Conference misery::feline_v1

    Oh No!!  All kitties of refinement are AMC and LOV fans!  You have
    a traitor kitty in your midst! ;^)
    
    Jo

    
    
    	I have had to make sure that none of our remotes face the TV/
    	cable box/VCR when we leave the house.  At our old apt I was
    	noticing that the VCR wouldn't tape my soaps, it was taping
    	nothing (the box got turned off) or taped a different channel.
    	I eventually figured out that one of the monsters was walking
    	on the coffee table and would step  on the remotes!
    
    	JJ
    

funny you should mention this....

Two nights ago, I was awakened at 4:30 in the morning by my roommate's
hideous clock radio alarm.  Now this is weird for two reasons, she doesn't
get up at 4:30 in the morning AND she never uses the alarm, preferring to
wake up to music....the alarm on that clock is real mean and even I can hear
it on the other side of the house - radio music, I can ignore.  

Well, it seems that Tabs, the midnight raider, had crept out of Marge's bed
to get a snack and had become chilly...so she sat on Marge's clock radio
to warm her butt....apparently, Marge didn't respond when Tabs asked, quite 
reasonably I'm sure, to be allowed back in bed under the covers, so Tabs sat
on the clock radio.  The problem was, all controls on the radio are on top....
and they are push-buttons.  Tabs' fanny reset the time to be two hours ahead 
and reset the selection for alarm or radio to alarm.

So, beware of VCR sitters....and beware of midnight clock radio sitters as
well.  Meanwhile, does anyone know of a clock radio brand with controls on
the sides, or back, or front, or ANYWHERE but on top?

    Boy, can I relate!!! I also have one of those stupid clocks with all
    the buttons on top.  For some reason they put a "test the loud brass
    bell" button up there too. Ruby likes to prowl about at times and
    happened to step on it!! I thought the house was on fire!!!  She kept
    sitting there as if to say "so what, mom, think of all the things you do
    to me!" NAHHH! And then she runs away!
    Karen, Ruby ( who is now CAGED ), Stinky, Wing ( who LOVES it) and
    Arthur

    I have a Panasonic telephone that is touchtone with all the buttons
    on the top.  The cats like to walk all over it.  A couple of things
    can happen with that.  First, they often turn the darn thing on
    to speakerphone in the middle of the night, and we are awakened
    by a blaring dial tone.  The other thing that happens is that once
    they get the dial tone, they have often hit the preprogramed buttons
    and actually placed calls, sometimes in the middle of the night,
    sometimes during the day when I am at work.  
    
    When my phone bill started doubling in cost, we took a closer look.
    Seems the cats were placing long distance calls during the day,
    mostly to my friend Sheri in Hawaii (the other pre-programmed numbers
    were all local, thank goodness).  When I told Sheri about it, she
    said she was wondering who it was that kept calling her and not
    saying anything. :^)
    
    Oh, they have also figured out how to turn off the answering machine
    by stepping on it too.  I am just glad that my remote control isn't
    that sensitive.
    
    Jo

    Cindy Fischer jogged my memory about another incident where my cats
    almost cost me money.
    
    I went to an out of town cat show with my friend Patsy who has one
    of my cats.  I was showing Limoges and Moody, and Patsy had Manny.
    We checked into the hotel, got the cats settled with food and litter
    pans, turned the TV on for them for company, and then went downstairs
    for dinner.
    
    We came back and found that the cats had hit the Pay TV buttons
    on top of the TV and were watching the X-rated channel.  Well, the
    Pay TV things said that you get the first 5 minutes for free, but
    after that they bill the charge to your room.  So, we called the
    front desk and asked how long it had been on.  The lady at the front
    desk thought this was an odd question, but told me that it had been
    on for about an hour.  "Well..." I said, "the cats must have
    accidentally turned it on while we were out having dinner...could
    you please remove the charge from our bill?  We have turned it off."
    Dead silence on the other end of the phone.  Finally she says "could
    you run that by me again??"  :^) 
    
    She ended up taking the charge off our bill cause she said it was
    the best excuse she had heard yet!  When we checked out the next
    day, she was working the desk and recognized my name.  Of course,
    she just had to see the "pervert" cat!  ;^)
    
    Jo  

    What is it about cats and radios, etc?  We have a clock radio with the
    buttons on top, (what a mistake).  Misty loves to sit on it. 
    Occassionally, her foot hits the on button, not much fun in the middle
    of the night.  :-}
    
    Thanks for the warning about cats and VCR controls, we'll make sure
    they can't be stepped on by the little purrsons.
    
    Steffi and Misty, Lizette, Misha and Marnie

    oh, h*ll yes!  my clock radio is a g.e. clock radio/phone combo with
    the dratted buttons on the top.  not only can the wake up alarm time be
    changed, but the actual clock time can also be advanced--with the step
    of a paw.
    
    sure enuf, one of the furbags tromped on the actual time button one
    night.  i woke up when the music sounded the next morning, looked at
    the clock--which displayed the proper time vis-a-vis when the alarm
    should go off--and got dressed for work.  it was only after i was in
    the car, halfway to work, that i heard the *correct* time announced.  i
    was an hour early!!!  i immediately reasoned what must have happened,
    then confirmed it that night.  i fumed the rest of the way to work, but 
    you gotta love them furry darlins!   ;-)
    
    diane, stella (it must have been my big-b*tt brother) and stanley (not
    me, no way!  i was snuggled on the bed)
    

    We have also had to make sure the remote is not available to be
    stepped on when we want to record something.  
    
    Fortunately the cats can't get on top of either the alarm clock or
    the cable box (the buttons are on the front anyway), but we have
    caught them watching M-TV or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!
      Nancy DC

      There was a "bit" on the evening news about two weeks ago about a cat
    in Chicago that called the Police.... Seems that it knocked a
    touch-tone phone off the hook, and must have dialed "911"... The
    Police, thinking that someone had called and become incapacitated when
    they couldn't raise anyone by voice, traced the call through the
    telephone company and responded with cruisers with sirens wailing
    away...(not knowing WHAT to expect). When they bot into the residence,
    there was a very calm cat patiently waiting in a somewhat puzzled
    manner..
    
      John Mc

	Today's Garfield cartoon in the paper fits right in with this:

	Garfield wakes up and realizes that he's cold - says he's going	
	to turn the heat on and reaches down to do so.  Next frames shows	
	him lying atop the tv set with a show in progress :^}

	Our kids aren't generally too bad with the remotes, but the 
	other morning I was blasted with noise when I turned the upstairs
	tv on - someone had turned the volume WAY up, and I know it wasn't
	one of us humans :^}

	Sandy

    o.k. i got another one!  (this is a friend's story!)
    
    a friend of my SO told us that their water bill had gone up in three
    (3) months so much that they had to wonder why.  they could not figure
    it out, called the water company and everything.  no one had any
    answers.  after a month or so goes by, this guy hears in the middle of
    night someone flushing their toilet downstairs.  he lookes next to him,
    his wife is there.  hmm... he says 'would a burgular stop to use the
    toilet?' naw, so he investigates.  
    
    its the cat flushing the toilet and watching the water drain!  they can
    only assume that the cat has taken to this and flushed the toilet for
    hours a day while they were at work.  shut the door?  can't, its a
    connecting door to the kid's room.  they had to change the toilet to one
    that has the flusher on the side.  needless to say, the water bill was
    down the next month.  i think they got their answer!!! :)

Jo,

My Biff does the same thing with the same Panasonic phone.  He turns on the
speaker phone and calls people.  He's placed several long distance calls,
so I've placed those long-distance numbers on the 'lower' buttons figuring
he's too dense to hit the 'lower' button, then the call button.  He's
pretty clever though.  He called a friend of mine one day and when she kept
saying "Hello", Biff responded with a few meows.  She told him to get off the
phone!!  He's always hitting the playback button and retrieving
my messages, too.  What a brat.  Can you just hear the prank calls??
"Do you have Pounces in a can??  Well, you better let him out!!"

Julie also warms her butt on the cable box and always changes the channel,
or powers it down.

It's so nice to have help around the house......

Mary

    My mom had a kitty (Taffy) that she use to have to race this
    kitty to the phone because he just loved to answer it.  The phone
    would ring and he would use his paw to lift the received off to
    stop the ringing.
    
    It was real cute when I use to call her and she wasn't at home because
    he would always answer the phone...so I would sit and have a
    conversation with him.  The bad part was he never put the reciever
    back on the phone when he was done...so the line was always busy.
                                                                     
    You can't live with them...you can't live without them.
    
    Sandy

re: toilet flushing

oh yes, Hannah went through that stage....when she was a kitten, she
discovered the moonlight coming in the bathroom window made a lovely
picture on the toilet water..when the water was going around.  It didn't take
my monkey cat long to figure out that pushing the silver lever made the
water go down and around!  She sat on the tank and leaned her body down and
pushed the lever as hard as she could..and voilla!  

Luckily, I could close off the bathroom until she decided there were other
things to get into...MANY other things.  Of course, now she is a mature
young lady and doesn't DO such things...well, most of the time, anyway.

I keep hearing that cats aren't that smart, but I keep discovering the
tricks the cats teach themselves...I'm beginning to think it is a feline
conspiracy to keep us in the dark about their real IQ's.  Maybe they ARE
furry aliens from another planet...it would explain alot of things...

    Mary, that is Hysterical...!!!!! I can just see him now!!!!!
     Hmm, last winter I was at course and I was coming in late
    in the evening.. ( Happy said I was late as it was not 5:17
    and dinner was late..) I kept finding the light on
    my answering machine blnking.. but there were never 
    any new messages... very curious indeed..
    Well that friday I came home the light was  blinking
    I hit "play.." and lo and behold I hear PUUUUUUFRRRRRPUUURRRR
    PURRRRRRR.. YAASKFATAYAS (HAPPY).. PURRRRRRRPURR (Preschie) I had
     figgured out they had hit the personal message button on the
     answering machine..  HMM.. A couple of weeks ago I
    "moved a few things around.. as in I put the phone and the answering
     machine on my dry sink.. (out of the reach of 2 little furfaces)
    only to come in the door from work.. and to find MS PRESCHIE
    up on the dry.. proceeding to knock the phone on the floor..
    she already had the answering machine down there ,, and of course
    Happy.. giving her "directions" on how do do all this.. You should
    have seen the looks on their faces.. when they saw me.. Happy
    asked for a treat,, and MS Preschie did her imfamous.. WHO ME
    MUMMY..??.. I WOULD NEVER HAVE NAUGHTY PAWS?.. PURRPURR.. CUDDLE
    CUDDLE.. I suspect they did not like  my having the 
    nerve to change things around.. Hmm.. does this mean
    that I am not in charge here at home.. could be. could be,,
    Kate, Happy( YO Mom . you are home.) Preschie( HI MUMMY..PURRR
    
    

    These notes are just too funny!!  I loved Mary's!  I can just see Biff
    making prank phone calls!!!
    
    Murdock is into phones and answering machines too, though he has yet to
    call someone.  When he hears the phone ringing he runs to it and jumps
    high into the air to try to knock it off the hook (it's on the wall). 
    When I play back the phone messages for the day he likes to sit with me
    and listen to the voices on the machine.  I can just see it now if I
    gave him phone privileges, as every call we make from Grafton is long
    distance!!
    
    He and Kelsey like to watch the toilet flush too -- thank heavens they
    aren't bright enough to figure out how it works.
    
             

    I'd forgotten this until I read these messages about phones.  My
    first cat, Kathryn used to knock the phone off the hook when it
    rang.  I remember one morning frantically calling my SO because I
    got lost on the way to a job interview.  He was in the shower and
    after one or two rings the phone was knocked off the hook and no 
    one answered.  I kept yelling at Kathryn and John hoping someone
    would hear me yelling..sigh... I finally did find my way to the
    job interview, on my own.  ;-)
    
    Thanks for the memory guys.
    

    You just reminded me about the time that I was calling a CFA judge to
    see if she was available to judge for the White Glove Society's first
    show.  I called this particular judge, the phone rang once, and was
    answered.  I said "Hello?" but no one answered.  I could hear the judge
    talking in the background to her husband.  They were talking about
    their electric bill.  I was screaming and yelling but no one came to
    the phone.  So, I hung up and called again...
    
                          the phone was busy!!!
    
    I still haven't gotten ahold of her.  I have to admit that I have
    forgotten to call her back.  Anyway, I have since learned that she has
    Burmese cats and that they are capable of doing things like answering
    the phone.
    
    Jo

    I sat here yesterday reading this note and laughing the whole time.
    We have an old Panasonic Radio that has the buttoms in the front...so
    we have not experienced the problem with radios/alarms sounding
    off at night.  (YET)
    
    Well my hubby came home with a present for me last night...and you'll
    never guess what it is.  A beautiful new radio with all the buttons
    on top.   I just sat there and laughed and laughed.  He thought
    I was crazy until I told him why I was laughing.  I guess this
    new experience begins!!  Oh no!!
    
    Sandy

        I had an arangement with my cat Cisco. While I slept I was
        off-limits, but after I woke I was fair game. Waking was
        defined as speaking, moving around too much or making eye
        contact. He was very careful to follow these guidelines. Of
        course this was most important during those times when he was
        being fed on a schedule and not on open feeding.

        Since he was observant as well as well-mannered, he noticed
        that the radiowould often make a sound in the morining that
        would get me out of bed. He also noticed that sometimes
        walking on the radio caused it to make loud noises which got
        me up. I think he refused to make the distinction between the
        buzzer and my usual radio station for this purpose. I know I
        barely could.

        As a result on those mornings when I would sleep in (read
        weekends) he would get impatient after awhile and poke around
        on the radio until he got it to make a noise. So I would spend
        some amount of time with the pillow over my head stubbornly
        refusing to let him train me.

        Malcolm has not taken over this morning vigil. He just likes
        to lick my nose until it hurts and stubbornly pulls my head
        around with his paw if I refuse this attention.

        Jack Wickwire

they are at it again!  not only did shirly manage to change the channel
to my friday afternoon soap session but she did it before they even started! 
I TELL YA, IF SHE WEREN'T SO CUTE AND TIMID I'D BOOBY-TRAP THE BOX SO SHE
WOULD BE TOO SCARED TO EVER SIT UP THERE AGAIN! 

but i can't... just her cute small face melts the ice in my soul.  :) :)

so guess what?  vernon has now decided that he too must do something to 
make mommy's scheduled 'i'm home let's walk the house and see what the 
kitties did today' stroll a bit more exciting.  i swear he knows that this
file has ideas on how to get your mom upset.  he is now trying to knock
the receiver off the cordless telephone.  this is the cat that would run
under the bed when the doorbell or phone rang.  i can't believe that he
is doing this now.  what timing.  

thank god the clock radio is too small for either of them to get up on!!!


cj