled it. She didn't like being touched and you could forget about having a purring ball of fur on your lap -- it didn't happen.

Through patience and perseverance -- and pure stubborness on my part -- she's developed a more trusting nature now and doesn't run and hide every time a new body enters the house -- only sometimes. She actually comes looking for some loving now and allows herself to be petted and scritched on the head. If I'm real lucky I can get about 10 minutes out of her on my lap without her frantically searching for the nearest avenue of escape. She still eats like a horse, both hers and the other cat's mentioned above, and is cleverly opportunistic when it comes to food. She'll love you to death if you give her something to eat, regardless of what it is... peanut butter crackers, chicken noodle soup, pizza crust... you get the idea. If you're eating it, she assumes it's hers and will find a way to get some. I think she thinks she's a people, but then they all do, don't they?

So anyway, this cat... her name is Zoey, by the way... may have overcome a lot, but the goofy beast is as dumb as a bag of kitty litter! She has yet to figure out how to use the pet door. The cat boxes are located in a little "kitty korner" area off of the laundry room and under the stairs. We have a pet door installed on the door going into the laundry room. Said pet door has a rubber flap that pushes in when the cat goes head-first through the door and pushes out when the cat comes back through. Simple enough, yes?

Not for my cat. Oh no, no, no. She has no problem at all using her head to push out when she comes back through the door after she's finished going to potty. It's the getting to the potty that's a trip. For some unknown reason, she simply will not push through head-first going in the door. She paws and putzes for an interminable length of time until she catches the flap with a claw and pulls it out so she can quick stick her head under the flap and goes in that way. I just know that one of these days she's going to have to go so bad that lacking time to putz with the door, she's going to think "the hell with it" and pee on the floor... more than likely, the carpet!

So, last night I'm sitting there watching as she starts to go through this stupid exercise yet one more time and as it turns out, the other cat, Buster, was on the other side. So naturally, he's thinking she wants to play and starts batting at her with his paws through the pet door. Since she's wanting to pee and not play, she just sits back and waits for him to come through so she can get on with her business. All of a sudden, Buster opens and holds the flap outward, she quick sees her opportunity and runs through to the kitty komfort station. She may be a little slow upstairs but she's fast on her feet!

Or, could be she's not quite as dumb as I thought and has been teaching the ol' boy new tricks... maybe she's on to something?