Dear Family Cats (and also the dog),
Thanks for giving me an unforgettable experience. A night of induced insomnia and – okay – a couple laughs.
The perpetrators, Bop and Luna.
It all started about 130 am. The dog woke me up, walking in and out of my room, flopping down in the hallway, jumping up again to tick tick tick tick another circuit of my room. When she walks at a certain pace, her nails on the floor sound like the Sixty Minutes clock. At 130 pm, I find this charming.
After a moment of consciousness, I heard what had made the dog restless. Cat fight, a couple houses away. I recognized the voice of my beloved Luna, whom I had failed to lock inside. I keep the cats in at night (coyotes), but on hot summer nights Luna often evades capture.
Luna is 10 years old and I had never heard him fight before. He is a peaceable fellow who gets along with most other cats. The part of my brain that was awake decided it was a good idea to break up the fight. I filled a glass with water and headed down the street. No noise, no cats. Okay. I dumped the water and returned to bed.
Turn out my light, cue the fight, which resumed a few feet outside my window. Refill the water glass, take it outside, toss water at the cats. The other cat ran north. Luna headed west, stopped, stared at me, then sprinted after the other cat. Jerk.
The really!-I’m-mean-and-I’m-going-to-hurt-you! howling resumed in the backyard. By now I was too invested to shrug and lie in the dark listening to fake loud cat aggression. In the backyard, I decided to turn the hose on them. I turned the hose on full bore and I blasted them —
— with a dribble of water. Oh. The hose had kinked.
While I worked on unkinking the hose, from the house behind ours came brutal THUNK-thunk-THUNKs as the pit bull tried to slam his way outside through a closed dog door. He wanted in on the cat fight.
Suddenly I realized that what I needed was to be asleep. I left the hose and returned to bed. Where I lay, very very awake, for 3 hours. As many of you know, time expands at night and those 3 hours lasted for days.
I finally drifted off to sleep shortly before dawn. Not long afterwards, I jolted awake to shrill cat screeches. For the first time, our cat Bop had ambushed the kittens during the night, which is usually a time of truce. Perhaps Luna had inspired her.
There we were, stumbling into the hall, squinting at the lights we each turned on: my daughter and I, armed with water bottles, looking to spray Bop for messing with a kitten.
A peacekeeper.
Actually the “kittens” are now 11 months old and two of them are bigger than Bop, but she knows how to bully and they will always consider her enormous.
Recent runt kitten Leo stands outside window and watches his hero Luna snooze. Leo doesn’t realize he has grown up to be the biggest cat in the neighborhood.
Now the dog was energized. With two humans out of bed, it must be breakfast time.
Have you ever gone for a walk just after dawn? It is such a peaceful time of day.
P.S. As I write this, Bop has knocked the DSL modem to the floor. Twice. So we’ll see whether this exposé ever gets posted.
(This post responds to today’s Daily Prompt, “I’d Like to Thank My Cats”.)
Required Writing 
This was hilarious, well done. Shows who is really the boss of us! Lol 🙂
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[…] either 7 or 12, depending on which murky version of her past is correct. All my experience is with cats, and rabbits, who are a lot like cats, except in two dimensions – they don’t usually […]
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Today, I went to the beach front with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said
“You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put
the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off
topic but I had to tell someone!
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Ha! That is hilarious. The poor dear. Wonder how many adult therapy sessions that beach trip earned her?
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Hi, can I reblog this post on my Fuzzy Buddy Pet Care site?
http://fuzzybuddypetcare.wordpress.com
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Thanks for the reblog!
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Reblogged this on Fuzzy Buddy Pet Care and commented:
We all love our pets, otherwise we wouldn’t have them. But sometimes, they try our patience and make us question our sanity….
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[…] Like all cats, the five in my household like to go inside stuff. It is the moments like these that persuade me to forgive them during times like these. […]
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I’ve said for a long time cats are ruining education in America with all the kids who come in tired from being kept up at night too!
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At last the problems with American education are explained. They seem to have no solution, however, unless we ship the kids off somewhere so they do not interfere with the cats living their lives.
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Btw I see a lot of good looking blogs but yours is exceptionally nice.
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Thank-you, what a compliment! I like your nighttime tree effect too.
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“The lads”, from the blog of Mr Midnight, Sir Winston and myself, loved your piece. I like your writing style and “the boys” loved your pictures. Keep up the good work.
Best regards. 🙂
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Thanks! And I love your blog header, as well as the clear sense of who (not you) is in charge over there.
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Thank you for your comment. So you´ve read between the lines and found out who the boss(es) are? It´s that easy to tell? 🙂
Glad you appreciate our stuff.
Best regards.
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[…] Gee. Thanks guys. | Required Writing […]
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That was a really good laugh with my breakfast. I loved the humour you applied with this story. Of course it is not a story, reality of being owned by cats with a dog fan. Loved it.
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Thanks! Btw I laughed out loud at your post when Nera had a speech prepared for her human. A realistic plot twist indeed!
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