From across the pond comes the hydrophilic tabby Kira, entered by Dutch owner Fré Hoogendoorn.
Kira is a tabby I’ve had since she was a few weeks old. I first saw her when she was just two days old: my upstairs neighbour’s cat had escaped before she was sterilised, with a litter of which she was part as a result. Kira was the only tabby in a litter of otherwise black and white kittens, and she also sat apart from the others, all tucked in and comfortable. When my neighbour asked if I wanted a kitten, I chose her.
She is now eleven years old, and loves drinking water from the tap. It’s the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night that she does; she’ll wait patiently on the sink for me to come and open the tap. She has no difficulty in ordering me and my wife about when she wants a door opened or when she thinks it’s time for her treat, but she’s a complete coward when it comes to strange people and other animals.
Another photo, submitted later:
Kira is so lovely and calm.
That is one pretty kitty!
I wonder why I tend to see cat lovers doing this kind of thing for more than dog lovers?
You don’t have to turn on the toilet…
Bwahahaha!
(my cat drinks out of the sink, too–only she’s now 17 and can’t really jump up there. So you have to pick her up. She’s also become eco-conscious… she goes and gets my mom to come turn off the faucet when she’s done:-))
oops– forgot to say Kira is cute! Kawaii Kira-chan!
Not kidding– according to my mom, totally true. Actually–she did it to me last summer:-)) Clio also puts my parents to bed now. At ten o’clock, if they’re still watching tv, Clio gets up and walks to the hall…. looks back… meows… walks a few steps… looks back.. meows… waits for them to get up and turn off the tv… then trots down the hall proudly leading the way. She funneh kitteh. Looks like Kira, only Clio also has orange in her coat (tortoiseshell tabby).
Awwww…she looks like such a sweetheart.
Baihu’s much the same. He bosses me around most shamelessly…but, if somebody pulls up in the driveway, he’ll be under the bedcovers before the car door closes.
And her coat is a good example of the kind of complexity that can happen. There’s the small-level patterning of the striping of her tabby markings, and then the large-level patterning of the white portions…it’s like she had the black parts of her sibling’s tuxedoes swapped out for tabby.
Anyway, here’s hoping the two of you get another decade-plus together!
Cheers,
b&
Kink’s stunt double!
And a near-perfect doppelganger of the cat we just adopted!
great looking cat. great name, too!
Ah, doesn’t my kitty look good! Thanks, Jerry.
Her face drinking tap water looks as satisfied as mine does drinking good beer. She’s a sweet-heart!
Pritteh Kitteh!
Lovely kitteh! She has wise eyes.
One of my owners loves drinking from the bathroom sink faucet and waits for me to turn it on. One day, she was holding her paw under the tap and licking it like she always does. Unfortunately, the water had not been turned on yet! Maybe she thought the ritual was magic and would make water appear.
She seems to know her picture is being taken…
Wow, she gets stoned on water!
It must be something in the water over there.
Cats are very skilled at training their “owners”. My big mama cat, Gypsy, only had to sit on the edge of the bathtub a couple of times before she had me trained to turn on a trickle of water for her to lap up.
Her daughter, Cuddles aka “Little Girl”, takes a more forthright approach to the matter and simply yowls when she wants a treat. No dripping tap nonsense for her!
Yowl! (i.e. gimme treatz)
Shut up!
Yowl!
Shut up! I’m writing a comment on WEiT.
Yowl yowl yowl!
Oh, okay, but it’s your fault if I make a spelling misteak.
[I’ve written “yowl” but “whine” is probably a more accurate word.]
Cats like to drink from running water. Years ago my brother gifted us with one of those cat bowls that recycles water like a fountain and our two cats probably drank twice as much as before.
Unfortunately for them, however, my husband decided that the constant stream of running water sounded not enough like a relaxing waterfall and too much like a broken toilet — so I guess it’s on reserve for a “special occasion” of some kind.
My mother got one of those for Clio. We were not fooled, no, neither were we amused. It collects dust. Out of the sink, or nothing!
Whenever Kira drinks from the tap, she first stretches out her paw to get it under the stream, then licks the wet fur a few times, before changing position to start licking the stream of water directly. The funny thing is, whenever she gets that first contact of the water on her tongue, she reflexively jerks up her right leg very quickly, which has caused her more than once to tumble down into the washbasin. There must be some instinct involved here; has anybody else observed something similar in their cats?
We have one of those cat fountains, too. We put it away after Bryxie died, ’cause the other 2 didn’t use it, but have now dragged it back out, because Merlyn loves to drink running water.
Keeshu likes us to fill a water glass for her, or partially fill the bathroom sink, and even drinks out of the bathtub when the spousal unit takes a bath.
Great cat, excellent name. All the cats I’ve known have loved drinking from the tap. They also spend a lot of time trying to figure how it works!
cheers to Kira!
How wonderful to have watched your cat develop from the age of 2 days! And such exquisite markings; the fact that they essentially duplicate those of my current cat have nothing to do with this objective judgment.
Does she have slippers on the front feet and boots on the back? She is beautiful.
I never had a cat who drank from the tap but I did have one that waded in the bath water before it got too deep and then shook it off his feet, and all over the bathroom, when he got out.
What a sweet looking kitteh. Congrats!
Such a beautiful name for a beautiful cat. It instantly reminded of one of my favorite J-Pop songs, “Will”, where the second refrain (at 2:12) starts with “Kira kira kira kira”:
Our cat wants water from whatever source is currently unavailable.
Kira has great markings: nose; chest; stomach, legs & paws. Pretty, pretty girl.