For Sherry...

What is the least favourite thing about your bengal ?


Ada - The Sweet Death Of A Thousand Cuts that is our evening padding session - I love the way that she bouces up on me and pads me for 10 minutes before calming down and giving me a Proper cat clean, but I just wish that she would not use her claws. She is such a delight and she loves padding me, but I find myself buying a lot of Germolene to put on the resulting cuts.

Babbage - he is incredibly sweet natured, but I wish he wouldn't be so creative in his locations for peeing. It seems that water encourages him, as do strong smells - I painted the windows recently and found the dust sheet peed on. Still, I can't resist his rolling on his back, purring and wanting *everything* stroked at the same time.

Okay, I'll go first. It's Raiden's incessant, loud crying that he does in the morning to get me out of bed so we can go on our morning walk. It's nonstop! It doesn't matter that I have open my eyes, get myself out of bed, dressed, eat breakfast, which takes time. He cries the entire time, even while I'm putting on his harness and leash. We walk out the door, he stops crying! Then after our walk, he's quiet and will nap. But he's up around 1 p.m. and doing it all over again because "it has to be time for my afternoon walk." I take him out around 3 p.m. That's two hours of listening to him cry. When our windows are open, I swear the neighbors must think he's being murdered! When we return from the walk, he's quiet until right before dark when he gets into his "mood" of crying some more -- this time for attention and play time. He will go bonkers before he simply conks out and is sound asleep for the night. The loud crying is the ONLY thing I don't like about him. He has other softer cries that aren't quite as annoying.

Oscar gets his extremely expensive wet food in a nice wide bowl. He then drags the meat out of the bowl and smears it around the floor before eating it. He also leaves dead mice tucked up behind his bedroom door. I then open the door in the morning and the mice quite often get stuck underneath. This happened this morning. Mouse head one side of the door and body the other! There is no easy way of removing the dead rodent. Lots of blood and guts. Thank god we have stone floors

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Melissa

UK
Oscar - Rescue (Rascal!!!) Bengal

Hairballs! Quasar frequently horks up hairballs, but not his own.

Quasar loves to lick up wads of long, white Samoyed hair that our dog drops all over the house. Kyenta, our dog, is constantly shedding, not to mention that she totally blows her coat twice a year.

I wish Quasar would not see dog hair as some sort of carnival treat left specifically for his dining pleasure.

Yuk!

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~ Kyenta

Gosh, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with a complaint about their bengal. Melissa -- mice, really? I am so terrified of those things. They are tiny, but run fast and Raiden has brought them inside from his enclosure -- some alive, some dead. I can't deal with them and make my husband do it. Raiden is a messy eater, too, but I use the Neater Feeder and it helps a lot. He still manages to get food on he floor somehow.

Eating a dog's shedded hair? That's a first! Never heard of that before. And it's tough to keep up with cleaning that.

Okay, I have a few pet peeves.

Blondie - Every time I go into the laundry room she is waiting on the other side of the door. The door opens toward me and like clockwork she drops down into the storage room and refuses to come back in unless food is offered. If I leave her in there she curls up in the pile of patio cushions and goes to sleep.

Blondie and Grace - refusing to come back in the house even when food is offered. They want me to go out on the patio and follow them around until they finally give up and go inside. Then the other one jumps outside to "play the game."

Killing lizards and leaving part or all their little corpses inside to rot and smell.

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The loud, incessant meowing. Especially when they go and sit near the dog, then meow loudly in complaint of the proximity of said dog. JUST GO SIT SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Inky and rugs. She rabbit kicks them, scratches them, gets under them and yells and screams until you "find" her. It is the best game to her! Keep in mind that she is fine with carpeting, it is area rugs and small entryway rugs that she assaults.

Everytime I start to get mad, I remind myself that she doesn't scratch furniture, carpeting, or wood and that I buy cheap rugs anyway!

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Bri

I'm dying to hear if Brian has anything to add ....... he has three and surely there is a least favorite thing from at least one of them.

Oh ok I don't really dwell on negatives though, so it actually requires a fair amount of thought...

Serafina: When I'm in the livingroom or office room, trying to get some work done on the laptop, she'll do three things: running on her cat wheel (cool), climbing on the hicat / messing around on the bookshelves and shelving (very cool), and staring at the walls and caterwalling (grr not so cool). Sometimes the only way I can get her to quiet down is to put her in another room (which I hate doing because I know she doesn't like it, and I mostly enjoy her company).

Gaga: Poor Gaga, she's been through a lot, and continues to go through a lot with the twice a day pillings. Right now it's just a constant battle to dutifully get her to take her pills, while remaining on her "good side" as much as possible. So I just wish that she would relax about it a bit, and understand that it could be a really easy and quick thing if she cooperated, and that I mean her only the best. As it is right now, there is just this uncomfortable tension where she watches me distrustfully, trying to decide whether I'm about to grab her and give her a pill or not. So I have to spend a lot of effort trying to overcome that.

Neytiri: I just wish she wasn't so mistrustful of strangers. It happens over and over: a cat-loving friend comes over, dying to see the three cats, has an instant fascination with Neytiri. They ooh and aah over her (even more so than the bengals), but she runs and hides! It's kind of maddening because Neytiri is the cuddliest, purry-est, most effection-seeking (and reciprocating) cat I've ever met. And people come that want to share that very thing with her, and it would be something that she'd really really enjoy if she'd just let it happen...and she runs :(

On the flip side though, Neytiri does come around for those that are patient (patient meaning over a number of days/weeks of visits) and does eventually become purry and rubbing and climbing all over the people she trusts. It's just a really high barrier of trust that someone has to establish with her! So there are now a number of people who feel they have this extra-special and exclusive relationship with Neytiri. Once she has "made friends" with someone, she has a way of making them feel very special! And part of that, admittedly, is the barrier she puts up that they have to overcome.

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The little monsters 3

This is one of the things I find really endearing with Jagger - I enjoy watching him beat up the bathroom mat and hiding under it lol

However the least favourite thing would be the way they always get up every evening and get idle when there is finally something worth watching on TV to the point I end up getting up and playing with them! They know exactly what buttons to press so I can't ignore them anymore - ie playing with the blinds or knocking things off shelves grrrr I think I'll have to shut them out of the room tonight for the Great British Bake Off lol

They are both really messy eaters as well - maybe that's just a Bengal thing!

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Clare
Hendrix and Jagger, Brown Marble Boys (born 18 August 2013)
Hampshire, UK

Oh Brian .... thanks for adding yours. Poor Gaga! She must hate the pills and you have to give them to her forever! I wish there were a way to make it easier on the both of you.

Raiden is not a people person at all. He usually runs the other way when we meet someone on the street, but if we have people over, I just tell them to ignore Raiden. He will eventually come over to them and investigate. They keep still and let Raiden sniff. Maybe they will pet him a couple of times, but they do not try to pick him up or make sudden moves and Raiden is fine with it. He goes on his merry little way.

Hubby and I watch TV in the evenings (the only time the TV is on) and Raiden feels like it's the time to play, even though I've played with him a few times during the day. He starts eyeing the top of the TV, jumping up on things that he never jumps up on otherwise. He knows it's to get my attention and time, so I miss part of the shows just to have him chase a wand around the room and make me dizzy.

I've never noticed an odor in the cat litter. I've used Fresh Start before and it had a perfume smell. I don't think the Cat's Pride that I use has any type of smell with it. And it's great at absorbing all the odors from the waste, too. You're obviously using a different brand.