So, this just happened a few minutes ago.
Troy is not quite a year and a half old. But if this is any indication of things to come, we’re in for a ride.
Our late cat, Aston, was one of those smart cats, too. He got past cabinet child safety locks, figured out how to flush the toilet, figured out how to open the freezer, opened drawers, figured out how to open the microchip pet feeder by pushing the button on the back to access the other cats food…
Aww, you’ve got a cute spotted-cow-like moo-moo kitty! I had one of those for a few years at our last house.
We have a stray one that sneaks in our house sometimes too.
His shelter name was Mooney (he has a crescent moon on the tip of his ear). We changed his name to Troy Mooney Barnes Buescher, but I call him Troy Boy or Moo Moo. Troy Barnes is a TV character from the show Community.
Abed’s shelter name was Bubby, we changed his name to Abed Bubby Nadir Buescher. I call him Obobob or Bud Bud. Abed Nadir is also a TV character from the show Community.
Get the cat a doorbell. 
I actually have a doorbell from when I was a teenager 30 years ago. Don’t know if it still works, we haven’t used it since our dog Bentley passed in 2020. We taught him to ring the bell to go potty.
Great names! Makes them immediately endearing.
We have a spigot in the back yard that squeaked loudly when opened and closed (it has since been replaced)
We were all in the house on a summer day and heard the spigot squeak. I got up to investigate and saw our Cocker Spaniel standing in front of the open spigot, water running, and her face wet.
She had to have opened the spigot with her mouth. It was a standard spigot with a round handle that needed to be rotated several times to,be fullly open, not a ball valve.
My mom’s cat’s rescue agency name was Harp. When I saw him on the agency’s Web site (my sister and I were both browsing off and on after my mom’s previous cat passed), I sent the listing to my mom and jokingly suggested that he needed a brother called Guinness (because I was thinking of the classic Guinness Stout + Harp Lager “half & half”), but my mom initially thought his name was Guinness and ended up adopting him and calling him Guinness Harp. I call him “Guinea Pig” much of the time.
I think at the time he was available for adoption, he and his litter mates were all named after stringed instruments. I believe a Lute and a Sitar were available for adoption at the same time.
I named my cat Mazda after he showed up in the engine compartment of my car and I decided to adopt him, but early on I began to call him “Buddy Boy” because of how people refer to C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon’s character) in The Apartment. Mostly I just call him “buddy”.
When I was a kid we had a Cairn Terrier (think Toto in The Wizard of Oz) who liked to bite at the water coming out of the hose when my mom would go around watering flower beds in the backyard. If the hose got a kink while she was moving and dragging it, and the water flow slowed or stopped, this dog would follow the hose back toward the house until he found the kink and then nudge at it with his nose until the kink was gone and the water was flowing freely again so he could go back to biting at it.
These beasts learn things. 
Most of the cats I’ve had were smart but not THAT smart like Aston (the Dennis the Menace of cats), and while I low key would love if Troy was of similar intelligence, i also know that at not quite 43 years old, I am too old for that. 
I was in my early twenties when I adopted Aston. My first clue that he was going to be a handful was the child safety latches. He loved to sleep in my soup pot. I did not care for this. I bought child safety latches for the cabinets and figured if it’ll keep toddlers out, surely it’ll keep a cat out. Boy was I wrong. He would get his arm in there pull it down, shove his shoulder in and just pop it open.
My second clue was after an all-nighter move to a new apartment. He just disappeared. I looked everywhere. Then, his brother Diablo disappeared. Last, Cooper poofed. The apartment was nothing but sealed boxes that we had just brought over and furniture. I found him 2 hours later after I had given up and decided to take a nap after being awake for 36 hours moving and frantically searching for those darned cats. I heard a meow. They were under the platform waterbed. They had accessed the very middle underside through a drawer they had pulled out. Two days later, I found Aston pulling the drawer open again.
About a year after that I had a 200 dollar water bill. I thought we had a leak and notified the landlord… Maintenance couldn’t find anything. But I got another high bill the next month. One day, I’m home alone from work and I hear the toilet flush. I went downstairs, bat in hand because I feared an intruder of some sort, to see Aston watching the water spin. I quietly watched as he flushed it again. To this day we keep the bathroom doors shut, even though he passed in 2023.
Then when I bought this house, we went away for an evening. I’ve left them for the weekend for years at this point with no problems. We were gone 39 hours. I came home to bloody paw prints everywhere, streaks down walls, and a smell. I feared the worst, or so I thought. I turned the corner to the kitchen and there it was: the freezer door on the fridge wide the f open, chicken juice and melted ice cream running down the front and pooling on the floor. And 3 cats gnawing at a vacuum sealed package of pork steaks they had managed to chew through. I found orange fur in the rubber sealer thing on the door. But I didn’t need that confirmation. I already knew who it was.
So, again, while the thought seems nice that Troy is smart. I really REALLY hope he’s not.
Aston when he was around 10
Aston (2005-2023), Diablo (2005-2023), and Cooper (2006-2023).
This is especially awesome, because my mom sometimes refers to her cat as “Guinness the Menace”.
Aston sounds amazing, and I like his ginger face.
When my parents’ previous cat, Bob Marley, was just a kitten, she would go running into the bathroom and jump up on the toilet lid if my mom was is there brushing her teeth or something. One time she went running in there and jumped right into the drink because the lid was up. We all started leaving the lids down after that. She also liked to sit on the lid and watch me shave my face.
I still leave the lid down. Mazda likes to jump up onto higher places like that, too, because it’s easier for him to stretch up toward me and be picked up for hugs. He’s a big baby.
I really like this guy. Thank you for sharing the memories.
You should maybe replace the knobs on those doors with lever-style handles. I think Troy would appreciate that. Probably Mazda and Guinness would, too, because they’re both long enough to stand on their hind feet and reach doorknobs with their forepaws.
I was a teenager 60 years ago
All mine have done that with the exception of Tucker. He was very aloof but so snuggly when he wanted to be.
Aston would jump into my arms from anywhere. Sometimes a little warning would have been nice. He just straight up EXPECTED you to catch him. He once launched himself across the room from the arm of a couch when I walked in the door. I dropped everything except him.
Not a chance in hell.
That would’ve been my guess, given the five o’clock shadow in your profile picture. (I’m totally kidding! 
)
That seems like trust and/or confidence. Either way, I’m liking this guy more and more.
Mazda would leap like that when he was younger. These days he’s more patient and sits expectantly at the corner of the bed or other elevated surface near wherever I happen to be. Leaping—more like launching—off me is another story. I don’t know how many skin scratches or holes in T-shirts I’ve gotten from that.
Aww, c’mon! You already have a Wyze camera in there! Do it! For science! 
I totally quoted the wrong part of that! 
I love the name Mazda, by the way. I should mention my late cats Aston, Diablo, Cooper, and Tucker along with my late dog Bentley were named after cars.
My late dog Hunter came to us with that name and it fit him so we never changed it. He was 3 when we foster failed and decided to keep him. At one time we had 5 animals. Aston, Diablo, Cooper, Tucker and Bentley. Tucker passed when he was just 4 years old in 2010, and a year later we adopted Hunter. Bentley passed 8/2020 at 13 years old, Hunter in 9/2022 at 15, and the cats last year: 2 at 18 (Aston in March, Diablo in May, and 1 at 17 (Cooper in September).
Tucker
Hunter
Bentley
OMG those cuddle piles are so adorable!
I could never get all 4 of my cats to do a cuddle pile anymore. Our black one thinks he’s hot stuff lately and only likes humans.
I miss them all terribly.
Pet owners are a special breed of people. We willingly choose to love and have our hearts broken over and over again.
Add family and friends into that pool and I’m glad I’m not immortal. 
Truer words were never spoken. I love HARD and losing people damn near breaks me every time. Losing my mom’s parents 3 and a half months apart in 2015… I’m definitely not the same as I was before.
Yeah, it freaking sucks.
My favorite cat is going through some tough times at the moment. He almost died a few weeks ago…got some bloodclot in his urethra that clogged him up. I noticed because the cat litter robot suddenly told me he gained several pounds which was weird, then he started walking funny and couldn’t hold down any food so he stopped eating. Vet fixed/popped the clog on accident when sticking a catheter in him, but ran other tests and found he has really bad kidneys now. He’s old though and it’s normal for them. But now suddenly he’s started constantly going to the bathroom in places he shouldn’t (mostly because he just has to go constantly and it’s uncomfortable to make it to the litter sometimes) and he’s still putting out blood in his urine. We tried a few different kinds of pet diapers, but that was…let’s just say a total intolerable NIGHTMARE…OMG I didn’t think it could be that bad when I have 2 toddlers and am used to human diapers just fine (but let me tell you about smeared all over the walls and floor and everywhere…). We finally just decided we’re ripping out our carpet and putting in hard flooring instead and getting different furniture that is not absorbent. And put some more cat litters in easy access locations for a while. That will solve part of the problem… but honestly it basically is close to his time to go.
Rough stuff. Pumpkin is my favorite cat ever though. He was a rescue (nobody wanted him (long story) So the shelter paid for all costs to beg us to take him. He was really mangey and infected and traumatized and terrified about everything when we got him, then he became the most loving sweet and smart cat ever. He’s like half puppy. He obeys commands and does tricks, and stands on his hind legs to give loving high fives to humans and everyone loves him, even his big black bully brother cat who doesn’t like any [other] animals.
Oh well. Hard to stop, eh?
