That naughty cat!

I live with two boys. One is as nice as pie, the other is a devilled egg. Well, you all know I like Stu quite a bit... but Samurai, he is a source of much consternation for me!

He's a very handsome boy, with green eyes, a pink nose and short little legs. His long fur is white underneath with a big dollop of grey on top, which falls over his left eye like the fringe of a moody teenager. He was quite a frail little thing as a kitten, but now he has the full bodied presence of a lazy indoor cat. He's cute, and he gets away with murder because of it!

I'm a cat person in general, so when he chose us on our fateful visit to the pet store, I thought we'd get along just fine. Stu and I fell in love with him straightaway, but it seems that Sam doesn't like me very much. He took to Stu like a duck to water (maybe it's a brotherhood thing), but me... I think he tolerates me at best. I want to pat him and sit with him and play with him, but he just ain't playing ball.

But occasionally he lets me know how he really feels... like when he ate the cactus I'd been lovingly nurturing for months... or insists upon waking me up at four in the morning by rattling the blinds... attacking me when I'm defenseless on the exercise bike... he hates me - boo hoo!

Recently he's knocked it up a notch (with the spice weasel - bam!). He has scratched so much underneath my lounge suite, that he has developed a hole large enough to fit through. So he climbs up into the bottom of the couch, just sitting there, straining the remaining lining. He loves to do this when I've just put my feet up on said couch, and am relaxing after a day of dealing with grumblebum tantythrowers. And he refuses to evacuate this crawl space... we end up having to fill the area with foul smelling 'no scratch spray', to make it completely unpleasant for him. So we're going to reline the couch with vinyl... let's see him claw through that!

And for the past few mornings, as soon as day breaks, he thinks that it is great fun to attack my feet while I'm trying to sleep...not just playfully, claws and all! And as soon as you so much as flinch, he dashes off, because he knows he's doing the wrong thing. When we close the bedroom door, so I may enjoy the last twenty minutes of my slumber painlessly, he howls for attention. Now, dear friends, we all know how much I love my sleep, so I am almost ready to make him a permanent outdoor boy, food optional.

But then he sits and behaves for twenty minutes... and I think of the stress of cars whizzing by, big mean doggies, and violent boys, and I love him all over again. Plus I don't think the local wildlife would survive him.

Seriously though, he's got some strange habits, like, why does he scratch the wall, instead of his litter, after relieving himself?! And he never cleans himself properly, so he gets little clumps that we have to chop out - we do brush him! And what's so great about sitting in the sink?

Pfft, at least he's not throwing up furballs (please don't let this be a jinx!).

PS - if anyone gets my obscure Futurama reference, Stu will buy you lunch!