Cabin Fever

Pippin’s cabin fever is conspicuous of late.  More wild-eyed thunderpaws from room to room, more spectacular leaps onto his cat tree, more bouncing into Gandalf. His miaows have become plaintive and he braids a path around my feet as I walk about the house; he is my make-up assistant in the morning and computer helper at night. Clearly, he has about had it with being house-bound this winter.

We are an eccentric little group and the scene that greeted me one evening after my shower was interesting but not out of the realm of what passes for normal in our house.

Traditionally, this is how Pippin has notified me that the water dish is empty but I rarely let that happen any more and yes….that is water all over the floor; this was not a Momcat fail.

I watched him for several minutes; he was focused on the dish and had it levitated off the tile I would not have been surprised; he was that intense. But the dish didn’t move and I had a mess to clean up so I broke the spell to put things back in order. With a resolution to make sure the dish was never less than half empty (half full? I am an optimist by nature) we turned in for the night.

My confidence in Plan A (keeping it full) was rewarded for several days; apparently Pippin was just being picky. We had a spell of calm weather and he resumed his walks with Gandalf and me. Problem solved.

Until…..

Really, Pippin? Assuming an air of incredulity (how could this possibly have happened?) he wove miaowing around my feet to tell me he was just as astonished as I was. The water dish must be haunted….yes…..that was it; he had kept it from running amok and had averted a soggy catastrophe; I should be proud of him. He continued his tale as I mopped up, embroidering the story until I dubbed him Sir Pippin The Brave. He seemed pleased with that and wandered off to bed.

When I was working in the emergency department I frequently took care of women with abdominal pain and one of the triage questions for them was “Are you pregnant?”. More often than I would have liked the reply was “I hope not.” Hope is notoriously lousy birth control and this leads to Life lesson #2: “Hope is not a method”.

While I “hoped” Pippin wouldn’t tip the dish over again, the realist in me knew I had to do something; optimism is actually realism with a smile.

Therefore it was with renewed determination and pink duct tape I moved to Plan B.

This was a few weeks ago and again I thought the problem had been solved. Did you catch the past tense there?

I think Pippin uses the time I am in the shower to get into noisy mischief; the other night I walked into the living room to the sound of scraping coming from the kitchen. Gandalf looked at me; “Mom….he’s doing it again.” I peeked around the doorway so see Pippin with his paw in the dish reservoir, carefully backing up while maneuvering the entire system out into the middle of the floor. He looked up, miaowed as if to say “My work here is done”, and strolled away to settle on the footstool.

No water on the floor and he gets to do……this; I count it as successful interspecies negotiation.

I love that cat.