Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive...Her Owners Crazy

I am so tired. I am so tired. I am so tired. I am so tired.

Last night Toonces was especially active. When used in reference to Toony, "active" is a cute little euphemism S and I have adopted to mean "defined by sprinting and leaping and battle-crying, resulting in little to no sleep for the two of us." Last night, I think the toy mice were to blame for Toonces's "activity."

Chilling on the couch (i.e., rickety futon) yesterday evening, S and I discussed---for the millionth time in the two years since we first adopted T. Kitty (like P. Diddy. Get it?)---how we don't play with her enough. She's rambunctious and super-playful, and she likes very much to engage in mock fisticuffs with all manner of erratically-moving string-like or mouse-like objects. In fact, she seems to thrive on this type of exercise. S and I, on the other hand, can think of other, more-enjoyable things to do after a long day at work than shake the Cat Dancer cat wand in the middle of the living room, for several minutes on end, while Toonces stalks it from various points around the room's perimeter. I mean, it's fun for the first ten minutes or so. But as time wears on, Toony's set-ups and choosing of vantage points and hiding places from which to stalk the wand become more and more elaborate. She'll spend five full minutes wriggling around beneath the bookcase to find the perfect little lookout point, then she'll sit there and follow the wand with her eyes for another eight. Meanwhile, there one of us is, standing in the center of the living room, bored, shaking the Cat Dancer halfheartedly while waiting for Toonces to finally make her move. Sometimes when I'm doing this, I repeat the words, "Look Toony! Come get it! Come get it!" so many times that I kind of work myself into a trance, and my mind sort of floats out of my head and goes somewhere else.

OK, anyway. After comparing levels of guilt about the piddling amount of playtime we
each make for Toony, I wondered aloud if her several hundred toy mice had all ended up in the usual place, beneath the television stand, since I hadn't seen them littering our hardwood floors in the last few months or so. S guessed the mice were indeed beneath the TV stand, and he set out to retrieve them with the handle-end of a Swiffer mop.

Bad idea. Well, good at first. Then bad.

Toony freaked when she saw her long-lost toy-mice prey come bursting forth from the
TV stand in one forceful swoosh of the Swiffer. She gave an excited little chirp and set about batting at the mice with her paws and scurrying after them as they sailed across the floor. "Oh, how cute! She's so excited!" we idiot pet owners cooed. We spent the next several minutes watching Toony fling her mice down the long hallway, then chase frantically after them, then bat them around for a bit, then start the whole shebang over again. Our "We're too lazy to play with the cat" guilt was eradicated for the time being.

Unfortunately, the fun and games didn't end when S and I climbed into bed at 11:30. No no; Toony was only getting started. She spent the next several hours whipping herself into a toy mouse–induced frenzy, which manifested itself as lap after lap of hallway sprints, nails clicking and clacking every step of the way; little victory mews and cries of attack when a mouse was successfully conquered; and what sounded to me like a whole lot of crashing into walls. I barely slept. S, who sleeps like he's dead, slept just a bit more than I did. It was bedlam! I wondered if the neighbors were kept up by the clamor as well.

This morning, when I "woke up," (as if I'd been asleep!), I felt more tired than when I'd gone to bed. Today I'm having trouble reading and concentrating. It's pathetic! And what irked me more than anything was that as I was leaving the apartment this morning to go to work, I caught a glimpse of Toonces lounging luxuriously on my side of the bed, yawning and snuggling up against a fold of the comforter, preparing for a nice long nap.