Tink and Zeugma are past the screaming freak-outs they were having a while back, which is an immense relief. Still, Tink’s very protective of her individual space, to the point where she’ll growl or hiss if she spots Zeugma creeping too close. And the word is, yes, ‘creeping,’ because Zeugma’s figured out — bless her poisonous little feline heart — she likes yanking Tink’s chain. So she’ll wait for Tink to get settled down in that prime early-morning sunbeam spot and then get hunkered down low to the ground a few yards from Tink and — in full view of Tink — start waggling her hind end like she’s fixing to pounce. And of course Tink will wail and hop up and go run and hide at the top of the cat tree, leaving the sunbeam spot for Zeugma.
Which isn’t to say that Tink’s a complete chicken. I was typing up some notes on Booth’s Rhetoric of Rhetoric last night, with Zeugma curled up near my chair, when Tink dashes into my office, cuffs Zeugma twice on the head, and dashes out.
And so yeah, all this has a point, said point being why I went into campus with one soggy foot today. The girls have figured out what time my alarm goes off in the morning, and Tink is usually quick to sit on my chest if I’m not out of bed fast enough, and I’m usually half-awake before it goes off anyway, listening to the morning business of the restaurant downstairs (now that Bob Edwards is gone, NPR’s Morning Edition ain’t got nothin on the six-o’clock smell of home fries), and listening to the girls on their morning apartment prowlings. This morning it was cat-tag, and before my alarm goes off, Zeugma comes tearing across the bed in hot pursuit of Tink, a quick circuit around the bedroom, and then Tink’s skidding across my chest in the other direction and taking a header off the nightstand. The nightstand atop which the glass of water I’d gone to bed with rested, and on the far side of which — knowing today would be a cold day — I’d placed my boots.
You got it. Glass and water, thirty inches and one hundred and eighty degrees into the right boot: nothin but net, sports fans. I don’t think she spilled a single drop on the carpet. Like, I had to search for it, I mean I knew there’d been a spill, but where was the glass? Right there, upside-down and intact, its base barely below the top of my boot. Which is why, for most of the morning, I was in a pissy mood, and making a squishing sound with every other step.
And they look so adorable when they’re kittens. “Let’s get two,” my husband said. So now we have the early morning tag -team wake- up calls, too, at 4:30 and 5.
What amazes me about cat chases is that they become oblivious to anything in their way (like us, for one)while they thunder after each other. It’s so different from the surgeon-like precision with which they start pushing glass breakables toward the edge of a dresser just to get one’s attention.
Good to hear that they’re not screaming at each other.
I like the text version of Friday Cat Blogging. Fits you, Mike 😉
Deep chuckle.