Are you smarter than a Cat?

Confessions of a Kitty Step Mom….

It was week one of being a kitty stepmom to these 2 Bengals.  We were off to a rough start.  Already I had yelled at the cats to “Get out, get off, get away” a few…million…. times.  I had lint rolled my couch and my black yoga pants daily and I wondered how was it possible to walk through the house, not sitting on any furniture, and by the time I had sat down in my car see strands of white hairs stuck to my clean black yoga pants.  So…gross….

The cats seemed to have invaded every part of my life, every part but our master bedroom where I absolutely refused to let the cats in.  I needed somewhere at least one room where I could hang my jewelry and leave my shoes laying out without being concerned about a little kitty claw breaking or scratching.  It was a rough transition for the kitties, who on the day they gained a kitty stepmom lost their bed, as they had lived their entire lives sleeping under the bed in the master bedroom.

This new “rule” didn’t stop them from trying to get back into “their room.”  Being a new, naïve kitty stepmom, I didn’t realize how determined cats can be to sneak into places you don’t want them.   I had just walked into our bedroom and in a millisecond, Jaxon, from several feet down the hall heard the door open and had lept from one end of the hall and dived through the open door and under the bed.  I tried everything I could think of, I commanded Jaxon to “Get out!,”  I lured him with the sweetest cat lover “here kitty, kitty” voice I could muster.  He definitely wasn’t buying that one.  I even tried to bribe him with a kitty treat.  He wasn’t budging.  He sat under our bed far enough away that I couldn’t reach him, but close enough to taunt me with haughty kitty eyes his smirk saying  “this is my bed, my room and I’m not leaving!”

Knowing my husband wouldn’t be home from work for hours but not wanting to leave the door open, for fear that Sparta might also sneak in, I racked my brain for how to lure him out.  I tried to think of anything he didn’t like.  “The guitar!” I thought, “Jaxson always runs out of the room whenever my husband starts to strum the guitar!”  I ran and got the guitar and knelt down and strummed a few chords.  Jaxon looked at me with a bemused gaze as if to say “ don’t you have anything better to do then serenade a cat under your bed?”  “Yes, of course I do!” I thought and panicked momentarily realizing I needed a new idea.

I stood up, breathing deeply and gave myself a little pep talk, “I am a college graduate, I have a master’s degree and I have opposable thumbs…. I am smarter than a cat!”  And then I remembered, I had never seen Jaxon so filled with terror then when my husband vacuumed.  So I grabbed the vacuum and walked triumphantly into the bedroom.  I turned on the vacuum and shoved it as far under the bed as I could.  But nothing!  Jaxon only moved further underneath the bed towards the center.  Warding off my growing frustration, I reminded myself that “I WAS SMARTER THAN A CAT!” and devised a new scheme.  I would leave the vacuum with headlights blazing and motor on pointing under the bed and I would close the bedroom door.  I left hoping that I the noise would drive him to the edge of his catlike instinct to wear down humans with tenacious stubbornness.  I opened the door fifteen minutes later and found a defeated Jaxon, shoulders slumped, head low, he quickly darted out of the room leaving his arch nemesis, the vacuum, behind.  Leaving one victorious kitty step mom, to celebrate a small victory…for Jaxon had learned that this was no ordinary kitty stepmom he had, she was Smarter than a Cat!

Jaxson treated me differently from that day on.  For one thing, he didn’t seem as eager to enter my “kitty free zone.”   And when I tell him to do something he does it…..about 50% of the time…I mean he’s still a cat, I’m still just a kitty stepmom not the cat whisperer.  We’re working towards that 100% but for now I will rest on the laurels of my victory.  And continue to prove that I am smarter than a cat!!!!!!!

Do you have pets?  What kind?  What is your favorite pet story?