Thursday, September 14, 2006

Family: Catnip

So we have two bags of the stuff at home now. Various cat products came with it. But, being from a dog family, I had no idea how the plant works. I really didn't want to come back from work to find the cat wearing tie-die, looking to me for some munchies and a fresh hit.

I was going to say "fix" but I doubt a cat would ever really ask for that.

So I checked Wikipedia. Turns out catnip is mostly harmless and triggers some sort of instinctual sexual-olfactory response. Most cats really like it, although the magnitude of the response has to do with genetics so every cat doesn't have the same reaction. Fortuneately this particular wikipedia articles seems to be cribbed from somewhere else, so it should be pretty trustworthy.

On a different cat tangent, he woke me up at 4:30 today which is a heck of a lot better than 2:30 like yesterday. At least this way I got about six hours of good sleep. He seems to wake me up when he's hungry and wants food, so we'll try adjusting his feedings and the amount of dry food we leave out for him overnight. When Amy and I said we wanted a cat to help prepare us for parenthood, we didn't mean by waking us up several times over the course of a night.

UPDATE: Oh and Milo's flea problems seem to be much better. We need to vacuum the carpets, but I flea combed him last night and I didn't find anything. Tuesday night I did the same thing and found five fleas. I'm guessing the stuff on the back of his neck (which also treats the ear mites) also got most of the fleas. We're going to continue keeping an eye on him just in case.

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