Happy gets happy

My cat has recently hit puberty, and I don't like it one bit. You know, the usual -- mood swings, tantrums, hair growth, masturbation. Yep, you read me right. It came as a huge shock to me, given that when I was growing up, any animal that dared come within a two-mile radius of my mother's house was immediately shipped off to be de-clawed, de-flea-ed, de-wormed and de-genitalized, as appropriate. It's debatable as to whether they were demoralized, but perhaps this helps explain my ignorance of the male cat's reproductive growth.

I was traumatized the first time I realised what was going on. Poops has started doing unmentionable things to my bedspread. He does it whenever he's happy -- he'll be purring away, like a good little kitty, and then I guess he just gets "excited". I thought only yippy dogs did that?!