The Mezzanine

One day I will have my female cat called Minerva, dammit.

But for now, he's very cute, very purry, and his name is Felix because I am a total Latin nerd.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your application for more bikkies. We are unable to oblige you at this time.

You will notice that your roaming space has been reduced from the whole living area to the close confinement of the laundry. This is due to a noise complaint filed by your nearest neighbour ("The Baby"). Please note that excessive noise during the nighttime hours is NOT acceptable, and will affect the sleep of The Baby. Your meowing, while cute, falls under this noise ordinance.

We hope you understand our actions at this time. The members of the Home Owners Association (HOA) would like to emphasise that, while we love your cute and fluffy self, we must consider the welfare of ALL tenants, and any further noise complaints by The Baby will likely lead to your permanent nighttime laundry confinement.

Sincerely,
The HOA

Elf is extremely hungry - and complaining bitterly at me - because he hasn't eaten anything since 10am.

I know he hasn't eaten since 10am, because that's when I filled up his bowl. And he hasn't touched it since.

Which means, basically, that he's meowing at full volume and trying desperately to get me to feed him bikkies, while standing in front of a bowl that is ABSOLUTELY FULL of the very bikkies he's asking for.

(Elf would, no doubt, maintain that they are, in fact, totally different from the bikkies he's asking for, because the bikkies in his bowl are old, used bikkies. But I'm ignoring him and his insane feline logic.)



He's actually been fairly upset with me all week. First Prince moved out, then his secondary patter-and-feeder (dr_carrot) moved out, and now, horror of horrors, he doesn't have a second bowl of (Prince's) bikkies to snack off, so he's feeling starved and ill-treated.

I remain hard-hearted. I will calmly ignore my cat's piteous meows, and read the internet instead.

Am awake bright and early this morning, despite my plans to sleep in.

Why? Because my wonderful cat, delight of my life, peed on my bed while I was in it.

EWW.


He is now in deep disgrace, my sheets have been swiftly deposited in the bath, and I am bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and contemplating dim-sims for dinner.

My cat is snoring.

My CAT is SNORING.


I'm not married. I'm not living with anyone. Nor do I have small children. There is no reason I should be getting kept awake by a loud companion. AND YET.

My lovely cat is snuggled up next to me, contentedly snoring as loudly as his teeny nose can manage. And it is so, SO LOUD.

Elf brought me a bird today.


My first cat, Koko, arrived when I was about 7. He was there to solve our mice problem - and solve it he did. He was an astonishingly effective killer of small, cute animals.

Although I'd read many storybooks about cats, and knew about the mouse-killing in advance, no-one had mentioned the other thing about cats: when they kill things, they bring them to you as presents.

Koko showed up, started killing mice right on schedule... and started proudly depositing their ravaged corpses at my parents' bedroom door.


So far I had avoided such morbid displays of affection - since Elf is a total wuss, and completely incompetant at killing anything.

But, today, he killed his first bird.


[Let me insert a short pause here, for cries of horror.]

[And a second pause for me to be a proud mummy. MY LOVELY BOY KILLED A BIRD. SO PROUD.]


And he duly came back home, and gave it to me.

The thing is - it really was a PRESENT. And my first response of running off to fetch
a) lots of paper towel
and
b) my camera
left my cat sitting there, indignantly meowing at my lack of gratitude.

...so I came back, patted him, praised him enthusiastically, and then ran off to get the paper towel so I could get the corpsified bird off my nice clean floor.





Cats are slightly strange...

In the last month, my cat has figured out how to open both the wardrobe in the sitting room (sliding mirror) and the wardrobe in my room (standard hinged door). He can now open every single door in the house except the laundry door, and the actual front and back doors. And those probably aren't too far behind...

We are all doomed.

My life this week seems to have consisted of several HUGE MASSIVE PROBLEMS, followed by wonderfully simple solutions. As follows...

Huge Problem #1: My "daybed" (spare bed / couch), which I ordered back in September, arrived with a rather important part missing. I rang up and complained, and they assured me that they'd take care of it, and I'd definitely have the missing part by January 10th. (FOUR MONTHS, people.)

Solution: I responsed to their "January 10th" idea with a simple LOL, WHUT????, and the next day, the missing parts were on my doorstep. I now have a very nice piece of furniture! Woo!



Huge Problem #2: Elf got into a cat-fight! Somehow I failed to notice this momentous event, until yesterday, when I suddenly realised that there were huge chunks of my cat MISSING. Raced round to the vet, in a total panic, wondering how many stitches he'd need, and how long it took for blood poisoning to kill pets...

Solution: According to the vet, the type of injury he's received usually ends up with lots of pus trapped under the skin and needing to be drained - so, the fact that Elf has a massive gaping wound is actually good, since it allows the pus to drain away naturally. I just have to feed him antibiotics for a few weeks to prevent infection. PHEW.



Huge Problem #1: Lilac's latest nervous breakdown. Which was apparently caused by a logic-board failure, and would be so expensive to repair that all and sundry advised me to just buy a new computer instead. Despite the fact that it would devastate my bank account, I stubbornly cuddled Lilac (metaphorically) and informed aforesaid all and sundry that they CAN'T TAKE MY COMPUTER, BITCAS.

Solution: Computer guys dove into Lilac's system to try and fix the oh-so-expensive logic board, and discovered that the entire problem was a SINGLE CABLE. Which suddenly makes the repairs $70 in total. Woo!

The former housemate's cat is staying with me for the next 12 days.

No, not Smudge. The former former housemate. The one who was responsible for the teeny fluffballs (Smudge's brothers). Of course, that was over a year ago - and the teeny fluffball is now a full-grown cat.


Elf is not happy. Prince is also not happy.

They're currently sitting on opposite sides of the living room, glaring balefully at each other and growling. This has been going on for nearly fifteen minutes now...


Any bets on how long it will take them to become friends?

Elf is horribly upset and bewildered. Smudge is... missing. And I don't even care.


He's spent the last half hour circling the house, meowing plaintively in the hopes that Smudge will suddenly appear from wherever he's hiding, and the world will be back to normal again. (Elf's mummy, meanwhile, is heartlessly trying to pat him, and completely ignoring the fact that Smudge is GONE.)

He wouldn't eat dinner. For some strange reason, I totally failed to put any bikkies in Smudge's bowl, and Elf can't start eating until Smudge can come and eat with him...

His whole kitty world is topsy-turvy and wrong. And he doesn't know why.



(No, Smudge has not entered the ninth dimension. He has moved a grand total of eight houses away, with nimthiriel. It's just rather tricky to explain that to someone who only speaks Cat.)