Cat Tales

It's 8.30 in the morning, and already this day has been nuts. I'll start with the lovely surprise of finding some of our wedding pics on East Side Bride this morning (I think my bestie Jen finally thinks I'm cool. She should stop reading now though because the rest of this post will change her mind back...) Kirsty has written the best guide to (getting married in) Edinburgh I've read in ages, and I have realised I've not eaten in a single one of the restaurants she's recommended so shall have to rectify that straight away. It made me super homesick- I love how quirky and interesting things in Edinburgh are. Even the Starbucks' are squished into the original architecture of the city. I am SO excited about my trip home in a mere 6 weeks!

Anyway, this post is about my morning, which has largely centred around Joan. We've had her now for 4 months, but it feels longer. She is really odd. Husband keeps reminding me that all cats are weird, but she seems particularly strange. Joan only answers to 'Cat'. Particularly 'Cat' said with an Aberdonian accent (I guess if you say 'coht' you're close...) This is, I'm aware, my own damn fault. But it certainly adds to her quirks. She's pretty violent. Her way of greeting is to bite you in the soft, tender bit of your wrist. She doesn't break the skin, but she does leave a good bruise. We are slightly concerned when we have kids she will treat them as a wriggly chew toy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Joan's worst habit is her insistence in getting up (and therefore getting us up) at 6.30 every damn morning. We have been trying to figure out how to keep her from scratching the bedroom door to shreds, and have a pretty complicated system in place. It doesn't work. We have a plastic draft excluder that slides over the door. This was an attempt to stop her putting her paws under and scratching the carpet. It worked, until she figured out she could just pick at the excluder, which would make an unholy noise and eventually drive us out of bed to shut her up. So I used duct tape to stick the excluder to the door. This worked for a few nights, but then she figured out the duct tape was more fun to scratch at than her scratching post, so we were back to step one. Eventually, we discovered the SSSCAT motion detector spray. This is magic and whenever she came close to the door, the spray went off, and she ran.

Eventually, though, she figured out that she could bypass it running through her tunnel, then lying very flat against the door to scratch it. Seriously. We moved the spray around a bit to see if we could get it into a position she couldn't escape. This resulted in disasterous morning number one.

I had woken up early to pee, and went to open the door to let her in. The door wouldn't open. At all. I figured out that the night before, I had stuck the sprayer on to the door with duct tape, and during the night Joan had knocked it over, and it was jammed between the door and the cupboard next to it. Yup, the cat had locked us in our bedroom. Every time I stuck my hand in the gap in the door, Joan would pounce, thinking it was a game. I bashed away trying to move it for ages, and all I managed to do was remove the duct tape, but it didn't shift the sprayer. Eventually the grumpiest husband in the world came over and managed to flick the can away with one move. Disaster (mostly) averted.

This morning, the usual scratching started at 6.30 (she is now just not scared of the sprayer, and ignores it.) At quarter to seven, the scratching went crazy, and I could hear her chewing on something. I opened the door, and she bounced into the room and onto the bed. Everything seemed fine. Until she came over and sat on me. She had managed to get the duct tape completely stuck to her front paw. And she was chewing at it to get it off. I don't know exactly how bad it is for your cat to eat duct tape, but I'm going to presume it's not good. I knew I had to pull the tape off, but equally knew it was going to be the hardest thing ever. I was right. It was wrapped completely around one of her claws. 5 minutes (felt longer) and MANY bites and scratches later, she was unstuck. She jumped around happily for a few minutes, then proceeded to chew at the other paw.

Both feet were duct taped. I laughed out loud. Mother effing cat. The second paw was a LOT harder. It was totally wrapped round, was stuck in the fur, generally just a big sticky nightmare. This one took longer, Joan was even more aggitated and I was grumpier. Thankfully she is free now, and dozing happily in her basket. I am tired and grumpy and ready for a cat-fur handbag. Pet ownership. Just magical.