This is what happens when you oversleep in the Cole household:
No two vocalizations are the same with this guy, and I bet he could go on like that for hours, but I’m afraid to test that theory.
by John Cole| 91 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging
This is what happens when you oversleep in the Cole household:
No two vocalizations are the same with this guy, and I bet he could go on like that for hours, but I’m afraid to test that theory.
Comments are closed.
Kay (not the front-pager)
My cats, one on my lap and one sitting on the corner of the desk, almost knocked over my monitor to try to find that poor kitty.
Emerald
THAT is a CAT.
rikyrah
Uh uh uh
Still scary.
It’s his house…..he lets you stay there because you feed him.
kindness
Maybe Trump can sign him up for his inagural
SP
His response to “Are you hungry” was the angry tail-tip flick, meaning “I’m going to kill you in your sleep and eat your eyeballs, human.”
satby
@Kay (not the front-pager): yep, my dogs all started barking listening to Steve. Beautiful boy!
MGB
All three of the cats in this household perked up and ran to the computer, wondering who was in their house. Satin, the crazy one jumped up to the computer, ready to fight.
HRA
What!!! I have a dog who is a cat? Wow!
Betty Cracker
@MGB: My dogs came running too, looking around for the intruder. If Steve had been here in the, um, fur, they’d have turned tail and run back to their beds.
Lee
I’m not sure how much of his girth is fur & how much is fat. If it is fat, you should reduce the amount of food you are providing.
He will live a longer & healthier life.
The Moar You Know
Miss my chatty kitty every day. And yeah, she could talk for hours. Only thing she loved more was being in my lap.
schrodingers_cat
Feed Steven, stat. He sounds so pitiful.
BTW you have a great voice. You should do podcasts or radio.
laura
Chet the weinie dog just threw off the covers with the What the WHAT!!! look.
Poor Steve, forced to wait for nom noms. That’s gonna end badly for someone.
hovercraft
You really have a death wish Cole, coming on the heels of your attack on him for shitaggedon, you really are pushing him to the limit. If anything happens to you, you have only yourself to blame, he keeps trying to give you a second chance, but you just keep pushing him. Just look at that poor emaciated cat being denied sustenance, he looks like he could drop down from hunger at any moment, you are a cruel man ;-)
Aleta
Something is terribly wrong.
phoebes from highland park
My cats, the Obama twins, loved it. Cole, why in hell do you feed Steve in the morning? You know this is going to happen.
donnah
Our cats came running, too.
My male cat talks to me in the morning, too, concerning breakfast. Only he says, “Mommeee! Mommee!”
Tom Levenson
Tikka is sitting on my desk listening as I play this. He is perturbed.
Botsplainer
Why are you intentionally starving that cat to death? DEATH, he says! He’s terrified that you’re never going to fill the food bowl (Peace Be Unto It) EVER AGAIN!
Patricia Kayden
Too dang cute. My dogs were intrigued. Stop starving Steve! Or else.
ellie
I have a Maine Coon who meows like that. He is very persistent.
mai naem mobile
He sounds like he’s going from a plain request to angry to begging to crying/pleading to telling you to hurry the fuck up and get his food already,manservant!
Coin operated
@Lee: Steve is probably part Maine Coon, and this is normal size for that breed. I had one that weighed in at 27lbs and was still speedy and stealthy enough to leave a barely-living “present” on my doorstep every week.
Don’t worry about Steve…he’s just fine.
Yarrow
Poor Steve! He’s clearly so deprived. Why do you keep the food from him? Why??!!
@Botsplainer:
That made me laugh out loud.
Patricia Kayden
@Lee: O-o. Be careful. If Steve reads your comment, you’re done.
Aleta
“We’re gonna be here the entire morning with no maple syrup and no toothpicks. I’m definitely, definitely not gonna have my pancakes.”
Lee
@Coin operated:
It is not so much speed/stealthy but general health. It is just like people, too much fat and they start having health issues as they get older.
Captain C
This sounds like the monologue I get in the morning if Kashmir’s water bowl is empty (and by empty I mean half-full or less). Kashmir being one of my two cats (the other is her sister, Misty).
ThresherK
@mai naem mobile: Yep. Our cats are much cuter-sounding. Steve doesn’t sound like he’s safe to ignore here.
raven
The Bohdi is goin ape shit!
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Steve sounds just like Tinkerbell, Calico Empress of the Fucking Universe. She’ll also run into the kitchen and sit next to the cat food, just in case we forgot where it was, humans being not very bright :)
raven
Bohdi and Steve!
SiubhanDuinne
That poor kitteh is STARVING — you can tell by just looking at him.
hovercraft
@raven:
He’s so cute.
I love the way he tilts his head trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
raven
@hovercraft: He’s a pip!
Elizabelle
@raven: Love it!
SiubhanDuinne
@donnah:
That’s nothing. I once had a cat who spoke French. I would say “Who wants supper?” and she always replied “Moi!”
Betty Cracker
@raven: That is SO meta…and cute. The head tilts cracked me up!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Adorable and hilarious!
J.
@Kay (not the front-pager): Same. :-)
SFBayAreaGal
I loved hearing my kitties meowing and purring at the same time.
Mnemosyne
@donnah:
There was a study done (I think in the UK) that figured out that cats don’t really use meowing as a language with each other, but they develop a language with their owners. Basically, they hear us “meowing” to them and to other humans and try to imitate it to get what they want. Still, it kind of freaked me out the first time my late great cat Boris managed to vocalize something very close to a human-sounding “mommy!”
Because one of our current cat Charlotte’s nicknames is “Stinky” (short for “you little stinker”), it’s no surprise that her most common vocalization is “no!”
Yarrow
@raven: Awww..that’s adorable! His head tilts at the doorway are too funny. He’s going to protect his household from that pesky Steve, that’s for sure!
MobiusKlein
@Kay (not the front-pager): me too. Except for the knocking part. It is too wet for them to be agitated for long.
Mnemosyne
@Lee:
It’s always hard to tell. Our cat Annie has that Maine Coon coat (though on a smaller cat body) and she’s under 8 pounds.
tmflibrarian
@Kay (not the front-pager): Mine, too. Entirely worried and unaccepting of any consolation at hearing such suffering.
I’ve given them some fresh catnip to refocus them, so to speak.
karen marie
@Lee: It’s true. I had an overweight cat (well, he was my neighbor’s cat but moved into my house because he loved our Gracie so much) who died at age seven from a stroke. He was 27 pounds. He was such a nice boy. It was a shame. I am very careful with our Gracie ever since. She’s currently back on a wet food diet, which makes her miaow at me a lot multiple times a day. She’s almost 13 and has arthritis in her hips so her ability to jump is significantly curtailed. Never had a cat with arthritis before.
Both Gracie and our Lucy (the spaniel) were looking around wildly for the interloper when they heard Steve. He’s adorable!
Trinity
lol! We have two Maine Coon mix cats, Bird & Louis. Bird sounds exactly like Steve when she’s hungry. She follows me into the kitchen and ‘yells’ at me until I feed them. Of course, I always break down.
I’m a total sucker.
#TeamSteve
SFBayAreaGal
@raven: Thank you for the laugh. I love how Bohdi kept tilting his head listening to Steve meowing.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
@laura: A stampede down the hall for mine, then they heard John’s voice (a very nice voice that; broadcast quality) then they realized it was on the computer machine and they went about their business. (They had already been fed.)
satby
@raven: I just played that for Hershey, who watched Bohdi with great curiosity!
chris
We agree!
Thanks, John and Steve, for two cats on the desk and a dog rooting underneath.
raven
I’ve posted this before but some may have missed it. Raven died over 8 years ago but, whenever I play this vid of him howling, the Bohdi replies. He NEVER does this except when her hears Raven.
VOR
My old pair of 20 lb. tomcats used to wake me at 5am to demand breakfast. One would sit on my sleeping chest and gently brush my nose with his paw until I woke up. Every now and then he would inadvertently (I assume) get me with one of the long, sharp claws on that big paw. The idea of a cat sleeping through a meal seems absurd.
Yutsano
@Lee: He’s a Maine coon. The vast majority of his girth is fur and muscle.
PaulW
I need to record my cats meowing for breakfasts. Remind me tomorrow.
Pogonip
“Waiter! Waiter!”
Cole, how do you keep your rugs so clean with all those animals? What do you use?
bemused
@raven:
Is that the only time Bohdi howls? Must be the Sammy part of him. One of our two Sams is a great howler but it’s pretty funny when the other one tries to do the same. Kind of a pathetic semi-howl and unusual for a Samoyed to be so bad at it.
bemused
@VOR:
One of our kitties gets very cuddly and annoying at the same time. She deliberately bugs me if I am up, jumps on the chair I’m sitting in and plays with my hair from behind. If we aren’t up by their breakfast time, she will create a lot noise in the bedroom, try to get into a closet and knock over things on the bed tables. She know exactly what she is doing.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
@SiubhanDuinne: Snickers, the Thing of Evil (22 pounds, and a real diva) responds better when I speak French to her rather than English, and I had another kitteh (the dear, departed Quincey) who understood Spanish better than English. There must be a reincarnation thing going on here, because I had both of them since they were tiny little babies.
(I only speak a little of each language, but my vocabulary consists of some very effective words.)
manyakitty
@raven: Excellent.
Also, two of my three cats are periodically talky. Schrodinger cries every time I put him in the car. It sounds like a four year old boy saying meow, and it gets louder after he pees in the carrier. Mme. Curie (Manya) is a sassy little tortie with some Siamese in her. She just yells and yells when she decides it’s time to eat. Schrodinger sounds more like Steve, and I swear sometimes Manya uses words. We have a little feeding ritual, and part of it involves asking, “Who’s a hungry baby kitty?” Heisenberg and Schrodinger get excited and mill around, but she screams, “Meeeeeeee!” and tries to climb into the dry food container. I love those little buggers so much it’s ridiculous.
Spanky
@manyakitty:
Maybe to him it’s a box, and that makes him very very nervous.
manyakitty
@Spanky: Hahahahahaha! That’s great!
raven
@bemused: Yep, I have no idea why but that’s the deal.
Aleta
@raven: So much emotion in his good heart.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
@bemused: My (also departed) Basement Cat, Cody, would climb on the pillow and lick my closed eyelids to wake me for breakfast. He at least understood that hooman eyes had to be OPEN for cans to be OPENED, so he would help get those eyes OPEN…
ruemara
Maybe guys are immune from the pitch & tone of cat cries. It would drive me nuts, especially after Smudge’s hypervocalization issues. What did you do to make him talk so much. Neither of my boys do that unless something serious is up. They just jump on me and tap my face. Infinitely better than non-stop yowling.
phoebes from highland park
@raven: Fabulous!
daryljfontaine
@SP: And I heard the response meow very clearly:
“Are you hungry?”
“What do you think, asshole?”
In other cat news, Mango (FatCat) needed to go to the vet for his high colonic, as he has periodic constipation problems. According to x-ray, he had quite a bit stuck up there, and had a somewhat miserable day. Still out of sorts this morning, though he passed some of the leftover bits overnight. He’s been on prescription diet for the problem, and it’s been over a year since he had any problems last, but he’s probably going to have to go back on lactulose for a while. Got my own Kitty Shitmageddon, but I prefer to let the vet handle the worst of it.
D
Steeplejack
@raven:
Hilarious.
Pogonip
@3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike): We live in an Anglophone area now, but in our previous neighborhood I called to a lost-looking dog in English. She wagged her tail tentatively and looked puzzled. Light dawned. “Venga! Venga!” says I, and she trots right up. I’m of the opinion that animals understand a lot more words than scientists credit them for.
And we went around the complex and found her owner.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Hilarious!
My cats are playing it cool. Ears perked, not much other reaction.
Larkspur
I love it when cats decide to use their “outdoor” paws, even if they have never been outdoors. I know this Maine coon cat who can creep around so stealthily, but when he feels like it, he’s all thundering paws. So loud.
Stardus614
He appears to have forgiven you for the Shitmas Shower. So that’s good news, anyway.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
@Pogonip: Love it! Very astute to make the connection she would respond to her language. I’m glad you found her owner. Quincey would come and sit in my lap and purr when I told him “Ven a sentarte conmigo. Amo tus huesos viejos” while the other cats would ignore me. He was an old guy then. I miss him.
The Lodger
@laura: How did you know “Chet the wienie dog” was the name of my band?
karen marie
@daryljfontaine: Has the vet recommended mineral oil? I give it to Our Gracie to purge hair balls. It’s great, because it doesn’t loosen the stool, merely greases the chute, not being absorbed by the intestine. Vet recommended it decades ago for my previous cat, Alice Springs.
Woodrowfan
my wiener dog stared at my screen for about a minute, then walked away. I guess if he could not smell cat he didn;t care.
Pogonip
@3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike): Awww. That’s sweet!
J R in WV
@daryljfontaine:
We had a giant red and white tom cat who ate a whole rabbit at an advanced age. Took him to an open on Sundays vet, back before the Vet ER was established locally. They administered the dread high-colonic to flush the rabbit bits out. Wanted to do surgery on elderly cat, we said no thanks.
So soon after we took him to OUR vet clinic, where they knew him. The experienced and compassionate vet told us to put pumpkin in his food, high fiber, low in calories. It worked great, kept him regular.
Years later we had a cat sneak up on totally obese suddenly, a rescued feral kitten, 6 months old, 8 inches long. Sad to say, but I named her punkin on account of her spheriod shape. We started feeding her pumpkin to fill her up without providing excess calories, worked great. Now she’s just a big cat, long and strong, with somewhat of an empty paunch left over from her pumpkin-shaped days. Now we just feed her a measured dry food unit with a spoonful of wet, and keep her locked in her dining suite, the bathroom, until the other critters have finished up their meals.
Try it for obese or clogged critters, they don’t mind it at all. Unflavored canned pumpkin, it’s what’s for dinner! Amazing what works.
Donna K
@Coin operated: I had a pair of female Maine Coons who each weighed well over 20 lbs and they lived nearly 20 years.
MelissaM
My dog is now convinced that there is a cat hiding in the box on my desk, and she is desperate to get at it.
joel hanes
a very nice voice that; broadcast quality
Cole has a sergeant’s voice.
I’ll bet he can still call marching cadence or PT drill so that they can hear him a block away.
If he decides to.
“Ain’t no use in looking down …”
cat copeland
@kindness: Steve would not be caught being anywhere near that coronation circus. EVEN for his favorite meal!!!
Kincade Webb
Our cat does that exact same thing! Even worse, altho he is fixed he will make a lightning hit-and-run strike on my wife’s ankle if we don’t respond fast enough.
BethanyAnne
Brenda posted an update on Gizmo today here He’s getting a bit healthier, and the vet is letting him gain more strength before surgery. Brenda wanted thanks passed along to everyone who chipped in for Gizmo’s surgery. (I agree, thanks so much!)
Miss Bianca
I finally watched this and L’dMAO.
“Am I hungry? What do you THINK, mofo?!”
@raven: Oh, God, and this! Too meta, too funny! The little head-cocking thing kills me!
TriassicSands
I have a rescue female tabby, Annie (all agree she is at least part Maine Coon), who is much smaller and a bit more beautiful than Steve (though their coloring is quite similar).
I just played JC’s video of Steve singing for his dinner and Annie raced to the end of the bed and stared, rapt, at Steve throughout the entire video. That is the only time I’ve ever seen Annie respond to the computer monitor.
philpm
He sounds just like my dear departed Domino. She would do that routine when I got home from work, and I’d talk back to her in the same manner. We could get some good conversations going.
PaulW
Okay, I can confirm that the second I played this youtube clip both of my cats entered the room and started meowing around me feet. When John said “You hungry?” my crazy cat Mal looked at the screen and meowed in his tone of voice that tells me “Yes I am”.
debit
@daryljfontaine: Try giving your cat milk. I had an elderly cat that was frequently dehydrated, which led to constipation, which led fluids under the skin and in the worse case scenario, to enemas. We tried lactalose, when another vet said, very sensibly, “Cats are lactose intolerant. Give him some milk every day.” It worked like a charm.