Saturday, April 26, 2014

Our Cat Demi Tom

Demi sleeping on the back of our recliner. One of his favorite spots.

Hubby says that 'Demi Tom' is a silly name, but my sister and I recently started calling him that because we think he looks so much like Tom from the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Not only does he look like Tom, but he acts crazy like him too! I think our cat chases ghosts around our living room. There is literally nothing there and he will run and jump from couch to chair to table to couch without stopping. It's quite entertaining to watch.

This photo is from October. Demi would climb on the bookcase and lay on my stacks of jeans & shirts to sew.

Demi is our only indoor pet now. We had some problems with Emerald and she had to go. Demi has become a completely different cat now that she is gone. He is much more playful and seeks out attention and loves snuggling and being petted. I think he is much more fun now than he was in some of the previous months. (We got him when he was about 6 weeks old and he was a friendly cat then, but at some point he changed and was more stuck up like Emerald vs. the fun playful cat he is now).

After Emerald was gone I was curious to see how Demi would react to the change and what his personality would be like. If he continued to be a stuck up, boring cat I was considering getting rid of him too. Obviously he is now quite entertaining and very much like Tom. I like him much better with his fun personality. Since he has changed for the better we went ahead and got him fixed and had his front claws removed.

Demi likes sitting in the kitchen chairs and he won't move if you go to sit down.
I've literally sat down on him and he doesn't move or make a sound. He is weird!

Getting him fixed was a necessity since he had started to pee in different rooms of our house. It was awful! It smelled musty and at first I wasn't sure where the smell was coming from, but after I caught him marking his territory we quickly made a vet appointment to get that taken care of. I haven't had any problems with him peeing on things now that he's been fixed.

Demi jumped in the laundry basket one day when I was doing laundry. He stayed in there for quite awhile too.

I was torn on whether or not to take out his front claws. Thanks to Emerald's influence in clawing on the ends of the couches he was bad about doing that too. He also kept trying to climb the curtains I had in our room (before the makeover) and in Little Man's room. He had poked a ton of little holes in the sheet and comforter on our bed from where he jumped up on it when he was really little and even now with him being around 8 months old he still got his claws caught up in my sheets. I wanted to get some new sheets, curtains, and a comforter for our new bedroom makeover but didn't want them torn up. This is where the waiting to see how his personality changed came into play. If he was boring I probably would've let him be an outside cat (he was an outside cat when we got him). But because he's not, I decided it would be best to have his claws taken out so for the rest of how ever long he is with us he at least wont be tearing up the furniture and linens.

Both surgery's were done at the same time. He was at the vets for two nights because I had to drop him off the night before his surgery and he had to stay over one night with his claws being done. When he got home he had to use a special type of litter for that first week. It was called Yesterdays News and was basically old newspapers turned into pellets. It was awful stuff (smelly) and I was SO glad when we were able to start using our regular litter again. That first afternoon when he got home he seem a little mad at me. He wouldn't have anything to do with me for several hours (I was the one who took him up to the vet and brought him home), but eventually he came around and now he is back to normal.

Demi's "I've been caught" face. He likes roaming around in the bath tub.
He's even hopped in the shower a few times when the water was running!

Demi took a little time adjusting to not having his claws. He was used to using them to climb on the furniture (not that he needed them to jump on the back of the couch), or play with our feet so the first few days when he would do something and realize his claws weren't there he was confused. He would look around like, "what is going on? why isn't this working like it's supposed to?" Once he adjusted how he jumped on the furniture or played with things he was fine.

I have noticed that since Demi doesn't have his claws he seems to over compensate with his teeth. He doesn't actually bite down, but he does put his teeth on your hand or your foot (which ever he is playing with) so I've had to work with him so he won't do this. I was a little concerned about this habit when he started it up, but he isn't as bad about it now as he was at first. I was mostly concerned because of having Little Man around him, but I don't think I'll have to worry about Demi biting him.

Demi snuggling with LM.

That's another thing to bring up: Demi is great with Little Man! In the beginning he could care less about him, but I think he's figured out that LM is here to stay. Demi usually sniffs his head and walks on, but occasionally he will lay on the play mat with LM or come snuggle on the couch with us. I can't wait to see how they react together when LM gets older.

Sprawled out on the couch. Demi does this quite often.

I swear Demi is part dog. He sniffs EVERYTHING, drinks out of the toilet (also a habit of his I don't like and can't get him to break), tries to lick you, and lays sprawled out on the floor or the couch or the bed. He is the perfect cat for me because I would love a dog, but can't have one right now. Yes he is still a cat and still does mostly cat things, but he also does these odd dog-like things and it makes me laugh.

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