Well, I have passed another milestone in my quest to overcome my handicap of thumblessness.
The human came home again, and had objections to me wanting to climb the artificial tree he’s had up for the past month. I don’t know why…there were never any presents under it or anything. At any rate, I apparently made him lose patience by repeatedly doing this, so he put me in the bedroom and closed the door. This put me away from where I can have the most fun – read “annoying the hell out the the giant lummox” – and so I did what I usually do: leap at the door and scratch at it until he gets fed up again and lets me out.
But that’s not what happened. What happened was that at the climax of my endeavors, I made a leap for the doorknob and grabbed it. Then, wonder of wonders, it turned, and the door swung to enough that I was able to get out.
Not only have I overcome the lack-of-thumbs issue, but I’ve overcome the height deficit to boot. Soon I’ll be able to get out of this apartment on my own…all, the glories of almost tasted freedom.
…And the human left for New Year’s. Frankly, I don’t see the point of it all. “The calendar has switched over” doesn’t immediately present itself to me as a cause for celebration. But then again, I lack that penchant for ritual cyclicality that seems to permeate a lot of human cultural behavior. Can’t say I have a problem with that, either.
In other news, still more of this “snow” stuff is falling now, and it’s coming down like it might be going out of style. I’m starting to get really curious as to what this stuff is like. My bipedal roommate seems disinclined to let me out in it, but I’m pretty determined to have a snow experience of some kind. I’ll find a way. I’m resourceful.
Human went batshit last night. Something about some guy called Nelson and a politician of some sorts…I don’t know, I don’t tend to care about the kinds of things that humans get all hot and bothered about, politically. Honestly, I think that bringing the sensibilities of a cat to government might do a lot of good.
Take immigration, for example. If humans just marked the border regularly, then I swear you would see a difference in a week. Never underestimate the amount of trouble that can be avoided by a judicious application of urine. I guarantee that after a few thorough soakings of the border line, nobody would dare cross; who the heck would want to get into a noisy showdown of posturing, scratching, and biting?
Come to think of it, I think that a judicious application of urine is what would solve all your political problems. After all, aren’t societal interactions predicated on posturing, limited combat, and establishing a pungent wall of pheromonal odor? I mean, think about it: War on Terror – judicious application of urine to Bin Laden. At the end of the day, a whole country has to be able to generate more urine than any one guy or collection of people hiding in a cave. You get that power together and drop it collectively on those caves? You win. And how about Russia? I guarantee you that if Bush had urinated on Putin the first time the Russian President visited Crawford, U.S.-Russia relations would have been very different.
But I digress. So the human was ripshit about something or another. It’s made him…edgy. Which, of course, made me edgy. Enough so, lestways, that I made him sleep on the couch last night. No way am I letting a pissed off human into the bedroom.
Well, he’s back – and with a veritable assload of Christmas loot. DVDs, clothes, and this weird machine that he plugs in and turns on which vibrates. He wears it on his shoulders like its some kind of article of clothing…it creeps me out.
Anyway, the vacation appears to be over for me, although I did have some fun while I had the place to myself. Got into the kitchen (which I never get to do – he has problems for some reason letting up on the counter) and knocked some stuff over. High old time.
In other news, I was surfing the web while he was gone, and found some disturbing videos that I’m inclined to share with you. I look at these less as examples of how humans demean us as a race, but more as examples of how willing some of “the brethren” are to make asses of themselves for human amusement.
This one is just ridiculous, for the simple reason that no self-respecting cat is going to get that far and go all stiff. That was a trick, pure and simple. If I started a leap and realized that I was going to fail to clear the obstacle, I would actually use my hind legs. They have claws for a goddamn reason. That animal was just looking for attention, and it’s depressing.
Now I’ll be the first to admit, some of this behavior is not the product of feline attention-whoring. Some of it is just normal cat interaction; other of it is normal cat-human interaction. But some of that stuff was just out-and-out retarded. I think we’d get a bit more respect if we didn’t in fact do that sort of thing so much. I somehow doubt that we became deities in Egypt because of our cute antics. Now those people, they knew how to treat a cat with respect.
Well, the human is gone to his family’s for Christmas festivities. He took his laptop with him, but there’s another computer in the apartment that I am making use of. The Mac Mini normally functions as a headless hub for media and such, but plugging in the secondary monitor and the wireless receiver of an old keyboard/mouse setup that I found in a drawer has turned it into my own personal web portal. Which I will be exploiting, believe-you-me. Just have to make sure that I get it all back to the way it was before he comes back…whenever that is.
Not that I’m worried or anything. Before he left, the biped was kind enough to clean out the litter box, see that I had enough food and water, and generally “secure” the place for my autonomous occupancy. I just don’t know when precisely his return is. I know it will be at least until tomorrow evening, but it may stretch out into the next day, and I don’t want to have to keep plugging and unplugging peripherals every time I want to make a goddamn post or surf the web. You think typing without thumbs is challenging (and it is) then you should try to plug in USB and DVI ports with paws. Go on, try it. I dare you.
Anyway, now for some sleep, followed by eating, more sleeping, and potentially some relieving of myself. Have fun y’all.
I’m a little annoyed that I haven’t been able to update for a while; the human has been monopolizing the computer since his finals; since those ended Friday, we’ve been recouping. He’s going home for Christmas, leaving me alone for a couple of days – so we had “our” Christmas early. He got nuzzles, and I got one of these. I don’t know that he got it specifically from that place, but it is much of the awesome. I am having so much fun with it right now.
Speaking of which, back to that. I’ll write more later.
I understand water. I drink it, I’ve watched it fall out of the sky, and (the horror, the horror) I’ve been immersed in it. The human calls that last one a “bath”; I call it “evil.” But for the second or third time, now, I’m sitting by the window watching this weird white particulate come out of the sky. What the heck is it?
According to Wikipedia, it is called “snow,” and it’s basically frozen water. I’m still not clear about the distinction between snow and ice, all things being equal, but now I’m curious. What does it feel like? What does it smell like?
The major obstacle to my discovery is, of course, the lummox. I know it’s cold out…the last time we went to the part, it was very chilly. I had no idea air could get that cold outside of a refrigerator. This is a problem for me, because I’m not that partial to chilliness. And the human knows this. I don’t yet know how to get around the problem, but we’ll figure something out, I’m sure.
I’m really not sure which is more annoying…nursing a sick, cranky human, or dealing with a mostly functional, healthy human. Seriously.
Now that he’s starting to convalesce, he’s becoming a lot more…annoying again. He seems to be able to reprimand me again, so I suppose fun is all over.
Unless of course I can figure out how to get him sick at will…
I meant to post this earlier, but extenuating circumstances – which I shall explain further down the line – prevented it.
Anyway, remember how I said I had the gut feeling that something was afoot the other day? Well, I was right. A whole load of humans showed up in the afternoon and spent hours socializing with my human, shared a meal, and were much taken with yours truly. As is only fitting. I don’t think that the other humans understand the pecking order around here, generally speaking. They don’t seem to get the fact that this apartment is ruled by a hierarchy of two, and that anyone else is an interloper that must show the proper respect.
As it is, they managed to royally freak me out. It’s difficult to deal with, because not only are they ignorant of the pecking order, but they are significantly bigger than me. What’s a cat to do? In the end, I figure it was easier to make lemons out of lemonade and just play with ‘em. Some of them seemed to understand what was going on, it served to effectively cow others…All in all, it was what I wanted. It was more fun that I usually get to have, because my human has made it abundantly clear that rough play isn’t acceptable behavior between us two.
Speaking of my human, he’s the reason I was so bloody held up in making this post. I don’t know precisely what happened…he went to sleep fine on Sunday, but when he woke up on Monday it was all sorts of complaining and what looked like a lot of discomfort. No clue where it came from except that it must’ve been one of his friends, but he needed a lot of nursing yesterday and today. I just hope it’s not contagious and that it goes away soon. He gets whiny when he’s sick.
