Cats

My husband and I have had cats for years. In fact, we've both had cats since we were children. Our last 2 cats have been adoptions from stray litters. The cat that currently owns us is Elrond Half-Siamese, and he's a real thing on wheels. He's 3 years old. Makes me wonder if Elrond Half-Elven was such a mischievous young elfling sometimes.

This morning he's been frantically pinging around the house for reasons totally unknown to us humans, yowling mournfully at the top of his lungs about something. When he wasn't doing that, he was commandeering my tote bags and crawling into them.

Now that latter bit isn't unusual for a cat, but what he wants you to DO, once he's INSIDE, is. He wants you to pick him up - or rather, pick up the bag - and swing him back and forth. While you're doing that, he is either staring up at you from the bottom of the bag, or else, and more likely, he has his head and front paws sticking out the top, looking around. For all the world like a kid on an amusement park ride. And purring fit to be heard across the room.

This morning it snowed in Alabama, a couple of inches' worth, for the first time in almost a decade. Needless to say, Elrond had never seen snow before. So I picked him up, opened the blinds, and held him to the window in the position in which we two often gaze out upon the world.

He did a double-take. Those crossed little blue eyes got bigger than milk saucers, and he stared at the white world outside. Then he started scrambling to get down. I guess he didn't like it and thought something strange had happened to his world. At any rate, he went into the bedroom and crawled under the covers with my husband.

Speaking of hubby, when he finally couldn't take the cat's racing around at Warp Factor 47 and yowling Red Alert any longer, he picked the critter up. Now, my husband is the only person who can turn Elrond on his back without getting turned into hamburger. So he turned him over and began rubbing his tummy, which elicits the sound of warp engines purring in perfect tune.

But as he did so, my husband commented, "Flop!" To which, of course, the cat responded by turning into jello.

My mind being what it is, however, I queried, "Does that make it a petaflop?"

My husband just stared at me.

The cat purred.