Does your pet have a metal deficiency (no, not a mental deficiency)?

[Lloyd-ss]

Well, ok, maybe it is a bit of a mental deficiency.
About a week ago I am going into my shop in the morning and there is this tangled pile of swarf just outside the door. The door is open to the house at night. Scratching my head, I remember seeing my cat sniffing around the pile of swarf that I keep swept up. I don't think too much of it and just clean it up. (Metal chips in the house are frowned upon.)

A few days later, I am making my coffee in the kitchen and I notice a little glass bowl on the kitchen counter, and I am thinking, Oh, my wife left a little bowl of chocolate chips that she had been eating in bed, out for me for a breakfast snack. I only had the counter lights on at the time so it was still kinda dark in the kitchen. I reach in to get a handful of choc chips and realize that no, it is the cats food bowl full of kibble. But why up on the counter?
I turn the overhead light on and take a look and think, uh-oh, I am in big trouble. There in the bottom of the bowl, in a puddle of kitty barf, is a spiral of lathe swarf.


I find the kitty and she seems like her usual neurotic self, wanting to be petted and brushed. I take care of that and call the vet to bring her in for an x-ray. I had to leave her there for observation.
In the end, all came out fine.

(These aren't the actual spirals, the vet staff wanted the actual ones as souvenirs.)

Everyone at the vet clinic said they had fun looking at the periodic x-rays and seeing how things were moving along. I don't know if they had a betting pool going or not. But one of the techs did get the grand prize of being able to dig one of the metal spirals out of a fresh kitty poop. A good time was had by one and all.
Afterwards, because our cat is an indoor cat, I dug up a big clump of grass and put it in a container next to her food bowl. Now we can inspect the cat barf right on the bed spread to look for grass, hair balls, and lathe swarf.
Cats can be a pain in the butt, but the entertainment value is priceless, and endless.
Lloyd

 

[GreenTwin]

My cats get into everything.

Even cats that are not mine get into things, such as into my office.

This black cat mysteriously appeared on my office camera (I work out of a converted house).

I was sure there were no entries into my office, and had personally renovated it myself.

Turns out a guy that did some plumbing work left the access hatch to the crawl space open, and he also left an access hatch to the plumbing in the closet open. So it was into the crawl space, up the wall, and out the access hatch into the closet.

I just happened to have that closet door cracked open.

Cats are sneaky, on their own level sneaky.

To make matters more confusing, I had seen a black cat hanging around outdoors at the office, and so when I pulled up to check on things, he was sitting outside in his usual spot.
But turns out there are two black cats, and one was inside my office.

The cameras have turned up an orange one too outside.
No rats or mice this year, so that is a bonus.

.

 

[Lloyd-ss]

My cats get into everything.

Even cats that are not mine get into things, such as into my office.
..................................................................
............................................
But turns out there are two black cats, and one was inside my office.

The cameras have turned up an orange one too outside.
No rats or mice this year, so that is a bonus.
.................................................

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So does that mean you now have 3 cats that have adopted you?

 

[Oldiron]

I had a deaf cat that wasn't scared of anything. He would sit on top of the lathe and swat at the chips as they flew off. He would also get into the deep dish of the tractor wheels and walk inside them like a hamster in a wheel as I drove around. I miss him. Bob

 

[Lloyd-ss]

I had a deaf cat that wasn't scared of anything. He would sit on top of the lathe and swat at the chips as they flew off. He would also get into the deep dish of the tractor wheels and walk inside them like a hamster in a wheel as I drove around. I miss him. Bob

I know how you feel Bob. They are all so unique, with their own personalities, that it is easy to get attached to them. Who has a pet that they don't "talk" to?

 

[GreenTwin]

The number of cats we have at any give time depends on which ones wander in.

We have permanent indoor cats, and then if we find a stray that needs help, we will try to integrate it into the group, or else it will have to live outdoors (we will feed it).

We had six cats at one point, but have lost a few to age and disease in recent years.

We have one cat that walks up and taps you on the hand with its paw, which means "pet me".

Cats never listen to a word you say to them, but they understand completely what you are saying.
Cats have a "screw you......bring me my food now" attitude.

.

 

[Toymaker]

A few years back, my wife & I were adopted by two "wild" cats, a mother and one of her kittens; I believe both were feral. The male kitten was so young it was still nursing. After feeding both of them for a few months they began spending more & more time inside our house, sleeping on our furniture, and of course begging for treats.
They would meow loudly when they wanted to come in and go out, so I installed a pet door and now they let themselves in and out. The pet door works wonderfully except when one of them brings a live mouse or rat into the house, jumps up onto the bed in the middle of the night and begins playing with it.

 

[willray]

I had a deaf cat that wasn't scared of anything. He would sit on top of the lathe and swat at the chips as they flew off. He would also get into the deep dish of the tractor wheels and walk inside them like a hamster in a wheel as I drove around. I miss him. Bob

Our deaf cat was the sweetest thing. He was deaf due to a horrible ear infection as a very young kitten (I originally found him stuck to the blacktop in the middle of the road during a thunderstorm, at what couldn't have been more than 4 weeks, probably 3 old), and the ear infection left him with no sense of balance or motion, as well as deaf. He'd ride around on top of the vacuum beater brush when the wife vacuumed, we assume because it purred and blew warm air. Because he had no sense of motion, you could ball him up, pet him a couple times, and toss him back and forth across the room playing catch. He'd never even bother to uncurl, unless you forgot to pet him before tossing him to someone else. We miss our weirdo too.