I have some felines in my home. Two of them came with my daughter. Beans is a beautiful white siamese which has clear blue eyes and is beyond striking in appearance. Then there is his best buddy in crime, Clooney, which I swear has some wild tiger his his bloodline.
Every morning Beans tries to share my breakfast of a granola bar. Meanwhile his cohort, Clooney, starts helping himself to my coffee.
Seriously, the coffee is poured out and the granola bar is broken into pieces and put into a bowel for Beans, which he usually ignores, because I guess it is all about communal eating for the little chap. To have a piece broken off and put in a bowel is not the same as chewing on one end of the bar while I am holding it in my hand.
Needless to say breakfast time is not usually a calm relaxing way for me to start the day. It is more like a survival feat just to be able to drink my coffee and eat my granola bar in peace.
The little tykes are so cute though it is hard to be harsh with them. But alas I used to have a house which was mine. I fear I have relented my power to the felines.
My house used to have rules for my felines. I only allowed the two older girl cats to sleep with me because they knew the bed rules.
No grooming once you hit the mattress is the most important rule. There is nothing so irritating as having my bed shake because some pesky cat has decided that three AM is the perfect time to groom their fur.
The two older cats were very well trained and never groomed while on the bed. The others only demanded an all out slumber party every once in a while and they too abided by the house rules.
Then my daughter moved back in with her two cats and it has been all out chaos since.
Clooney is an alpha male and he does not take “NO!” for an answer. If I try to lock him out of my bedroom at night, he body slams the door. If that does not get my attention then he uses insidious torture methods. He slides his little paw under the door, in and out, to make just enough of a rumble that sleep evades me.
I relent and let him in my room most nights because it is just easier to be a door mat to this cat than to hear the body slamming all night long.
When he enters my room he has a routine. He usually starts off on the floor. Once I am in deep sleep he decides the floor is beneath him.
He wants to spend the rest of the night on my pillow which is beside me in bed. He could walk around the bed and lay on the pillow and I would be none the wiser but this is not how he lands on the pillow. No, always, without fail, he jumps on my bed and the first landing spot is my chest from which he launches onto the pillow. Thank God I don’t have silicone boobs. One could only imagine the horror of piercing one of those with a cat claw.
Well this morning I must have had enough room beside me in bed. He bypassed the launching onto the pillow trick. He had a new trick. He instead decided to plop down beside me and immediately started to break the cardinal rule. He groomed himself.
Off he went by the push of my hand. I resumed my struggle to go back to dream land and before I had even gotten one step into my dreams. PLOP! There he was again! Dagnabit he started that silly grooming exercise again. So he soon found himself back on the floor. I mean one must be consistent with contrary felines.
This cat would rule the world if he was a man. He does not give up! (I am thinking of suggesting to my daughter that we call him Napoleon instead of Clooney.)
In no time at all, he had come back up beside me plopping his body into the contour of my chest and this time there was no grooming. Aha success at last! Just one minor problem, I was already wide awake. Gads!
You may think that I should find a new home for this cat but he has a very redeeming quality. He is my writing buddy. When I write my novels he lays on a little plush bed on my desk to be a much needed distraction. When I get writer’s block I just hand my pen and paper to him and he takes over.
I have included a picture of him working hard on my novel outline just the other day.
