AllenOK
New member
I'm a cat person. I admit it. I've always liked cats.
I learned fairly quickly that cats and fly- and jig-tying do not always go together. Anything that dangles/bounces/jiggles, I already had that figured out. Have to be careful about leaving tied flies and jigs out. I've gotten good about putting stuff up when I'm done with a session. I have to not only put up my finished flies and jigs, but my materials as well.
I've learned the hard way, that one of my cats has a taste for deer tails. Another one likes to bat around any finished flies/jigs I had stuck on a cork. That was a few years ago. I was tying on the kitchen table, so I would have to put everything up. I could leave my vise out with no problem.
Well, a little over a year ago, we had a stray female that had a litter under our house. After a couple weeks, one of my boys spotted the little fluffballs just outside the entrance to the crawlspace under the house. He went back there (hard to get get, with the privacy fence and the over-sized back deck), and grabbed every kitten he could find, four in all.
I was constantly telling my wife, "we already have two. NO MORE! Don't get attached, because you're taking them to Wal-Mart and giving them away in a few weeks....."
YEAH RIGHT!!!! Little buggers are still here. We even moved them 1,000 miles from OK to MI last Fall.
Last year, I realized one of two of them has a taste for long, stiff, feathers. Pheasant Tail and Blue and Gold Macaw, to be exact. I've lost at least one of the Macaw feathers (don't really use them), as well as one of my PT feathers. Luckily the PT feather was just about used up. Last year, I left out some of my tying materials to go run an errand. One of them managed to grab a package of strung pink marabou. Lucky for me, there were only about 5 - 6 feathers left in the package, and I already had another package.
Well, earlier this year, I bought them used desk, dirt-cheap, at a resale shop here in town. $20 for a desk and chair was a great deal. Some of you have probably seen the pic I took. Well, there are two shelves up above the desktop. Y'all know how cats like heights? Guess what? I usually one or two cats perched on those shelves, just chilling. I don't store anything on those shelves; as they're to narrow for my material boxes. This keeps the cats close to me when I'm tying. Normally that doesn't bother me. Until last night, when I kept having to shoo one of the little buggers away from my black ostrich plume. I managed to tie one really nice, intricate jig that afternoon. After dinner, I went to tie another one. My Black Schlappen had dissappeared! Crap! We started finding a feather here, and feather there. I feared the worst, finding a pile of shredded remains, like what happened to my yellow bucktail.
Luckily, one of my sons found the package after a quick search. Dang cat had managed to rip a few holes through the plastic and extract a few feathers, but the bulk of my black Schlappen is intact.
I count myself lucky. I was able to gather up the bulk of the yellow bucktail that a cat shredded. Of the feathers I've lost, I either didn't really use that feather, or was almost at the end of it. I think I only lost 5 or 6 Schlappen feathers, the bulk of the package is still strung up.
I've read stories on other forums of guys coming home, and finding piles of loose feathers in one or two rooms, and a very guilty-looking dog......
I learned fairly quickly that cats and fly- and jig-tying do not always go together. Anything that dangles/bounces/jiggles, I already had that figured out. Have to be careful about leaving tied flies and jigs out. I've gotten good about putting stuff up when I'm done with a session. I have to not only put up my finished flies and jigs, but my materials as well.
I've learned the hard way, that one of my cats has a taste for deer tails. Another one likes to bat around any finished flies/jigs I had stuck on a cork. That was a few years ago. I was tying on the kitchen table, so I would have to put everything up. I could leave my vise out with no problem.
Well, a little over a year ago, we had a stray female that had a litter under our house. After a couple weeks, one of my boys spotted the little fluffballs just outside the entrance to the crawlspace under the house. He went back there (hard to get get, with the privacy fence and the over-sized back deck), and grabbed every kitten he could find, four in all.
I was constantly telling my wife, "we already have two. NO MORE! Don't get attached, because you're taking them to Wal-Mart and giving them away in a few weeks....."
YEAH RIGHT!!!! Little buggers are still here. We even moved them 1,000 miles from OK to MI last Fall.
Last year, I realized one of two of them has a taste for long, stiff, feathers. Pheasant Tail and Blue and Gold Macaw, to be exact. I've lost at least one of the Macaw feathers (don't really use them), as well as one of my PT feathers. Luckily the PT feather was just about used up. Last year, I left out some of my tying materials to go run an errand. One of them managed to grab a package of strung pink marabou. Lucky for me, there were only about 5 - 6 feathers left in the package, and I already had another package.
Well, earlier this year, I bought them used desk, dirt-cheap, at a resale shop here in town. $20 for a desk and chair was a great deal. Some of you have probably seen the pic I took. Well, there are two shelves up above the desktop. Y'all know how cats like heights? Guess what? I usually one or two cats perched on those shelves, just chilling. I don't store anything on those shelves; as they're to narrow for my material boxes. This keeps the cats close to me when I'm tying. Normally that doesn't bother me. Until last night, when I kept having to shoo one of the little buggers away from my black ostrich plume. I managed to tie one really nice, intricate jig that afternoon. After dinner, I went to tie another one. My Black Schlappen had dissappeared! Crap! We started finding a feather here, and feather there. I feared the worst, finding a pile of shredded remains, like what happened to my yellow bucktail.
Luckily, one of my sons found the package after a quick search. Dang cat had managed to rip a few holes through the plastic and extract a few feathers, but the bulk of my black Schlappen is intact.
I count myself lucky. I was able to gather up the bulk of the yellow bucktail that a cat shredded. Of the feathers I've lost, I either didn't really use that feather, or was almost at the end of it. I think I only lost 5 or 6 Schlappen feathers, the bulk of the package is still strung up.
I've read stories on other forums of guys coming home, and finding piles of loose feathers in one or two rooms, and a very guilty-looking dog......
When I had my lab she loved anything that "floated" around like balloons, feathers, plastic bags ect. She would just go nut's catching it and then destroy it so I could only imagine the mess I'd have with her in a bag of marabou.
