Kissing Friday

At 4 a.m., Obi was bored. He started his usual bored routine, pulling the cupboard open in the bathroom and – because we installed baby locks the day after he locked Oliver in the cupboard – letting it bumpbumpbump closed again.

“Obi, stop.”

At 4:20 a.m., Obi was bored. BumpBumpBump.

“Obi. Stop.” BumpBumpBump.

He could not be convinced, verbally, to stop playing with the cupboard. I got up, removed him from the bathroom, and shut the door. Now everyone with cats is thinking that THIS didn’t work. You just can’t have closed doors in a house with cats. But, surprisingly, no one cared.

At 4:45 a.m., Obi was bored. He went to his secondary bored action of playing with the blinds over our headboard. After the strings hit me in the head the tenth time I reached up, grabbed the brown kitten, kissed his head and sent him on his way.

At 5 a.m., Oliver was hungry.

At 5:05 a.m., Oliver was hungry.

At 5:10 a.m., Oliver was hungry.

At 5:15 a.m., Oliver was hungry.

At 5:18 a.m., Oliver was hungry.

At 5:30 a.m., Oliver was hungry. He jumped onto my should to see why I wasn’t paying attention to him. “It isn’t time yet,” I said. As he turned to leave, his foot slipped and jammed into my eye. His grey body went thump against the wall and then thump on the floor when instinct made my arm flail and send him flying.

At 5:32 a.m., I had a sore, watering eye. And a lot of guilt.

At 5:35 a.m., Oliver was hungry. This actually made me feel better because it meant I didn’t hurt him.

At 5:42 a.m., I decided I might as well get up because I needed to be downtown at 6:30 a.m., anyway.

At 5:45 a.m., moving slowly and picking up both kittehs to deliver passive-aggressive kisses, I arrived in the kitchen to feed them.

At 6:15 a.m., I was out the door.

There were meetings all day. And there was work to do.

At 4:45 p.m., Oliver and I finally met on the couch for the post-breakfast snuggle. Then there was more work to do.

At 10:13 p.m., I will publish this post.

At 10:17 p.m., I will be in bed. Asleep. And hoping for a better start to tomorrow.

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The Guilt Spiral

This is how things work at the Thunder house:

The doorbell rang. I was eating lunch in my office and I thought about not answering it. I hardly ever do – no one needs to know I work from home. I grabbed my quesadilla and peeked toward the street from the kitchen. No car. Someone going door to door.

The doorbell rang again. Fine. I answered it.

I’m going to stop this story for a minute to say I can’t imagine that door to door evangelism can possibly work. Are there really people sitting at home in the middle of the day, munching on their lunch, and thinking “gee, I could really use a new god right now”? And if there are, would you want them in your church?

I’m sure you realize that last paragraph wasn’t unrelated. It was two ladies who wanted to know if I still had hope for human kind and then they started reading the Bible at me. AT me. And then they wanted to know if I felt uplifted by what they said.

I have no idea what they said.

While they were reading, I was holding my lunch in one hand and noticing that Kitten Thunder was making a break for it. These two cats have never been outside. They don’t rush the door. The one time Obi escaped – I’m convinced he got outside by accident – he got a paddling and ran any time I even looked toward the door for a month. I take keeping them safe and inside very seriously. So don’t even ask me why they were trying to get out. 

Maybe THEY were considering a new god?

Anyhow, Oliver was dissuaded by a foot blocking him but Obi was out the door already. I grabbed him by his back skin – it was the only thing I could get – and yanked him back in. He cried, mostly from surprise. The back up Bible reader cried out. “They’re INDOOR cats,” I said and slammed the screen door. I then politely explained that I was on my lunch hour and didn’t have time to explore my relationship with God with them. They said okay and they’ll consider stopping by later.

I won’t be answering the door.

Once they were gone, I apologized to Obi. He was good once he found out he wasn’t in trouble anymore. We hugged. I gave him some ear kisses. He went off to nap.

Oliver, though, is full of remorse for his brother getting in trouble. Oliver, my little grey ball of stress, has been laying on my lap since the incident. Actually, an arm and my lap; this makes it hard to work. He’s been purring with all his might to get me happy again. He just left. Probably to toss his tuna somewhere because the drama has given him a tummy ache.

So now I have guilt from both cats. And typing this story out has renewed the guilt from spanking my cat two years ago. I need to go find the grey kitten for some purr therapy.

Obi just stretched and rolled over. Nap.