The cats were going crazy from all the birdsong in the middle of this day, which was weirdly sunny for November in Ohio, and that gentle temperature where sun and shade are a complimentary kind of lovely. Not that my poor kitties have ever felt the outside parts of shade and sun, just the stuff that comes through the windows. I am still trying to keep it secret that those are lesser versions. That outdoors would blow their tiny minds with actual bugthings and up close birdthings and treethings to scratch and climb on. Keeping them indoors is meant to protect them, but sometimes I wonder if it's mean of me to put them in a house and make it their entire environment. It's already kind of odd for them to have been chosen by a human for co-habitation. That some giant personthing came by and took them off (how could they know it was a rescue?). I just plucked them up and now I wonder if they have even the the smallest dream memory of their birth garages or being curled in heaps with their feral mamas. I recently had some full force pondering about the fairness of their cat lives when I had to open the door to the other side of the attic to put something away. Jasper had never seen that part of the house before (with good reason, it's full of insulation and he eats all sorts of weird things). His eyes got huge and he was twitching to get in there, flummoxed that I could so nonchalantly open a no-no portal in his universe then shoo him away. What a bitch goddess I am.
I couldn't make their physical world any bigger but I remembered a bag of catnip in the freezer. I refreshed the catnip mice and left a small pile of nip on the floor. Jasper made a snuflly pig of himself, sneezing along flat on the carpet, his two front paws stretched outward, MINE MINE MINE SNEEZE NOM NOM. His paws are huge with coral pink beefy paw pads that actually slap the floor when he runs into a room. He is very loud with his body. Especially when he is lording over a pile of nip, nails plucking and thwacking his haunches against the floor after each roll.
Oddly, neither of my cats are talkers. Gracie only meows to tell me stuff, like FINE I'LL JUST POOP ON THE FLOOR or HEY STUPID I LIKE WATER, which means she barely ever makes a peep but when she does I follow her around until she shows me what she's going on about. Jasper makes squeaks when I give them the human gets me blues and scoop him up for some harassment. I don't try that with Gracie because she's too dignified and really one of the easiest cats in the world until someone tries to pick her up. Then she turns psychotic. Jasper is a bit of a nutcase all the time, jumping out at people or chasing my pant legs all the way up the steps. He's a biter, but he's also such a charming shithead that he kind of invites a noogie every now and then. I just make sure I'm in long sleeves. I know his lion seed tricks.
Sometimes if I pick Jasper up he'll flip onto his back and sit there, calmly, with his giant mouth open and his teeth waiting, just looking totally ridiculous. He has a basket full of stuffed babies he snags with his nail and flings in the air, catching them with his teeth and throwing his paws around their vulnerable stuffed necks, squeezing and raking with his mammoth hind claws. This is how he turned one toy into two, creating a headless bunny body and a bodyless bunny head with bursting yarn eye. He's a fierce little big thing. He leaves the bunny head on my pillow.
