cat infestation

who, me?

I was very proud of myself this morning- I got up a little early, got out of the house a little early, and was sitting calmly on a bus when I got an unknown-number call. I picked up to the sound of my apartment manager trying to talk over a howling cat.

That was my cat, and I was sitting on an express bus headed the opposite direction of the howling cat. "Um, do you have a black cat?" politely asks my manager between wails. Kitty was locked in the lobby. The perpetrator of the heinous crime this poor little creature was suffering from came off as being me, but is actually herself. That little beast is a weasel.

Her brother is a tiny bit of a weasel as well, he has a couple quirks (obsessive clawing of packages of paper towels, sliding along the hardwood floors using the upholstery of furniture as leverage included), but she is a serious weasel. She barks for water from the tub faucet if you so much as turn the direction of the bathroom. She sits on the countertop in plain sight. She eats houseplants. She bites off the ends of anything skinny- drawstrings, qtips, shoelaces- and worst of all, she is an escape artist.

When we lived in our little house on the top of the hill she'd escape outside and it would take hours and many food and toy jingles to get her inside sometimes, with the hiding and the dashing making it quite difficult. Here she doesn't get far, as the front door only leads into hallways, but it's never fun to chase a cat, belly on the ground and neurotically disoriented from the identical-looking doors and walls without windows, around and around in the hallway in your pajamas after taking the garbage out, only to fear running into a neighbor and looking like a buffoon. Or the best is when the cat is not realized to have disappeared until a neighbor brings it to your attention with a polite knock. She is such a weasel that she can escape when you think it's unlikely, and then disappear into the labrynth of hallways until you're back inside again.

Granted, she's a little bipolar, she's never aggressive and is very affectionate and cute and will fly through the air in performance, so that works to her advantage, keeping me from throwing her out. Everyone loves a soft, cute, kitty.

Soft, cute, weasel kitty.