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

First of all, I’ve had some coffee… so put a check in that box.  I’m not saying anyone is safe, because my second cup is still mostly full, but at least the light isn’t blinking red with the sirens blaring like they would if I wasn’t this far.

Second, I’m an idiot.  Understanding I’ve had coffee, the statement should be taken with a degree of seriousness, because obviously a staggering, drooling, half-conscious person with no coffee is an idiot solely because they are attempting to engage in discussion without any caffeine-driven support in the first place.  No, that’s not this situation, so sit down, get your own preferred beverage… even if that’s tea, which is stupid of you… listen to this nonsense, and you’ll quickly understand why I’ve said it.

I have two cats.  That is understood. They are passive aggressive morons.  This is also established through my previous recollections of their assault on the Christmas tree and fireplace in my last place of residence.  The behavioral pattern being documented, we’d like to think that, as a fairly “evolved” species and a reasonably intelligent guy, there’s a decent probability that I’d learn how to cope with these furry imbeciles in residence in a more effective way over time.  You’d think that, right?  Right?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  Go back to your coffee/tea and relax.  This isn’t that story.

So, since we’ve moved into the new place, life has been fairly under control and without “incident”, which is amazing given the amount of time I’ve spent in Georgia and the access they’ve now had to my drums and recording equipment.  That isn’t to say that Lucky hasn’t marched across the mixing board and muted certain channels and messed things up or knocked over the table that had my laptop on it, sending that to the floor so I could find it all in a big pile once or twice… of COURSE he’s done that.  Doing harm while no one is in sight of him is Lucky’s specialty.  He’s like the master ninja of stupid shit to do when no one is around to catch him.  That all being said, we’ve had a relatively peaceful, non-confrontational experience over the last 10 months here, and I guess we were just due for some level of stupid to work its way into the light.

So, in moving to the new place, I had to figure out a place to keep all the cat toys.  Seems like a simple enough task, but in this place (unlike my last one), keeping them in a closed off bedroom is much more inconvenient because you’d have to go upstairs to get things and it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle.  As a result, I made the “brilliant” and “efficient” decision during the move in process to put the toys in a cabinet that is near where the cats have their bowls.  Now, before you start nodding and thinking you know the outcome, just take a pause and wait bro… this isn’t your story, so take two steps back and wait for your turn.  We’re not there yet.

Considering myself reasonably educated in pea-sized cat brain behavior, since moving in, I have always been very careful not to let them see the toys come out or go back into the cabinet.  That takes some effort at times, given they never seem as interested in a toy as the minute you stop playing with them with it, but I’ve generally been very careful to distract them just long enough that the toy can be put away without them seeing where it’s going.  That is specifically based in the fear that their diabolical little minds will realize they can pull that cabinet open on their own and then the rules of organized society will come crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.

That was my process and discipline.  Be careful, be deliberate, maintain secrecy, and no one gets hurt… until about two days ago.  For some reason that we can probably only refer to as a TOTAL MENTAL LAPSE, I put a toy back in the cabinet right in front of Stormy… as in, he was about two feet away and witnessed the entire thing.  Now, I’m sure I must have been thinking… “what possible harm can come from just one lapse in the (otherwise) deliberate and thoughtful approach we’ve been taking to this situation?”  Yeah, that must be it, because “how can I possibly screw up a good thing” likely wasn’t the idea going through my head at that moment in time… at least, I’d like to think it wasn’t.   Realizing that I’d just taken a slight risk, I pushed their cat bed next to the door so that all of its four ounces of total weight could provide an impregnable barrier to any attempt they may make to get in there… just in case.  Yeah, I know… a daunting obstacle.

Anyway, from about an hour later, and through most of yesterday, I’d occasionally hear a quick little ‘bump bump’… coming from the kitchen.  It’s a sound I haven’t heard before and is clearly the audible result in cats trying (and failing) to get a cabinet open.  So, in this situation, you’d think that my somewhat evolved and developed brain would think “hmm, maybe I need to do something to make sure they don’t get in there”… You’d think that, and I wouldn’t like you, and I’d probably say “mind your own damn business… I’m ok with being accountable for my stupid choices”, but that’s not really the point.  The point is that, despite every warning that a problem was coming, I didn’t do anything other than leave a fairly harmless cat bed in the way of two motivated, devious little fur demons from hell with something they clearly wanted on the other side of that door.

So, sleeping with the peace of mind that only comes from being utterly oblivious, I woke this morning thinking today would just be another day of making coffee, feeding the morons, and rolling into the day… that’s not what happened…

I came downstairs to find cat toys strewn across the entire floor, both in the kitchen and living room.  It’s like the cats made multiple trips to the cabinet, brought stuff out, took it into the living room, played for a while, got tired of it and thought… “maybe I ought to try something else and play with it in a different spot, this one is kinda played out”.  More like that.  Not surprisingly, when I appeared on the stairs, both cats made a dash for the basement like they knew it was about to get real the minute I saw the mess.  How this is possible with pea-sized cat brains that seem incapable of about any level of intelligent thought…?  I have no idea, but I guess survival instinct is a real thing, even when you theoretically have nine lives to expend in the first place.

Anyway, the good news about their prompt exit was that it afforded me the opportunity to pick everything up and return it to the cabinet without them observing, but it seems like a pyrrhic victory at best when they obviously know where the goodies are at this point.

So, here we stand.  Clearly a new level of security was needed if the toys are to remain safe and secure in their present location, so I used the trusty and reliable “rubber band strategy” to attach the two adjacent cabinet door handles, hoping that will make it almost impossible for the two thieves to either open the cabinet doors or to keep them open for more than a second even if they do.

The question is what will happen next.  Will this measure of added safety prove out, or is this yet another hopeless endeavor into being outsmarted by the two smallest, non-Sicilian creatures in residence…?  It’s a battle of wills and time will tell.

In the meantime, I’ll open as I began… I’m an idiot.  I had this situation under control, or so I thought, until one temporary lapse in focus was enough to remind me that there are criminals under my roof, and you can’t show them an open safe without expecting them to steal the contents the minute you look away.

This war isn’t over, but for today we remain vigilant… and committed to the cause.

-CJG 06/27/2018

Ok, I admit it… I’ve lost.  I’ve lost and I’m befuddled… well confused, that’s a better choice.  And my coffee isn’t really working yet, what’s that about?  Dammit.

Back to the point… ever since the domestic violence unleashed on my Christmas tree, not that long ago, robbing it of its tree skirt and exacting what can only be described as acts of unholy, godless violence upon it, it’s been a question of what these two idiots would do next.  Not really a matter of “whether”, you see, just “when” and “to what”?  These are cats, after all… Lords of the Idiot Animal Kingdom… like, if there was a pet equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys, these fools would be the lion with the little crowns, except they’d never let the crown stay on their head for more than a second, because that would be cute… and they don’t play like that.  They make their own damn rules… and… ok, I’m a little off topic.  I have two cats.  They are idiots.  Enough said right?  Well.. and my coffee isn’t working quite yet.  Could be some weird form of Columbian revenge, since I spilled a small amount of coffee grounds on the counter this morning… and now I’m paying the price to Juan Valdez and his Columbian brothers… and… shit.  Off topic.  Let’s focus here.

The cats.  Morons.  Start with that.  Add a great room and a fireplace… Now, you’re probably thinking… “Ok, I see where this is going.”   No, you don’t.  You don’t see where it’s going.  Set aside your basic assumptions of normal pet stupidity and assume some hallucinogenic-level stupid, and you’re starting to get warm.  Dora couldn’t find the level of stupid my cats are able to muster with the map in her backpack and the entire audience of one million five year olds shouting directions three times, over and over at every step of the damn trip.  That kind of stupid.  And by the way… Jesus Dora… get to Benny’s barn already, its right on the other side of Crocodile Lake, and over Strawberry Mountain.  Who makes a mountain out of strawberries anyway?  I highly doubt that could support the weight of a person… you’d sink like you were in strawberry quicksand.  You’d sink and then you’d be dead… and that would suck.  And no one wants to eat the number of strawberries necessary to get out, whether you like strawberries or not… You’re done.  Anyway… I hope when she finally gets to Benny’s Barn the bull kicks her in the head, so MAYBE she starts remembering the damn directions and saves her entire audience the hassle of repeating that shit forever.  She clearly needs electroshock, or some kind of mental reset… like in that one Avengers movie where Scarlett Johansson bangs Jeremy Renner’s head into a pipe and all the evil mental stuff is gone… THAT kind of reset.  What?  Off topic?  Blame the coffee… I’m just a victim in this.  Ok… I’ll get another cup.  Hold please…

Ok, where were we?  Right.  The idiots and the fireplace.  Now, I must clarify, this has been an ongoing thing.  A war that has been being waged between me and the miniature morons who live in my home for months now.  I thought I had gotten somewhere safe, but clearly I was wrong, and I’m stupid… and I’m a grown up… and I can accept that shit.  Doesn’t mean I like it though, so take two steps back bro.

So… to go back to the beginning, here’s the basic thing: the cats have a fascination with the fireplace.  I don’t know why.  I’m not a cat psychologist or a cat whisperer… I’m just the big idiot who feeds the smaller idiots and cleans up after them every once in a while.  They want in there.  It’s a thing.  It doesn’t seem to be the case that they want to roll around in the ashes and then spread that shit on the carpet, thank god… it’s just like they don’t like being excluded from the little three foot by one foot area right in front of where the ashes are.  It’s like they have a fixation on not being allowed in there.  This is where the grate comes into play.  It’s always been there, and they are not happy about it.  To the point they have pulled it down, moved it aside… basically everything to communicate the cat version of “you’re not the boss of me”, which in cat speak, would probably sound like “meow”, but they don’t have a lot of vocabulary, and thank god, because a smack talking cat wouldn’t live in this house for three minutes.  Sarcasm is restricted to the Italians in residence and the cats need to know their place in the hierarchy.

Ok, so the grate has had many things done to it to establish its general irrelevance and annoyance to the cats.  Where this all started was that they would become interested in the fireplace, I wouldn’t be paying much attention, I wouldn’t hear a THING, and suddenly I’d look over and notice one of the cats walking back and forth ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GRATE, with the other cat normally sitting on this side of the grate, on the carpet, admiring the ability of his brother to walk in the forbidden zone.  I don’t really get the point of any of it, but they would reach up with their paw, slide the grate out a little, and then march on in.  Simple enough, right?  No, not right.  Not good.  Not ok.  That’s a mess of ashes waiting to get on my carpet and I’m not up for cleaning that, because anyone who has had ashes on their carpet knows how bad that sucks to clean.

Now, being an engineer… and half Sicilian… I figured this was easy enough to solve, so I placed a piece of firewood, which you can see in the picture above, in FRONT of the grate.  That was step #1: what I’d call the “make it too heavy” tactic that my brain thought was good enough to outsmart two morons on a mission.  I should clarify that this was the Engineer’s way of solving the problem.  The Sicilian in me would probably have tossed them individually into the ashes, then out in the yard to consider the gravity of their crimes… and… well, reason over passion… it’s a good thing at times.  Anyway, well, that solution actually DID work for a while, as the cats would look at the piece of wood and just stay away from the grating altogether.  They would lay to the left of the grate as if trying to find some Zen-like peace with it, but for the most part, I assumed I had won the contest and my days of seeing little cat paw prints in the light ash on the other side of the grate were over… Yeah.  No.  No.  It didn’t go like that.

Well, cats being the criminal moron masterminds that they are, eventually realized they could still go to the left of the grate, raise a paw, and slide the grate out enough that they could get back there.  Apparently one fire log isn’t enough weight to keep them out.  For all I know, they were working out and doing some deadlifting while I was sleeping, to get big enough to move it… they make enough noise at 3am, who knows…  Anyway, soon enough stage two was needed… a way to keep them off the mouth of the fireplace entirely, because even letting them up there was enough to see the house of cards come tumbling down.

At this point, I introduced the ENTIRE PACK OF WOOD to the left of the grate in the picture, what I would call the “deny access” tactic.  Now, two things about my second cat countermeasure… first, it completely blocked off their previous access to the point they can’t get up there to pull at the grate.  Check.  That’s gotta be good, because that’s both where they pulled it out before AND it’s where they went marching in behind the grate, given the andirons are on the other side and there’s no space for cats over there.  The second thing is that it is ALSO pushed against the grate so that there is even more weight and pressure to overcome for them to move the grate out from where it is supposed to be.  At the point I added this second level of security, I figured I had solved the problem and the cats were effectively screwed to do anything about it… yep, that’s what I thought… until this morning.

Well, the picture above is what I found when I woke up today, and I really don’t know what to make of it, because, by all indications… MY CATS HAVE A CRANE HIDDEN SOMEWHERE.  Not only did the cats manage to pull the grate down, they also did so WITHOUT knocking the piece of firewood out of place that was in front of it… In physical terms, I’m not clear on how they did it, but it would’ve theoretically meant they lifted the grate up BEFORE they toppled it forward, which seems almost impossible for two little idiots to have accomplished without some form of complex machinery… and that’s scary as hell… Wherever this contraption is, clearly I want to find it, because I need to examine its construction and figure out what other kinds of equally dastardly devices they may be able to build (without the benefit of opposable thumbs, mind you) if they want to make me a target of their mania…

The larger issue is also what to do now… I may be out of basic engineering tricks, and the idea of using the infamous “plastic bag deterrent” was clearly confounded with the Christmas Tree incident.  I’m also afraid that introducing the plastic bag threat at this point could backfire and escalate the situation where they may do something really harmful to the fireplace, like spread its contents all over the room… and that would be… well… really, really bad.

As I said at the outset, I’ve lost.  I’ve lost and I’m confused.  I thought I was living with two complete idiots, but after two rounds of failed safeguards, it would seem that my cats have an understanding of basic engineering principles, or there’s no way they safely lifted that grate over the firewood and dropped it onto the carpet without disturbing either of my presumed “protective measures”…

I need to think on this one some more… and have more coffee… yes, coffee… but this war isn’t over.  Not by a bathed and shaven domestic short haired cat, it’s not…

-CJG 06/08/2017

I love my cats.  Most certainly, yes.  I love them.  I have to… or they are both going to end up out in the snow in the next 30 seconds…  I love coffee in the morning as well… yes, coffee… and that pot isn’t done yet… dammit.

It seemed like a good idea.  I’ll get a real Christmas tree this year.  Haven’t done it in something like 10 years, long overdue.  We have our Charlie Brown artificial tree, but a friend showed me the tiny, equivalent-sized real tree she bought and… hey, maybe I can do that!  We used to get two real trees a year, after all… Maybe a change would be a good thing and help get me in the spirit, despite what’s been a pretty brutal 2016.

Oh wait a second… the cats.  I saw Stormy do a flying tackle of Charlie Brown tree before.  Is this a good idea?  What could happen if they tackle this one?  Water all over the carpet?  A stain that will never come out? Pine needles even more all over the place than is normally a hassle to clean up?  Well… come on, what are the odds?  Pretty slim… and you get that awesome tree smell in the house for a month.  Totally worth it.  I’m in!!

Ok, fast forward a couple weeks… it’s been a constant chess game… where’s Stormy?  Yep, there he is, stalking the bottom of the tree… staring down the tree skirt, his apparent sworn enemy.  “What are you hiding under there?  I know you’re hiding something!”  His pea-sized cat brain seems to be convinced it’s something he wants.  Why conceal it otherwise, right?… “Stormy, get away from the tree…”, I say, as if he will suddenly develop the capacity for any comprehension of those words.  Oh, right, he’s a cat, he’s an idiot… Where’s Lucky, for that matter?  Oh, wait, Lucky’s hiding somewhere.  He’s a coward.  He’d never try something so bold as an attack on the tree in broad daylight.  His boldest move to date is probably a yack on the carpet in another room… when no one is around.  Or that dump I found on the carpet the night they slept in the office, with BOTH litter boxes three feet away… yep, that seems like his speed… little passive aggressive bastard…

I wonder if the coffee is done…?  Nope.  Shit.

I guess I should’ve seen the escalation coming.  It was inevitable, I suppose.  Man versus beast versus Douglas Fir… versus… beast.  Where the “beasts” are both idiots.  I was outnumbered from Day One.  They have me flanked and outgunned.  I can’t stay up all night… I can’t be here all day, though, given both of them sleep what seems like 20 hours in a day, that doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot.  Really the most active time of the day for them is when they want to be fed when I get up and then 3 o’clock in the morning, when it’s just damn hilarious to them to fight, run a few sprints around the entire house, and jump up and down the cat tree on the other side of the wall from my bed, slamming it into the wall in the process, sometimes waking me with a sound echoing of the coming apocalypse… oh no, wait, it’s just the damn cats… being assholes at 3am.  Definitely not having coffee then, I’d never get back to sleep.

You’d think, having rescued these two idiots, they’d be a little more docile… heck, even a bit more appreciative.  I “rescued” you two morons… doesn’t that engender even the slightest hint of “let’s do our best not to piss him off and do dumb stuff” in a cat?  Apparently not.  This is the cost of no appreciable longer term memory I guess.  Oddly, they know where to go for food… that part they get.  Being nice to me first thing in the morning when it’s time for food… yep, they are all over that.  That behavior they can learn… little charlatans.

So, where did this go so dreadfully wrong?  I don’t really know, to be honest.  It’s been an ongoing back and forth with Stormy… him pulling the tree skirt open… sticking a paw into the water basin… pulling a low hanging branch off here and there… carrying it across the room or the house… forgetting why he had it in his mouth in the first place… spitting it out… like he’s creating a little treasure hunt for me… how cute, right?  No.  Not cute.  Pain in the ass… more like that.  More like… I wonder what he’d look like without his fur… cat shave!!!

Yesterday afternoon, I was reading something on the computer… and it happened… SLURP… SLURP… SLURP… what the hell is that?  I look over and Stormy has pulled the tree skirt apart far enough that his entire head is plunged in the water basin and he’s just going to town like he found an oasis in the middle of a freaking desert… “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?”  He doesn’t even stop to look at me… as if he knows… when he gets here, the feast is over…. better drink this shit up right now…  that pea-sized cat brain is either really working quickly or not at all… I guess it depends on how suicidal I want to imagine him to be.

I get to the tree… he runs like he just came out of the bank vault with a bag of money jammed down his pants… ok, he doesn’t have pants… but that WOULD look hilarious, come on… I look… there’s almost NO WATER left for the tree!  I swear, that thing was probably at least half filled in the morning… HOW MUCH WATER DID HE JUST DRINK?  Holy shit.  For that much water gone, I should hear a sloshing sound as he walks across the room… either that, or he ought to be in the litter box for the next hour or two, relieving his clearly overfilled, tiny ass bladder…

Ok, this bullshit has to stop.  I’m calling in the big guns now.  Plastic bag time.

I pulled out my weapon of last resort… the plastic grocery bag.  Both cats immediately head for the stairs at full blast and… oh, hey, Lucky… had no idea you were hiding back there in the corner till now… sneaky little coward that you are… (damn, I need that coffee)…

Now the coast is clear and I can find a solution.  I’m an engineer dammit… these are two idiot cats.  No way they are going to beat me on this one.  Three semesters of physics alone and I should be able to beat them down… forget about all the rest of the chemistry, math, and other shit… I’ve got this.  We’ll take their sworn enemy, the plastic bag, and we’ll make HIM the defender of the tree.  Like putting an armed guard in the way.  They won’t possibly jack around with this one… impenetrable fortress of security… one plastic bag covering the connections on the tree skirts versus two very fearful, idiot cats… no way this solution will blow up in my face… no… freaking… way.  Yeah.  So I thought… and I’m saying these cats are stupid…

I don’t remember hearing anything last night.  I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work when bad things happen under cover of darkness… I don’t know how they did it.  I can’t say if it was entirely one or actually both of them, because Lucky apparently has some temporary bravado when no one is around… but when I woke it all seemed so normal at first.  Stormy making a ton of noise meowing, laying parallel to the opening of my bedroom door, testing to see if I’ll trip over him on my first, non-coffee supported steps of the day… Lucky, seeing the door open, runs like Hell towards the office, as if my mere appearance means that the bowls are already full, or as if seeing him run there will make me all excited to feed them.  Nope, sorry dude, it doesn’t work like that… Without coffee… your lives don’t mean much right now.  That pot brewing is your best hope for a meal, so shut up, be patient, and try to stay out of the way for the next three minutes… interfering with this can only go badly for you… really, really badly.

I take a few steps forward into the great room… I’m not sure why, but I noticed the bag first.  Maybe because it was ALL the way across the room… near the chair in the opposing corner… as if the cats spent all night getting it as far away from the tree as possible… their own version of a “fuck you” gesture, just to be clear it’s not the boss of them… not this time.  Not this tree.

“What the hell?”  I’m pretty sure those words came out of my mouth.  I can’t say really, no coffee and shock will do that sometimes…  I immediately snapped my head down at whiplash speed to check out the tree… WHERE THE HELL IS THE TREE SKIRT?!?  At first, I didn’t even see it.  Nothing… I just saw the tree stand, with a tiny amount of water in it… exposed.  naked.  exploited.  Oh my heavenly God… what happened here?  You poor tree…  The branches seemed just a little lower this morning and there is tree carnage everywhere.  I don’t remember this much of a mess yesterday when I went to bed.  It looks like they not only tossed the bag across the room and removed the tree skirt… they beat the hell out of the tree too… oh my god.  Cat vengeance is a real thing… the tree skirt was there, crumpled up in the corner… as if they said “GET OUT OF OUR WAY!” and tossed it to the side, right before they started in on the tree itself.  The horror… the horror… where is Marlon Brando when I need him…

And here’s the cats… acting as if nothing has happened… playing out their normal morning routine.  Should that be what they’re doing right now?  Doesn’t the perpetrator understand the gravity of the crime?  You don’t smash a store window, take a bunch of stuff, then walk in and buy a stick of gum the next morning, do you?  What kind of evil criminal minds are living with me?  This is scary.  Maybe I should be locking that bedroom door when I sleep… I do hear Stormy smacking at the door knob some mornings.  I’ve always assumed he just wanted me to come play at 3am… or feed them… or make coffee… maybe it was a murder plot all along.  No, they can’t be that stupid, who would feed them then?  They haven’t figured out the impenetrable security of the pony tail holder that keeps the pantry shut, so I’m probably safe for the time being…

The question is what to do now.  I could kill them both… certainly an option.  Is “double catricide” even a thing?  Is there such a thing as “justifiable catricide”?  It sounds plausible at this moment, but it could be the lack of coffee… I understand and accept that risk exists.  I suppose the people at the shelter might not appreciate me adopting and killing them both… kind of defeats the “rescue” concept.  I could try to explain that they plotted a Christmas tree assassination, and I was the only one who could save the poor defenseless tree… but what happens if they don’t celebrate Christmas… do I need to get dragged into a world religions conversation?… or even worse, find out that they’re the people who bitch about a Christmas tree in front of city hall in some nowhere town, because it somehow threatens their freedom of religion… as if the tree is going to come to their place of worship and burn it to the ground?  It’s a Christmas tree people… not a terrorist.  It’s not a ballistic missile… it’s generally a symbol of something positive and good.  When we take down the trees, the terrorists win… wait, maybe that’s a line in a movie.  Strike that part.  Damn, I need my coffee…

Anyway, what do I do now… have we reached a point where the cats kicking each other in the head during their daily fights has finally taken its toll?  I thought cats were morons before… this can’t be good.  Maybe this is why they is why they use “litter” both to describe a number of newborn cats and the place where they go to the bathroom… maybe more brainless furry criminals entering the world is an “oh shit” moment, and I’ve only just realized it.

This much is for certain.  This war is not over.  Eight days till Christmas… and I have only begun to fight… (or whatever that Revolutionary War quote is… that I might remember… if this stupid coffee ever gets done)…

-CJG 12/17/2016