I came home last night to discover that, Dizzy, the weirdest kitty that ever was, had died while I was at work. He’s was only 5 years old and had appeared totally healthy, so the vet suggested that he might have had an undiscovered heart condition and had had a heart attack. We’re not doing an autopsy, so we’ll never really know. But I’m so sad that I wasn’t there for him in his final moments.
A cat with that much personality deserves a fitting send-off, so I’m reposting my past posts about him. Please wear a belt today in his honor, and strut around confidently showing it off.
Just in case you had a long day, here’s something sweet for you. My long time readers will know all about Dizzy, the pitten, but just in case you don’t, you can read about him here. Despite the fact that he’s a little defective, he is, finally starting to grow up and act less like a puppy and more like a cat. For about a month now, he’s taken to sitting on me as long as I don’t touch him. And today – GASP – he let me scratch his head while he sat on me. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! Anyway, even though he’s a little mutant-y, he’s got a truly great face, so I decided to paint him. Or, well, do a painting of him, not cover him in paint. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you people. When I posted that on Facebook and Instagram, a disturbing number of my friends suggested I actually roll him in paint and smear him on a canvas. Clearly, I have all the right friends. So here’s my little Dizzybutt:
As mentioned in another post, I’m headed off to Europe for a week with my mom, and I don’t think I’ll have a ton of internet access, so I may not get to blog while I’m gone. I have set Mondays With Muddy to post while I’m away, and I’ve also entered a contest on DickBlick.com that I need help getting votes for, so that will post while I’m gone, too.
But I didn’t want to go and leave you feeling unloved. So, today I’m giving you the many uncomfortable ways my little Dizzybutt likes to sit:
Does this look comfy to you? It reminds me of when I get too hot while I’m sleeping and I have to contort to cool down various parts of my body.
Nothing says “comfort” like falling off of a step.
This is the only use the scratching pad gets. I’ve sprinkled cat nip on it before, and they still don’t use it. But, apparently, Dizzy thinks it’s pretty cozy with all those hard edges poking at him.
Yep, half of your body hanging off the sofa seems pretty snuggly to me. It took all my self control not to drop something to startle him and watch him fall. Does that make me a bad mom?
Guys, I think my cats are broken. They don’t seem to understand the concept of sitting somewhere comfortable. Take, for example, Satch, who thinks it’s super comfy to sit in an canvas bag we use to haul firewood inside. He does this all the time, whether there’s wood in the bag or not:
Then there’s Dizzy, who somehow looks murderous in all the photos I take of him. He likes to sit half way on a couple chairs, rather than on just one. They are his chairs. He has claimed them:
Satch is very, very sick and may not be long for this world. Two nights ago, he had to be separated from Dizzy so we could monitor his litter box, and Dizzy, surprisingly, spent most of the night outside the bathroom door where Satch was sequestered and cried and cried out for him. When I brought Satch home from the vet again yesterday, Dizzy, who normally licks only as a precursor to a sneak attack of biting, came over and started licking and licking him. He followed him around the apartment, jumped up on the sofa with us, and only licked. No biting. I’m quite proud of him, and honestly, grateful, because poor little Satch doesn’t need any extra stress right now. It was too cute not to capture, so here you go, video evidence of Dizzy not being an unholy terror:
I think the title says it all. Dizzy, the pitten, does not want to snuggle on the sofa or chair or anywhere normal. No. He wants to snuggle in the bathroom and only the bathroom. And boy, does he want to snuggle there. As soon as he hears me turn on the bathroom sink he comes running. And then he does this:
This morning, Dizzy, the pitten, decided that the best use for the kitty bed would be to pull it off of the chair, shred the bottom of it and pull out the stuffing, then sit on its upside down remains on the floor. He achieved all the destruction with his teeth. See? Pitten. Or rat bastard. Either one.
This is the story of Dizzy, our pitten. What is a “pitten,” you ask? It’s a cross between a puppy and a kitten. He looks like a cat, but we’re pretty convinced there’s more to the story based on his behavior.
We had 2 adult cats before, but our eldest, Ella, passed away about 2 years ago. We decided to bury her out at the property, which sounds like no big deal, but we had had a lot of rain that week. So, the hole kept filling up with water, which we had to submerge her in. Only, she didn’t want to be submerged. She kept floating back up. So we had to bury her mobster style by weighting her down with bricks. Yeah, that was fun. I kind of wish we had it on film, though, because we must have looked hardcore covered in mud and fur.
Ella
Satch, current title holder for World’s Sweetest Cat
After Ella died, our other kitty, Satch, got all sad and pathetic and would cry all night outside of the bedroom door, so after a long search, we got him a kitten, Dizzy (we’ve named all of our cats after jazz musicians. We’ve had Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, Frankie – for Sinatra because he had blue eyes – and now Dizzy Gillespie). I had originally planned on getting another adult cat, but had been looking for about 8 months and hadn’t fallen in love with one yet. When I was in VA visiting my parents, my mom and I had to kill a little time and decided to stop by the local SPCA to see their kitties. We walked in and saw this little kitten who looked like a mini-me of Satch.
Satch’s Mini-me
I’m pretty sure thisis the only time they have ever snuggled
Now I’ve owned a lot of cats over the years, and I’ve never had as great and snuggly a cat as Satch, so a mini version of him was too hard to resist. Then he reached his little paw through the cage and looked pleadingly at us like Puss n’ Boots in Shrek, and we lost the battle. So much for getting another adult.
Imagine this face with a paw stretched through the cage bars at us, and you can understand why we melted.
Dizzy was either born with only 1 testicle, or has a 2nd one floating around in his little tummy, so we seriously considered naming him Testicles (pronounced Testiclees – like a very wise, uniballed Greek philosopher). He also has the cutest little kink at the end of this long fluffy tail. We got a defective cat. While we decided to name him Dizzy, his real name seems to be “Dizzy-No!” He’s rotten to his very core (as evidenced by the fact that when he poops, it smells like Satan himself is coming out of this cat’s butt), and he torments Satch like it’s his job. There are many times when I have seriously considered turning him into a shishkacat. This has resulted in Satch being even more sad and pathetic. And now, instead of Satch crying outside our bedroom door all night, Dizzy does it. Oops. He chews everything in the house like a damn dog. I thought maybe it was because he was losing his baby teeth or something, but he’s about a year and a half old now and he’s still doing it, so that’s not the reason. To date, he has destroyed/eaten 5 cat toys and chewed through 6 speaker wires, 1 dvd cord, 3 cell phone charger cords, 3 ribbons, 1 vacuum cord, 11 shoelaces, the plastic wrapping for at least 10 bundles of firewood, and chewed a bald spot into my hair. We’ve had to wrap all vital cords in terry cloth and duct tape.
This is what it now looks like behind our TV
His favorite game other than tormenting poor, sweet, Satch, is to wear belts. Here’s what I mean:
He does this for hours each day. He dives in and wriggles the loop onto him, wears it around like a belt, wriggles out, then repeats the process over and over and over. And Satch just looks at him, like, “what the hell is wrong with you?” I’m telling you, defective cat. Pitten.
The Perks of Being an Artist 