My cat, Horus is an exhibitionist. What do I mean by this? He likes to sit in front of my pet camera, look right into the lens, lean back on his haunches and then lift a leg into the air to clean his private parts – while the pet camera for cats is on.
It all started out so innocently. Horus was born in September 2010, the progeny of two of my other cats, Hercules and Isis. Both have since been fixed, so Horus and his sister, Osiris, are the only two cats that the pair will ever have. Once the kittens were born, Isis, their mother, spent as much time away from them as she could. Hercules took over.
I have many pictures of him laying the cat bed, taking up the whole space, with the tiny kittens lounging on top of him. My husband was afraid at first that Herc (as we call him) would hurt the kittens, but no – he was a proud cat-dad. To this day, he’s constantly snuggling with his now adult “kittens.”
For some reason, Horus wound up with long, glossy black and white fur that he’s immensely proud of. Cat genetics are strange because Isis is long haired and gray, Hercules is an orange and white tabby, and Osiris wound up with medium-length calico-colored fur.
Why do I mention this? Because Horus spend an inordinate amount of time grooming himself. He thinks he looks fabulous, and if he even has one piece of fur out of place, he plops himself down and begins the grooming process. Once I put the camera into place, it turned out that most of that time is spent in front of it.
Keeping an Eye on My Cats
I bought the Motorola Wi-Fi Pet Camera on a whim. It all started out as a way to see what the cats were doing in the living room at night.
Based on the number of hairballs, toys scattered around, and rugs moved out of place, I suspected that they were ingesting a lot of catnip and partying.
After looking around the room to see where the best location would be, I placed the cat camera on our fireplace mantel. I figured that this provided a nice overview of the room. After downloading the app and installing it on my tablet (at the time, I didn’t have a smartphone), I sat back and hoped that the nightly hijinks would be recorded.
The first night was not successful at all.
All that appeared on the recordings was something that resembled a fly, buzzing around the camera lens. The next few nights were just as uneventful. At first, I thought that the cats were onto me. They saw me install the camera and just took their partying to another room.
However, as it turns out, I made a fatal mistake.
The Motorola Pet Camera is motion activated which should make it a good pet camera for cats. If there’s no movement, nothing records. It seemed I placed it too high off of the ground. The fireplace mantle wasn’t the best place for it after all. The camera’s sensor wasn’t activated by any of the movement on the floor in the living room, because it couldn’t detect it.
The Cat Room
In order to solve this problem, I moved the camera. We have what we call a “cat room.” It was originally a front porch that the previous owners finished off with walls and windows. It’s legitimately a room in the house now – and it’s our cat room, where the litter boxes, food dishes, food container, cat trees, and other things live. We even have chairs and cushions out there just for the cats. It’s their room, filled with windows that they can hang out in. And it’s also where I moved the camera.
Since the space used to be a porch, there are windows and a small ledge on the interior wall. This is where I placed the camera. It needed to be plugged in, and thankfully there was an electrical socket nearby.
Once it was set up, I just needed to sit back, relax, and hope that this time it worked. And wipe the dust off of it at least once a week. (Amazingly, the litter dust didn’t harm the camera at all. I just wanted to keep it clean.)
What the Pet Camera Captured
Thankfully, my new set up worked. I could check in on my cats from just about anywhere that I had a Wi-Fi signal. The pet camera app alerted me whenever a new video snippet was taken (it only recorded the movement and stopped once the cat walked away.) I received an email from each of them as well.
Some of the recorded highlights included cats walking to the litter boxes, Socrates (another one of my furballs) jumping around on the cat tree, and Horus walking up to the camera and then sitting down to clean himself. This last bit of action happened every single day. At least once or twice each day, Horus would clean his privates in front of the camera, activating it. It’s easy to dismiss it happening once or twice, but every day? He was certainly determined to show off his goods.
Once I realized that Horus enjoyed this little exhibitionist habit of his, I began keeping an eye on him throughout the house. He not only did this in front of the camera but in the middle of the living room floor, facing whoever was in the room at the time. I never noticed this until I installed the pet camera for cats, which is what brought Horus’ little proclivity to my attention.
Horus is a bit of a strange cat and this is just one of the many odd habits that he has. Others involve carrying things around the house that aren’t cat toys (he once brought me a pen that he stole from my desk), and attacking hooded sweatshirt strings.
However, the number one thing that I enjoy telling people is that Horus is an exhibitionist. He loves grooming himself in that one particular area right where everyone can see him.
