Sassy cats – Sasha the bag cat!

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Sasha in a bag with handles

I know better! I have had cats for decades. I know what to do and what not to do. Yet this happened on my watch.

My cats love bags. Most of them like to lie on them. I always cut the handles so no one gets strangled. Sasha is the only one that goes inside. We usually have a smashed up bag for them to nap on in the family room. (We will never make it in House Beautiful until a shabby chic bag comes in style.) Someone is usually on it. It’s about the texture.

Up in my closet there was a decision waiting to be made. I bought what I thought was a fall through winter coat. The kind that would be great until it was really cold out. Nice looking. Not a souped up hoodie (souped up means with a fleece lining or something that makes the hoodie considerably warmer). A “Sunday go to meeting” kind of coat.

Laying on the floor was the bag to take it back. (Again we are in my closet. This is not traffic central.)

I was getting dressed to go out when I heard a racket, saw a rocket and was befuddled. What I saw was a bag moving at the speed of light. Through the bathroom, down the steps, around the downstairs.

In checking my closet, I saw the “waiting” bag was gone. So was Sasha who had been overseeing my dressing. (Cats can be judgmental. “You’re going to wear that with that? Seriously? That color is not good for you!”)

Sasha: “I was skeered!”

I went to find her because I know they can get caught in the handle. In the dining room, I saw the bag had exploded. The remains of half of the bag and one handle were there but no sign of the other handle, half bag or a terrified cat. We searched high and low. I finally found her crouched in the corner of a basement room, trying to hide behind stuff. I slowly pulled her out and removed the remaining bag from around her neck.

She was freaked out and fearful like her old feral self. She wiggled out of my arms and hid. I was afraid she had hurt herself while bumping down the first set of stairs when she was still inside the bag. It took over four hours to get her to come out and overnight until she was her usually fearless self.

All bags have been removed from the house. No bag is allowed to keep its handles. The good news is that it happened when we were home and all is well. Fortunately Sasha is resilient although I’ll be curious if she has a fear of bags going forward. We’ll see. In the meantime she is her usual terror self and if you have any animals, cut the handles off the bags!

Sticking close to her buds!

Have a great weekend!

59 thoughts on “Sassy cats – Sasha the bag cat!”

  2. My two-year old grandson loves to sit in boxes, so I guess it’s the same thing! Creative play things that also provide a little security? And they entertain us at the same time they have fun. 🙂

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    • I remember when I was a kid, refrigerators came in cardboard boxes. We made a fort with it. So fun. That dang fridge lasted for 30 years. Ahh…the good old days. My last fridge lasted 6 years.

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  6. Cats – if there is trouble to be found, they will find it. 🙂
    Back when we had actual paper to deliver news, my cats used to adore playing with the newspaper. One in particular would wriggle under any paper left on the floor and make a fort out of it. Still did it, even after she was stepped on under it.

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  9. I see from your last paragraph that Sasha has recovered from the bag misbehaving and chasing her down the steps… thankful for that! Don’t you just wish when she was fearful for four hours that she could just understand an explanation that it won’t happen again. We learned to cut the handles off of bags the hard way with Z. See you have some wintry weather coming your way… hunker down and enjoy the fire.

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    • Our first snow is due tomorrow. Maybe. Although likely. Then again. Depends on the snow/rain line. Don’t you just love weather forecasters. I think all cat parents learn this lesson the hard way. In all the years I’ve had cats this is the first time this happened. I’m usually good about cutting.

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  10. I’m so glad she bounced back to herself. It’s odd how fragile the mind can be in fear. It’s also a great reminder this time of year as gift bags are being purchased in lieu of wrapping. I have actually asked people in the aisle beside me if they had pets when I saw them buying bags so I could ask if they knew the handles could be dangerous. #crazycatlady.

    Our first cat ate plastic and the biggest mishap happened in our closet too. Now if we carried in groceries in plastic they were being chewed while you were still unloading the car. They were like a magnet. Pica syndrome I think it was called. Anyway, the closet door was always shut, until one day it wasn’t and she ingested part of a dry cleaning bag. Thankfully no more dry cleaning for me and she was okay too.

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  11. So glad Sasha is OK, and thank you for the good reminder! Our current set of cats doesn’t seem to care about bags, but many of our cats in the past sure did. Still, you never know when someone will get curious. Now where are my scissors?

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  15. I like the shot of her peering through the railings – good thing her head is not fat! We had our first canary and he had a swing. It was wire with a wooden bar to stand on to swing back and forth. It was poorly made as it had a tiny opening – the reasoning was that you could slip the wooden part off the metal if you wanted to scrub the place they sat on. My mom was home all the time and she went down the hall to the bathroom and suddenly there was a lot of screeching and squawking. Everything was okay, just a minute before –
    she hurried as fast as she could go to find Sugar hanging upside down by a toenail that was stuck in that stupid crack. The swing came out, never to be put in there again – we felt badly as he used to not only swing on it, but he’d sail through like a tiger went through a circle of fire.

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  20. Oh boy. Good thing you were home. Glad Sasha is okay. All the cats I’ve had in years gone by were very resilient. My dogs, however (2 in total over the years), have each broken a bone. Unlike cats, dogs are inflexible and clumsy.

    Happy Black Friday. Yeah, I’m stayin’ away from the shopping mania.

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  21. I never thought of the handles being a problem. Thanks for the tip. I will make sure to do that if they get one. I usually just give them boxes. And it is amazing how if you give them two boxes, they will fight over one! Silly kitties! Glad Sash is ok.

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  22. Whew! Poor Sasha. Homicidal bags are the worst. And stairs are scary. But as you say, cats are ridiculously resilient. I’ll never forget one vet telling me about the cat that jumped thirteen stories and merely chipped a tooth.

    What’s one flight of stairs?

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  23. I pet sat for a client once who had a roommate who was not as careful about bags as she should have been. Came in to find a plastic grocery bag ripped to bits and still around the next of one of the cats. Not a pretty sight…not a happy cat. So bags are kept well away from our kitties! Glad Sasha’s okay.

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    • A co-worker adopted a cat that had been pulled by kids with a rope around it’s neck. It totally freaked out at the sight of ropes or anything similar for its entire life and would hide under the bed. There won’t be any bags around for a while. I’ll introduce eventually (without handles) and see how she is. (The other cats love bags too!) She was so fearful I was worried. We don’t keep the plastic bags around at all. Plastic is not good. I had a fall table decoration with fake berries made of foam or soft product. I found a few of those chewed and that went away too. My cats don’t eat flowers so I can do that.

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