That Darn Cat

Meet Spark.

Spark is a cat I adopted a few years ago when I moved out of my parents’ house. Living on my own proved to be a bit lonely, and I knew a friend who had been made aware of a cat coming from a broken home. The poor guy had been between a violently divorcing couple, so I took the little sweetheart in. I named him after a character in a webcomic because I’m a huge nerd, and at the time my taste was less refined than a raw lump of coal.

He’s proven to be a pretty good pet. He has a tendency to get his claws stuck in furniture, but I try to keep his foreclaws trimmed so he’s less of a threat to me and the upholstery. Before I adopted him, he’d been fixed, and he’d also suffered from a urinary tract infection. So no worries about him getting a leg up on female cats. Oh, he tries, when his step-sister Damsel goes into heat, but he gets about as far as the “get on top” portion of the feline mating ritual and ends up just looking confused.

Maybe that’s why he’s such a jerk sometimes.

Spark doesn’t just love attention. He craves it. Particularly from me. If I’m not home by a certain time, or I’m away for a weekend or something, the first thing he does when I walk in the door is start whining. He, like me, is a creature of habit, and if I don’t immediately drop everything to sit in my desk chair so he can hop in my lap and knead me while purring like an outboard motor, he’ll pitch a fit. But that’s not his jerkiest behavior. His jerkiest behavior is related to something he loves more than attention.

I fed the cats a little wet food every morning, to compliment their bowl of dry kibbles. Spark, in particular, loves it. And if I don’t get up when His Majesty is hungry, he can be a real pill about it. This morning, for instance, at around 5 in the AM, Sir Whines-A-Lot pawed at me until I woke up. He looked me in the face and meowed. I told him politely to let me go back to sleep and rolled over.

He wasn’t having any of that.

He pawed. He nuzzled. He purred in my ear as a way to keep me awake. On and on this went until my alarm started going off at 6:40. Basically, the little orange bastard made it a point to keep me awake for more than an hour and a half before I got up and fed his ass.

And after a twelve and a half hour day at the office, I could have used more sleep, not less of it.

I guess days like this are a peril of pet ownership. And I do love my cat quite a bit.

He just infuriates me at times to the point that I have to write up a filler blog post about it.

Congrats, Spark. You’re famous. Now get off my lap. I need a shower.