It's a good thing you're cute.

When you live alone in a house…every noise sounds creepy.  Especially a new house that you just moved into.  However…after a while you get accustomed to certain noises and they don’t bother you anymore.

When you have a cat, this happens sooner.  Cats prowl at night.  The hunt too…even if there’s nothing to hunt.  They race around the house and knock things over and make noise.  Cats are insane.  So there are noises we have learned to ignore because it’s “just the cat”.

However…some noises you will still get up and check out…because they just sound too scary.  Which brings us to this morning at 6AM.

My husband heard the cat tearing around the house earlier than that but ignored it as her typical behavior.  However…a little after 6, we hear quite a big crash as if she had really crashed into something.  Well, she does this.  We have a sliding glass door and our neighborhood has lots of other cats, so she has been known to crash into the door trying to fight other cats.  We were awake, but not out of bed yet so we were startled but just considered it her usual, silly behavior.  A few minutes later, we heard another crash and some really horrible cat noises like she was literally fighting another cat.  It was an awful sound.  That time it was just too nerve wracking because the crash sounded like someone breaking into the house.  So we actually got up to see what was happening.

In the living room, we found a couple of empty bags of rice cake snacks.  I had collected them in a small plastic bag to throw them away but it hadn’t made it to the trash.  We also found little rice cake snack bits all over the living room.  Behind the couch, in front of the couch, down the hall way and in my craft room.  They were everywhere.  Our assumption was that she had dug into the trash bag and tried to eat the remnants of the rice snacks and gotten her head stuck in the bag and then torn around the house trying to get it off…thus spilling crumbs all over.  ALL OVER. 

What we did NOT find…was the cat.  We looked for her in all of her usual hiding spots and could not find her.  We shook the treat bottle which rarely fails to get her to come out of a hiding spot…but still no cat.  We looked for quite some time.  Finally, I had to give up and go get into the shower.

When I got out of the shower and got dressed, I decided I’d go look for her again to see if she had calmed down from whatever trauma she had experienced so she would come out.  I had looked twice behind the bookshelf but I kept feeling drawn back over to it.  So I moved her little cat sleeping/playing tent and the curtain…and finally found her.  Her eyes were huge and she looked terrified.  There was a plastic Hobby Lobby bag with one of it’s handles hanging loosely around her neck.  She looked at me with a mixture of guilt and exhausted terror.  I had to laugh…even though I felt bad for her.  I tore the bag to easily get it off and moved everything so I could get to her and pet her.  She just sat there and looked at me.  It was so sad.

She had apparently gotten into the plastic bag I’d used to collect some trash…and gotten her head caught in it…I don’t know how long she was stuck or how long she thrashed about and tore through the house trying to get it off.  But I’m sure everywhere she ran, she felt like the bag was chasing her.  Which is horribly sad and slightly hysterical.

I suppose we both learned something today.  I should not leave plastic bags where she can get to them.  And she should not dig in plastic bags trying to eat people food.

For the record, I petted her, soothed her, checked to make sure she hadn’t hurt herself and gave her a treat.  She was a little traumatized but she’s fine.  I’m sure she is at home, sleeping it off.

Now if I could just be at home with her and sleeping it off…life would be much better.

It's not a seizure...

No, I am not having a seizure.

 

This bit of random was brought to you courtesy of songs by Jonathan Coulton  including “Ikea” and “I Feel Fantastic”

 

Ever drive down the road and that song you just LOVE comes on the radio…so you crank up the volume and sing at the top of your lungs?

 

Yeah…me too.  And when I get really happy about it…there are hand motions.  It’s pretty pathetic.  But it keeps me from being cranky and having road rage most of the time.  At least it cuts down my road rage, we’ll put it that way.

 

The thing is…nobody in any other car can hear your music.  So you just look like a total lunatic, driving down the road having a complete spaz out. 

 

For the record, that’s the technical term: Complete Spaz Out.

 

Anyway…if you don’t know this about me…I’ll freely admit it.  I do this all the time.  If I’m having a bad day or a bad drive…I put on music I love and I crank it up and act like an idiot while I drive.  I even have a whole playlist on my Zune entitled “Make Me Happy”.  On my iPod it was entitled “Make Me Happy, Dammit”…but I felt like that was too much pressure on my friend Steve Zalman.  Long story.

 

Anyway, so yeah…I sing and  chair dance in my car while I’m driving.  You wanna know the worst ones?  Happy, boppy songs that make my head bounce side to side like an 80’s blonde bouncing her head off her shoulder pads.  When I realize people are looking at me…I usually crack up laughing…which probably makes me look even more crazy than I already did.

 

I’m having a sudden mental image of Juliette Lewis in that video where she’s in a psychiatric ward and coloring on the walls and crying.

 

That’s probably what I look like to the people in the other cars who cannot hear my amazing, happy, boppy music.  But you know what?  When it’s 7:20 in the morning and you’re tired and you really don’t want to go to work because it’s been a long week…it can really improve the start of your day to listen to something totally happy and mindless.  And there’s just something infinitely funny about driving along and singing a song about Ikea and how it all started with a God named Thor.  That’s funny stuff!

 

And there are few bad moods that cannot be improved by Bon Jovi.  “No Apologies”, “Have a Nice Day”, “This is Our House”, “Raise your Hands”…I mean, there’s 25 songs I could name right off the top of my head that immediately improve my mood.

 

Things are not always going to go your way in life.  Some days just suck.  Sometimes they suck for no apparent reason…especially if you’re female.  But if you can make yourself take that one little step that improve your mood and thus, improve your day…well, do it.  Have a Complete Spaz Out.  Who cares if you frighten other drivers and they contemplate calling 911?  This is not about them, it’s about you.

 

Just make sure you can do all this and still stay in your lane.  Oh yeah…and when people look at you and you catch them…smile and wave.  You just might improve their day too.