Cat hair

[wombat1138]

Over the past few months, the Shadowcat has occasionally gotten into really weird moods where he'll nuzzle up behind my head and then start burrowing into or even chewing on my hair; in extreme cases, he'll even try to start chomping it out of my scalp. This isn't a completely new thing for him-- when we first we got him and Spot as bitty semi-feral kittens, we kept them shut up in a small room where we never even saw them for the first few weeks, but I'd sleep inside there and occasionally I'd wake up because one of them was apparently trying to suckle on my wet hair hanging over the edge of the cushion-- but it's certainly weird for him to've started back on the habit some years later with such sudden vehemence.

I recently commented on this to the wombat-consort, who made a jocular reply along the lines of "Did you start using cod-liver oil as conditioner?" ...which made me suddenly realize no, not exactly, but my conditioner *is* labelled with an "Ocean Mist" scent.

(Though I still don't know what's sparked off this behavior from Shadow, since I've been using this conditioner for a while now; the first few times, it might've been because I was sitting around with my hair still wet from the shower-- normally I shower just before bedtime and let my hair dry overnight-- but yesterday he got really determined to scalp me in mid-afternoon when I was just sitting around with my hair not only dry but not having been washed for the past day or two.)

Comments

[stasyred.livejournal.com]

I think that your and my cats inspite of being raised in different countries have something in common :) One of mine relentlessly lick my ears with her rough tongue *oh, hate it so much!* and the other claw my hear all night long :)
So, you think that we have identical conditioners?.. ;)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, a lot of people have said that Shadow looks like the cat breed called "Russian Blue", though I have no idea how similar those are to the actual cats you have over there :)

I don't think he really is-- his fur doesn't have the silvery "haze" that's supposed to be typical of the breed, although it does have a very nice plush texture. All we know about him and Spot is that their mother was at least part-Siamese (she had lynx-point markings), which explains a lot of Shadow's behavior: he can get into very clingy "Velcro Cat" moods, and sometimes engages in long "conversations" with us; Siamese are supposedly also very fond of chewing on wool and hair.

Both cats cured me of trying to take naps on the sofa, though-- it's very unrestful to have ~12kg of cats resting on your chest @_@ though I've never been able to decide which experience was more disturbing: waking up with one of them licking the inside of my nose, or with a paw inside my mouth 8b

[stasyred.livejournal.com]

12 kg?!?! Wow!
Do you have any fotos of them? I'd like to have a look of these giants :)

As for me, I have many cats - tabby, red, black-n-white... But no Russian Blue :) By the way, they are quite rare and expensive even in Russia despite the name :)
Couple of mine is here http://stasyred.livejournal.com/4169.html and their offsping are there http://stasyred.livejournal.com/8083.html
Such a joy and a terrible headache in our extremely small apartment...

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Kawaii nekotachi! :)

The 12kg figure is the total for both of our cats at their peak; we've put them onto a high-protein diet so they've lost some weight since then, but they can still stretch to an impressive length when napping in hot weather or trying to see if I'm cutting up meat on the kitchen counter. I don't seem to have any recent pix of them, but there are some old ones here (http://wombat1138.deviantart.com/gallery/#_browse/scraps), here (http://sonic.net/~jhouze/catnap.jpg), and here (http://sonic.net/~jhouze/catfight.jpg)... I think they were only about six months old on those pictures? so they probably weren't at full size yet; they're almost six years old now :)