Weird Cats. Gotta love ’em.

I think I may have the weirdest cats on the planet.

No, really. I know yours might have quirks. Mine are really bizarre.

Take Milo for instance. He has a plastic fetish. A cigarette smoke fetish. And a used Q-tip fetish.

I’m not kidding.

He will dig used Q-tips out of the bedroom or bathroom garbage if we forgot to take them to the kitchen and put them it the one trash can with a lid. It’s entirely gross to find a used Q-tip sitting on the floor of the your bedroom. Why does he do this? Blech!

And, smoke? Say, what? D has been a smoker for many years, off and on. Lately, he’s smoking very little but when he does, the minute he comes inside, Milo comes running. I’m sure the first few times this happened, D naturally bent down to pet the attention-seeking kitty. But somewhere along the line Milo got the scent of something intriguing and now he doesn’t come running for petting. He comes running to lick “the smoky hand.” Does he think he’s cleaning his dirty pack member? Can he actually taste the nicotine or does it just taste smoky? You can even see his disappointment if D forgets and washes his hands before Milo gets to him. Apparently soap and freshly washed skin doesn’t have any appeal.

And the plastic. Oh my. Don’t leave plastic bags out anywhere! Milo will lick them to death. He slimes them. Shopping bags. Sandwich bags. Plastic packaging of any kind. The minute you walk in the door with groceries, he’s on ’em.

See how he samples the savory aroma.

I try to let him have his fun from time to time, because really, what harm does a little plastic fetish do?

Check him out as he saunters away after he’s all licked out.

Olli on the other hand is a whole other bag of weird.

He likes to eat leafy vegetables. Try to cut up celery or lettuce for a salad, and you might as well give up. He’ll go for the stems of strawberries too. Sometimes I lock him in another room, sometimes I just let him have some leaves off the top of the celery just to get him out of my way. We found him as a stray at about six months old, living in the Garden Center of a Navy Exchange, and can only surmise that perhaps some of his early dinings were on plants.

Olli also meows. Incessantly. He acts like he is attention starved (fat chance buddy) and he seems to suffer from a certain degree of separation anxiety. When we get home he meows. When we’re getting ready for work in the morning he meows. When we’re trying to work out he meows.

And he doesn’t just meow. He follows you around the house while doing it. If you make noises back at him, he’ll talk right back. He’ll also walk right in your path while meowing – damn near killed me a couple of times (and got himself stepped on too.) 😦 Picking him up or petting doesn’t seem to satisfy him even. He still meows. It goes on and on until usually around 8 or 9 when he finally settles down and snuggles up on the couch with us. Every day. You’d think he’d get tired of it. We do.

I don’t have any incriminating photos of Olli at the moment so I’ve included just a couple random shots.