Feline Frenzy

February 16, 1998

My cat, Munchie, was being a real stinker last night. I think she was bored, though I can't read feline minds. She wanted to play, or something to keep her entertained, so I threw a couple ponytail holders for her to chase, (she usually brings them back, like a dog) but she didn't seem terribly interested.

Instead, she climbed up into the almost 5-foot high shelf in my closet, behind the clothes; how, I don't know. A couple days back, she had been playing with a plastic grocery bag of yarn leftovers from Jevim's afghan, and ran off with a small (golf ball sized or a bit larger) ball of yarn into the kitchen. She had brought the ball back and put it back in the sack, and I don't remember if I threw it into the kitchen for her, or if she carried it back herself, but she disappeared for a while. I went to check on her, and she had a length of yarn sticking out of her mouth.... I pulled out what I could and the ball wasn't noticeably smaller, so I don't think she swallowed too much, but after that I tied the bag up with the yarn and put it up on the shelf in the closet.

Apparently, she remembered me putting it there, and in no time flat, she had it down. I took the bag away from her and threw it back up on the shelf. Sure enough, she got it down again a few minutes later and was trying to get into it. So I put it on the highest shelf, where she'd have to learn how to fly to get it. I had to stand on the stepstool, but then I'm short.

About ten minutes later, I heard her dragging something across the floor, and wondered how the heck she'd managed to get that bag down from a seven foot high shelf. I turned around, and saw that she had a whole 'jumbo' skein of yarn, bigger than she (not counting legs) from Jevim's afghan, and was dragging it across the room between her legs. Now that was a sight! Of course, not wanting her to swallow more yarn, I took it away from her, and wound up having to hide it in one of my dresser drawers to keep her from getting it again.

She went off and was quiet for a while, and I thought she was looking for mischief, but I went out and found her sprawled on the floor in the dining room (in the dark) and she just blinked at me in the light from the kitchen, as if to say, "Yes? Were you expecting to find something else?" Cats...!

While Mom is gone for these three weeks, I'm trying to get our four cats re-trained as far as their internal clocks. They have gotten to the point where they would wake Mom up every night between one and three to be fed, or keep her up half the night trying to get her to feed them. I'm more of a sound sleeper, at least til the sun comes up, and so I don't even hear their noise, and last week I was working on gradually moving their feeding times later and later, with little success.

When Morris (yes, orange tabby; not very original, hmm?) woke me up yesterday at 6:45 after I went to bed after 2, I was not a happy camper. I fed them at 7 (The time I had been trying to get them used to) and went back to bed. He came back in after he'd eaten and started meowing again. I went out to see if they were low on dry food, but they weren't, so I crawled back in bed and proceeded to ignore him.

Sometime later in the day, I decided they could just wait until after I'd had dinner to eat. But once it got past 4 or so in the afternoon, they apparently forgot about eating, or thought I wouldn't feed them. I just waited and fed them at 10, thinking that might make a difference as to when they woke me in the morning. Did it? Of course not. At least not by much... 6:56am, Morris came in and gave me his pitiful meows (he is this huge cat and sounds like about a 12 week old kitten when he tries to meow). I ignored him, got out of bed and went and brushed my teeth and all that jazz, and continued to ignore him. The others lurked in various places in my room, but weren't too terribly pitiful; they had plenty of dry food, so I didn't worry about it. He eventually gave up, and I fed them 'breakfast' at 2pm.

They did bug me for dinner a couple hours later again, but I ignored it, since they couldn't possibly be starving yet -- they had dry food in their bowls all day today -- and just fed them again a bit before ten. What I am enjoying about this is that both times today, I've woken them up to eat. Turning the tables can be fun.

Do I expect to be allowed to sleep until the alarm goes off in the morning? No, I know better. But maybe by time Mom gets back on the 28th, they will have forgotten all about 2am feedings.

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