we bought smudge a new carrier yesterday, because our old one fell apart, and the last time we took him to the vet we just tried to hold him. not surprisingly, restraining a muscular cat in a waiting room full of giant dogs is more than a little difficult. and to add insult to injury (literally, he scratched me to ribbons), he peed all over me.
***posting aborted**** cat isv on desk, attacking typing fingers aNd grabbing mouse away from me..every keuystrolke is charge and retreat onele ttera tatime
smudge has always loved when we make the bed. as soon as you pick up the sheet or blanket to shake it out and snap it over the bed, he's there. he teleports from wherever he is so that as the sheet wafts down to the mattress, there's a distinct lump in the middle. he just has to be there as the blankets float over him. he'll stay under there a while too, until you see the lump move slowly across the bed and deflate at the edge as smudge magically pops out onto the floor.
about two weeks ago jeff and i were making the bed and smudge jumped up onto the mattress just as my fist was coming down and -- thunk! -- i clocked him in the noggin. he took off, and although i ran after him to apologize, the damage was done.
ever since then, when i pick up the bedding, he runs away. i think i mentioned before that when i go to sleep, he waits in the doorway for me to get into the bed before he jumps up to pounce on my legs. he still does that, but if shake out the sheets first, at the first snap of fabric, he's gone. whoosh! he's under the dining room table, in the safety of chair legs, looking out from underneath with a watchful, baleful eye.
it is truly heartbreaking.
UPDATE: the post below now makes less sense, since it was written while i had the "gachapin 8" theme up. i just couldn't take it anymore, and switched back to the old one. to see what i mean, go to "design" and i think it's in the "illustrated" category.
i just popped this new theme in, but it's too too red. my eyes hurt. by the time anyone reads this, it will probably be back to the old cartoon cat theme and this will make no sense. but for the moment, i had to use it, because it reminded me of smudge. but wow, that's a lot of red.
the other day, i walked into the bathroom, and smudgie was in the tub, doing whatever he does in there. when he saw me, he immediately crouched down so that all i could see was the top half of his head peering over the edge. his eyes were enormous black olives, and his ears were flat.
this is not fear or aggression as with most cats, it's his playful "let's have fun as i rip your flesh to ribbons and watch you bleed" posture. that is his favorite game, and he plays it often.
his face as he sized me up and wriggled his butt into pounce/spring mode looked a lot like the big face at the top of this page. only, of course, much cuter, and much much much more deadly.
this is supposedly a blog about our monster, smudge. how he makes our lives so rich and full... i.e., full of bacetracin and broken vases. i am going to digress for a moment. this post will seemingly be about a subject other than smudge, and you may be all, "wtf? omg!" but rest easy, gentle reader, for all will be clear in the end.
jeff and i bought ourselves a wii as our chanukah presents to each other. we stood on line sunday morning, november 19, at TWO stores to get it, and let me just say, target sucks and toys r' us rules.
i never got into the whole video game thing. for one thing, most of the games are violent...well, no, that's not really a problem -- i love blowing things up and shooting people. i think my real problem is that they're so dense. i can't be bothered to look here, shoot this guy, now turn over the box, ok, read the note, now go through the castle door, check the map, kick this guy, kick him, punch, get out your machine gun, no the other one, wait use your invisibility ray...enough already! and to make matters worse, it's all just twitchy thumbs. how am i supposed to remember "right, left, a, +, left, down" makes me pull the whore from the car and shoot her pimp?
so it was with breathless anticipation that i awaited release day. and i was positively giddy driving home with our pretty white box (plus extra wiimote and nunchuk, and "red steel" for jeff). ok, the four hours' sleep may have had something to do with my delirium. i'm not used to getting up at 6:30 on a sunday.
end result? wii is awesome. the best part is how much fun everyone has. it's not often you'll hear my mother say, "be sure to bring the wii with you, i want my friends to try it." It came with a package of basic sports games that are a great workout. And you create avatars to play with. We made versions of ourselves, but we also made einstein, michael jackson, and charlie brown. You really haven't played baseball until you strike out Adolph Hitler.
We bought another game for it, Rayman's Raving Rabbids, and this game is incredible. It's a bunch of mini games, which i love, because if you get tired of one, you can go to something else. It is wild and weird and wacky, and it really gets everyone in the room screaming and cheering and laughing.
so what does this have to do with smudge? truthfully, not much. i just wanted to brag that we have it and statistically, if the media is to be believed, you don't. but he does love watching when rayman and the bunnies disco dance. (following is a crappy video i inserted from you tube. when i get home i'll upload our video of smudge watching the rabbids.)
office max has done something sweet, if a little hokey, for the holiday. it's at www.elfyourself.com - you can upload a picture of yourself and it makes you a dancing elf. so of course i used a pic of smudge. here's the results. (these are screen caps - the actual thing is a great dancing goofball)
i bought a heavy round metal decorative piece at homegoods a while ago, and hung it on our wall diagonally above the sideboard. on the floor directly below the metal circle is a small antique milkmaid's stool. and on that stool sits a large beautiful chinese vase. normally, that would be just another decorating choice. but in my home, it's a constant source of stress.
smudge has decided he needs to redecorate, and that all the paintings and artwork in the place must go. he started with my collection of art glass pieces i kept on a high shelf above the tv. (i know, what was i thinking?) now most of them are either broken or have been relocated to the floor.
then the monster cast his yellow eye on our paintings and other framed works. looking around the living room last night, i noticed that every frame was crooked. that's because smudge gets underneath them and swats them or pulls them or pushes them until they're cock-eyed. some he manages to get off the wall entirely.
i had a high school picture of my father framed and then stupidly hung it between the tall entertainment center and a bookcase. smudge used it as a stepping stone. it's now permanently on the floor. another print, of a painting of salome from the met, has been knocked down so many times, jeff bent two tiny nails on the bottom corners to hold it down.
back to the homegoods wrought iron circle: of course, smudge has to take it off the wall, because its very existence offends his artistic sensibility. this panics us mainly because of the possibly antique vase beneath it. and i WILL NOT move it. that would be admitting defeat.
so jeff took clear duct tape and taped that motherf-ing thing to the wall in four different places. it's not pretty, but maybe it'll get smudge to focus his attentions elsewhere, right?
last night i caught "tomcat filicia" underneath the metal piece, peeling the tape off the wall with his teeth.
so while we were watching tv last night, smudge jumped up on the sideboard (buffet? credenza? whatever) as he usually does, and found two packs of plastic silverware i had left there, and began eating the plastic baggie. attempts to distract him with the laser were futile, so i got up and walked over to him, ready to give him a good yell.
and he walked up to me, climbed up onto my shoulder, turned himself around, and settled onto my chest for a cuddle.
okay. i petted him for a bit, and then put him down so i could go back to the couch. he followed me, and as soon as i sat down, he jumped up and climbed back onto me. this is weird. he might do that occasionally after i've been out all day and he got lonely, but we've been home for hours.
then he jumped off me, and walked over between me and jeff, flopped down, curled himself around jeff's arm, held his hand, and went to sleep. he spent the next half hour dozing, switching positions once in a while, usually pressed against jeff's thigh or grabbing his wrist.
most cat owners will be wondering why i even bother to write this. normal cat behavior, right? maybe if you have a normal cat. smudge is so bizarre, that i have to tell myself he's like my emotionally disturbed child so that i cut him a little slack and not shake him to death. so curling up next to mommy and daddy voluntarily is very abnormal.
i was actually wondering if he was sick, and how i would explain his symptoms to the vet.
We got smudge at a shelter, and on the way out, we stopped at their little pet supply store and bought the essentials: some food, a collar, and one toy. It was a stick with a completely useless suction cup at one end, and a stuffed felt flower thingy tied to the other end with elastic string. you all know what i'm talking about.
smudge loved that toy. we stuck it to the table and he went nuts jumping and grabbing and pulling and chewing on the stuffed doohickey. it had a few ribbons dangling off the end, and maybe a bell too. of course it took him maybe a day to rip that thing off the stick, and off the string, so that he was left with just the stuffed flower-ma-bob. but that was fine with him.
we've had smudge eighteen months, and the whatsis, which i named norman, is still with us. yes, it's seen better days. some of the seams have ripped open, and cotton stuffing is bulging out. the felt is wispy and pilly amd basically disintegrating. there are three shiny raggedy pieces that used to be the dangly ribbons.
but smudge loves norman, loves him like he loves no other toy. not his snake, not his bulldog, not any catnip filled mouse. when norman gets put away into the toy bucket with all the other toys, smudge will dig through it and pull norman out. he may have to get some of the others out first, but they are left on the floor while smudge gallivants off with his best friend. norman has been through it all with him, and they still play together like they did in the kitten days. smudge grabs him and flings him into the air, then launches himself into a crazed pounce to nab norman before he gets away.
i've opened my bag at work and found norman in it (i confess, that made me cry a little -- i thought smudge had loaned me his friend to play with while i was away). i've woken up to see norman in bed with us. i've found him under the kitchen cabinets. and today, after smudge threw norman around for a while, he picked him up, took him into the bathroom and left norman in the tub.
why? well, smudge loves the tub. he naps there. he plays there. sometimes he joins one of us as we shower there. and he often jumps in after we leave the shower, to drink up the yummy water left behind (i know, i know). so i think he put norman there for safekeeping, and also because he thinks norman will have a nice rest.
until he comes back to play some more.
i confess: i read in the bathroom. it's a habit my sister and i got from our father, much to our mother's horror. she said it was poor manners, gauche, and caused problems in the bathroom. she never specified, but i think she hinted around hemorrhoids.
anyway, i have a drawer in the vanity next to the toilet that's full of magazines and paperbacks. and sometimes, if i'm exceedingly lazy, i leave a couple of things on the countertop. usually it's the only two magazines i read - vanity fair and games. both probably are terrible choices - v.f. has very long articles, and even i agree doing crosswords in the john is just declasse.
the point of telling the world this in a blog that's supposed to be all about our mischevious cat? well jeff and i remember this differently. i thought we came home and i walked into the bathroom to find a surprise. jeff says we were home, heard a noise, and went to see what happened. either way, this is what we found:
by the way, i haven't blogged in a while, because smudge was going through a phase of normal-catness. not normal for him but normal for a cat. you know, sleeping most of the day, following you around and flopping next to you to get bellyrubs, and purring. none of the ankle-biting, head-pouncing, surprise-attacking behavior we've come to expect.
well, that didn't last too long. he's taken to hiding behind the bedroom door so that when i walk in or out of the room he can jump out and rake the flesh off my feet with his teeth.
welcome home, smudgie, we missed you.
