The Cat, the Blanket, and the Blame

For Christmas, M bought me a very comfortable throw blanket.

Well. Presumably for me. Possibly for the cat. Or is it for the cat and I wanted it. I forget.

The idea was simple. Leave it on top of the comforter so there is something extra cozy. This matters because sometimes the cat comes onto the bed, and when it was warmer out, I could just peel part of the comforter off myself, drop it on top of him, and he would happily snuggle into it and fall asleep.

He is a Devon Rex. He likes warmth. A lot.

If I do not do that, he might crawl fully under the covers and turn himself into a little croissant right next to me. Or, more often than not, directly on top of me. That is a whole separate story involving him sitting on my chest while I sleep. Which, if I am being honest, is actually pretty comfortable once he settles down.

The only downside is the settling down part. There is some light clawing involved. Not aggressive. More exploratory. It sounds worse than it is.

Anyway.

In the winter, sharing the comforter like that does not really work. Giving him his own blanket on top is much easier. He can be moved. I can adjust. Everyone wins.

This is where things get complicated.

For a while now, A has had a fuzzy blanket that she wraps him up in. He sleeps in her bed, and she basically curls herself around him. She does not care that she is practically on top of him. He does not care either. This has been their arrangement for some time.

So when the new blanket appeared on our bed, A immediately declared that I was stealing him from her.

Now, she was mostly kidding. Mostly. But what she very conveniently glossed over was the fact that he originally slept with us, and only relocated because she provided a better blanket based incentive program.

I honestly did not think this would change anything. She goes to bed earlier. She snuggles him aggressively. I assumed he would continue choosing her.

Instead, what has been happening this week is that he hangs out downstairs with us in the evening, usually on someone’s lap, because he is essentially a heat vampire. Then he moves upstairs and parks himself on the radiator until about midnight, enjoying what I can only describe as a personal sauna.

After that, he chooses a bed.

And apparently, he has been choosing the one with the new blanket.

Here is the part that makes this truly unfair.

I am getting blamed for all of this.

Despite the fact that he is actually cuddling next to M, not me. Despite the fact that I did not invite him. Despite the fact that I did not even buy the blanket, although I did ask for it often.

A is not having any of it. It is still my fault.

Not that it really matters to me.

I am just saying.

Cat of Interest

Have you seen this cat? He goes by Grogu, Chicken, little dickens, and other Aliases. He is a cat of interest in the disappearance of a stuffed Shepard from our advent calendar. And probably other stuff.

Ok he is not missing thankfully, but we do have surveillance on him as much as we can.

Should We Have Named Grogu B.A. Baracus?

As a kid growing up, I loved the TV show, The A-Team. Yeah, I know, it’s not that realistic. Even then I kind of realized that they spent a lot of time shooting things and never hurting anybody, but I digress.

One of the gag’s that they always pulled was how they always found a way to get B.A. Baracus (Mr T) on a plane. He hated flying but they always tricked him into drinking milk or something. Whenever it’s time to give our cat his flea treatment every month, I feel like he’s B.A.

We get him and cuddle and snuggle up with him and wrap him in a blanket pretty snugly, and then one of us will put the medicine on his head, and then he finally realizes it as we’re finishing and slithers out of the blanket and runs away. The damage is already done, though, and he’s got his flea treatment.

Yet when I take him to the Vet he now knows not to eagerly get out of the carrier and will hiss at the vet straight away. He never hisses. He’s a smart cat, but he falls for our blanket trick every time.

I am The Indiana Jones of My Kitchen

Our cat keeps finding trinkets to play with and runs around the kitchen with them scurrying around on the floor. Inevitably they seem to end up under our refrigerator. I am starting to feel like Indiana Jones on a dig every couple of weeks fishing out things that I’ve gotten under there.

It’s always a mystery. I’m never lonely though. Grogu is my trusty companion ever sniffing under the refrigerator trying to get out something. I have not yet started calling him short round though…

I Almost Contributed To The Death Of My Cat

Today I was walking down my stairs as I normally do to get coffee in the middle of the day. My cat Grogu thinks it’s a game and when I put my hand on the top of the banister he tries to paw at it. I went to lean down and pet him when he was doing that. He had other ideas. At the same moment I was leaning down he was making a full leap with the intention of jumping up to my shoulder. Since I was going down and he was going up I mostly missed him. His paws scratched my neck a bit. However he kept going since my shoulder wasn’t where he thought it was going to be. When I mean he kept going, his trajectory took him two thirds of the way down my stairs. I cannot say for certain if he landed legs up however he recovered pretty quickly. For about three or four seconds I thought he was going to fly all the way to the bottom of the stairs and hit our step cabinet. While I was still getting over the shock of the situation he was sitting on the bottom step licking his paw waiting for me to finish walking downstairs.

He likes to sit on my shoulder however I haven’t seen him try to make one leap onto it before. That got me totally offguard.

If cats have nine lives I’m going to count that as one of them.