Every weekday morning I have a little ritual. The alarm goes off, I hit snooze. It sounds again, I slap snooze again. The third time it goes off, I hit the button a little harder. Then my wife starts saying something about getting up and I mumble something about a “few more minutes,” to the untrained ear it probably sounds like cursing. Then I get out of bed.
I stagger to the bathroom, the difference between me before a shower and after is very much like the difference between Clark Kent and Superman. I am not a morning person.
*Good excuse here to show a picture of Morgan when she was just a little kitten*
When I come out of the shower, Morgan is almost always waiting for me. I don’t know why, she just is. I think she feels the need to make certain that I survived my latest encounter with water since she hates it so much. This is one of the few times during the day that she will deign to honor me with her meow. She wants attention, doesn’t matter if I am running late for work, she wants attention. She also knows that if she meows at me, with her kittenish meows that I will always pet her. She loves having her ears scratched.
Have you ever bought a toy for a child and they were more interested in the wrapping paper? We have quite a few cat toys in the house, a large bagful actually. Morgan has a few toys that she likes, but what she loves to play with are Q-Tips. I use a Q-Tip in the morning after a shower, and I get one for her too. I throw it down the hall and she chases after it, pouncing, batting, and rolling around with it grasped between her paws. Once she has subdued it she will carry it in her mouth to another point in the house, where she will drop it and begin the process anew.
We first learned of her love for Q-Tips by discovering her love of dumpster diving. She would knock over the bathroom garbage and sort through it until she found a Q-Tip. This is not the behavior that we felt she should be exhibiting! But I am too wrapped around her little paw to actually punish her. So I give her a new Q-Tip to play with.
A generic Q-Tip actually. I like the soft feel of the extra padding on the brand name Q-Tips, but it is too easy for Morgan to tear it off and try to eat it, assuring that it will make an appearance later, or I worry that it could be harmful to her. So last time at the store, I got generic Q-Tips. Less padding, my ears will suffer and pay the price to keep Morgan from harm. I think it is the little things we do that show our care for each other more than the large things. In a way it is easy to do large things once a month for those we love, we get thanks showered on us, but the every day things, the little sacrifices that go unnoticed and unthanked, those get tiresome.
Morgan doesn’t thank me for using generic Q-Tips to keep her safe, but she doesn’t need to. The sheer joy she exhibits when I throw a Q-Tip down the hall is thanks enough.
3 comments:
Careful there, Fritz. Too many posts like this, and people will start to think that you're a kind, compassionate voice in someone's head that loves cute kittens and little children. Can't have that.
do you punish your cats? ::eek::
time-outs? glue-sticks?
a friend of mine was telling me about a mutual acquaintance who shared with a table of lunch eating people that she beat her cat for something. BEAT HER CAT. she's something of a psycho in the first place, so perhaps it should not have been so surprising. but it was . . .
our cats snag at stuff and jump on the kitchen table. they try to sleep on the baby when he's snoozing on the couch. i do not like this behavior and do not know how best to deal with it. currently we embrace "redirection" and toss the cat gently to the floor and say, "no," and it runs away. ::shrugging::
so, fritz, tell us about felines and punitive discipline.
The only thing that has actually "worked" is keep a squirt gun filled with water nearby. When the cat does something bad, I squirt him or her.
I personally hate doing this, since I am not attempting to raise good members of society, so the only time I really do this is when they are doing something that could be harmful to them, like chewing on our fake Christmas tree. By the way, pine needles are poison to cats, but since I'm sure they aren't all that swell for little kids, I'm sure you are already careful :)
Post a Comment