Cats

My cats think I’m crazy!

They’re probably right. After all, who gets up at the crack of dawn to go sit in an office all day to earn money for cat food (and other things!) and who gets to stay home and sleep all day?? If life were fair, it would be the other way around!

But, who said life was fair? I don’t even like that word. It’s the ultimate whine from spoiled children who aren’t getting their way; “No fair!” I always asked them to explain their frame of reference, not letting them get away with simply stating that they wanted their way in something. Why was their way better than mine? Explain yourself!! Who says?

Anyway, back to the cats…

Cookie and Klein (named by children, is case you couldn’t tell!), get a can of cat food every night before I go to bed. As a result, Cookie won’t let me out of her sight unless and until they are fed. I’ve gone to bed early a couple of time without feeding them and she’s never forgotten it, nor forgiven me. So, if I leave the kitchen, she follows me. If I go upstairs, she follows me and gives me that “Mommy doesn’t love me anymore” look until I go back downstairs. Or she panics and tries to block me from going up the stairs. Of course, I’m probably just going to get something and step right over her. A 12 lb. cat just isn’t capable of physically blocking my path to any great degree. Or I step on her, resulting in much yelling and hurt looks and apologies from me, even though it was her that got in my way.

So, any place I go in my house in the evenings after dinner requires a 2 cat entourage, just to make sure that I don’t get away without feeding them their treat. They also can’t figure out why I don’t feed them earlier. I do, sometimes. My SO hate the smell of the food (we call it “Stinky Stuff”!) so he has to have gone down to the Family Room for the remainder of the evening after dinner before they get fed. So, they follow me around, giving me the ‘evil eye’ and meowing because I haven’t fed them, yet. So, they think I’m crazy because I do things other than feed them.

Cookie has a fairly accurate clock in her tummy; although it tends to run faster the closer it gets to feeding time. They get fed at 10:00PM, more or less, so I call it her 10:00 Tummy. She has also been known to wake me up in the morning if I should fall back asleep after the alarm goes off. She gets up on the bed and meows in my face to wake me up.

Wonderful way to start the day! A face-full of cat-breath! But my “4-footed alarm clock” has come in handy a few times! Some days, I can sleep through anything! Except a 12 lb. cat standing on me, yelling in my face. That usually gets my attention!! And then I’m only a few minutes late for work instead of the hours that it would be if it were up to me. Not a good way to stay employed! Bosses like you there when they want you there.

In addition, I think my cats think I spend all day in the garage. Well, after all, I go into that room in the morning and come out of it in the evenings. They never really try to get out there. I suspect it smells nasty to them: I park my car in my garage. Cars smell nasty to me; I can’t imagine they smell nice to cats: gasoline, oil, various fluids and all that plastic. Plus, when I had to have my very old and very sick put to sleep this summer, Cissy went into the garage and never came back out! I think they noticed. Klein seems almost afraid of it!

This is all to the good, as far an I’m concerned. The last thing I need to do when I’m on my way to work is play Chase-the-Kitty out in the garage! Cissy did that once and I had to wash her feet as she got into some oil leaked onto the floor by an old car I used to have. She didn’t like that one little bit!! Gave me that hurt look for days!

I used to trim her nails when they got too sharp. She was a very good sport about it and never fought me. Although, she would often leave to go and wash her feet to make sure she still had all her toes, carefully licking them one at a time. You could imagine the monolog in her head: Onnnnnne… Yep, this one’s still here. Twooooooooo…..Yup, the next one’s here, too. Threeeeee……….Yup, this one’s OK as well.

Well, if cats could think in English, that is!!