A Tail Not Hers

We have dramas, again. First: rain. Now I like rain. Well, not freezing rain, but a nice downward mist or refreshing summer rain – even if it’s bordering on tropical storm variety – or a spring rain that brings the promise of a new season of gardening… yeah, I sort of like rain. I prefer not to be out in it too long, and the cats prefer not to be out in it at all. So, rain, this means Jingles was inside being all angsty. That’s the second problem: the angst of a cat trapped indoors by her mortal enemy: water.

I have a theory on why Jingles tolerates Nimoy. Sure, I know the plan was to get a kitten so there wouldn’t be any question about dominance. Well, there shouldn’t have been any question about dominance, but Nimoy is a little dim, as I’ve mentioned before. I don’t think it’s the “she’s a kitten, I’m dominant, therefore I can afford to be gracious” attitude that Jingles has so much as “there’s something clearly not quite right with this one.” It’s just not polite to pick on the mentally disabled; apparently that extends to felines.

Nimoy means well. She tries very hard to keep me from falling into the toilet – she knows from experience it’s unpleasant. And while Jingles likes to ‘play’ with me while I take a bath (I have to take bubble baths if she’s going to join me so she can bat at the bubbles), Nimoy seems genuinely concerned about my welfare sitting in all that water for so long. She paces along the edge, throwing worried looks my direction and peering into the depths to see if the tub really is full of water. Every now and then Nimoy reaches out to try to catch my shoulder or arm and pull me to safety. I really wish she’d stop  because she uses claws to hook me and reel me in. For that matter, I’d be fine taking a bath on my own, but I’m not trusted alone in the bathroom. It’s kind of like having a toddler again.

The problem that arose the other day when Jingles was inside because of the rain, and angsty, was this: Nimoy persisted in playing with a tail that was not her own. The owner of said tail quickly lost patience, then the beatings began. For the most part I sat back and watched Darth Jingles set Nimoy straight on tail-etiquette, but after an hour I decided to intervene. Yes, an hour. No, you don’t get to lecture me on my slow response time, focus instead on the persistence of this absurd kitten.

I mean technically she’s still a kitten, but she’s eight months old now; at a certain point they’re supposed to learn things. When the grumpy black cat reaches out a paw and whaps her on the nose, Nimoy could conclude she did something to earn the rebuke. Maybe pause to think – skip back on the 8-track in that thick skull of hers and review the data – what did she do that made Jingles feel the need to beat her? Don’t blame Jingles either. Occasionally it really is the victim’s fault. If I were beating her that’d be different, but this is cat on cat action here. Jingles has patience, but it can’t be endless or Nimoy would never learn. I will pamper and spoil my cats, but only to a point. No paws on the kitchen counters or table, or pantry or cabinets (remind me to tell you about how we learned that one from experience). Jingles made those concessions in kittenhood and everywhere else in the entire house seems to be fair game.

Darth Jingles can’t be held responsible for the other bits of drama, instead The Girl steps up to take her place in center stage. First, a reminder: I’ve mentioned our invisible spiders before. They’re small to medium sized arachnids that happen to be the exact same color as the carpet. On the wall, they stand out – not like a black spider on a white wall, but enough. It’s that time of year where spiders are once again on the move, and because the temperature keeps bouncing up and down, some are finding their merry way indoors.

The arachnid migration is causing a problem in a few ways: primarily in that The Girl is terrified of spiders and can’t bring herself to step on them even with shoes on. She’s eighteen now and we still have to save her regularly from being trapped forever in a room by a spider lingering a foot away from the only door. Worse is when she sees the spider, screams, scares it causing it to lose its footing, we come trudging to her rescue with a tissue only to find the source of all horror has disappeared. The Girl (now supervised with the promise of immediate intervention should the creature appear again) sprints from her room and refuses to enter it again until she’s found Jingles and confined the cat to her bedroom for two hours to make sure she’s had sufficient time to hunt, kill, and devour the spider. Then she’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room anyway just in case. I’d like her reasoning on why the living room is safer, but I’m honestly afraid to point out the hole in her theory.

A similar and related problem with the new influx of spiders is Nimoy. Now when I say influx, I should clarify, I see maybe one a week. We’re not talking infestation here, just more than mid-winter levels of legs in the house. Now, our darling kitten has taken on a new tendency that has much of the household on edge: staring. Not just staring, she stares, wide-eyed and startled, at a spot on the wall just above your head or over one shoulder. And keeps staring at that spot. Now however much I tell myself I’m being paranoid because I’ve fallen for this before, she won’t stop until I break down and look.

Nothing. Just wall.

Either Nimoy finds the texture of our walls absolutely fascinating, or she’s hallucinating. It’s possible she’s toying with us, much like Jingles does with the occasional mouse, but I doubt she has the intellect. Given The Girl has seen spiders recently, she’s completely freaked out by this new behavior in her kitten.

It gets worse.

The Girl isn’t the only one who’s discovered bugs, Nimoy has too. You guessed it, she discovered the invisible spiders. Now Jingles did this once upon a time – spent time seeming to play with an empty spot in the middle of the living room floor. Closer inspection might reveal something we didn’t want to find, so after the first discovery we all decided closer inspection wasn’t necessary – Jingles picks up her toys. Unfortunately Jingles is stealthier in her maturity and we don’t see her doing this anymore so we sort of forgot about it. Extra unfortunate is that while Nimoy isn’t known for picking up her toys in terms of tidiness, she does pick them up – to move them to a more convenient location. Her claws get caught in the carpet.

Invisible spiders become visible on tile.

Sigh. That’d be fine if Nimoy actually picked them up to move them, because I bet that’d be the end of it. I mean given the relative size of a cat and a spider, I can guess the final result. No. That’s no fun, she herds her new toy to a better playground where she can play with it easier – and The Girl can see it easier. The Girl shrieks, sending Nimoy scampering off to hide and leaving a frantically sprinting spider unattended. Not once have these spiders still been either findable or reachable by the time Hubby or I arrived for damage control.

The Girl is freaking out about all the spiders in the house. All? Hubby got clever. He floated the idea to our little bundle of anxiety that there’s only one, and it’s toying with Nimoy as much as Nimoy’s toying with it. Intellectually they’re probably evenly matched. She wanted to believe that, so she did.

Then the highly improbable happened: Nimoy actually made her first kill. Intentional kill. I suspect she learned not to bite spiders before because it puts a swift and premature end to play-time, and she’s never exhibited hunting behavior so she was never in it for the kill. Any spider mortality at Nimoy’s paws & jaws was purely accidental. This time though …. If The Girl was there it wouldn’t have happened, but she was busy and The Boy was happy to not only recognize Nimoy’s changed behavior, but leave her to it. Nimoy corralled and herded her toy spider for nearly an hour before cornering it and pouncing. The cat may be a little dim, but she’s dedicated. Then she sat by her prey and meowed to get our attention. Of course we fawned over her, rewarding the behavior and all, forgetting Hubby’s story that there was only one spider in the house and Nimoy had just killed it. Another apparently moving in a couple of days later didn’t settle well with The Girl. I haven’t seen the newcomer yet. It was gone by the time I answered my theoretically adult daughter’s high-pitched shriek of dismay.

Back to speaking of rain, two cats trapped inside - one now very grumpy in addition to angsty. Add a high-pitched shriek of dismay. I need to go rescue something from something. Reminder: we only have one invisible spider in the house. One. It lives in the living room and plays tag with the kitten. One spider. That should keep The Girl from sleeping on my couch.

I Don't Want Three Cats

I’m having a sort of cat-related breakdown. Let’s take a look at my feline assets here:

Indoor cats: 1

Outdoor cats: 1

Indoor/outdoor cats: 1

1+1+1=3. We have three cats. We’re not really supposed to, I only agreed to two. The second actually required some persuasion from Hubby and The Girl. By way of clarification: the indoor cat is Nimoy, the indoor/outdoor cat is Darth Jingles, and the outdoor cat is Celery – a stray the girl brought home and the homes in the cul-de-sac have been feeding for a couple of years now. She’s not technically ours, she’s a stray. She’s also skiddish as hell and allows only a handful of people to come with in striking/petting distance. Of that handful of people, three live in my house. Also, we’re the ones who provided a cozy covered box on our porch with a towel nest inside that she snuggle-slept in out of the wind, rain, and snow all winter. She gets cat food and leftovers. And pets. And helps me weed, although ‘help’ is subjective. Celery doesn’t know it, but she’s going to get catnip planted this summer. Jingles doesn’t like it, but she might so we’re planting it.

Setting aside our stray, I’m fascinated by the differences between Darth Jingles and Nimoy. Jingles is a really good cat. She’s well behaved and was easy to train as a kitten. She’s smart. Nimoy is a dimwit and has to be taught everything multiple times before it even begins to sink in to her tiny brain.

Jingles is afraid of vacuums but the blender doesn’t even warrant an ear-twitch, Nimoy is the opposite. Jingles goes outside day and night, Nimoy has only recently decided sitting in the window is safe. In fact, she lay on the window sill a couple of weeks ago, watching and sniffing all the new and interesting varieties of pollen floating in the air. A breeze kicked up, startled her, and she wouldn’t go near a window for days. Nimoy doesn’t like bags, paper or plastic, and only recently discovered boxes might be okay as forts. She’s still testing that theory. I can bring Jingles running from anywhere in the house by loudly shaking a plastic bag open.

On the subject of outdoors, Nimoy couldn’t go out if she wanted to because she hasn’t figured out how the front door works yet. Years ago, when Darth Jingles was little, Hubby hung bells on our front door. Okay, I did, but it was for Christmas and I took them down again. He put them back up. He taught Jingles to bat at the dangling bells to signal that she wanted to go outside. Jingles not only learned that lesson, but reinforcement taught her a more refined version. It isn’t a request, it’s how the door works. First, the door has to be unlocked by one of her humans standing ready. So she has to lead us there. Guests don’t count, although she’s learned to sneak in and out with them. Then she has to actually ring the bells, not just touch them. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t want her to go out, if it’s late or we know it’s going to rain for example, so we remove the bells. At this point, the door is broken. Meowing will not fix the door. The door will be broken until morning. Hubby thinks this is all very clever; no doubt Jingles thinks it’s annoying, but that’s the way the door works. It works against us too. If we don’t want her to necessarily go out, but we didn’t remove the bells and pass close enough to the front door for her to ring them, we have to let her out. It’s the rules. Nimoy doesn’t understand the bell system, although Celery seems to. She hears those bells ring from outside and is there waiting because the door will open and Jingles will launch herself out of the door. If the door unlocks without bells, she doesn’t have to step aside for Jingle’s inevitable catapult down the steps.

Anyway, Nimoy carries off socks and hides them under beds, sofas, chairs, the coffee table, or wherever else she favors to hide that week. Jingles chews on paper, preferably homework. True story: three years ago I had to write a note to The Girl’s Chinese teacher explaining why her carefully written out homework was mangled almost beyond recognition. Jingles was still a kitten at the time, but she still hasn’t outgrown the taste for homework. Also receipts. Last year I discovered her palate has expanded to include tax returns. Nothing in an envelope though, she doesn’t like the taste of the USPS.

Both cats have a phobia about me falling in the toilet and insist on lying on my feet to anchor me in my vulnerable state. Nimoy is significantly more dedicated to the task, whining to get into the bathroom every time I close the door with her on the other side. She comes from other rooms when she hears that bathroom door close, running in a panic to get to me and prevent a disaster. Unfortunately, Nimoy is more likely to cause a toilet-related disaster as she’s jumped into previously used toilets three times now. Never with me, I’m careful, but I’m clearly living with people who don’t pay attention to mentally deficient felines. Curiosity killed the cat, cat.

Nimoy might be occasionally problematic because she’s got ADD. The diagnosis is going around; there’s no reason kittens can’t have it. It’s either that or she’s chronically stupid and I’m trying to be fair about her condition. Also, I’m seriously reconsidering her name. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve the honor of being named after a Star Trek great, but it’s become almost a sick joke. Jumping in toilets (and getting baths in the sink), stealing socks, being afraid of wind, snuggling up next to Hubby’s butt to sleep with her nose practically right up his – you get the picture I’m sure. Nimoy loves smells. Any smells. Burp or break wind her direction and you’ve made a new friend. I’m not a fan of that sort of comedy and now I’m living with it. I’m sure it’s also why Jingles refuses to acknowledge her as cat enough to hang out with and why I hesitate before calling her by name. It just seems wrong. “I just farted in Nimoy’s face so she’s happy.” See what I mean?

Jingles watches our activities and projects, but only helps when asked. Nimoy helps us do everything. She’s constantly underfoot and Hubby stopped trying not to step on her. She helps us build Lego projects, she helped me sew The Girl’s prom dress (a whole other story), she helps prepare meals and do dishes, she helps do laundry and household chores. It’s tedious. Then she helps us sleep at night by walking over us, bouncing back and forth between beds and pillows, and putting her nose right in our faces to make sure we’re still breathing. Never hubby if he’s snoring, that’s apparently obvious and doesn’t require checking. Jingles helps me sleep at night every now and then by simply coming home. Otherwise I worry. Then she sometimes sleeps on the pillow beside me reserved just for her or the down comforter folded over to be extra fluffy over my feet. Or with The Boy, but he doesn’t appreciate it. Besides, there’s nothing like having a little black cat curled up next to your head when you fall asleep. It’s peaceful. Until 2 am when the extra-fluffy tabby wanders in during her bed hopping rounds and your pillow-mate sits up and starts hissing.

Yeah, two cats, yay. I need to find a permanent home for Celery before she becomes official, I won’t survive a third.

P.S.: Nimoy is deeply offended by zippers. Someone want to tell me how that works?

Let Me Tell You About My Family

Let me tell you about my extended family

Hubby has sisters to spare, but only has one brother. That brother is married, and his wife is super special. Really. Super special. Now to be fair, she’s nice. Nice in a really weird way, but nice. For example, I remember when she was worried the kids were hungry because they refused to eat their non-child approved lunch of shrimp cocktail and cucumber sandwiches (which were lovely by the way) so she gave them a package of Oreo cookies to tide them over until dinner. The Girl wasn’t on solids yet when this occurred but I made a note not to let this particular sister-in-law babysit.

Moving on, previously mentioned family member is a wee bit OCD about some things. In particular is an obsession with keeping her living room pristine. Seriously. Your stature in her eyes is obvious depending on whether she allows you to sit in her living room. Or walk in it. Most people (family especially) get hustled from the front door through the entry and directly to the family room opposite the kitchen. I’d also like to say her kitchen is always spotless, and I was a little jealous until I realized it’s because every meal comes from the microwave or a take-out bag.

Another thing she’s OCD about is pets. She doesn’t like them. It just about killed her when her daughter got a gerbil for her birthday two years ago. I believe children should have a pet. It teaches them responsibility and kindness to animals. If not children, teenagers will do. In any case, the gerbil stayed and everything went smoothly, mostly, for a year. Then the gerbil escaped. I thought she was going to have a stroke.

Okay, so OCD, insanely protective of her living room, doesn’t like pets, and has an escaped gerbil on the loose. You know where this is going, right? She tore the house apart, almost literally, looking for that damned gerbil and swearing she would find it before it did any damage. The gerbil had other ideas. We thought the gerbil won, after all, she didn’t find it and time went on.

Then she found it. I think you know that’s not a good thing, not at this point. The gerbil sort of won, at least it got the last word in on behalf of the entire family. Yes, it is now a dearly departed gerbil, and it chose her living room couch as its final resting place. Between the cushions. That no one ever went in there helped prolong the discovery.

Lesson: gerbils are evil. No, wait, that’s not it. Let people sit in the living room. Closer, but no. Life sucks sometimes is a fact, not a lesson. Oh, yeah: Foreshadowing – it isn’t just for entertainment anymore.

Cat Herders

The Girl once had so many interests she couldn’t decide on a career path. We told her it wasn’t a big deal, I mean a lot of college kids change their majors and she wasn’t even close to graduating from high school yet. Now she’s close, and she settled on Marine Biology. She wants to talk to whales. Oh, joy.

The unfortunate part about having a teenage girl with a newfound passion for whale calls, is that I have a teenage girl with a newfound passion for whale calls. Practicing them. At home. Out loud. Darth Jingles has come to grips with the oddity that her girl makes loud, strange noises while wandering around the house and yard, but Nimoy is still freaked out about it. The poor kitten just about jumps out of her skin when The Girl emulates a … I’m going to say blue whale … and she sprints to the safety of Grandma (me). Remember, if The Girl is her kitty-momma, then I’m kitty-grandma. Grandma is much safer to associate with than her mom, and I kind of see how this whole grandparent thing works now from a different perspective.

Before Marine Biology, The Girl had passions for paleontology and anthropology. She still does, in evidence is how many documentaries about mummies we watch. Yay, mummies – the well dressed zombies of the ancient world. I can say that here, but I can’t usually mentioned zombies and mummies in the same paragraph because, while The Girl likes mummies, she hates zombies and everything to do with them. That being said, we recently saw a thing about ancient Egypt and the things they put with mummies. Not just the royal ones everyone gushes over. Proper burial was a big thing back then. Do you know what they used to mummify and bury with people all the time? Not whales, thankfully. Actually no, that would be amusing. The next time Egypt goes on a mummy-making kick, someone suggest whales to ferry the dead to the afterlife, okay?

Cats. Sorry, I got a little sidetracked there. They mummified and buried cats with people. Mummified cats was such a booming business that apparently they raised cats for the purpose. Cat ranches. It stands to reason if there were cat ranches, then there were cat herders. Right?
The Girl and I just about fell on the floor laughing when the narrator mentioned cat ranches, both of us went immediately to cat herders.

For those who don’t know, ‘as difficult as herding cats’ is an idiom referring to how challenging it is to bring differently-minded people together to accomplish a goal. More to the point for the purposes of this tale is that EDS once did a commercial about cat herding. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/vTwJzTsb2QQ . It’s worth a look because this clip is why my daughter was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. I’m not sure where exactly the phrase comes from, but it doesn’t matter.

Literal cat herding - the Egyptians did it.

Kitten Milestones

Nimoy passed another milestone in her catlike growth the other night. Hubby, The Boy, and I were watching ZNation because The Girl was out with her friends. We can’t watch anything scary, startling, or involving zombies when she’s around. Just hearing it or walking into the room and seeing what’s on before we can pause it is enough to give her nightmares. Usually we watch in our room and lock the door, but she was gone so we took advantage of being able to use the bigger TV in the family room.

Anyway, The Girl was gone and we were watching TV. Jingles was outside taking advantage of the slightly warmer and dry weather. The Boy was playing with Nimoy, sort of, and suddenly Hubby remembered we’d never put tape on her paws – a grievous oversight.

Anyone who has done this knows what happens. For anyone who doesn’t: suffice it to say cats don’t like tape on their paws. I’m not sure if it over-stimulates their senses or what, but they react differently to this little problem than others they may be faced with.

Putting a harness on a cat who isn’t used to it is a similar challenge. Most cats interpret that harness (weighs all of a few ounces) as being a five hundred pound load that’s been dumped on them. They fall over, lie down and refuse to move, slink along the floor with their back ‘weighed down’ in a concave shape, or even drag themselves along using only their front legs as if their back is broken. Take the harness off and they’re fine. It’s magic!

Now tape on feet: it doesn’t hurt the cat, but I’m not convinced the cat knows that. It’s sort of like putting a harness on, disabling your loving feline. Sort of. It depends on the cat. I think of it as short-circuiting their traction control so they have to operate with a warning light irritating them.

So The Boy grabbed Nimoy in a snuggle on her back, feet accessible for Hubby. Nimoy doesn’t care for this as a rule, but for some reason she allowed it this time. Odd considering it was The Boy holding her when she doesn’t trust him at all (with good reason.) So Hubby applied and removed the tape a few times on his hand to remove adhesive so it wouldn’t be too sticky. We don’t want to be cruel after all. Then he stuck a small piece of tape covering her cute little jelly-bean toes on her back foot, then the opposite front foot.

Nimoy immediately started shaking her feet around trying to get it off. I collapsed into a chair laughing. Tape turned our kitten epileptic. The Boy set her on the floor to watch her try to walk, and she didn’t disappoint. Some cats refuse to walk with tape on their feet, others just do it weirdly. Nimoy chose the latter option. Forward progress was hindered by the incessant need to shake her feet to try to get the tape off. Then she tried to outrun the sensation, but only went five feet before she had to stop and shake again. Five foot sprint, shake those feet, five foot sprint, shake, and so on. She managed to leave the family room, so we sent The Boy to get her. It’s a tribute to this cat’s dimness that she allowed her tormenter to pick her up again and carry her back. Normal cats would hide at this point.

Hubby removed the tape and scratched her ears, and all was forgotten. It takes so little with this one.

Okay, so that was fun. Then The Girl came home. Was she outraged by our torment of her kitten? No, she demanded to see the show herself because I foolishly forgot to record it.

Round two went much the same way except The Girl saved her ‘baby’ before she ran off. Nimoy was kind enough to purr for Hubby after he removed the tape, completely forgetting he was the one who put it on there in the first place.

A couple of things struck me as odd about Nimoy’s introduction to tape. First, for a cat that’s notoriously vocal and loud, I’m surprised we didn’t get complaining whines when holding her on her back, nor was a peep of any volume, pitch, or duration uttered while she was ‘seizing.’ It’s out of character. Nimoy also doesn’t hesitate to bite and most of the time forgets to retract her claws, yet all parties involved came through uninjured. Blood should have been spilled.

Then we reminisced about when Darth Jingles was a kitten and we did this same thing to her. Jingles has a completely different outlook on life, let’s just put that reminder out there. She did the ‘broken back’ routine when she had a harness on for nearly a year, even though we started training her to walk on a leash from the day we brought her home. Nimoy, in contrast, thinks it’s attacking her and tries to bite it. Add a leash, and it becomes a toy. Try to lead her on the leash, and all hell breaks loose – as in “Oh hell no!” She lies down and you have to drag her. Or you can just wait a few minutes until she forgets the personal liberty infraction, then she hops up and you can guide her wherever.

Back to tape: when Jingles was little we did the same thing. She noticed immediately that she had something on her paws and it wasn’t the floor. The Boy set her down to walk and she froze. She took one tentative step, stopped, shook her ‘defective’ paws, took another step, stopped, shook her paws again. Then walked off. No drama. Jingles had a sort of “F--- it, this is my life now” attitude. Given the over-reaction to the harness, we expected more. We tried tape on Jingles’ paws a couple of more times, hoping for some reaction, but nothing. No more shaking the paws, she just walked away with dignity. She was not going to reward this childish behavior by acknowledging it. Even as a kitten Jingles had charisma.

Although Nimoy plays with yarn. Jingles was half-hearted on the yarn thing, and only if you were holding the other end. As soon as you stopped playing, she stopped. Nimoy takes her war with yarn to new heights. A ball that started off as being stolen from my closet (attached to a blanket I’m crocheting in my spare time), unraveled its way (with help) to the hall, down the stairs, across the entry and around the foot of the table there, back across the entry to the stairs leading to the basement, and (this is my favorite part) got buried in the litterbox.

I awarded that win to Nimoy and detached the yarn string from the blanket. I have more.

Something Wrong With Nimoy

There is something fundamentally wrong with Nimoy. The Girl suspects she's inbred. Just a little, like her grandparents were cousins or something.

First, her ears don't flatten normally. Cats flatten their ears when they're unhappy, but I've never seen Nimoy do it. She doesn't like it when Jingles whaps her; she hisses on occasion, but never flattens her ears. She sort of does when she's "hunting," but it's not the same. Her ears don't flatten in the normal sense; they rotate sideways so she looks like she’s wearing one of those wide-brimmed flat WWI helmets. And her expression isn't one of excitement or concentration, she looks concerned. Also maybe a little dimwitted.

Plus, this cat doesn't know what to do with a box. Oh, sure, The Box Of Judgment is fine, she knows how to perch in there, but all other boxes are beyond her. She'll climb them if it's handy, pull something out of them – particularly packing peanuts to bat around and leave all over the house. There are a ton of packing peanuts and socks stolen from drawers left cracked which she hoards in her stash under The Girl's bed. Weird.

I found a perfect, Nimoy-sized box the other night. I showed her, and she was unimpressed. She tried to get excited about it, I mean she bit it a couple of times. It didn’t do anything or smell or taste interesting, so she tried to walk away. I caught her and put her in the box. Nimoy just sat there staring at me, as if to say "Now what?"

Sigh. So I picked her up and rearranged her into a little sleeping ball and laid her back in the box. I tucked in her tail. She proceeded to bite her tail, but she stayed in the box.

So far so good. I got ready for bed and laid down beside her, the box sitting between my spot and Hubby's for whenever he came to bed.

Seeing it was bedtime, Nimoy jumped out of the box and stretched out in Hubby's spot. She even put her head against his pillow. Box aren't for sleeping in, they're for sitting in judgment of the house.

She is similarly confused by baskets. Except when you upend an empty laundry basket over her, then she accepts her confinement without complaint. She moves it around some, like a little Dalek, but mostly she just sits there. No playing, just a time out. Jingles considers laundry baskets to be toys. Any other type of basket is just a fancy box and is treated accordingly. We’ve held Nimoy while Darth Jingles played in a basket, but Nimoy just didn’t get it.

I seriously don't understand this cat.

Misnamed Cats (And The Box Of Judgment)

The renaming of cats that began in December has continued, and it’s becoming absurd. It started with The Girl rechristening Darth Jingles as Darth Huffy because she’s in a snit about the new kitten, Nimoy. Nimoy is Star Trek based instead of Star Wars, so she was briefly renamed Jar Jar. It should have stopped there, but it didn’t. The Boy got in on it, offering up alternative monikers for his cat as Darth Grumbles, Q.T. McWhiskers, and Remington. Nimoy has gone through Winky (After the Harry Potter House Elf or more likely the derivative of Tinky-Winky from The Girl’s once favorite TV show: The Teletubbies. She’s now embarrassed about this obsession, as well she should be). Nimoy was briefly Nermal (grey tabby in the Garfield comics) also and I almost wished that one had stuck. Swinging to the weird again, the kitten passed through monikers such as Lemon Drop, Meringue, Yelly-bean (because she’s still so vocal), Stupid, Sweetie (as in “Hello, Sweetie,” the catchphrase of River Song from Doctor Who. I’d be good with that one too.), and Tiny Cat. Sadly, Tiny Cat is the one that’s most common now.

This kitten is going to have some serious identity issues. Well, she would, except I suspect she’s too dim to realize what’s happening. As you can imagine, she doesn’t answer to any name, but then again, she’s a cat. Felines aren’t known for coming when called unless there’s food involved. 

The Girl has also taken to gushing about the adorableness of her kitten. There’s no point, she’s a kitten and therefore adorable by definition; waxing poetic about it doesn’t accomplish anything. Regardless, we get daily plus statements about how The-Cat-Formerly-Known-As-Nimoy, or (^><^),  is ultra-special in some way. Well, special as in the unflattering implications of the adjective perhaps… Yes, Nimoy is special. Aside from that, frequently heard remarks go like this:

The Girl: Look at the markings on her face. She’s like a tiny cheetah.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: Her stripes are really pretty.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: And look at her color – she’s not gray and she’s not brown, she…camouflage.

Me: Yes, she’s a tabby.

The Girl: Those tiny pad on her paws, they’re so cute. And her teeth and claws are dainty but sharp.

Me: Yes, she’s a cat.

And so on. Actually The Girl is tired of me pointing out her kitten isn’t really special in any way, any positive way, so she’s started directing her observations elsewhere.

The Girl: She’s so sweet. Look at the way she bats at my nose.

The Boy: With her claws out, yeah, sweet. My cat’s better.

The Girl: She loves sleeping on the back of the chair and snuggling my head.

The Boy: Again: claws. My cat’s better.

The Girl: And she’s not a picky eater. She eats dry cat food or moist. Even the dry no one else likes.

The Boy: And she has semi-permanent gas, fantastic. My cat’s better.

Do you see a theme? She’s turned her attention to Hubby recently, who has a chronic habit of humoring her.

The Girl: Look, she’s –

Hubby: Uh-huh. (Continues typing on computer without looking or paying attention.)

Now Jingles responds to her Girl’s doting over the kitten differently. Very differently. As in ‘if looks could kill’ sort of different. To be fair, if The Girl or The Boy aren’t involved, Jingles is learning to tolerate Nimoy. (Nimoy is still the kitten’s official name, I just haven’t heard it used recently.)

We’re seeing a lot of cat wrestling now. Cat wrestling as in two cats wrestling each other, not as in someone dressed as a cowboy and roping cats. Oh, wait, that’s cat wrangling. Part of the problem is having two cats. Another part of the problem is we have only one “Box Of Judgment” and both want to sit in it and gaze with ultimate power over the household. FYI, the “Box Of Judgment” is a cardboard box that lays on its side and moves around the family room so it can be in the worst possible place at any given time. There is power there.

Anyway, Jingles pins Nimoy easily, I think that’s a given considering she’s three times the kitten’s size and weight and an accomplished hunter. So Jingles pins Nimoy, whaps her a couple of times on top of her head, then sits back to wait. Nimoy lays there on her back and sizes up the situation. Does it cross her mind that things are not in her favor and she should – just as a passing thought – be submissive to the irritable shadow hovering over her? Not usually. Nimoy reaches up tentatively as if to whap Jingles back. She’s yet to make contact with that ploy, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. As soon as she reaches up, Jingles quickly whaps her three times, then sits back to wait again. It typically takes several rounds of this before Nimoy decides it’s not working out in her favor, wiggles away, and scampers off. At some point she’s going to learn not to push Jingles over the line between playing and irritability. Unfortunately, Nimoy’s earned the name change to ‘Stupid’ (through pure observation), so it might take a while for her to learn to stop baiting the dark, cat-shaped shadow who rules this house. At least it’ll be entertaining while she learns.