I wasn’t expecting to write another article specifically focusing on Penny, but here we are.

Penny has turned out to be a very crazy cat. Endless energy, infinite distractibility, all the spastic frenzy of a hyperactive cartoon character…

I’ve never seen anything like it.

She has escaped her designated room multiple times (I had to seal off the openings above my walls with cardboard because we left the ceiling unfinished so we could easily access the plumbing, and she somehow kept getting out through the openings), she only recently has been able to sleep through the night outside her kennel (she either gets freaked out or simply enjoys being a maniac in the dark because she would go bananas when I tried letting her be loose), and is drawn to every single movement and noise.

Seriously, if I want to know where she’s at, I just make some sort of funny noise happen by smacking the floor with my hand or crumpling paper and boom, she suddenly appears.

But if I’m typing? She sleeps.

The lovely thock-thock of my tsunami wave keyboard—a more compact 75%, no pin pad, with fancy customizable colored backlights, and Japanese hiragana characters in blue below or beside the regular English keyboard letters, numbers, and symbols—as well as the gentle click-click of my matching tsunami wave light-up gaming mouse, relaxes her immensely.

Convenient, since I’m a writer and type all the time.

(I felt like describing my keyboard in great detail for no reason, I guess shout out to my tsunami keyboard for helping me type these articles?)

Inconveniently though, during my longer typing sessions, she loves to come over and sprawl herself out across my giant $10 mouse pad I got from Walmart, and smoosh her head up against multiple keys that do problematic things to my writing program when pressed—or she sits her furry behind down on my mouse so I can no longer click anything anymore—expecting me to give her an unpaid full facial massage while she rolls around and presses more problematic keys on my keyboard.

Thankfully nothing’s been deleted yet…

Still, I’ll take that over the absolute catnip-drunken madness that has a constant hold on her brain. I have tried everything to get her energy out, but it takes a lot before she becomes button-smashing, facial-massage-demanding, chill-as-ice-cubes sort of cat. If she doesn’t get it out, it’s zoomies FOREVER. Jumping around, crashing into things, leaping onto my back or climbing up my leg, rolling around on the floor—

Maybe she’s like this because of all those catnip toys I had laying around for a week when she was only 3 months old.

Nahhh, what? No wayyyy—she’s—she’s finnneee!

Taking Tigger Outside

I believe around August was when I started taking Penny outside, for “feline enrichment time”. She was easily bored and I thought it might be a nice change of pace.

I put a collar on her, with her name and my phone number, and also a leash and harness so she couldn’t run off, since at the time she was still pretty small and had never really been outside. I was making attempts to leash train-her (so I could possibly take her on walks), which I wasn’t sure about, because cats aren’t exactly leash animals.

It was weird enough having to do the whole kennel thing, since I had tried reading about it and it seemed like a bunch of people were against it, but it was the only option I had at the time besides her crawling all over me and biting my face. Now she’s used to it and it’s almost calming somehow for her, I’ll put her in there for a few minutes when she’s gotten overstimulated and give her some treats to munch on, and then let her out and she’s much calmer. Sometimes she still ends up going crazy again, but typically it helps a lot.
Penny was terrified of the outdoors at first, she would just sit there and become extremely overstimulated, but she got to like it and soon started walking around and nibbling on random grass and weeds.

The leash training hadn’t gotten far before we started trying out taking off her harness and leaving her collar on, to see what she would do. After a while, we started letting her roam around outside on her own. At first things were going well, she was running around the yard and exhausting all her energy (she had more than I expected, she’d be rushing up and down trees like a squirrel, and galloping across the lawn at top speed until she was literally panting), eventually coming back inside and sleeping peacefully all through the night.
Unfortunately, one day in early October, right after I got home from work, I went outside to say hello to Penny, and I found her under the porch with a random gray cat I had never seen before.

It was meowing at her in a whiny, sad sort of way, and both of them looked tense and defensive. I was confused about their body language at first, I couldn’t tell if there was aggression going on or not and I asked Penny if she had found a new friend.

Immediately after I said that, Penny started backing away and hissing at the gray cat, and as she turned to walk slowly away, the gray cat followed after her and jumped on her.

Cat fights aren’t fun to watch, just going to say that now. If you’re looking for entertainment, I recommend watching Phineas and Ferb or doodling with colored gel pens. Play Minecraft or ride a four-wheeler or simply go outside touch grass my dudes—cat fights suck.

0/10. Thumbs down. 0 stars. Would not recommend.

I jumped in to break it up. I shouted and the gray cat came out from under the porch with a clump of Penny’s fur in its mouth, and after I yelled at it again it scurried away. Penny ran up the porch stairs and came and sat over by our back door, hissing. By this point everyone else had come outside to see what was going on, and I told them what happened.

We ended up bringing Penny’s kennel out to help her go back inside, but it ended up that we didn’t have to put her in it, because just her seeing it calmed her down enough to allow me to carefully pick her up and carry her back in.

Thankfully she wasn’t hurt, other than having had her fur pulled out in one particular spot, but the experience shook me enough to not want to let her outside by herself anymore.

So I started going out there with her and following her around to make sure she wasn’t attacked again. I told my family that if I was at work and she wanted to go out, she could, as long as someone else was out there keeping somewhat of an eye on her.

The gray cat came back several times, and my family and I had to chase it away. Penny almost had another confrontation with it down in the creek in our backyard, but luckily my dad was there, so as far as I know she didn’t get into any more skirmishes.

Eventually I began to calm down and started allowing Penny to roam around by herself again. We hadn’t seen the gray cat in a while and the last time we’d seen it my dad had tossed a big rock at it to scare it off, so I figured it wasn’t coming back. I assumed everything would be fine now and I could let her run around outside without any problem.

I was wrong.

Tags: JustMe, AllPosts