Clumsy Kitten Stories

[NewYork1303]

One thing about having kittens in the home is that when they go through growth spurts or just times of great kitten curiosity spectacular feats of clumsiness can occur. 

Angua of course has her own bouts of clumsiness. For example, when I put down her food dish she gets really excited. One time I set down her bowl next to her water dish. In excitement, she ended up launching herself at the food dish and placing both back paws in the water dish. Since she was trying to get away from the water, she then proceeded to put her wet feet into the food bowl. When I reached down to save her, she took this as some kind of a threat and ran into her litter box with her wet paws. The litter box has clumping clay litter so she managed to get this all over herself and scatter the litter everywhere before I was able to catch up to her and give her a foot bath.

So how about you guys? Any clumsy kitten stories to share?

 

[insidiousfeline]

Awww

My Fathers cat, Kitty, had a litter of kittens (An amazing feat for a cat on the top floor of a block of cats). I hate to say it, but Kitty was a somewhat negligent parent, growing bored of them rather quickly. After her kittens somehow managed to bypass the the makeshift blockade, they made it to the stairs. One of them, dubbed Blinky, due to an eye infection that later cleared up, Was playing, and managed to creep through the banisters, before falling off the edge!

Thankfully, He was unharmed, though he refused to go near the stairs for a while after.

 

[NewYork1303]

Poor Blinky. Can't blame him for not wanting to go near the stairs.

 

[NewYork1303]

Another one about Angua. This kitten has a real fear of my dog for some strange reason. The dog does nothing to her, but she still won't let the dog come to close to her and will hiss if the dog comes too close. They have to be supervised around each other.

One afternoon, when we were watching TV, the dog was sleeping next to the window in the sun. Angua was exploring walking from the couch to the windowsill to the ground. At one point, she jumped over to the windowsill, but her back feet slipped. She ended up falling onto the sleeping dog. She transformed immediately into her extra angry kitten mode with puffed up fur, ears back, and all. The poor dog just looked so bewildered since she had been minding her own business only to have an angry kitten land on her. Luckily, the dog was able to escape when I picked up Angua.

 

[laura h]

At about 4 months old, Comet decided he was cat enough to jump up on the coffee table (which is actually the junk table, there's never room for my coffee on it!) and he was practicing his new feat. At one point, the second he landed on the coffee table, my cell phone went off, vibrating and meowing loudly (my daughter calls it the crazy cat lady ringtone) Poor Comet freaked right out. He jumped off and landed in his toy box, which turned on one of his electronic noisy toy. Which in turn scared him even more. He tried to jump out, and caught his dew claw on a ribbon. Which chased him around the apartment while he tried to escape it for 5 minutes while I laughed at him so hard I could barely breathe. Mean mommy I know. I could have rescued him but it was too darn funny. 

He still hates that ribbon. And I had to change my ringtone because I think it traumatized him.

 

[mservant]

Aww, poor Comet @Laura H  , I can just picture it.  One of my tabby girls had a similar episode after gettins a fright from my vacuum hoovering up her tail (well she did walk right under the tube trying to 'help' me).  

Mouse is the clumsiest cat I've ever known.  I mean he can be well coordinted so I don't worry he needs to see a vet or anything, but there's 2 things.  One, he doesn't think before he acts, and two, he doesn't always get that cats have a righting reflex so they land on their paws. 

 

 ( 

  I know, I am a mean cat mama.)   Oh, and he doesn't realize his claws are there to help him to hold on to stuff.  Consequences?   A cat that jumps when he shouldn't, falls or slips off and then doesn't land as gracefully as he could.

His worst incident did end up in an emergency vet visit when he was all but 6 months old:  racing about my sitting room like kittens do, legs too long so he ran so fast he couldn't stop without doing headrolls, jumped up on to the sideboard, did a vertical jump up at a painting I have and came straight down on to an un-lit dinner candle and holder.  Bottom first.   Safe to say he gave his nether regions a hard waxing (fluff on the candle told the story) and when I eventually found him at the other end of the flat there was evidence of blood so I raced him off for what was already his second emergency vet appointment (the first was a tail tangled up with string after pulling over his brand new just assembled cat tree before it got fixed in place).   Tail intact but thereafter AKA Scarbutt, the Mouse did not calm down or learn to look before he lept....    Roll forward about 18 months and after more slips, trips and head rolls than I could count:

He had decided to use me as a climbing ladder one day after eyeing up the top of my bedroom door.  The doors in my aparment are about 7' high.   I watched the Mouse do his tightrope thing for a while, lay on the top ledge for a bit with his tubby belly hanging over either side, and generally enjoying surveying his territory from on high.  All was fine until he decided it was getting close to the time for his descent.  As he tried to find his preferred position to reach or jump down on to my shoulders he lost his footing (holding on with paw digits not claws remember) and off he came.   None of that cat twisting and graceful body righting stuff you see in movies or in photo sequences.  No, it was that unique decending technique as perfected by Mouse - the verticle drop.  On occasion he does manage to drop down paws first but on this particular occasion it was not to be and he landed with a thud, side on.   He lay there for about 2 seconds (with me holding my breath and frozen to the spot) and then looked up, got to his paws and stolled off as any cat would - pretending nothing had happened.

He continues to slip, trip and fall off stuff but has thankfully not had any serious tumbles for a while.  Life is forever entertaining when he is on the move though.

 

[NewYork1303]

Wow. Those are great!

 

[laura h]

@MServant  poor Mouse!

 Comet thinks I've lost my mind laughing at your story. 

 

[lyrajean]

When Aya was a kitten she was absolutely crazy. She'd run around the apartment. Climb anything and everything. Generally she's a very athletic cat and very good at the jumping and climbing but she was always pushing the limits. 

You could watch her getting ready for a leap, jumping and adjusting her posture like, "I can make this jump... I can make it! ....-Oops, no I can't," -Slides down furniture with paws out just like a million youtube videos.

 

[NewYork1303]

 
When Aya was a kitten she was absolutely crazy. She'd run around the apartment. Climb anything and everything. Generally she's a very athletic cat and very good at the jumping and climbing but she was always pushing the limits. 

You could watch her getting ready for a leap, jumping and adjusting her posture like, "I can make this jump... I can make it! ....-Oops, no I can't," -Slides down furniture with paws out just like a million youtube videos.

Silly kitten. They always seem to be testing their limits.

 

[mservant]

@Laura H   Is Comet wondering why you're laughing when he isn't doing anything?   Mouse always likes to be the centre of attention, whether it means being cute or silly he will do what it takes.  One thing's for sure, he is used to being laughed at - a lot.  

 

[NewYork1303]

I have a new one from last night. We had a laundry basket with clean clothing on the bed. Since the cats kept climbing in the basket with the clean clothing, we stacked another basket on top so that it was balanced precariously on the top of a mound of clean clothes. Angua had to investigate so she ended up trying to jump into the laundry basket. Of course, she couldn't jump high enough. She ended up grabbing onto the edge of the basket perfectly so that the basket flipped in mid air and landed on the bed, trapping her inside of it.

 

[mservant]

 
I have a new one from last night. We had a laundry basket with clean clothing on the bed. Since the cats kept climbing in the basket with the clean clothing, we stacked another basket on top so that it was balanced precariously on the top of a mound of clean clothes. Angua had to investigate so she ended up trying to jump into the laundry basket. Of course, she couldn't jump high enough. She ended up grabbing onto the edge of the basket perfectly so that the basket flipped in mid air and landed on the bed, trapping her inside of it.

   

    

      I presume from your post here and not somewhere more serious, that Angua is well and not injured or traumatised for life by this recent event.   Poor Angua!   She must have been very confused when she found herself pinned to the bed by some wierd cage! 

 

[NewYork1303]

She was very funny about it. Got down all low and looked out of the holes in the basket. She's lucky enough not to do something too detrimental to herself just yet, but she loves making me worried.

 

[fyllis]

I moved into a new apartment about a year ago when the boys were about 4 months old and I have an 'open concept' kitchen/dining/ living room that I didn't have before. There is counter space dividing the kitchen from the dining room. 

One afternoon I was doing dishes and Keeker and Kricket decided that was a good time to play a game of, what I call  'chase me like I just robbed a bank'. They were running full-force from room to room; over, under, and around furniture when Keeker decided to try a new path. He flew through the living room and into the dining room, then jumped onto the dining room table. From there he leaped across to the counter and quickly discovered it was only 18 inches wide... not nearly enough landing space! He 'put on his brakes', but to no avail, and he slid right off the counter and into a full sink of soapy dish water!

The soap suds, water and fur flew and I think I was as wet as he was! The funniest part was after he finally landed on the floor, he proceeded to walk around trying to shake all 4 feet at the same time! Unfortunately, that little episode has not deterred him from getting on the counter! He knows that is where Mommy prepares his food and every time I walk into the kitchen, he has to jump up and see what I might be 'cooking'. 

 

[mservant]

Heheh, that story reminded me of an incident when I had my 2 tabby sisters.   They regularly did their herd of elephant impersonations doing zoomies about the apartment.  It's a long apartment with a sitting room at one end of the hall, and the all the other rooms off a little area at the other end - the kitchen used to be the only door opening at the opposite end of the hall to the sitting room and it had a carpeted dining area as you went in to the room and a vinyl floored kitchen area round to the left....  Until I had some new kitchen units put in and the whole of the floor area covered with a nice white vinyl that showed up where mucky paws had been.

Pretty much the same day, as the girls settled in to the new look kitchen area, the inevitable zoomies took place.   The only problem was they hadn't been used to running full speed on vinyl as the kitchen area was pretty small, nor had they had to change direction on it.   So as I heard them thunder down the hall and race in to the kitchen (where I was) the next thing I saw was them both trying but failing to screech to a halt and do their usual 90 degree turn in to the kitchen or dining areas.  They skidded high speed across the new floor and pasted their furry little bodies straight in to the opposite wall, one after the other.

 

 

    Thankfully neither of them hurt anything other than their pride and they quickly dusted off their wounds and strutted off to test out the new floor a bit more so I didn't feel too bad for laughing so much.  It was just like a cartoon.