Monday, July 23, 2012

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.


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