I can has LOLcats?

We have a visitor cat in the house — in the basement TV room, to be exact. Mabel is down there recovering after spending a month outdoors (she was effectively exiled by a new cat in her household).

If you follow the LOLcat photoblog I Can Has Cheezburger.com, you'll recognize the phrase "basement cat." In the lexicon of LOLcats, "basement cat" is the Devil — a black cat with burning red eyes and fangs.

The LOLcats also have "ceiling cat" — an angelic white cat that is often shown at the very top of the set of stairs or on a tall bookcase.

Ironically, Mabel, our "basement cat," is a black cat. And Sheba, who likes to be in the highest place in the house, is a white cat.

Today, basement cat and ceiling cat met briefly in my office. Sheba was completely relaxed. She looked at Mabel, and went back to purring. Mabel, clearly traumatized by her recent persecution, gave a sharp hiss. But since Sheba couldn't hear it, there wasn't a problem.

Mabel soon calmed down, and was disappointed when she was taken back down stairs to her den.

Cat on the keyboard

(more lolcat pictures)

A friend sent me a link today to PawSense, a software product for detecting a cat on your keyboard and shooing it away before it can do any damage.

PawSense is a digital variant of the battery-powered Cat Scram. The Cat Scram emits a beam that, if the cat walks through it, triggers a high-pitched noise humans can't hear but which is unpleasant to cats.

Both devices would probably work well with young kittens that roam around climbing onto anything. But I'm dubious of their efficacy with older cats. Cats aren't on your keyboard for entertainment. They're on your keyboard because they want your attention.

If a cat walks on the keyboard to get your attention, and you give it negative reinforcement, the ignored or rejected cat will simply move over one inch to the next item on your desk and go to work there. We have one cat that removes pushpins from the bulletin board, another that pats the screens with its paws, and a third one that shoves mugs of tea, staplers, pens and anything else movable onto the floor. It has no problem moving a full mug of tea across the desk and over the edge.

Zorg takes a very hard line with cats on his desk, but does that help? Not really. In his case, the cats cannily leave the room and sit (out of squirt gun range) in the hall, yowling until the paint peels. Then Zorg puts on earphones and turns up the volume. Now, who is really winning?

(Note: And PawSense and Cat Scram don't work with deaf cats like Sheba.)

As an amateur cat psychologist, I recommend a long-range, big-picture approach. If I had at cat on my keyboard, I'd stop everything I was doing, figure out what the cat wanted, give it the food, open the door, play "Mousie," or whatever it took for five minutes, and then go back to work. If you treat your cats this way, they won't be driven to get on your keyboard or destroy your desk to get your attention. Mine just sit by my chair and tap my leg politely with one paw.

Doesn't this just make you want to run over to PAWS and pick up a few cats?

Sheba is famous

Our deaf white cat, Sheba, is one of the cats of the day at the LOLcat (laugh-out-loud cat) site, I Can Haz Cheesburger?

I wasn't sure they'd be interested in this Mac-oriented photo and caption, but...here's the perma-link:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/05/31/maccat/

Many thanks to the folks at Lolcat Buildr, who have a web-based app for quickly creating LOLcat captions and submitting them directly to I Can Haz Cheesburger? (However, be aware that sometimes not all the photos you'lll see at the Lolcat Buildr home page are "workplace safe." Too bad they can't move the one or two questionable thumbnails to a separate area...)