Twenty-Something Tuesday
Animals are a blessing. They are our faithful companions, our hilarious best friends, and our coziest couch buddies. They inarguably make the world a better place, through their unwavering love, devotion, and weird ass behaviors that make us question their planet of origin. So, pet lovers, rejoice: here is a compendium of the most bizarre behaviors of LD’s menagerie.
SHILOH DOES NOT UNDERSTAND PHYSICS
My adorable cat Shiloh loves laying in the sun. Unfortunately, she does not understand how physics work, so whenever the sunlight is not where she wants it, she tries to move it with her paws. It’s really cute.
– Erin
WALL-LICKER
My parents’ collie-lab mix is very smart, very fast, and very neurotic. If there’s an uneven floor board in their house, she has found it and attempted to dig it out. She also performs a variety of odd behaviors when she’s attempting to demand everyone’s attention—the couches, kitchen chairs, and coffee table all bear evidence to her sassy nibbling. However, her strangest moment by far came when she decided to mix things up by approaching a wall in our kitchen, pausing with her body perfectly perpendicular to it, and then gently licking a seemingly random spot until we noticed. Either there was something stuck there that only dogs could see (unlikely in my mother’s spotless house) or she just has a flair for the dramatic.
– Michelle
YOGA DISRUPTOR
Zeppy pretty much considers the floor his domain, so if you do anything on the floor he wants to participate. Whenever I’m doing yoga or crunches, Zepp is pretty much in my face wanting to know what’s up. Can he play? What kind of game is this? Maybe if he hits me in the face with his paw I will let him play too.
– Liz
THE CAT WHO TRIED TO STEAL CHRISTMAS
Pretty much everything our cat Jasper does is super weird. We took him in after we found him sitting at our doorstep one November. He was not shy and basically invited himself to be a member of our family. He now enjoys the luxuries of domestic life such as heated seats via laptop keyboards, yet he still relishes in the daily wild romp outside (with a 9pm curfew of course). Last Christmas, in a moment that would make even the Griswolds and any other veterans of holidays mishaps cringe and spew their eggnog in horror, Jasper darted up the Christmas tree at lightning speed. Christmas lights were flailing and the fate of my mother’s beloved angel ornaments looked quite bleak. He had already made his way up to the center as I sat stunned, before my parents pried him from amongst the pine needles.
– Lauren
TRAINING FOR THE OLYMPICS
French Fry is a weird, weird cat. She insists on being held like a baby, chirps rather than meows, and is terrified of the most random things. But one of my favorite quirks is the way she gears herself up to sprint around our very small apartment. She gets up against the wall, puts her back paws up on the moulding along the floor, and launches herself like an Olympic runner.
– Bridey
THE DIVA DOG
My family’s dog Jax demands to be the center of attention at all times. If you sit down on the couch with a blanket he will tap at your leg and whine at you until you invite him up. If you are laying on the floor, he rolls his face/body across your head and tries chew on your hair. Some nights he’s too lazy to walk up the stairs, and he rolls over on his side and refuses to move until you carry him. He also won’t go upstairs to bed unless he’s found one of his “babies” (stuffed animals) to bring with him. If you enter a room he’s in, he whines or barks at you until you acknowledge his presence. Sometimes he plays fetch with himself from the top of the stairs by tossing his stuffed animals halfway down and chasing after them. Basically, he’s lucky he’s cute.
– Allie
THE MUFFIN MAN
Jax also has a propensity to eat things he shouldn’t. When I was in high school, he ate my physical when he found it sitting on my backpack. When we left the house, he would chew on the corner of magazines or newspapers left out. Any stray piece of paper is fair game, basically. The weirdest incident was the time he found a muffin in my little brother’s messy room and carried it around in his mouth until he got caught. I still don’t know why he didn’t just eat it.
-Allie
THE ANGSTY DRAMA CAT
I have three cats, the two boys (Yoda and Sir Jack Kittington III) are buddies, but the one girl cat is decidedly against other four-legged creatures. I had just moved (part 1) and my cats were all pretty stressed out. Sir Jack was glorying in harassing Evey and had taken to ambushing her when she went to use the litter box. Evey is a tortoiseshell cat and if there’s one thing you need to know about tortie cats is that they have plenty of sassy tortitude. So, Sir Jack spent the entire night chasing and stalking Evey and by the time I got up in the morning she was PISSED. And apparently she hadn’t been brave enough to attempt to the litter box. It’s 5:30am and I’m standing in front of my bathroom sink attempting to get ready for work. Lo and behold, Evey hops into the sink, glares at me, and proceeds to pee and drop a massive shit right into the sink. All I could do was stand there shrieking in horror.
– Kelsey
PAPA YODA
As some of you may know, when I lived in Tennessee I regularly fostered kittens for the local animal shelter. It was a major gamble at the beginning because I wasn’t actually sure how my native cats would react to the invading tiny furballs. Well you can guess Evey’s reaction (see above) but Yoda LOVED all of them. He loved to play with them, clean them, snuggle with them. Sometimes when one of the tiny kittens was piteously mewing, Yoda would run over, pick them up, and carry it around and then lick its head. Yoda is super-duper fluffy, so he would lay on his side and let the kittens snuggle up by his furry belly and they would all sleep together. So basically there was cuteness overload all the time. Little did I know that my massive (13-14 lb) Maine Coon MALE cat would be all lovey-dovey with the tiny kittens (stars above tiny kitten heads).
– Kelsey
LILY THE WONDER DOG
Lily is a blessing. She is the official Literally, Darling Dog, owned by our fearless leaders, Katie and Hope. She wears Halloween costumes like a champ, flings feces at loved ones, steals cookies and throws fits when there are none left, and requests that her devoted owners burp her via firm belly pats when she eats too much. Also, she really likes the Foo Fighters (that’s a video of her beautiful harmonizing).
