Nerd Girl in the Country

The mild-mannered feline pictured at left is my eldest and first kitty, Felix. I adopted him in Richmond when I was going to college there, much to my cat-allergic roommate’s chagrin. He wasn’t always mild-mannered, of course. And he still has some terrible habits. When he was wee, he would pounce my head in the middle of the night. Bored kitty was bored. He taught himself to fetch, and whenever I did two chores in particular, he tried to help me with them.

The first chore was laundry. When I sorted my laundry and emptied everything out of my hamper, Felix was in it the second the last sock was removed. Being a meanie, I would close the lid on him. He could care less. When I was feeling jolly, I’d throw one of his toys into the hamper just to watch him hop in after it . . . and then I’d close the lid on him.

That particular hamper is long gone, sadly, however every empty laundry basket since has been fair game for kitty-hopping. I suspect the motive is to inspect the vast emptiness such baskets provide and to contemplate it. Cats are very existential. . .

The second chore Felix liked to help with, and is somewhat related to laundry, is changing the bedsheets. I thought it was a particularly kitten-y thing to do. But alas, he still gets excited about changing the sheets to this very day, 10 and half years later.

Take the sheets off the bed and immediately, there’s a wide-eyed predatory Felix on the mattress pad, chasing invisible gremlins along its surface.

Putting the fitted sheet on the bed is an invitation for sheet spelunking and diving under before the third and fourth corners can be tucked into place. (I should mention here, I have made an entire bed with a big lump in the middle because he refused to come out from under the fitted sheet)

Adding the top sheet is like a declaration of war. Forget military corners, just try and get those edges tucked under the bed without coming back with a bloody nub.

If you’re the type who likes to fold over the top bit of sheet to cover the middle blanket, its best to just let Felix go diving at the fold. He prefers the sheet flat at the top and will let you know by attacking the fold, diving under the fold, and chasing the fold back up to the top of the bed until the fold has been vanquished.

Also, it’s not just me he likes to help with changing the sheets. So, yanno, if you need a good laugh and a simple chore to take three times longer than it ought to because a senior cat is recapturing his kitten-y youth, c’mon over.