Pretty Kitty

I'm dedicating this post to my sweet Gabby girl. It's only too bad she can't read this to see how I am trying to suck up for what I did.

The above pictures are from last night when she was helping me fold towels. This was after she had helped me change the sheets on my bed, which is where the trouble began. More on that in a minute...

Gabby is probably the absolute sweetest and loving while at the same time the most irritating kitty in the world. She loves getting attention and she will let me know when she's not getting enough. Gabby will grab my pants or my leg with her paw when I walk by, or wander around the house meowing, or wake me up at 4:30am by sitting right by my head and meowing. The other night she used my leg as a scratching post, looking at me quizzically when I shrieked in pain as she left puncture wounds in the perfect shape of her paw on my knee. When I'm walking through the house she always runs ahead of me practically tripping me by darting across my path once she gets ahead of me. Most mornings she succeeds in tripping me, because while I'm fixing my breakfast or packing my lunch she sprawls out on the floor right behind my feet and I half kick/half trip over her when I turn to walk across the kitchen. And, she and/or her little partner in crime Izzy (I'm not sure which one but if I find out it's gonna be a kitty smackdown) have ripped a hole in the wall in the hallway. Oh yes, I came home last week to find scratch marks down the wall at the end of the hall (of course they couldn't do something like this in a room no one goes in, it has to be in the hall directly beside the guest bathroom). I had a slight kaniption fit (see also tantrum, hissy fit, out-of-body experience) and realized quickly it did no good to try and scold a cat. I was pointing my finger at the wall and at Gabby and back and forth emphasizing my point when she reached up to grab my finger. She thought it was a game. And I realized I was glad no one saw me or heard me fussing at my cat because honestly I looked quite ridiculous. However, not as ridiculous as I looked the next day when I came home and found that they had ripped the paint and sheet rock away from the scratch marks to make an even bigger hole. Which caused an even bigger kaniption fit. (Right now as we speak, they are chasing each other around the living room/kitchen and pictures are flying. Because they don't know how to run under the end table, they have to run across it.) I am mourning the loss of my leather couches from scratch marks, and just when I think they are not jumping/playing on them as much, Izzy literally just fell in between the couch and the end table and used her claws to hang on for dear life and pull herself back up onto the couch, because heaven forbid she fall the 6 inches to the carpet. Argh.

Anyway, the girls are challenging that is for sure. But Gabby is my sweet snuggly kitty, and she in no way deserved what happened last night.... remember how I said she helped me change the sheets on my bed? Well... ok so here's what happened. I have a sleigh bed, and because of the way the frame is shaped I have to lift up the mattress in order to put the fitted sheet on (do you see where this is going?). So I usually prop the mattress up on my knee, pull the sheet on, and then drop the mattress. Little did I know that Gabby had been lurking behind me, and when I lifted up the mattress she thought it was super interesting. She jumped on the bed to check it out, and I didn't see her, so I dropped the mattress. And then I saw her tail. Sticking out from in between the mattress and the box springs. Big fluffy tail, no kitty. Reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz you-dropped-a-house-on-my-sister-and-only-the-ruby-slippers-are-sticking-out. I quickly lifted up the mattress and she jumped out. Of course I spent the rest of the night picking her up and feeling her internal organs for signs of hemorrhage or squishedness (it's a medical term).

So Gabby, although you scratch me, trip me, and wake me up in the middle of the night, in no way did I purposely involve you in a game of Smoosh-a-Kitty.