From a Dead Start

Date: February 19, 2007

SUMMER - January 2007

      She can run from a dead start faster than I can and bounce (literally) off my computer chair, my monitor or my audio speakers. She can race over the Total Gym, the Pilates, and the storage boxes ready for shipping. She can leap over furniture or under it, and snag something to hide under without pause.
     
      She can leap on the kitchen counter, off the counter and onto the barstool, flinging the cushion or not , before you can cross the kitchen floor.
     
      She can twist around my ankles while I am walking in an effort to redirect my steps - especially around feeding time, making me shuffle like I was 90.
     
      She can make her upset known when I don't get out of bed before 7AM by bouncing off my hip, my butt, my chest, or my ankles. She is impossible to ignore no matter how good the dream. Or how cute the guy in it.
     
      She can decimate a yarn ball or a new roll of toilet paper with equal aplomb (The toilet paper remnants covered half the bedroom. The yarn ball I wind up periodically. The original was bigger than she was but it didn't stop her.)
     
      She can climb expensive black-out drapes in a single bound and leave tell-tale cat claw marks all the way up. She had to be rescued. I had to re-nail the hanger clip.
     
      She can leap from one set of drapes to another, wrap up in them, roll in them, mess them up and pull them down. It's an adventure to come home and discover which ones have hit the floor.
     
      She can purr louder than my vibrator. (And I have a big "move the mattress" vibrator. Built for inserting into a barcolounger, under a mattress, or into its special back rest pillow. Big. My sons bought it for me. Funny boys.)
     
      She can carefully pick her way about my desk without disturbing a thing, or she can wreck total havoc - depending on her mood. Tax sorting has been an adventure.
     
      She can smell chicken from 20 paces and scream louder than a Siamese cat in heat until you feed her some. And it can't be dry - or too cold - or sauced - or not cut into dainty pieces. If it's really fresh - she will take a hunk.
     
      She can find the oddest things to use as toys: panty liners, Kleenex, sales slips, empty Alavert bubbles, hair rollers, my sock, a shoe booty, or a pen - never mind the toy mice, jingle bells, catnip toys, or the leftover yarn ball. To see her pacing with the end of a fresh kill panty liner from a box she discovered in the closet - all this at 2AM - put me on the floor.
     
      She can snuggle on your shoulder, pin you to the bed with one paw, and fall asleep in seconds. She has long legs.
     
      She can trill to announce that it's bedtime and that you'd best make room for her on the bed - on both sides of you. She will cuddle up to the back of my legs or stretch out all down my stomach and other parts of my front.
     
      She can throw herself down on the bed so she 's touching you with enough ooomf that you cannot possibly help but notice her arrival and then she will bang on your hand until you pet her.
     
      She just learned how to open a door - and she can wiggle thru the smallest crack. If she can't get it open, she will cry loudly in protest.
     
      4AM is play with Mommy time and tossing her off the bed only encourages her - the only remedy is to pet her and snuggle her and clamp her to your side until she gets annoyed and trots off about her business. That or get up, put her out of the room, close the door and put a pillow over your head.
     
      If I fall into bed with a book, that is a signal for cuddle time as long as I don't drop the book on her. Paperback or not, this WILL upset her. 

      Any trip to the kitchen is accompanied with a racing cat, cries and a persistent need for you to yell NO loudly and shake a dishtowel. This means you can stay on your diet since this will reduce trips to the kitchen.

     
      It's a KITTEN!!! No - she's about 1 year old now - she's a CAT!