It’s only a matter of time, I suppose, when you live with two small, furry psychopaths, that something is bound to happen that makes you wonder what they are thinking.  I’m not suggesting that I’d actually like to know of course because, if history is any indication, they may both want to kill me at any given time for the stuff they do, and I don’t need to be any more paranoid than I probably already am.

The point is that, having returned from my recent trip to Atlanta, I fully expected I would be met with two things:

• A utility room that had been messed up from their several days being limited to that area
• Stormy making an incredible amount of noise for an extended period of time

This return home was, as you’d expect, no disappointment and they delivered on expectations brilliantly.  The utility room wasn’t exactly a disaster, but it did need the normal sweep and Swiffer mop run to get back to a semblance of normal.  Stormy, on the other hand… well… he clearly had a lot to say.

From the minute I arrived and for over thirty minutes straight thereafter, he unloaded a non-stop series of meows that seemed like it may never end.  This, coupled with him following me everywhere I went around the house, seemed to bespeak a need to communicate something, which got me thinking: “What if he actually WAS trying to communicate something and I just lack the ability to understand his frantic monologue in cat speak.”

The end consequence, of course, was that I thought it might help to toss out a few potential scenarios of what he was trying to say over the course of that half hour, from a few different perspectives, and see if any of them upon review seemed to explain the mania that was clearly going on.

 

“Where the Hell have you been?”

The first thought that comes to mind is sheer panic and insecurity… Stormy is basically giving me an earful for being gone for a few days.  “You bastard! Where have you been?!?!” Followed by a series of stories that he was worried, stayed up all night, couldn’t eat for days, thought he made it VERY clear when I was leaving that I was to be home by midnight… something along those lines. 

Stormy in a parenting role was going from being annoyed and angry to an emotional wreck… how could I do this to him, heartless jerk that I am, leaving him with his brother, expecting that (and their normal 15+ hours of sleep every day) to cover them.  The horror, the horror… in true Marlon Brando, Apocalypse Now fashion.  The nerve of some humans… how dare I?

And he is following me saying “Are you listening to me? Don’t you walk away from me!  I’m talking to you!” which, of course, sounds like “meow…meow…meow…” but he seems content with whatever the hell is coming out of his mouth.

Annoyed and distraught?  Possibly…

 

“Do you have any idea what he was doing?”

The second possibility is that he’s decided to take on the role of confidant, NARC, and tattle tale.  Lucky did something, like… trash the room… and now that I’m home, he’s going to tell on his little brother.  “You won’t believe what this little bastard did.  You remember how you left with all the litter in the box?  Well, yeah, he said ‘screw the human’ and proceeded to spread that shit all over the room.  I was there.  I saw him.  I told him you’d be so mad and I was going to tell, but he did it anyway.  He didn’t even care.  You aren’t going to take that are you?  Are you?”

I suppose it’s possible that, with the disaster that had occurred Stormy was entirely innocent.  He could be chasing me in an attempt to both implicate his little brother and exonerate himself from any potential consequences of their heinous wrongdoings.  Nothing gives me a sense there is such a thing as cat loyalty given the number of times they knock each other deliberately off the cat tree.  It’s all about who gets that top pedestal and it doesn’t matter how long the other guy has been there (or how comfortable he is) when the other one wants it.

Stormy the informant?  Sure… I can wrap my head around that, especially because Lucky is probably the most destructive cat in the history of fur beasts.

 

“I’ve got a great idea!”

The only possible other option is that, given the incredible feat of engineering involved in the time that the cats built an invisible mechanical device that lifted the fireplace grating over several blocks of wood in the old house, he had a Nobel prize-level epiphany and he needed to tell me about it.  Cats having no appreciable longer-term memory, that might actually be a matter of simple practicality as if he was like that Guy Pierce character who forgot everything ten seconds later in Memento. “Hey, I’m SO glad you’re back.  You won’t believe this.  You remember that cold fusion bullshit hype thing from like twenty years ago?  Well, here’s the thing… Since you left us like an ungrateful, heartless ass for all this time, I got to thinking… what if I could use our drinking water, some cat litter, a hacked up furball… and, anyway, long story short… make a cold fusion device, blow up the house and get me and Lucky out of here?  I know, that probably sounded a little harsh, but you weren’t here, you know… and we only had enough food for the next three months, so I had to plan ahead.  You understand right?  Anyway, can you maybe write this down, because I don’t have opposable thumbs, you know, and I’m pretty sure I’d be the first cat ever to win the Nobel Prize in Physics… Hey, seriously, don’t walk away.  I need you to write this down before I forget.  This is serious…”

Yeah, ok, maybe that’s not a very likely situation.  Cats are morons after all, and given Stormy would rather smack his head into the container to release more food than just reach with his paw and get it out, something about a cold fusion device feels a little like a stretch…

 

Anyway, the point is that I really have no idea why he would continue to go off for over a half hour, but if I had the ability to understand his ranting cat speak, would the result be anything good?  Perhaps.

On the other hand, I suppose if he literally was just saying “you asshole…” over and over again, maybe I don’t really want to know.  Ignorance is bliss.

-CJG 04/16/2022