...the cat must learn to look before it leaps. Usually, this lesson is best learned as a kitten and hopefully doesn't involve a toilet bowl as a steady stream is pouring on in. My husband has unwittingly taught many a kitten this lesson the hard way and last night was no exception. Needless to say, the kitten got a bath, not just once, but twice.
I'm really hoping this kitten has learned his lesson by this one experience. We've had other kittens in the past who needed more than one lesson. We had one cat whom I think had never learned. This particular experience happened a number of times with this cat, named Stitch. Although Stitch eventually learned that the toilet is no place for curiosity, she never learned to look before she'd leap. More than once, I would be running a bubble bath and she would unwittingly hop right in and then hop right out, into a wall. Later on, she would be walking the length of an ironing board and keep on walking long after the ironing board ended. Honestly, we wondered if there was something wrong with her: bad eyes, bad hearing, bad depth perception, until one day we saw her outside hunting a bird. "Oh this is going to be a disaster," I thought to myself. There she was: crouching low to the ground about 15 feet away from a robin.Robin was pecking away at the ground with his friends, none the wiser. Soon, Stitch was 10 feet away, Robin was slightly concerned. Stitch moved closer a couple more feet and the whole flock took to flight, specific Robin included. While the birds went flying, so did Stitch, and Stitch caught the Robin about 5 feet in the air! She had a quick and scrumptous meal; a perfectly executed dining experience. It was then that I realized that there was nothing wrong with the cat at all; she was just an idiot! An idiot savant! She became one of the best hunting cats we ever had until we had to give her away because we were moving. It is my understanding that she'd live for weeks hunting in the forest.
Another cat who didn't look before he'd leap was our Kitty Bear, the one responsible for melting the Ice Man's heart toward the idea of having cats. Kitty Bear was tons of fun to play with. Of course, he was a full-grown adult cat when he adopted us. He played games differently than other cats we're used to having. He employed strategy to his games. Yes, he liked the typical fishing with string game or chasing after jingle balls game. However, he also liked to play Surpise and Attack! Often, I'd home home from work antsy to go to the bathroom, so I'd enter a dark bathroom and turn on the light while this BoogeyCat would jump out at me from inside the bathtub and almost scare the pee out of me. He looked so smug. This game quickly turned into Peek-A-Boo Surpise where he would run and jump into the bathtub every time I walked down the hall. It would be a contest of who would jump out to startle the other first.
It wasn't too long when I decided to put a whole new twist on this game by adding water to the bottom of the bathtub. I certainly couldn't do it the moment I got home because Kitty Bear was way too smart for that. No, but I did run about 3 inches of bathwater in the tub before I left in the morning, wondering if he would find his suprise sometime during the day. I snickered at the prospect even though I wouldn't be there to see it.
I returned home that evening and events carried on as usual. Even I forgot about the water in the bathtub. I entered the bathroom, turned on the light, and like clockwork, Kitty Bear raced in after me to jump into the tub. A perfectly elegant jump turned spread-eagle-with-talons in mid air as he took stock of what, exactly, he was jumping into and attempted to execute a change in plans. The only thing he successfully executed was my shower curtain in true Freddy Krueger type fashion. I can't remember if he glared at me with daggers the entire night or even if I was afraid to fall asleep, but I do remember shopping for a new shower curtain the next day. To my recollection, we still played Peek-A-Boo Surprise, but he was much more cautious about the bathtub from that point forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment