Zapp vs. Dr. Scholl's

Hubby bought some new Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts today for his work boots. For those of you who've never gotten Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts, you have to cut off the top to your appropriate shoe size, which leaves you with these rubbery, cloth-y crescent shapes.

Well, given Zapp's affinity for things like bottle caps, the thin strips of cardboard you rip open those heavy envelopes with, and other things that B.C. (Before Cat) we would have immediately relegated to the rubbish bin, we decided to toss them in his direction and see what happened.

Much to our delight, he did not disappoint, acting curious, interested, and scared all at once. This particular one was black on one side and grey on the other, and when Zapp finally managed to flip it from the black side to the grey side, he was startled and confused.

Even better, when Hubby finished cutting the tip off the second shoe insert, he threw that in Zapp's direction as well, and he stared at them on the floor next to each other like they'd somehow replicated on their own. Knowing, Zapp, that probably IS what he thought, actually.

Anyway, we decided to film some of the fun that Zapp was having to share with you lot, as we were highly entertained by it. Enjoy!

Zapp the Bug Hunter

I know that I've talked a lot about how Zapp isn't graceful and isn't even especially catlike, and definitely isn't overly smart, but he does have one very useful skill that, in my opinion, more than makes up for all of that:

Zapp is a Master Bug Hunter.

He stalks them like a lion stalks his prey (and indeed, Zapp seems to have delusions of grandeur in that he often seems to think he's a much larger, more dangerous feline), sneaking along, following them, watching keenly, and focusing intently. After a while, he comes up with an apparent strategy, although his nerves sometimes come into play and we can see the hesitation as he lifts his paw.

He then swats at the bug or spider, one tentative swat followed by more of a basic pressing down on them.  It's a very effective technique because, while Zapp is no lion, he does outweigh the bugs in our house.

The biggest problem is that he doesn't clean up after himself once he's done the job. He simply loses interest and wonders away, leaving me to unsuspectingly almost step on the large dead spider he's left in the middle of the floor.  On the bright side, the word dead is a big one in that sentence.

The only other problem, is that, since he is indeed a cat, he is stubborn. That means that when I actually ask him to kill a bug, pointing it out to him right under his nose, he has no interest in killing it. He looks at it, then up at me as if to say, "Yeah? And?"

He will wonder over if I call him, and look where I point, but he won't act on the small moving insect. He'll simply watch it.  

I encourage him. "Come on, Zapp! Kill it! See the bug? Kill the bug!" pointing directly at it. He looks at it, then looks to the side, then turns away.

I try berating him. "Come on, stupid cat! Earn your keep! Kill the bug!"  He'll look at me again with his big amber eyes and glance disinterestedly at the bug. 

I try bribing him. "I'll give you a treat if you kill the bug!" He either walks away or walks over to the treat cupboard, disregarding the "kill the bug" clause completely.

I eventually, inevitably, sigh and give up, realising that if I'd simply taken a minute to kill it at the start of my attempts to persuade Zapp to, it'd have been over several minutes ago.

On the other hand, I really can't complain when I come home from a job interview to find that he's kindly killed a spider in the bathroom and left it for me to clean up.  All hail Zapp the Mighty Bug Hunter!