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| Toby surveys the winter world from his favorite perch |
It’s
been a month since the clowder’s antics were last posted. Have no fear, they are alive and well. If any
of you deeply miss the cats, you are welcome and encouraged to borrow them
for a few days…or weeks.
The
lack of news is due to my adherence to the adage, “If you can’t say anything
nice, then don’t say anything at all.” Winter
confinement has morphed the cats into naughty, awful children that I’ve been
unable to write about with good humor.
Our
days are filled with breaking up fights and clearing destruction. We try to wear off their abundant energy with
laser light chasing and feather-on-a-string hunting, but as soon as our backs
are turned they pick fights by sneakily chomping legs or bapping noses. Once the gauntlet is thrown—game on! They whiz by in a blur of fur, over chairs,
under tables, across counters. The fate
of anything sitting in the way is always the same—it will be swept up and
discarded once the dust settles.
Their
quiet time is almost as nerve-wracking as their playtime. As their main source
of entertainment, I am never
alone. Wherever I go they follow and
watch—in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom (with floor space too small to
fit a golden retriever), and even the closets.
If I sit they jump onto my lap to nap.
If I lie down, they pile on top of me so I can’t move, inducing a mild,
claustrophobic panic. I am in desperate
need of personal space!
Today
I reached the limit of my patience. I got
up this morning (after a second night of overcrowded, contorted,
too-many-cats-on-my-side-of-the-bed sleeplessness) to the sound of a cat
vomiting in the other room. A few
minutes later I was pulling Merps, the visiting grandcat, out of a hole in the garbage
bag I’d set by the back door to take out.
How did the hole get in the bottom of the bag? Evidence points to the adorable, innocent-looking Merps who had scraps of torn plastic bag caught in his claws. After that, a little feline help making
breakfast was all it took to push me over the edge. My meltdown came in the form of walking out
the door and driving into the city for a morning of cat-free movement. That’s the good thing about having cats—if you
leave for a few hours you don’t need to line up a sitter, you just leave. Imagine how blissful errands are without
being stared at, meowed at, and walked on.
No fights to break up, fishy catfood odors to smell, or shredded
upholstery to view. Ahhh….
Returning
in a much better frame of mind, I enjoyed the cats for several minutes before I
had to pull Jersey out of the bowl of lasagna filler my daughter was
mixing. I guess my patience wasn’t
completely restored yet. I tossed (yes,
tossed is the correct verb) all of the cats outside except for Biff, who has
put on weight this winter and is too heavy to toss. Occasionally I’d look out the window to check
on them. They were quite happy with the change of scenery. Sometimes I’d catch them playing tag, other
times staring in the neighbor’s patio door, and once I saw them playing
hide-and-seek in the winter garden.
Sadly,
the cold weather returns tomorrow so it’ll be another indoor day for them. Spring is on the way, though, and we just
have to hang in there and be patient with each other a little longer before the
fresh air washes away our grumpy winter mood.
