Day Two

Yesterday I had called Michelle to ask about 4AM wake up calls. I was not reassured when she laughed and told me "Wow, he let you sleep late!" Thus it was no surprise that here I was at 3:30 in the morning with Satan incarnate bouncing around on my bed. Michelle had told me yesterday that kittens love to be up at the predawn hours and generally raced around like mad. They stopped at about six months, she assured me.

I gave up any pretense at sleeping and decided to get up. I was nearly killed before I made it more than three feet from my bed.

Last night in an attempt to prevent the feline alarm clock from going off, I had played with a feathered wand toy that Butternut had chased back and forth and back and forth with mindless intensity. At one point I was whipping the toy around in circles and the kitten was growling at it and leaping. It was kind of cute, but he was definitely the exception that proved the rule. He would leap in the air flying several times his height. However, he could not land on his feet to save his soul. His hips, his head, his chest, anywhere but his feet. He didn't seem to mind at all. He also liked to skitter across the floor for no reason whatsoever that I could tell. I guess he just liked sliding on the floor.

Butter-nutcase must have decided to play fetch this morning before I even woke up. He had left his feather toy near the bed and I nearly broke an ankle when I stepped on it and it tripped on the string. As I recovered I was thinking that it was once again 4AM, and I was living on Kitten Time, as I was becoming to call it. I kept reminding myself that I only had five more days of this before I returned the Chaos Kitten to the shelter.

Butternut burped and bounced around. Thankfully I had bought a laser pointer at one of the shops in town. The orange menace chased after the pointer dot and left me in peace. Except that I had to keep the button pressed and run it along the floor. After several minutes of this, the kitten collapsed, panting, on the bed. I took the opportunity to get in a 30 minute nap before he decided it was time to get me up again. It was kind of like having a snooze alarm that fought back.

I got up and went about my day. It was already a very long week because of my furry alarm clock and the odd dreams that had been plaguing me the whole time. Audrey and Nathan stopped by briefly, but ended up being called away to deal with two fishwives fighting in the street. Stoney had wanted to meet about a delivery and that had taken up too much of my time, and nearly caused me to miss a pickup. I got there just in time and we got out just in time to miss the cops. It was not one of my better days. Audrey then called me to remind me again about caring for Eleanor's cats because she was leaving to head down to Boston tomorrow.

As I walked up to the dock I saw an orange face looking out a porthole at me. He was getting nose prints on the glass. I opened the door and the kitten slipped out and ran over the deck. It then tried to skid to a halt but failed. He went right out the scupper. There was a splash.

I ran over to the side and dove into the water. The salt stung my eyes as I looked frantically for a little limp body. I wondered how one does CPR on a cat. I wondered if Nathan would notice if I got a different orange kitten and played it off as Butternut.

I ran out of air and surfaced. I was about to dive again when I saw a little sopping wet body on the waves. I swam over to it and as I got closer, I could see that the kitten wasn't dead. It was swimming. A giant knot untied itself from around my heart. I grabbed my brined kitten and climbed up on the dock. I placed it down, and it got up, shook itself off, and then sharpened his claws on the wood. After he straightened himself out, he walked over to the edge and put his forepaws down on the pylon. The idiot was about to jump back into the water!

I quickly grabbed my kitten and brought him inside. "Listen you crazy furball, don't do that again. I don't want to go swimming. You don't want to go swimming. You are a cat. You don't like water."

Butternut completely ignored me. I grabbed a hand towel and dried him off. It left him with spiky hair and a punk look. I set the kitten down on the table in a nest of blankets on the table he took possession of the previous day and went to fix my dinner and his. His was easier - a cup of kitten food in a bowl. I had a salad.

I put the stopper in the sink and filled it with water, preparing to do the dishes from dinner and a few nights previous. While I had my back turned to grab another towel to dry the dishes, Butternut jumped from the table to the counter. The cat-astrophe then jumped into the sink full of water and attempted to drink from the running faucet. He purred madly all the while, and when I turned off the water, the stupid thing paddled around in circles in my sink. I pulled him out. He jumped back in. I pulled him out again and again he jumped back in. And that is how the kitten conquered my sink. I was losing territory quickly.