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Lily's Kitty Secrets

One Thing I Really Like About Mom

One thing I really like about Mom...even with all the newcomers around Mom never forgets to give us oldtimers plenty of attention. I still get to be Mom's pillow kitty and sleep behind Mom's head every night. When I ask Mom to scratch my neck or chin, or rub my head, she always obliges me. She will even stop giving attention to the younger cats when I or one of the other oldtimers wants attention! That's one reason I don't mind the other cats being around...I always know Mom will still make sure to give me and the other oldtimers plenty of love and attention.

Failproof Ways To Get Human Attention

Hi Catster friends & future friends! My name is Lily. I'm a brown mackerel tabby shorthair. My mom calls me an "old-timer" now but I disagree. I tell Mom I'm just "experienced" at the art of living & that it takes one a lot of years to reach this level of life experience!

I don't think I'm much of a writer...in fact I hadn't tried my paw at writing until this moment when Uno told me she's smarter than I am because she writes a diary & I've never yet written a word in my life. So I decided to show Uno that when one makes up their mind to do something & puts enough effort & heart into doing it, one can accomplish bigger things than anybody else expects.

Anyhow what I wanted to tell you in my first attempt at writing a diary, is this very useful, usually fail-proof, tip for how to get your human's attention! As you know, one problem most of us kitties constantly have, is that of getting & keeping our humans attention especially when our humans are busy concentrating on unimportant things such as dealing with bills & financial things, talking to customer service people on phones to try to straighten out issues with whatever they're talking about, sitting at the dinner table eating while refusing to acknowledge our presence or give us our deserved share of their food, entertaining guests, shutting us out of the bedroom while they're in there together with their spouses spending what they call "quality time" together uninterrupted, getting ready for work, & all the too many other times our humans think they're too busy to give us cats their attention when we want it.
(Beware-our humans will refuse to acknowledge this & make the excuse that us cats pick the wrong times to try to get our humans attention! Correct way to handle these excuses is to either ignore them, pretend you totally have no clue what your human is talking about, or if absolutely necessary-put on your widest eyed innocent look & simply deny them. Never ever admit to anything your human sees as negative!)

Now, back to the topic of the failproof tip for getting your human's attention (& remember kitties, DON'T TELL ANY HUMANS WHERE YOU LEARNED THIS!!!)

A day or two ago right when I wanted my human to give me attention, my human calls up somebody & then was on the phone with some customer service department trying to get some sort of problem straightened out. The company, whoever it was, had made some kind of error in either billing or not processing an order right or not giving my human a discount she was supposed to get. It was something like that, I'm not sure of the details.

While I sat patiently & waited for my human to get off the phone & give me my attention, my human sat impatiently waiting on hold for a real human to get on the phone line. I got on a shelf behind my human & tapped her on the head with my forepaw. All she had to do was turn around, put the phone down & talk to ME & pet me.

However, my human wrongly ignored me. I tried several more times to tap her, she persisted in ignoring me. I got to thinking of what else I could do to get her attention. Suddenly out of the blue a wonderful idea came to me!

Does anybody else here remember the movie Ghostbusters? That movie beautifully illustrates a very easy & almost always failproof method to instantly get your humans attention! How many of you noticed this in that movie?

What is that method? you may ask. Well, it's called SLIMING. Now for us kitties, there is more than one way to achieve the attention-getting method known as sliming.

Method 1 is to hack up a nice wet hairball in a spot humans frequently walk through, such as any pathway to the bathroom, or just outside the bedroom door when your humans shut you out of their bedroom, etc. Ideally, time your hairball hack so the hairball is in position immediately after your humans turn out the lights to go to bed. Then make sure you're anywhere else in the house except for near that hairball! Don't worry, you won't miss it when a human finds your hairball with a bare foot. You don't have to see the action because you will definitely HEAR it when your human first steps barefoot onto your nice slimy attention-getter. Your human will yelp in shock & say things that let you know for sure your hairball has done its job. Your human may even say words unfit for kitten ears to hear. If your human figures out who did the hairball & focuses unwanted NEGATIVE attention on you, simply pretend to be sick & your human's anger will change to worrying about your health & keep you out of trouble.

Method 2 is the method to use for getting the attention of humans who are on the phone or watching TV or talking to other humans, etc. You get close to your human, preferably behind them & at a level as equal to the level of their face as possible. This is one time when although the purpose of your sliming is to get your humans attention, YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT LET YOUR HUMAN NOTICE YOU until AFTER you execute your sliming maneuver!!!

Once you have gotten yourself into a good position unnoticed by your human, quietly gather as much slime in your nose and mouth as possible. Your target is fairly large. You need your slime to hit your human anywhere on the face. Make your load of slime big enough & heavy enough to travel through the air far enough & fast enough to reach your target so your human is sure to notice NOTHING UNTIL AFTER YOUR SLIMEBALL STRIKES!

Now, get ready to put on your most innocent "I don't know what just happened but I had nothing to do with it" expression & your "I don't feel good, I think I have a kitty cold" expression. When you have a nice big heavy load of slime & your innocent expressions ready....

SNEEZE!!!

FIRE!!!

SLIMED!!!

Ideally your slimeball will land somewhere on the face of your human.
If your slimeball hit its target, I ASSURE YOU that YOU'LL HAVE GOTTEN YOUR HUMAN's ATTENTION. It may take a few times of sliming your human before he or she puts down the phone & gives you attention.

I had to slime my human about 7 times before she finally got off the phone, turned to me & started checking me to see if I was coming down with upper respiratory problems. Now if your human starts thinking "vet" or "antibiotic shot" or any other such medical kinds of things, start gradually reducing your "I think I'm coming down with a kitty cold" expression & change it to an expression of "I only had a little dust in my nose, I'm ok." I had to do this to stop my human from heading in any kind of medical intervention direction. It worked.

I succeeded sliming my human, getting her off the phone, & getting her to pay attention to ME! Why won't our humans ever learn that if they just give us cats positive attention whenever we WANT it, we won't have to do such things as SLIMING them to get their attention?

PURRS!
Lily