ellen_datlow

It's so true! And it explains all those mysterious bruises I wake up with, too. :) (I've got two cats.)

Back 25 years ago this month, my mother bought a beautiful shaded silver Persian that she named "Woodrow". Woodrow was a wonderful cat in many ways, and I've missed him immeasurably in the fifteen years since he died, but he had one habit that we were all glad he grew out of. As with most cats, he'd get bored in the middle of the night, so he'd go wandering about the house looking for someone to entertain him. Unlike most cats, though, he didn't satisfy his needs by yowling or by simply crawling into bed with the nearest person. No, he'd come into a room, purring like a badly tuned Volkswagen Microbus, and wait for the applause. If that didn't work, he'd trot to the nearest victim and jump onto his/her chest. Still no response? Time for an increase in the purr volume, with additional rubs of the victim's nose. The poor victim shows no vital signs? Now it's time to start licking the nose, and if that gains no response after all that effort, a quick chomp guarantees that Woodrow becomes the only cat in the neighborhood regularly pegged across a room at 2 in the ayem.

Suffice to say, I'm glad he didn't live to see that video. It's not that he would have picked up ideas. He would have written to the animator and suggested that it didn't go far enough.

(Now, things could always be worse. My old savannah monitor Gwangi had a thing for ripping large holes in the top of his cage, climbing out of the cage, and climbing into bed with me. He wasn't obnoxious or needy: I'd just wake up in the morning with a very large lump under the blankets that grumbled and hissed when poked. I didn't mind, though: I was still rooming with an ex-girlfriend who thought I could be a roomie "with benefits" whenever she'd strike out on a date, and Gwangi's nighttime romps guaranteed that she left me alone and let me get some sleep, especially after the time she tried to sneak into bed and the lizard nearly took her arm off. This is why I recommend reptiles as pets.)

YES.

Or at least half right. We have two.

Sigh.

This is way too close to the truth. I have a 22 pound Maine Coon. Large, sweet, fluffy, dumb, and he INSISTS on sleeping on my pillow, wrapped around my head. And when it's time to wake me up, he gets obnoxious in many ways, starting with licking my forehead and moving on to forcing me off the pillow altogether...

Now you know why we lock the cat out of our bedroom at night.

Well, that, and the time a 4-kilo tabby leapt from the top of the wardrobe in the opposite corner of the room onto Vic's chest, and the time the Siamese dropped a dead cockroach into Elaine's navel...

Oh, I know! I love that little movie.

I had a cat once, and her name was Helen (short for The Great Helen of Peerless Whose Face Could Launch a Thousand Combines), and she was my One True Cat. However, she had a rather regrettable morning routine not unlike the hero of this movie. After walking all over me, she would like my nose until I woke. Sometimes, her prickly tongue would nearly remove the skin from my face before I woke, but it worked.

Cats. Why do we love 'em when they treat us so badly?