Living with Cats

The other morning Gryphon woke me up at 4 am. This, unto itself is not an unusual development, what was unique was his reason for annoying me awake. 

Gryphon's methods are not those of the average cat. He doesn't tap my face, or even resort to a baseball bat. Oh no, he is much more insidious. He starts with the drool, or at least this is the point at which I usually start gaining consciousness, and thus the known point of origin . He drools by standing on me with his suddenly very knobby two front feet and purrs. It is with the purr that drool starts. Big splashy drips of drool that I am forced to hide from under the covers. 

When this isn't enough to rouse more than a couple of indistinguishable, muffled curses and a changing of position, he starts to nibble on me while purring and drooling. This usually succeeds in sufficiently waking me to full cursing and grumpiness. This is an odd choice for him, not just because of my reaction, but because in the past this has led to his being thrown off a bed and being injured. On a quick side note, I was not the one who tossed him, but I do not blame the thrower one bit, drooly biteyness demands reaction. I'm much too benign in my reactions to ever make this behavior stop, as it usually just results in me grabbing him and hugging him tightly until he can wriggle away as I fall back asleep. 

Then the next strategy occurs, the dreaded room attack. Dreaded because this also his chosen method of punishment when he is upset with me. This happens in one of two ways. The first being on the dressing table and more specifically to my jewelry. I currently have many earrings without backs or matches due to his diligent attention to their misplacement. The second way is my garbage can. This cat has a fetish for nibbling on plastic, and he loves finding it by knocking over garbages and spreading the contents about before settling in for a nice crackly chew. This noise is as good at getting me to fling myself out of bed with visions of him choking, as the sound of throwing up. I'm going to be in real trouble when he figures out how to fake a hairball on top of everything else. 

All of this usually means I didn't sufficiently fill the bowls the prior night and that he is STARVING. So this morning in my usual fashion I stumbled out of bed and while threatening to dismember the little shit, I fed him and the Pig, who was also out and about. This is when I started to notice something missing. Cleo wasn't a part of the madness. I drank some water, yelled at Gryphon for jumping off the counter without even eating a thing and  went back to bed. Laying there I began to think about the last time I'd seen Cleo, it had to have been the prior day, so I called her. 

Now anyone that has cats knows that despite bad word of mouth they do come when called. Having said this, I am disproportionately proud of  Cleo's eagerness to come trotting when I call her, and when she doesn't show up I know there is a problem. She didn't show. 

I got out of bed and started calling her again. Gryphon who was still not eating despite his previous dance of annoyance, stood in the hall and stared at me like I was an idiot. He was right. I could hear a meow from Cleo, but I couldn't locate the origin. 

She wasn't in the studio room, where I had been working the night before. She wasn't locked in the dresser, a place I have found her in the past. But the sound was definitely hall adjacent, and Gryphon was still standing in the hall looking at me disdainfully. 

Then I remembered that I'd opened a drawer rather wide the night before, and Cleo, being the tiny curious thing she is probably took advantage of this opening to explore. Cleo had to be in the hall drawers. 

I went through all of them before I found her. She'd somehow wedged herself in the tightest drawer and had to spend the night there with my sheets. 

As I picked the ecstatically purring creature up, all I could think of was my childhood cat, Moki getting locked in the sofa bed. That was an awful experience, but at least I know to check the house thoroughly before I assume the cat got out. 

Poor silly Cleo. Thank goodness you have a brother who likes you enough to get your idiot human up, or at least gets so desperately bored without you that he will risk the wrath of the waking human to free you from your curiosity.