Gag me with a ............

I have Siamese cats. I have always had Siamese cats. Anything else is, well, just a cat. But, Siamese cats are convinced of one of two things: either, they are human, OR, we are just some kind of stupid Siamese cats. Either way, they know they are the superior being and just tolerate our inane behavior and our rather thick headed ability to take quite a long time to be trained by them.

Be that as it may, I have always loved Siamese, do love them, and will continue to love them forever. They are gorgeous, intelligent, exasperating, and just plain fun to have around. The combination of runway model looks and minds that never stop working is the most entertaining and satisfying experience.

My current two cats are litter mate sisters. They are the typical sisters - love each other one minute and arguing the next. One of them, Kalissa, is very honest in her dealings with everything. She is not the most outgoing with strangers, but she throws herself (literally) into her toy playing. If I play with her with a feather wand, she will jump in the air and hurl her whole body at the feathers, grab them in mid air, and pull them down to the ground so she can methodically strip them of their life. Her sister, Dulci, is the quintessential little dainty girl, except she has a jealous streak. Just picture Nellie Olsen from the Little House on the Prairie TV show. Well, she's not hateful like Nellie, but she has that ability to whine and act like she has been mistreated. If she were a human child, she would be the one on the play ground tiptoeing around any puddles that had been left on the sidewalk after a rain. She has a way of daintily jumping up in the air and turning around 180 degrees before she lands and then doing it all over again in two second intervals.

Now, to the point of my subject line. Most cats like catnip, right? And, almost every cat toy on the market has some form of catnip in it, so it's almost impossible to buy a toy without it. The first time I tried giving the girls (as they are called) a catnip toy, I was in for a surprise. Instead of the usual rubbings, rolling, and general feeling of euphoria that normally accompanies a cat with catnip, I am greeted the following way. Dulci smelled it, thought about it and smelled it again. Then, she backed away and looked at me like I had just tried to poison her. I mean, if looks could kill, I would be deader than the proverbial door nail. Kalissa sniffed it and jumped back, and then she sniffed it again and GAGGED! Yes, you read right. She actually gagged. She too walked away but a bit faster than her sister.

So, I thought that maybe they were just too young and had not matured enough to really get the hang of catnip. I have periodically tried with the exact same reaction - deadly looks and gagging. I may not be a real quick study, but even I could see that I would be wasting my time, money and energy buying catnip toys.

Fast forward about 6 months. This summer, we had some very strange looking black beetles coming into the house. I had never seen them before, but the girls were fascinated by them. They were "on the hunt", well, that is until Kalissa actually got a whiff of one of them. And, you guessed it, she gagged! I looked them up on the Internet, and they are called ground beetles and it says that they give off a very unpleasant odor.

Today, Kalissa was meowing and meowing constantly and looking up at the ceiling. I couldn't see anything, but she was convinced there was something in the house that didn't belong there. She had her sister convinced too, as both of them would not leave this one particular area of the family room. Finally, I saw it. There on the ceiling was a small bug. My husband stood on a stool and finally knocked it down with a fly swatter. It was a LADYBUG! Now, I love ladybugs because, (1) they are cute, (2) they don't bite, and (3) they are good in the garden for eating other destructive bugs. We try to never kill them, but, I think this one was injured beyond saving by being knocked off the ceiling. I put the ladybug on the floor so Kalissa could see that, yes, we indeed had found her intruder and what a good girl she was for pointing it out. She reached down to sniff it and - whamo, she gagged.

So, either my cat has the most sensitive gag reflex on the planet, or quite a few things have a very unpleasant odor to them. Maybe I can figure out a way for this talent to be helpful - you know, like bomb sniffing dogs. With Kalissa around, the airlines need never fear that someone will try to smuggle catnip, ground beetles, or ladybugs on board any aircraft. Glad to be of service!