A Little Night Time Excitement
What do you do when it is late at night, you are sitting in the living room watching television with the sheer curtains drawn knowing you sometimes forget to lock the back door but don’t care, and you suddenly hear subtle clanking and rattling behind you somewhere in one of the other rooms?
Well, I can tell you. For half a second you pause as you try to place not only what kind of sound it is, but where it might be coming from and what might be causing it.
Was it metal? Metal on glass? From what? Was it from the utility room? Breakfast nook? Kitchen? It wasn’t me, an automatically set appliance, the wind, Iris who was here beside me, or Stanley who I’d just seen headed for the bedroom. Yep: There were too few answers.
I muted the television and listened again as I simultaneously began moving out of the chair. Curious, but cautiously, I moved furtively around the corner of the half wall into the hallway, heading toward the kitchen.
As I reached the kitchen, there in the darkness was the silhouette of a figure. He stopped his commotion as he heard my approach.
He turned his face toward me.
Stanley.
Looking ever so innocent, he’d found himself up on the dark granite counter rubbing his cheek on the kitchen utensils that were sitting in the clay container marked “utensils” as if he was somehow driven to do it. At the old place, this was a common occurrence because he had easy access to the counter. One I repeatedly tried to discourage. So, after nearly four months at this new place, he obviously took it upon himself to find the utensils again. Out of the blue. Hmm.
This time he’d had no “ladder” to get himself up onto the counter. Before, he’d climb partially up the cat tree, over to the bar counter stools, then up over the bar and onto the counter. This particular counter had no such convenient access.
Once the culprit was discovered, I was not amused from several perspectives. After all, I had just been a tad frightened, I was unhappy Stanley was on the counter, and I was displeased Stanley was rubbing his hair all over the wooden spoons, spatulas and ladles again. I suspect my admonishments as I quickly lifted him from the area were not very convincing.
Stanley briefly voiced his complaint at his activities being interrupted as I carried him to the back door to check the lock, then into my lap for just a moment of smoothing his slick black and white coat.
It didn’t take long before he was off on another mission.
I’m still not sure how Stanley, that Scottish Fold, managed to jump up onto that counter!
July 19, 2011