It’s Zaturday – Space Cat!

Posted on August 29, 2020September 3, 2020 by Carol J. Post

It’s Zaturday, the day we (Ziggy and Zorro) take over Mommy’s blog.

Zorro here. Ziggy and I love hanging out on our catio in North Carolina. There are lots of fun things to see. Birds fly back and forth to the bird feeder all day long.

There are lots of squirrels on the ground, too. They like to eat the corn that Aunt Kim puts out for the deer. It’s fun to watch them.

Yesterday a squirrel ran up the wire right in front of us! Ziggy and I both jumped, because it startled us.

We like being out here in our catio at night, too. In the dark, there are different things to see. That’s when the racoons come out. They’re close to our size, but we’re not sure if they’re friendly. I’d rather not find out.

Moths fly into our catio, too, especially if Mommy has the porch light on. They’re fun to chase. Whenever I can catch them, I eat them. Mommy feeds me too good for me to be hungry, and the moths don’t have much taste, but I guess it’s just instinct. Mommy doesn’t like it when I do that, though.

Sometimes Ziggy and I just sit on the bar and look up into the sky. There are lots of little lights. (Mommy calls them stars.) I sometimes wonder what it’s like up there. Although Ziggy and I travel a lot, we’ve never been off the ground.

Recently, Mommy learned about a cat that went into space back in 1963. She was a French tuxedo kitty named Felicette and was the only cat to ever travel to space. Before the mission, she and thirteen other cats went through the same preflight training that human astronauts do. I’m not sure what that involves, but I probably wouldn’t do very well. I get sick and throw up on Mommy when she drives around too many curves.

When the cats finished their training, Felicette was chosen because of her calm disposition and because all the other cats had put on too much weight. She blasted off, and her rocket flew almost 100 miles above the earth at up to six times the speed of sound. Then thirteen minutes later, she parachuted back down to earth in her little space capsule, alive and well. Felicette’s mission helped bring France into the space race.

Mommy says that Felicette has her own statue, on display at the International Space University near Strasbourg. I don’t want to go into space, but I think it would be really cool if Mommy and Daddy made a Zorro statue. I guess it would be okay if Ziggy got one, too.

It’s Zaturday – Ziggy for President!

Posted on August 22, 2020August 21, 2020 by Carol J. Post

It’s Zaturday, the day we (Ziggy and Zorro) take over Mommy’s blog.

Ziggy here. Zorro and I stay pretty busy. We spend a lot of time keeping ourselves clean.

We have to keep the critters in line, too. In Florida, we stand guard to make sure the lizards don’t come inside.

In North Carolina, we don’t see any lizards, but the squirrels are constantly misbehaving. Mommy and Aunt Kim hung bird feeders outside our catio so Zorro and I and our two cousins can watch the birds. But the squirrels hang on the wire and get into them. Yesterday, Zorro and I weren’t out there to stand guard, and this is what Mommy and Daddy saw while sitting at the dining room table:

The squirrels here will do anything to get to the bird seed. Sometimes they stretch between the screen and feeder and eat it right out of the tray. Other times they pull the feeders close to the screen and dump the seed onto our bar.

Zorro and I don’t like them messing up our catio like this, and we chase them away if they try to get too close. We take our job as guard-cats very seriously. But we can’t stand guard 24/7. All that hard work makes us tired, so we have to get in our naps.

Zorro and I work hard to protect our area, but Mommy told us about a cat that was in charge of a whole town. It was time to elect a mayor for the small town of Talkeetna, Alaska. The manager at the general store picked a ginger kitten from a box of unwanted cats and named him Stubbs, because he had no tail. Stubbs ended up winning the election as a write-in candidate, because the people didn’t like the humans on the ballot. Stubbs kept the position for twenty years, his entire life. Since he was honest and never raised taxes, he was pretty popular, even though he insisted on drinking catnip-flavored water out of wineglasses and was often guilty of sleeping on the job.

Zorro and I have been hearing a bunch of stuff lately about an election for president coming up soon. If Stubbs can be mayor, I wonder if I could be President. I bet Mommy and Daddy would vote for me. Zorro would, too. If I was President, I would make sure that all kitties had a good home, a nice soft bed and all the kitty food they could possibly want.

Ziggy for President! Hmm, that belongs on a bumper sticker!

It’s Zaturday – The Cat’s Whiskers!

Posted on August 15, 2020August 16, 2020 by Carol J. Post

It’s Zaturday, the day we (Ziggy and Zorro) take over Mommy’s blog.

Zorro here. Daddy has whiskers but Ziggy and I have him beat! Check out mine:

Ziggy has pretty good whiskers, too.

Mommy had a hard time getting pictures of our whiskers, though, because black whiskers on black cats don’t show up as much. A lot of cats have white whiskers. Like this one:

Kitty whiskers make us look cute, but that’s not all they’re for. Our whiskers help us navigate the world. They’re as sensitive as a human’s fingertips. Each whisker is filled with little, supersensitive nerves that help us judge distance and space. Humans touch the world with their fingers, but we use our faces!

Our whiskers can pick up subtle changes in air currents and tell us the shape and speed of nearby objects. They also send messages to our brains about the position of our legs and body so we always know what every part is doing. Did you ever hear that cats always land on their feet? That’s why.

Another thing our whiskers do is help is “see” things that are close. We see better at a distance, but it’s hard to focus on objects up close. When we approach something in our path, our whiskers act like radar detectors, picking up the air currents that bounce back. That way, we can go around it. Unless it’s our food bowl.

Whiskers protect us, too. If a tiny speck of dust falls on a whisker above my eye, I blink or shake it off. Whiskers also keep us from getting into jams. The ones on the sides of our nose are the same width as our bodies. If we come up on a narrow spot, they let us know if we can fit through it without getting stuck.

People should never cut cats’ whiskers. It doesn’t hurt us, but it can make us feel disoriented and scared. Cutting our whiskers is like blindfolding someone, because you’re taking away one of our ways of telling what’s around us.

A while back, Mommy said that someone thought they were the cat’s whiskers. Ziggy and I didn’t think that made any sense at all. But she said it’s an expression that means someone or something is very appealing, even considers himself to be the center of the universe.

Hmmm, Ziggy and I are really cute. When we meow, Mommy and Daddy always listen and try to give us what we want. I don’t know if we’re the center of their universe, but we’re a really important part of their lives. Does that mean we’re the cat’s whiskers?

It’s Zaturday – Lefties!

Posted on August 8, 2020August 7, 2020 by Carol J. Post

It’s Zaturday, the day we (Ziggy and Zorro) take over Mommy’s blog.

Ziggy here. Mommy is right-handed and Aunt Kim is left-handed. (That rock in the picture belongs to Aunt Kim.) The other day, Mommy was curious about whether cats have a dominant side, so she asked Mr. Google. (Mr. Google knows everything!)

She learned about a study they did on 44 cats. They watched them play, walk down stairs, climb out of the litter box and reach for food, and they looked to see which paw they led with. They found that most of the female cats favored their right paw and most of the males favored their left.

Zorro and I are both boys, so that means we’re left-handed, like Aunt Kim. (I guess in our case, it would be “left-pawed.”) Mommy wanted to test the theory, so she put us each in the litter box. I jumped out with both front paws together, but Zorro stepped out with his left foot.

Then she put us on top of our cat condo. Zorro stepped down with his left paw again, so I think he’s definitely left-handed like Aunt Kim.

When Mommy put me on the perch, I kind of liked it there, so I sat…

And sat…

Mommy finally gave up. But then came the fun part—toys!!! One of our favorite things to play with is a piece of paper wadded up into a ball. Mommy throws it down the hall, and we go crazy chasing it then batting it around. Mommy tied it onto a string and dangled it in front of us. Guess which paw Zorro batted it with–his left. Again.

I thought he was making things way too easy for Mommy, so I swung at it with my right paw some and my left paw some, then grabbed it and held onto it.

When it was all over, Mommy decided that Zorro is left-pawed, and I’m just difficult.