Suzy Says

At the risk of turning this blog into Cats’R’Us, here’s a cat news roundup!

Megan’s kittens (seen here at my place in the city) are adjusting well to their new home in the country. Megan has taken them outside a few times, where they zoom around like freaks, climb trees, and terrify the local wildlife. Harriet, the silver kitten, is still using the litter box inside. She hasn’t figured out yet that the woods is not only her playground, it’s her litter box, too. When they are a little bigger and know their names, Megan will start letting them go outside by themselves.

Often on the weekends, Rufus wakes up early — or rather, gets woken up — by the cats and feeds them, then goes back to bed. When he does this, he leaves me note so I don’t feed them again when I get up. Our cats can be very convincing, and when I’m staggering to the kitchen thinking, “Coffee! Coffee!”, they mill around my feet impeding all movement and explaining earnestly that they haven’t been fed yet that day, or possibly that week. Cleo in particular has Sarah Bernhardt-like qualities of projection and histrionics, and accompanies her performance with reaching up and knocking some of the food on the floor as it approaches her dish. You can’t feed her without that part of the game.

Last week’s note was a poem:

The cats have been fed,

So go back to bed

And hopefully their litterpaws

Won’t step on your head.

This reference is to Miss Jackson, who somehow manages to get litter stuck in her fuzzy little paws and then distributes it in unexpected destinations throughout the house, like inside my shoes (one of Cleo’s favored hiding places for toy mice) or between the sheets, where it can really surprise you.

This week’s note was a hilarious drawing of Rufus feeding the cats while they are wahing loudly and he is yelling “Shuuut uuup!” None of this wakes me up, of course, since I can sleep through earthquakes and Jack’s daily attempts to wake us up to give her breakfast. Jack’s methods are usually running across our heads and slamming the blinds against the window.

So although I missed feeding time at the zoo this morning, the artist’s rendering is the next best thing to being there.

I’m against naps as a rule. They mess up your sleeping patterns, and well, they just seem wrong. But I do occasionally indulge. On Friday, I decided to take a nap, so I put on my bunny pajamas and curled up in my featherbed. As soon as I did, Cleo joined me. She curled up against my chest, purring and keeping an eye out for monsters or anything else that might dare to disturb my sleep. When I woke up an hour later, she was still there, warm and purring, on patrol. I felt so happy and safe. She has never, ever done this with me before, though she often does it with Rufus. It was magic.

And finally, Hannah should have been a ship’s cat in the great days of sail. Every night she sleeps on Rufus like he’s her bunk, and no matter how much he tosses or turns or rolls over, she just goes with the flow and rides it out like nothing ever happened. As soon as he settles down, she does, too. I think her secret fantasy is to be alone with him on a desert island. But she’d probably settle for the high seas, as long as she had him all to herself.