I was gone AGAIN this weekend. But now the traveling is over for a while. To add insult to injury, when I arrived home early this afternoon I left almost immediately for a meeting and then had a call on Skype. So Oliver and I didn’t settle down for a nap on the love seat until after dinner. He was full of the purr.
Obi doesn’t trust that I’m really back. He settled down for a nap at the same time on the couch. Every time I looked over he was napping…with one eye open and watching The Girl. I’m not going anywhere without him knowing.
***
I was expecting to have a super cute video of Kitten Thunder and their first Skype. I mean, a man’s voice coming from my computer? His face on the screen? Me trying to be semi-professional? All of these things told me I would have two kittens crawling on my lap, over my shoulders, onto the keyboard…
Nope. Not a kitten in sight.
How…catlike.
***
At my parents’ house this weekend, Cousin Spade helped me get ready for bed in the basement. After I turned out the light he jumped up on the bed, walked up my leg, over my shoulder, and stepped on my head as he moved on to the nightstand.
Then I heard it. The sound of a contact case scooting.
“Spade. Stop.”
Scoot. Scoot.
“Spade-O. Don’t knock my stuff off the table.”
Scoot. Scoot scoot.
“Hey. Spade. Un-uh.”
Scoot. Scoot scoot scoot.
*Sigh*
When I woke up in the morning I found my contact case balanced precariously on the ledge of the table. Exactly half on and half off. Also, the black kitten had scooted my contact solution bottle onto the edge. He wasn’t there to see the look on my face.
I told him later that I was impressed.
Kitten Thunder: Life lessons and cat tales 
Before I got Thunder or even Holly, I had another cat named Laptop (the three cats overlapped for a while, but Laptop died a few years ago). At one point during Laptop’s tenure, I was working on a project that involved weekly video calls. The first time I took one of these calls at home, Laptop jumped on the desk and started walking between me and the camera. That wasn’t too bad, but then she turned so that she was standing facing me, with her tail up in the air. She wasn’t exactly showing my colleagues her best side.
I kept the office door closed for video calls after that.
Laptop is the best cat name evah!