QI saftey

well, Charlotte, i dont have kitties, but my dog is always under foot. i have tried to train her to lay only under the sewing desk and not lay on the pressure foot. she does insist on "helping"me when i lay out blocks or sandwiches on the floor, tho! be persistant! they'll get the hint eventually! amy

Lilly cat got all tangled up in the sewing machine thread one night. Good thing the machine was in the bedroom corner and she made a fuss and we were able to help her. Had she been in the other room and not had help it might not have been such an ok outcome. SInce then I try and keep covers on my machines. I even had to make a new cover for the serger. SHe reached in the hand hold opening and pulled the thread through there. I have the rest of the thread in a cabinet or on a higher wall rack. I keep cutters closed unless I am using them and hung on a key holder up in the closet. You may need to put her in another room while you rotary cut or run the machine. I was told if a cat touches the iron once they won't do that again. I try to keep a close eye on kitty location when the iron is on. Mine sits in a rack on the end of the board so most of the accessible parts of it are not hot if a cat gets too close. Maybe if you have a basket with some fleece in it handy to lie in and Darius might like that? It gets better as they get older but Maki still likes to be right in the middle of things a lot! HTH, Taria

Charlotte Hippen wrote:

I'm allergic to cats, so I can't offer kitty-specific advice ... but what about setting up a nice bed for her in the corner of your room? Perhaps keeping a few special toys in the bed (toys she can only have in the room in the bed) that she loves to play with might help?

All QIs that I know of (canine and feline alike) love us and want our approval. If you teach her early that she won't get mommy's approval when she climbs on the ironing board - but she will if she stays OFF, she'll learn quickly.

Worst comes to worst, when she gets up on the board, tell her to "Get Down," and take her down, put her in the basket, look very pleased and give her a tiny treat and tell her what a good girl she is for getting down.

That is, of course, assuming that you can train kitties like you can doggies. :-)

Winston (Mr.Cute by Polly!) has been told by Lulu that he is no longer welcome in the sewing room! Lulu has a box lid near the doorway where she spends her time and she will not permit him to pass her lair - he has decided that the best spot for him to observe is from the doorway sitting on top of a large air cleaner - same idea that he has when I am in the kitchen, he has a tall box outside the door where he can watch me without getting in the way. Lulu has also decided that she has to spend her nights in the kitchen and she doesn't think that Winston should have his eating station in there - it is a 'cat and mouse' game for him to grab his food and run. I have set up a spare ironing board next to my sewing machine desk that Katie will use to be close to me - Winston will attempt to share this space with her sometimes when he thinks that he can get away with it - he is not so much interested in the sewing as in the quilting of something and he does know the difference (I think that the aroma of batting has that effect on him!) When he was younger, he couldn't resist thread and would take off with it but I have learned to cover the machine and remove the thread cone from the back of the machine. I remember turning from the ironing board one evening after hearing a whimper, Winston was clinging upside down underneath the other ironing board - his claws were holding him through the holes in the metal - I still haven't figured out how he had managed to get into that predicament in the space of a few seconds. He wouldn't have been able to extricate himself without hurting himself - he hasn't actually bothered me much since this episode. I think that part of the safe training involves giving your QI a place of their own and having a sound or a signal that he/she recognizes as a reprimand in any situation. However, you attempt to safety train your kitten, it takes lots of patience and repetition. Let her have other toys to distract her from the iron cord and keep sharp items (like scissors, rotary cutters, seam rippers, etc.) in a box or tray away from the table edge. Another tip for yourself - check your garbage bin for any items that might have been played with by kittie that have fallen in the bin - before tossing the contents! I've lost several good items that way in the past. jennellh(@gmail.com)

On Sep 7, 9:44 am, "Charlotte Hippen" wrote:

Everything is a toy to a kitten, and the kitten may or may not grow out of it. One of my cats is permanently a kitten mentally, another one learned a bad trick after he was grown due to a poorly designed pet toy, and that trick is now a weird habit.

I must pick up all stray bits of threads, and put away all thread spools and bobbins after sewing. My Samson thinks thread is kitty spaghetti and will chew and possibly eat it. I have even caught him trying to bite the thread right off the sewing machine. It is not enough to put the stray thread bits into an open trash can because Samson will try to dig the threads out, so I have to hide them below other items of trash while he isn't looking rather like one throws away a 6 year old's drawing that has been attached to the refrigerator door for the last 6 months. His favorite "flavor" is black but he will go for whatever he can reach. Thankfully he only chews cords/thread under 1/8 inch diameter. Unfortunately that means he will chew things that range from thread to silk cording, including mini blind cords.

Samson also enjoys preforating paper. So any instructions, notes, row numbers, etc. that I may pin to a project are subject to being gnawed on. I use safety pins for notes instead of straight pins.

I must put all straight pins and needles out of reach of cats because Trouble will bite anything that stands up and away from the plane it is attached to, as if items around her must be smooth or they offend her somehow. She will try to eat buttons off shirts, and pins/needles off pin cushions and fabric. Usually all I have to do is put the pincushion and current pinned project under a piece of folded yardage. This is one of the reasons I prefer to use Elmer's Glue Stick for applique piece placement rather than pins. I never liked getting stuck by pins while doing applique so the glue keeps us all safer. Trouble has also been known to bite the thread spool pin on the machine just because it protrudes from the machine body.

Trouble also chews on plastic bags when she thinks she is hungry so I have to keep those in closed bins most of the time. Since I like to use large zipper bags to keep order with my projects this is a real concern for me. The zipper bags with the slider closer are a bigger problem because she feels the slider part should not be there and tries to bite that offending part off the bag.

The ironing board must be folded and the iron must be placed on a steady surface when not in use. If I forget, the cats will remind me, usually by the loud thud of iron or board hitting the floor.

The rotary cutter and blades get put in a bin away from prying paws and mouths. The good shears get hidden from the man in the house. The sewing machine gets covered when not in use because of 2 cats. Current projects are put away in containers or hidden under uncut yardage.

Cleo is my only cat that doesn't care about the sewing items. She will only lay on freshly cut fabric stacks or finished quilts. Debra in VA See my quilts at

Oh dear! Most cats don't give two hoots about pleasing their human! We are there to serve them and that's pretty much *it* >g< We love them, and hope they love us, in their own way; but I have discovered that is by no means guaranteed. Fine, if their will is the same as ours; otherwise ... ... It is no skin off their nose if they displease us! I have one who quite often does what he is told, but I think it is only for the praise and attention he then gets - which, of course, he sees as his due. I'm afraid they have an entirely different mind-set from that of dogs. . In message , SewVeryCreative writes

My late QI, Blackbean, who crossed the rainbow bridge in May, ignored the small and sharp things but enjoyed inspecting finished quilts and sleeping on my stash of polar fleece - I think I'll be using hairy fleece for some time to come! She also loved kneading any batting she found lying around, so that had to be stored in oversized plastic bins. When I was making clothing she always tried to run under the paper pattern as I laid it onto the fabric.

Smokey our new QI who is about 9 months old is fascinated by fasteners and fixings. His favourite game is to carry a 4" screw up our uncarpeted wooden stairs and roll it down each step to the bottom - and then do it all over again. He also likes occupying my cutting table, so now he is shut out of the room when I am using the rotary cutter. Another trick is playing with safety pins (ugh!) so I have to keep them in a closed container AND close them as I go along while pin basting 'cos otherwise he will pull them out of the quilt!

Good luck with keeping you new QI out of too much trouble.

Lizzy

Only if they want to be trained!

When she is a little older she will have discovered lots more interesting things - feathers, (hopefully not birds!) butterflies and mouses.

Yesterday Kiwi was taking a great interest in a largish hebe bush so I went to investigate. There, right at the top was a very worried little mouse with the most enormous eyes. Kiwi spent the next 2 hours indoors, and hopefully mouse had gone home when he went out again, though he appeared to have forgotten mouse's existance fortunately.

He's still an excellent QI, but saves inspections for when they are spread on the floor. I do make sure that everything is covered up at night though, as cats sleep in their beds in the conservatory where I sew. I am especially careful with pins, threads and thimbles. Hodge is too old to be bothered and Mia says she is a good girl, so its really only Kiwi who might be tempted, and now it is "Summer" they don't always come home at bedtime anyway.

So if Cheetah's allowed outside enjoy the attention while you can, but if she's an inside cat I can't help!

Dogs try very hard to please their humans.

Humans try very hard to please their cats.

Probably another flaw in my character but I have enjoyed so much your adventures with baby QIs. When our Sweet Pea was in his prime, he chose the ironing board as an acceptable place to practice his Olympic competition high dives. I had to keep the hot iron off of the board and over on a hot pad on an old SM cabinet when I didn't actually have the iron in my hands. We just never knew when a double Swan belly-buster needed to be perfected. There's also a drawer-pull mounted over on the cabinet to control the extra length of cord. Our Yorkie does not jump (or practice diving) but we don't want him to bound through and pull a dangling cord. When your little darling QI gets a little weight, you'll also want to turn off your machines when you are not stitching. Sweet Pea could get a truly comfortable nap on a foot control and run the SMs and the sergers. That will give you a heart attack for sure. Rub the precious whiskers for me. Polly

By gosh isn't that the truth!

Stripey considers any and all sewing projects to be test runs in the search for the perfect cat bed.

Thorncat has a general hatred of sewing machines and will leap to attack them given the opportunity.

Jiji thinks all my string are belong to him. If I manage to convince him that jumping up to grab my thread is a bad idea, he will notice my hair hanging over the back of the chair.

Spike is, well, Spike. He can be distracted by a fur mousie, but if I am doing anything he has to check it out for fun potential. I think he is part Tigger and part cupboard moth.

Faced with these cats I determined that I had three choices.

2) Give up what I do. I have not been informed of any severe climactic changes in the nether realms as of this time.

Having reviewed the situation I selected option number 3. I even got lavish and spent an additional $2 to put a lock on both sides of the door.

If you cannot do as I did, you can lock the cat away instead. With cats this can sometimes accelerate the learning curve as being on the wrong side of a locked door is something they seem to really really hate. They are often quick to learn that "jump on table"="get locked in bathroom". I just don't happen to have four bathrooms.

NightMist

While we are alking about keeping QIs safe...

Jiji-chan is a greenery browser. We had one of those tubs of oats for cats, and he would pull the whole rootbound lot right out of the tub and make off with it. Eventually he chewed it right down to the roots. He has been making a break for the hallway to investigate my tub of peacock orchids ever since they came up, fortunately after taste testing them he does not seem to have aquired a taste for gladiola.

However we had guests on Labor Day and they gifted me with a new plant. It is a nearly 3 foot tall salvia divinorum. Jiji is in love.

There is no way I want him munching on one of those. I currently have it in the hallway with the glads, but that is overmuch sunlight for it and I would like to bring it in to more diffuse lighting.

Does anyone know of anything I can spray it with that would convince him that it is not good to eat? Do bitter apple or tabasco sauce actually work and not hurt the plant?

Fortunately Ash does not pay much mind to houseplants. Though if it smelled like apples it might be a different story.

NightMist

I'm so glad you thought about plant safety. That danger hadn't crossed my mind to warn Charlotte about. We have a Euphorbia Tirucalli (pencil plant) that would terribly dangerous. It can cause temporary blindness from just a clipped branch. I approach tending it with great caution. It has a potential height of 18' and is happy as a clam to live here (quite a surprise). Unless the Yorkie or gators have access to a stepladder, all is well. For a greenery browser, it could be v-e-r-y interesting. Polly

Wish I had an answer for you, Charlotte! Boots is the biggest problem. She eats pins. So, needless to say, she cannot be around at all when I'm sewing, and I have to be really mindful about pins. Fortunately, she's an independent soul and doesn't decide to "help" very often. The first time I put a quilt on the frame to handquilt, it was a nightmare. They thought it was their own personal kitty trampoline. This is about the 5th one I've quilted on the hanging frame. Weirdly enough, I don't think any of them have been on it once so far.

Sherry

Sherry

Samson and Maisie both like to sit/lay close by. If I'm quilting they like to be wrapped in the quilt that I'm quiling. If it's just something I'm appliqueing they like to sit on me. Machine sewing? They ain't interested.

Oh! well said, Sally >g< What a wonderful (and, sadly, true) statement. Fabulous - one of those 'wish I'd said that' things >g< . In message , Sally Swindells writes

Mia is completely thick when it comes to doors, whereas the other two just put a paw round and pull. Her favourite place to get shut in at the moment is the bathroom. Her answer is to hurl herself at the door which just shuts it more!

The other thing she can't do is to jump on the windowsill so she faces the open window, nor can she reverse - so her slaves have to go all the way to the door to let her in when she appears on the sill.