Cat Bomber
For every adorably squishable cat there is in this world, there's also an Ali. A loveable, sweet, but not-entirely-right-in-the-head cat.
If you don't mind, I'm going to put my Cat Psychiatrist Pants on real quick and diagnose her . . . Yup, she's crazy. Probably the paranoid schizophrenic brand of crazy because she walks around as if she has tiny invisible bombs strapped to her body. She's just waiting for them to go off. She's skittish, is what I'm saying. And by "skittish" I mean "don't breath in the same room as her because she'll jump 40 feet into the air and probably land on your head with her claws all ready for gouging."
Which is EXACTLY why I should never try to paint a wall with her roaming within the same zip code.
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There's a new post over on the Review Page. This one comes complete with a chance for you to win a $150 Walmart gift card (GO. ENTER. PLEASE.). I'm going to pull back the curtain on this bit of magic, though, and tell you that I already know how that series of three posts is going to end.
SPOILER ALERT!
So, the series of three posts sponsored by the company that makes paint? It ends with me painting a room. Shocking! I know!
Anyway, the actual work going on in that room is a wee bit ahead of what's being posted. I'm sure all of the magic is gone for you now, and for that I'm sorry.
(Don't forget to go enter to win. I'M SERIOUS.)
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Alexis was literally climbing the walls and . . . hold on . . . I have to meander a little bit off topic for a second. Tonight Alexis used the word "literally" in a sentence. Correctly. Twice. I literally can't stand how smart that kid is sometimes.
And we're back . . . so Alexis was literally climbing the walls as I tried to quickly brush a coat of paint on some trim. At some point the Kitten Brigade had invaded the room, which always results in Alexis tormenting Max and Max being all, "You are the wind beneath my wings, short human." Ali usually joins in on the lovefest, but she does it with her tiny invisible bombs strapped to her body, so she is liable to go running for her life at any moment.
Which is exactly what she did. I don't know what spooked her--an ant farting in Texas, perhaps? Regardless, she suddenly took off running and managed to plow right into my hand. It was the hand that was holding the paintbrush, which, REALLY? We were in a 9' x 13' room and she HAD to invade the only 10 square inches I didn't want her in?
Whatever. She knocked the paintbrush out of my hand. It went flying like a trapeze artist, in slow motion and slowly twirling and twirling and twirling and SPLAT! It landed square in the center of paint can, causing paint to go splashing up in the air. The flying paint was like shrapnel and Ali freaked out more. She literally started running up a wall, flipped over, and landed with a leg in the paint can before tearing through the doorway, down the hall, down the stairs, across the dining room, through the kitchen, around and through the family room, down to the basement, and back upstairs to the dining room again.
How do I know where all she went? Why, because she left a perfect trail of paw prints for me, of course!
This is where I prove I'm not a very good blogger. A good blogger would have grabbed a camera and taken a few photos of the disaster zone. I'm a bad blogger, though, so I started scrubbing the floor. That might have been in part because who should pull into the driveway at that very moment but Mr. Husband!
He's very helpful in situations like that, but only after he gives me grief for being talented enough to let the cat turn the house into an episode of Family Circus.
You know it's bad when he walks into the dining room, takes one look at the chaos, and mutters, "I'm not even going to ask" before disappearing upstairs.
Moral of the Story the First: If your cat somehow manages to turn a can of paint into her personal tracking device, CATCH THE CAT IMMEDIATELY. Failure to do so will result in an unlimited number of paw prints being left all over the house over and over and over and WHOOPS. ALWAYS BATHE THE CAT BEFORE CLEANING UP THE MESS.
Moral of the Story the Second: If a cat is all "Whatcha doin'?" when you paint a dresser? Lock her in a closet when you later try to paint a room. The potential for damage is MUCH higher.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Reader Comments (13)
It made for great blog fodder, so its all good, right? ;)
We stayed with my sister last week and slept in the living room. My niece came out before she went to bed and said, "Don't be alarmed if Minnie comes running down the hall, leaps onto the couch, runs across the back of it, jumps down, runs over to the wall, and starts meowing and hissing. She's psycho." Minnie is her cat. Apparently related to Ali.
I feel cats have that need to BOUNCE AND POUNCE OUT OF NOWHERE at times. It makes them cats. They need to hunt for mice and bugs like that. Also they probably get 1000x less exercise cooped up in a house than they could hunting for stuff in the wild.
Poor cats.
@Anthony from CharismaticKid--Ali would be cat toast if she were an outdoor cat. She can't stand even the thought of walking through the doorway to the outside, let alone survive the noises associated with the outdoors. She has ZERO interest in hunting anything for anything except a place to hide.
Sometimes I almost think you make this stuff up! I mean really, pink paint on a car, and a cat landing in the paint can?! Your life is a sitcom.
That literally made me LOL at work. That was a sequence of events that you couldn't reproduce if you spent the next 10 years trying...
I think your blog needs to be a reality TV show! When you tweeted about it I just couldn't believe it. :)
high fucking larry us!
especially because i love the way you tell a story.
I love that cat!
When I saw the tweet, I instantly knew it was true, and my brain filled in the family circus print from the tweet alone.
Years ago I had a cat that would levitate at the slightest sound, usually a good 24" off the ground. Then a (*cough*) friend saw the cat crawl under a dresser w/ 8" legs, and remarked "Wouldn't be a shame of he got startled now?"
Almost in unison, we hissed.
[pause]
THUD!
[pause]
A sad cat oozed out from under the dresser.
It didn't hurt his levitation abilitities one bit, he was still the poster-cat for vertical take-offs for years.
Four Words:
Live-Action Web Cam
You need to start streaming. You'd be RICH.
i had an outdoor cat who very easily startled. if he was freaked out enough he would take off like a shot and run up the brick chimney, sit on the roof, and cry. eventually i'd have to get a ladder and rescue him, because the stupid cat couldn't climb down the chimney.
This? Well, this is awesome!!! This is the kind of story I need to read everyday just to make me laugh out loud! I love your cat! But please don't bring her to my house. :)
That made me laugh so hard that I am crying. You didn't need actual pictures, the description was great!!!