Harnessing the healing power of snark
(With this post I believe that I have officially given up any remaining moral authority I might once have had to complain about anything that anyone else writes on their blog, ever. So, here we go!)
I’m not sure which of these is worse:
Finding a spot where one of the cats has barfed, or
Coming back later and finding it gone, knowing that neither my husband nor I have done anything to clean it up.
(It’s a very good thing that the cats are so cute!)
Take (1) one cat who has figured out how to open the laundry room’s bi-fold doors.
Add (1) feather duster lying unguarded in the laundry room, and
Three (3) super destructive felines, angry about being left alone for the week,
and you will receive the following hysterical phone call while on vacation for the holidays:
“Oh my God! I just got to your house, and the floor is covered in feathers. I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure your cats have killed your bird!”
As I believe I’ve mentioned here once or twice, we live with three cats. We love them for so many reasons, not the least of which is that they provide us with so many hours of entertainment with the wacky things they do, and then we get to say things like, “Well, it looks like the aliens are beaming messages into their brains again.” Because really, what other explanation is there for those times when they awaken from a dead sleep because, “My God, I must lick my own ass 75 times in a row RIGHT NOW!”
Additionally, having cats gives us the opportunity to refer to other creatures in the third person, as in, “The Bailey just pooed in the tub again,” or, “The Tigger just captured another lizard and is ‘playing’ with it in your office.” I have no idea why we do this. Perhaps it’s not actually the cats’ brains that the aliens are after. (Mwa-ha-ha! We’ve gotten the humans to refer to the felines in the third person. By next month they will be referring to them as, “Your Royal Highnesses, The Supreme Rulers Of The Universe”!) [Read more…] about Hot Sticks
You know how when you’re little you learn certain prayers to say at certain times, like saying “Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” before you go to bed, or saying “God is great/God is good/Let us thank Him/For this food” before a meal? And then you get older and you learn different prayers to say at different times?
Well I have noticed that since I began living with cats, I have learned an entirely new set of prayers for the particular circumstances that arise due to cohabitation with felines.
Such as, A Prayer For The Sick
Dear God,
Please let that noise I hear not be the big cat horking stuff up all over the rug.
Thank you.
Or, A Prayer For The Dead
Dear God,
Please let that black thing in the middle of the living room carpet not be anything alive.
Or anything that was alive at one time, but is now dead.
Or anything that used to have legs, arms, a head and/or wings, but is now missing them.
Or any of said legs, arms, heads, or wings.
Thank you.
Or, A Prayer For Deliverance
Dear God,
Please let whatever it is that Tigger just captured on the porch
and then brought inside
not end up on my bed.
Thank you.
Together we all say, Amen.
That Tigger was smart enough to figure out how to get out of his cat carrier while I was in the bathroom, but not smart enough to run far, far away and hide under the bed; instead he stood right next to the carrier and investigated it thoroughly, thus allowing me to easily stick him right back inside and take him to the vet anyway.
For creatures who lack the ability to speak, our cats have developed a large number of ways to communicate to us EXACTLY what they are feeling in any given moment.
One of their more effective communication methods is that of Knocking Stuff On The Ground.
After living with these particular animals for the past nine years I have begun to decipher the different meanings behind each level of this process.
The first level is pretty casual, taking place when they are bored, or curious, or just feel like messing around. They will jump up on my desk or the kitchen table and start batting around things like pens, bottle caps, scissors, pills, or anything that is small, light, and rolls easily. Here the meaning is pretty much along the lines of,
-“Hey, I’m bored.”
-“Hey, pay attention to me.”
-“Hey, look what I found.”
-“Hey, this is so cool! I’m totally stealing it for myself!”
The next level is a little more intense since it is an expression of their frustration and irritation. It usually takes place early in the morning on my nightstand, where they precisely and deliberately knock off One. Item. At. A. Time, calculating just how many THUNKS it will take before I can’t stand it anymore and will get up and do whatever they want if they will just PLEASE, LET ME SLEEP A LITTLE LONGER!
I thought I was getting pretty good at understanding what they were wanting. But apparently sometime during the night we moved to a new level in this process, because when we woke up this morning we saw this:
We’re still trying to figure out exactly what it means.
So the other day I faced quite an interesting quandary.
You know how some people think that we’re here on this earth to learn lessons? Well apparently one of my lessons is Learning How To Take Care Of Things Myself When My Husband Is Gone.
That’s fine when it is something like, hm, I wonder why we’ve lost power in these back 3 rooms but the electricity is still functioning in the rest of the house or, hm, the washing machine seems to be seeping out some kind of sticky brown goo. But I’m really not okay with this when the lessons involve insects, rodents, or reptiles. Because, as was clearly stated in our marriage agreement, my husband is The Person In Charge Of Creepy Crawly Critters. Not. Me. [Read more…] about I’ll Take Door Number 2
This is our screened in porch, where the cats spend most of their time.
This is our backyard.
Notice the absence of any large bodies of water.
This is our screened in porch from the outside. See how there’s nothing underneath it?
So having shown you all of this, I know that when I tell you that recently I was unable to make the cats come into the house because they were fascinated with a creature who had come inside our porch to visit with them, you will of course say, “Well clearly that visitor was a frog!” And you would be right! (Apparently all the local lizards were busy that day.)
Because an enclosed porch in the middle of suburban Atlanta with no water in sight is The First Place a person would check when they are looking for a frog.
Not.
(PS-As awesome as it would have been to get a picture of this, I was unable to due to my freaking out at the appearance of wildlife on my screened in porch and my yelling for my husband. And while I could have then snapped a quick shot once my husband was in control of the situation, the poor frog had been covered with so much cat hair that we were afraid it was suffocating, and my husband had to dunk it in the birdbath as quickly as possible in order to revive it.)
