Puddy doesn’t get scared easily. Being a former stray, she had to learn to be strong and brave early on in life. I will never forget the first time she saw a rottweiler that was being walked on a leash past our house. Instead of freaking out and running away, she lunged at it, puffed up and hissing and I found myself attemping to pull my cat off the (stunned) rottweiler, apologising over and over to the bemused owner.

Since then, she’s tried to attack other cats, a german shepherd and even the poor mail man, so as a result, she usually goes outside on a leash, or when I am within grabbing distance. Even though she’s a quarter of their size, she thinks nothing of starting something with them!

While she is a brave cat, she does have her limits. The vacuum sends her into a frenzy. Strong winds freak her out, forcing her back inside the house to hide until it calms down. And hair clippers … oh dear, we discovered this particular phobia by accident one afternoon when Puddy was napping and Phill and I were examining my brother’s old electric shaver. We turned it on, it whirred to life and this was Puddy’s reaction, which took about a second to play out:

Her pupils dialated and she stared at the shaver apprehensively. I was surprised at this, since she tolerates more intense noises without a problem and the shaver wasn’t particularly loud. The only thing I can think of is maybe it reminded her of a trip to the vet last year. She had to be put on a drip, so they had shaved a little fur off her front leg. The vet had told me when I came to pick her up that she had been extremely pissed off the entire time and kept hissing at them, but particularly lost it when they started up the shaver.

Poor Puddy!

How does your cats handle loud noises, crazy winds and hairdryers?

Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted at Life from a Cat’s Perspective, the Carnival of the Cats is being hosted at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats, and the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Meezer Tails.

You already know about Puddy’s favourite sleeping place – on the back of our sofa set, since it’s so cushiony and comfy. Usually she’ll sleep in a relatively normal position – in a log shape, or curled up a little. However, the other day Puddy managed to roll herself into a lumpy, furry ball!

Where’s the head? Where’s the tail? It’s a bit hard to see!

I was taking some photos and Puddy must have heard me because she woke up. Well, let me clarify: she woke up but didn’t move. I only knew she woke up because she opened one eye and glared at me.

Stealth mode!

(Too dark for you to see? Click on the photo to view one I took with flash!)

Puddy watched me for a while, the only sign of life being her little beady eye following me around as I took photos. Once or twice her ear flicked, but that was it. She was obviously very comfortable and wasn’t impressed with me disturbing her (I was trying to be quiet!).

It’s getting colder here as we approach winter, so it’s always nice to be close to a warm, fuzzy purring cat who is, in fact, a wonderful substitute for a hot water bottle – as long as you can stop her from kneading your stomach long enough for her to curl up and fall asleep!

Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted at CatSynth, the Carnival of the Cats is being hosted at When Cats Attack and the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is being hosted at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

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I know this is supposed to be wordless, but I wanted to jump in here and say thank you to you for visiting and reading my little blog. Since April 14th 2009, A Byootaful Life has had 120 comments and over 1,000 visitors, which is not a bad effort at all. It’s nice knowing my words are being read, and I love reading your comments.

And even though Puddy looks totally pissed off in this photo, she secretly loves the attention, so thank you.

Edit: Okay, some of my posts are not showing up in my feed at all. I have no idea why this is happening, but I do know that this feed: http://www.byootaful.com/?feed=atom appears to work okay. If you read this blog via a feed, please consider changing to the atom feed, since it appears to be the only one displaying all my posts.

Now I’ve said feed so many times, I am going to go and have lunch, because it’s made me hungry!

Every single day, Phill and I are confronted with evidence that our cat is completely and utterly crazy, but as soon as a visitor arrives, she drops the manic act and appears relatively normal – purring, snuggling and sleeping, with no suspicious behaviour at all. This is frustrating because it sometimes makes us feel like we are the crazy ones.

However, I recently got some photographic evidence that Puddy is indeed crazy and I would like to share that with you.

Photographic Evidence #1:

Yes, that is Puddy hugging her scratching post. She was kicking the living hell out of it, then suddenly lunged forward and wrapped her arms around it … and stayed there. I slowly inched towards the camera as she watched me, and managed to get a photo before she pushed away from it and began to attack the carpet next to it.

I knew she recently has started loving her scratching post, but I didn’t know she loved it that much!

Photographic Evidence #2:

Every night without fail, Puddy experiences a 5-minute ‘crazy episode’ where she dashes across the room, jumping on the chairs and racing under the dining room table, bunny-kicks her carpet toy and bolts up and down the staircase, before disappearing into the laundry to poop. Don’t ask me why she does it, she just does.

Anyway, last night Puddy was having this “moment” and we, of course, were ignoring it, when all of a sudden we heard a thump, then a timid meow. That’s never a good sign, so we went to investigate … and found Puddy sheepishly looking up at us from behind the water cooler, sandwiched between the piano and the fridge.

I have no idea how she managed to fall down there, but it was pretty funny. She was rather disgruntled when she realised I wasn’t going to help her out, but rather I was going to stand there and take some embarrassing photos for use on my blog.

No, I’m not cruel – this has happened before and as we can’t reach in there to pull her out, we let her figure it out herself. After sulking in there for a few minutes, she finally sucked it up and jumped out.

Of course, she then went straight to the laundry to poop.

Such a strange, crazy cat!

For more Weekend Cat Blogging, visit Paulchen’s Foodblog. The Carnival of the Cats is being hosted by Three Tabby Cats in Vienna. And last but not least, the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is being hosted by CatSynth. Have a good weekend everyone!