SO, I had a package waiting for me when I got hoem today, my Stewart AS-16 and VO-1000, and Gerry Bernet’s Anthracite Country Color book, and the complete 1943 Model Railroader. I go to test run the locos, first going to push the string of car kits back to make room…something’s missing.
I just have a coupel peices of flex track sitting on top of the benchwork right now and I’ve set up all the kits I’ve finished recently. To keep from shoving them past the end and onto the floor, I put together one of the Walthers track bumpers I picked up. Not glued tot eh track, but I found that if a car pushes against it, it jams pretty good so nothing’s going to roll off, at least not without a lot of help. What’s missing as I go to push the cars back to give me anough room for the loco, is the track bumper. Seems the little cat has absconded with it. I’ve looked all over, no sign of it. I’m sure it’s under a chair or couch or something.
This was SO intended to be just a humorous post, but not 5 minutes ago, while I was looking right at him, the big cat jumped on the layout and knocked over EVERY car. And left a big paw print in the foam - yeah, he’s that big. Luckily I had already returned the new locos to their boxes, and given that the cars are Accurail and Athearn kits, nothing was damaged. The most detailed things are the Kato covered hoppers, but I actually DID have 2 of those fall to a concrete floor and amazingly enough, once I located all the little detail parts, return completely unscathed. Now it’s off to the store to get a squirt bottle and teach these heathens that some thing are off limits.
‘Spring’–my cabeese napping furriness has issues with things that move and honks at him–My RS2’s horn is enough to discourage him from trying any cabeese napping tricks!
I unfortunately have no sound locos at the moment. However I might pick up one of those canned horns and if i see either one makign a go for the layout, blast it off. My neighbors probably won’t liek me too much either after that, though.
Had a cat once that kneeded the 1" foam on a temporary setup I had. What a mess. Foam is still useable for most things in scenery work that will be glued together and sculpted. Some of it OK to use as a base as long as I use a good roadbed. What a pain. Fortunately the cat got old and on to the next world before I started on any type of serious layout work. Currently have a long haired one that gets into the train room once in a while and leaves gear tangling hair on the layout. Needless to say that cat is not my favorite and folks that leave the door open will be asked to dehair. (So far I’m the only one that has left the door open. Duha!
I accidentally locked my cat in the train room for 10 hours last week. I was afraid to look at the layout when I went in there. What a surprise to find she didn’t touch a thing! Just laying their sleeping on my office chair. I think she still remembers the flying sensation she experienced when she knocked my brand new Dash 8 onto the floor.[:-^]
And now you know why ‘critters’ aren’t welcome in my layout space. I would make an exception for birds, but my wife objects to my favorite breed (the Double-Breasted, Broad-tailed Homewrecker, which is quite common in Las Vegas…[:-^])
Chuck (Lone wolf modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I inadvertently discovered this fellows distrust of noisy trains when i set off the horn by accidently touching the wrong button on the controller–ya see–I’m still gittin’ used ta tha dang thing!–anyhoooo–the cat shot up into the air–let out a squeek—and shot out of the room at a full gallop. I went looking for him after splitting my sides laughing and found him in the living room under the coffee table all puffed up.It took most of that night to unpuff him–everytime a sound came out of that section of the house he’d puff right back up again. He didn’t even trust the door! He did not go anywhere near the room for a month!LOL!!
We have 3 cats and only 1 had the inclination to jump up on the layout. Her intention was to leap from the layout to the top of the masonite backdrop; walk across the top of it like a highwire act in a circus; jump from there to the basement windowsill in order to peer out at the birds, squirrels etc… No big deal at the benchwork stage, but as I get closer to starting scenery this would be a major problem. 1 day I decided to lay strips of duct tape sticky side up all over the layout, backdrop top and windowsill. I came home from work to see that the tape was all twisted around, hanging off the edge, on the floor and stuck with clumps of cat hair.
Two BIG cats, an 18-pound Maine Coon and a 20 pound Norwegian Forest Cat. No problem with them in the MR room, which is my garage, and they are strictly indoor critters (they don’t like to think how their position on the food chain would change if they got out).
They do like to help Daddy on his kitchen table construction projects, though. Spooky, the Maine Coon is an inveterate caboose thief (she carries them off by the cupola) and Remington the Viking has developed a thing for Yellowstones, when they’re upside down in the foam cradle having their wheels cleaned. I have a wooden steam whistle that I bought at the Sacramento Railroad museum a couple of months ago, and one blast of that tends to keep them both off of the table and back on the floor near their food bowls where they belong.
Thats a great idea. I have 2 cats ans they both LOVE to eat non edible things such as decorative trees, etc. I am planning my layout and will need to come up with something like that. I can just picture laying out trees and one day walk in to see they are all chewed up.
I found the missing bumper, the thief batted it around on the floor until it went out under the front door. I found it this morning in the hallway, amazingly intact.
I’m still not speaking to either cat. One was up last night and attempted to abscond with a rerailer, even after I moved things around to make it harder for them to make the leap.
I love threads about cats and trains since I have two of the darling little furballs myself. Douglas, the older (10) of the two, is content to just hang out in the trainroom with me when I am in there. Maggie, four and a Siamese, is another story. She thinks everything she sees is hers and there is no discussion about it. I, too, have learned that a good blast on my Proto 2000 RS-27 will send her scurrying to parts unknown. One good thing about the cats, when I drop some little object on the floor they will lead me right to it.
I noticed some people have cats that destroy their train layouts, time after time, would that not need to be solved, when my two water buffalo get acting up in my train room it takes some strict rules to calm them down, so far they have only destroyed 3 layouts, a new furnace, 2 load bearing walls and a water heater, other than that I see no reason for not allowing destructive animals in a train layout room.
[:-,]Now that’s an idea–just remember to keep the dang door shut[:-^]–that’s why I have DCC/sound on those RS’s—if I leave door open–he gets —beeped at----[:-,][swg]
