shoesonwrong

And Of Course Ryan Slept Through It

I've had this bear, Snuggles, since I was just shy of three years old.

It's that bear from the Snuggles fabric softener, and the only reason my mother got it for me for Christmas was to win an ongoing argument we had as to whether or not Snuggles really had the ability to walk, talk, and fall gently into a pile of laundry while giggling. That my mother had to shell out twenty bucks to win an argument with a two year old is neither here nor there, really. The point of this story is I still have Snuggles and he is still basically intact. The stuffing is a little less stuffy and his eyes and nose are all scratched up from when I would chew on them at night to fall asleep. I also scratched out his tongue because I found the bright pink to be garish. Okay, so aside from some toddler Guantanamo treatment, Snuggles is totally fine.

When we were at my parent's house this past weekend, I found Snuggles and thought, Hey, I should bring him back with me. He can sit on the bed. It will be cute. I did not think, My cats are completely insane, view this stuffed bear as a threat to national security, and treat it as such. It's becoming increasingly clear I still have no idea what I'm doing with two cats and someone should have made me pass some basic psychological competency test before letting me out the door of the animal shelter with a kitten.

Snuggles got wedged up between two pillows on our bed while we slept. Our bed is huge and I don't think either one of us really remembered Snuggles was still up there. At least I know that I didn't until it was three in the morning and I had a sixteen pound marmalade tabby cat on my stomach and an eight pound grey tabby sitting on my forehead, working in tandem to investigate, abduct, and probably destroy the innocent childhood relic. I'm not someone who wakes up in any sane manner. Sometimes there's tears or screaming. There's always a wide-eyed terror-filled look of confusion. Waking up wearing almost twenty-five pounds of cat was... well, I'll be honest: it wasn't one of my proudest moments, considering I punched the big cat in the face. Once the first punch was thrown, the little cat clung to Snuggles. I think he knew I wouldn't hurt the bear. I pryed his grubby paws off the bear, rolled out of bed, stumbled into the closet door, opened the closet door, and then put the bear on the highest shelf.

The next morning, I woke up and rolled over to find two cats sitting on the nightstand, both looking at me with malice in their hearts.

I'll Say It: I'm Disappointed In Him

Does anyone remember when my cat got all internet famous and uppity? First he was on cute overload, and then he was turned into a LOL cat. Frankly, I think he peaked then and stopped trying. It's all been downhill since. (Sort of like when you give your dad a #1 Dad mug and he just starts phoning it in from there on out.)

Well, I hate to think of how big his ego will get after he sees this:

Yep, that's Momo on an ad for Jones Soda (You might need to click on the picture to see a bigger version to really see him.). He came super close to making it onto the limited edition labels but at the last second he was cut. Oh well, at least I got a free case of Jones with him on the labels as a consolation prize. (I didn't give him anything. We don't encourage losers in this house. We plan on standing at our kids soccer games one day with signs that say "WIN OR DON'T COME HOME.")

See, look how he's already just coasting on his fame:

Oh Monsters, Why Did I Create You?

DEAR. LORD. Thank goodness we go to pick up Wicket later today because Momo? Has been driving me absolutely nuts. Sad crying all night. Constantly trying to sit on my shoulder like a parrot. And this morning, we started a new thing where he yells and screams at every closed door he finds until I come over and open it for him, allowing him to look in briefly and appease himself that Wicket isn't hiding in my bedroom (which the cats are closed off from becuase I don't want their disgusting litter mitter feet all over my bedding).

Other places that Wicket isn't hiding but Momo has checked:

• The refrigerator
• Under the bathroom sink
• The closet
• The other closet
• That kitchen cupboard next to the oven
• A large box of Q-Tips

Momo is too aflutter to even bother enjoying getting into places he's not allowed to normally go. The door opens, he races in and checks every corner, then he's back out again and looking for Wicket somewhere else. Why do I bother to open doors for my deranged cat, you ask? Because those three seconds of reprieve I get from him doing that cat-howl are worth it.

When you're running short on time, the internet loves it when you throw cats at them

We've had him for almost three months, and the kitten is just not getting any smarter, he's just getting bigger. It's a great combination, let me assure you. He's knocking stuff over and falling off things and letting his mouth hang open. Sometimes he grabs onto his own tail so hard he rolls himself over.

He does, however, keep Momo from walking around constantly moaning. Now instead, Momo spends his time alternating between bathing Wicket and hiding from Wicket in the bathtub. Sometimes, I'll see Wicket walking around and meowing, then I go into the bathroom and Momo is looking up from the tub where he's pressed to the floor and giving me a look that says, "Tell him where I'm at and I chew off your hair tonight."

That is Momo and his feather. His PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS, PRECIOUSSSSSS feather. Wicket likes whatever Momo likes, so he also loves the feather. Momo is not exactly a good sharer, so he usually pushes the feather into a pile and then sits on top of it while Wicket circles him and cries.

Ultimately, the real difference between the two cats is that Wicket spends his life trying to intimidate Momo and Momo spends his life trying to intimidate the vacuum cleaner.

His precious

Momo chewed off a small chunk of my hair when I was hold it out twirling it between my fingers as I watched TV. I'm kind of afraid to take it back from him because he's sitting in the corner grooming it with big, wild eyes. I'll try to vacuum it up tomorrow, on the down low

Should I be prepared to buy a saddle and put it on him?

As someone who never owned or interacted much with cats until about seven months ago, I am totally unfamiliar with what to expect. For example: Momo has hit a growth spurt since we moved to Detroit, and he now weighs 12 pounds. He is almost 9 months old, and weighed about 8.5 pounds before we moved in.

He's not really fat. He's not a skinny cat, but he's not really chubby either (somewhere between a 5 and 6 on this chart). Still, the Good Dr. Google (specializing in cat medicine, of course) claims that is pretty big for a cat under a year old. So, what should I expect? Is Momo going to be huge? How long do cats continue growing?

And now for something entirely different

I am sick of talking about comcast. COMCAST, COMCAST, COMCAST.

When we weren't waiting for the cable guy to show up, we actually DID leave the house and wander around. You know, until the sun started to sneak behind the skyscrapers, and then we scampered back inside like we were afraid the zombies would get us. More specifically, that the zombies would mug us. Seriously, it's like a ghost town after dark. I sometimes stare down from our apartment at night and try to find a pedestrian. So far, I've seen one very scared looking person a bicycle.

(Also, we can see Comerica Park and the Fox Theater from our windows, too.)

Anyway, while we were wandering around, we came across this indoor waterfall-colorful-arty-shiny thing:

Water! Colorful! Shiny!

The apartment is great. Still small, but slightly more floorspace than we previously had. Plus, it has wood floors so that the cat keeps skittering around and falling over. We have our bookcases set up, and then we spent the better part of an afternoon alphabetizing all our books.

GLORIOUS. GLOOOOORIOUS!

Of course, we ran out of shelf space and had to buy more bookcases. That makes five new bookcases and the two we brought with us.

The bathtub is really deep, and I've pretty much set up camp there. Also, we tried to drown the cat in it one day, but decided it was really just too much work to do that and we'll just push him out a window instead.

Crack dens and a mental midget

I'm in the middle of William Cope Moyer's memoir, Broken. It's pretty good so far, except for one thing. The prologue opens with Cope in an Atlanta crack house, stumbling over junkies, completely strung out. Then the book shifts to his childhood -- which is really interesting, don't get me wrong. I mean, his father was instrumental in establishing the peace corps, Cope got a character reference from Dan Rather, yada, yada, yada. Sure, it's well written and engaging, but I am in this for the crack houses. Let's get to the crack houses. I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE A CRACK HOUSE.

So, we all know Cat is a MIGHTY HUNTER, right? All day, there's been a single ant in the house. I've been disguising my utter laziness and unwillingness to just hunt the stupid ant down already under the guise of letting Momo chase it around for the better part of the day. The payoff came around seven this evening, when the ant crawled directly onto his paw and he went batcrap crazy. Seriously, he was doing that cat thing where they shake their paws in disgust, only he was doing it super hard, fell over in the process, and let out this wail of terror. When it was all over and I managed to regain my composure, he was just staring at me like YEAH? FUNNY? I COULD HAVE DIED -- HOW FUNNY IS THAT?! Earlier, he got so worked up sitting in the window and watching birds, that he started thumping his paws on the window sill (which he was also sitting on) until he thumped himself off onto the ground from the massive excitement of it all. Hello, McFly.

I think the cat knows my plans for him

I've had this headache since Thursday. It lessens sometimes, but never fully goes away, and it feels like there is a village of angry Smurfs behind my right eye that keeps stabbing me. I wish I could just pop my eyeball out and relieve the pressure -- I have myself convinced that there would just be a little wooshing noise and RELIEF, then I would just pop my eyeball back in.

My finals were done on Thursday, and I haven't stopped moving since aside from a few hours spent wasting time making Borscht under the watchful eye and iron fist of Mama from Cooking Mama. I've been sorting, packing, cleaning, and painting. It turns out that we own a lot of crap. I had deluded myself because it was all stacked away so neatly into relatively small stacks around the apartment. I thought, "We won't need too many boxes. I'm sure we have too many already!" We have run out of cardboard boxes and the only thing we've packed up has been the books. And even those aren't fully packed up.

It's becoming clear we're going to die under our massive pile of ephemera. And as it crushes in on me, I will be thinking to myself, "Hey. I haven't read that book in awhile. I should do that soon." Because I am delusional.

In addition to packing up our entire life in preparation for living on the mean streets of Detroit (Rather, 19 stories up, where I can look down at the mean streets of Detroit and ponder the odds of both the black and white citizens stabbing me to death during my trek to the drugstore to buy tampons because they think I'm some sort of ghostly apparition/albino demon come to steal their essences.) (I'm so pale I'm translucent. I don't show up in mirrors anymore. I don't need x-rays -- they can just hold me up in front of a 60-watt bulb to inspect my bones and watch my tablespoon of blood race around my body.), we are trying to set up moving plans with my parents, who offered to help us move. The operative word there is TRYING because it seems like every time we get a tentative plan set up, something changes and then a clump of my hair falls out from stress because I do. not. like. changes. to. my. plans. I made a plan, I made a diagram outlining the plan, I made a flowchart regarding questions ABOUT the plan, and THIS IS THE PLAN DO NOT CHANGE THE PLAN.

An earlier conversation re: The Plan ended with me in tears and shrieking, "Well fine! I make plans and they change and why do I even bother and our stuff will never make it to the new apartment and wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." I know I'm overreacting. My parents are kind and reliable and will make sure that we do, in fact, make it to our new apartment with all of our stuff in tow. However, I'm furiously making backup plans with letters and titles -- things like, "Plan M: Cat Pulls Tiny Wagon" -- and googling furiously -- "Load bearing capacity of 8 lb. tabby cat."

I'm going to go find a spoon and pop my eye out.

The Cat's Tail Looks Long Enough To Strangle Him With

When Cassie was a puppy, she was prone to running all over the neighborhood, just eluding my grasp, thinking it was a fun game. One day, she got away in the pouring rain when I was barefoot and she wasn't wearing a collar. After a lively chase around a few blocks while I cursed at her, she stopped half a block from the house, squatted, and took the biggest dump ever. Right in front of a lawyer's office. While the lawyer looked out the window. That same lawyer looked out the window as I, soaking wet and barefoot, carried a mid-sized puppy across the street and back into the apartment. He also watched while I trudged over, soaking wet and barefoot still (shoes? I don't need shoes, y'all. I'm BRITNEY SPEARS.), and picked up dog poop from his lawn in the pouring rain.

So yeah, we've had some really special moments. I've been happy that lately our pet missteps have been in the privacy of our own home. (I don't count the Momo Backlash of Ought-Eight because I DID NOTHING WRONG. I MAY DRAG HIM AROUND AGAINST HIS WILL IN A HARNESS 9 HOURS A DAY UNTIL HE'S DEHYDRATED AND HAS A BALD SPOT, BUT I DID NOTHING WRONG.) Sure, the cat has tried to kamikaze out the window and the other day, the dog wandered into the closet, stepped into a pair of my underwear that had fallen out of the hamper, then got all her feet tangled up in them as she tried to escape/wander around the apartment so that she hogtied herself with my underpants, but these things happened in the privacy of our own home.

I think you sense where this is building to, right?

I opened the apartment door for a second -- a SECOND -- and the cat was off like a shot down the stairs. Fortunately, he's unable to push hard enough on the door at the bottom to escape. Unfortunately the same is not true of the dog, who pushed past me in a cat-chasing frenzy. At this point, I had just woken up and was only wearing a tee shirt that didn't really cover my various, uh, widgets.

The long and short of the story is this: I ended up throwing on whatever clothes I could find (which did not include a bra, sadly) and chasing a ginger dog and marmalade cat around the outside of the house, hissing death threats at them, and fervently hoping all my neighbors were either asleep or still drunk.

It's moments like these that I'm almost happy we have decided to give Cassie to my parents when we move to Detroit. Almost.

At least if I'm running around Detroit half-clothed with a crazed look, it probably just means the job didn't pan out and we've taken to the hobo lifestyle.

I hate my pets

Every stupid morning the stupid dog is let out by Ryan while he's showering and stuff. She's outside for about 30 minutes before he lets her back in and then goes to work. Only after she has been put back in the house (THIS HAPPENS ALMOST EVERY DAY, PEOPLE) does she realize suddenly, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to POOP."

So she whines outside the door to the bedroom where I am still sleeping. If whining doesn't wake me, then she tries yelping. If I manage to remain comatose through THAT she then BEATS ON THE DOOR. Not, like, scratches at it or anything. There's no claw involved. This is straight up, pad to door, repeated slamming.

I finally wake up and let her out while calling her every variation of the term "turd", she runs outside and poops, and then I go back to sleep. Unless I have a class. Like today.

Seriously. What is wrong with her? She is smart enough to know basic commands, recognize names, and know approximately what time to start looking out the window to wait for Ryan to come home. Yet she can't remember to TAKE A DUMP? There is something wrong with her. It's not mental retardation, but it's not not mental retardation, you know?**

Plus, she's got the cat doing it now. He whines outside the door and paws at it like a needy little tool in the mornings until I pick him up, where he proceeds to sit on my head like a hat and lick my hair. Again, not not mental retardation.

*Not really. Except sometimes really.

Momo's momoment of fame

Hey look. I'm internet famous. Well, Cat is internet famous. I was sort of surprised to be looking at cute overload and be like, "Hey... that looks like my cat. Wait..." What is it with the internet and cats?

I LOVE the comments suggesting that he tried to gnaw his way through the leash (the was leash gnawed on years ago by Dog). If you've ever met Cat, you'll see that he's sort of phlegmatic by nature and not averse to things like being carried around like a baby or made to lay on his back so you can rub your face on his soft underbelly. You can stick your finger IN his mouth and he won't bite, so the thought of him going all cat-Cujo on something is pretty amazing.

I also like the comments that say things like, "Let the poor bebeh go!!"

[Edit: The link has been fixed.]

 

Please Let This Phase Pass Quickly

Why are our pets so clingy to me? Remember when Cassie went through that 6 month phase where she would bark and whine whenever I left the room? I remember it vividly as the time I kept that plastic bag, cinder block, and map to the river in my pocket to make me feel better.

Now, Momo has developed a similar problem. He follows me all over the apartment, and even when he's nowhere to be found, I only need to turn my back for a second and then turn back around to find him sitting there, staring at me in wide-eyed wonder. He tries to crawl into my socks as I put them on, nibbles my toes while I pee, and pitches a hissy fit when he's separated from me at night. Let me assure you, Miniature Satan is damn tenacious, too. He will keep up his yowling for a good half hour to an hour each night. One night, I had to pee in the middle of his scream himself to sleep routine, and he instantly stopped bellyaching when I entered the bathroom (which is where he stays at night, with his toys, food, water, and litter box) and started purring at a level that should have liquefied his brain. His favorite thing to do is drape himself around my shoulders like some weird cat scarf and give my ears love bites.

I like the cat and all, don't get me wrong. But I prefer that he stay on the floor. And be a dog. All the problems we had with Cassie, I never had to wear her as a hat to keep her placated.

The Cat is Pretty Weird

The cat, it turns out, is more of a dog person. He loved the dog at Katy's house, but found the cats to be terrifying and spent the majority of the morning sitting on my lap and making this face.

Call me cruel, but that picture makes me snarfle, and I took incredible delight in watching him make pathetic hissing noises and praying for death to snatch him from the situation. I only wish that picture had turned out less blurry.

Then again, Timmy The Cat is rather, uh, corpulently intimidating, one might say.

Drum Roll, Please

Introducing Momo! He likes long walks on the beach, pina coladas, and most of all getting caught in the rain. We bought him as a friend for Cassie. So far, she mostly just licks him a lot (he looks like he got caught in a typhoon) and he darts around while she chases him. Know what we call that? Mission accomplished. I've never owned a cat before, so this should be interesting. I mean, how hard can it be? Poke a few holes in a peanut butter jar once you stick him in there and then throw in food occasionally, right? Right?