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Cat ritual

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Meet the co-author of this blog, Oliver the Cat. He greets me at the couch at around 5:15am, and will meow if I don’t put my legs up on the table. When they are horizontal, he jumps up on my legs and waits for a good head scratch. Once he’s satisfied, he turns around to face my feet, and stretches out along my legs.

Alas, it only lasts about 3-4 minutes, then one little adjustment or shift in my body position is enough for him to get off me. But not until I’ve started tapping away words on my phone.

Oliver is probably the only part of my morning routine I don’t have control over. He can choose to sleep in, and avoid my lap for a morning. He can decide how long he wants a head scratch & massage. He can have the nerve to jump off me before I’ve written anything. Still, any time he chooses to run through this little ritual, I’m happy to make sure it happens.

Oliver isn’t just my cat, he’s very often my writing companion… there to support me in my daily writing, stealing just enough of my attention to put me in a good mood, but not too much of it to distract me from the reason I got on the couch… which is to write.

Smelly cat

Yesterday morning our cat was covered in sawdust from our renovation, his eyes were streaming and he smelled like chemicals. We were extremely concerned that he poisoned himself, and gave him a bath to get the chemicals off. It wasn’t fun! At one point I had a claw stuck in me and no matter what I tried our struggling cat just stuck the claw in deeper. This is from a cat that never scratches us.

It was only after the bath was done and the vet was called for an appointment did we go outside and smell the same smell outside. Turns out that in his early morning wanderings our cat was sprayed by a skunk. Our retired neighbour was kind enough to take our cat to the vet while we went to work.

When we got home last night we gave him another bath, this time with tomato juice, and some baking soda. He’s going to need another one of these baths tonight. Now that he is curled up under my chin as I write this, I can unmistakably smell skunk. However, when it happened yesterday it was very much a chemical smell that didn’t make me think of this very familiar smell.

The good news, he isn’t poisoned. The bad news, we have a smelly cat.

Morning cuddles

Well now I’ve run out of time to get my workout in before my first errand of the day… but when your cat decides to jump on your lap while you are meditating, and he snuggles in, it’s kind of hard to move.

He has hunkered down for a nap, and I can’t get myself to move him.

Our cat usually only gets on our lap when we have his brush, but he has become a lot more affectionate in the last few weeks. He’ll jump up on me, look my in the eye, and bump our noses. Then he’ll settle in for a good pet. Usually it’s about 2-4 minutes and he’s had enough, only longer if we are brushing him.

This morning has been a full on settle-in-and-get-comfortable moment and I’ve been ‘stuck’ here for a good 20 minutes. But if I’m completely honest, this is a nice place to be stuck.

Cat alarm clock

It’s not fun having your cat wake you up at 3am with an angry high pitched scream. What could possibly be wrong? And then I find him at the back glass French doors, hair raised on his back, looking at a cute, fluffy, grey and white cat just outside the doors. The other cat is sitting calmly watching him, taunting him with complete lack of concern. The only recourse is to lock our cat in the bedroom, or try to chase a cat away, that will surely return as soon as I fall back asleep.

Our cat isn’t usually like this. Our neighbour has a male cat too, and our two ‘boys’ are best friends. They hang out together all the time. They roam the neighbourhood together. They visit each other to start their days. They have quite the ‘bromance’ and don’t even put up a fight if the other cat is eating their food.

But this grey cat is not a friend. He or she is one of the only reasons our cat will wail like a heavy weight just landed in his tail. And last night we got the 3am wake up call.

I don’t mind when our cat, Oliver, walks on me at 5am, even though he won’t settle on me. Instead he wakes me up to pet him 2-3 times, then goes to my wife. He literally comes to tell me, ‘I’m going to cuddle with your wife’. But this is ok. I’m usually getting up about then and so this wake up call is fine.

On the other hand, Oliver screaming bloody murder at 3am is really not an ok way to be woken up. Hopefully the cute, fluffy, grey and white cat is regularly kept inside, and we don’t have too many unplanned cat alarms in the coming days and weeks ahead.