Coming Home

I spent about ten days at my parent's house for the winter holidays. Upon returning home I have noticed that my five cats have regressed into some sort of semi-feral mentality. These are pampered house cats that live an indoor life. Despite having the company of a cat sitter visiting once a day for the four days while both my boyfriend and I were gone and then the single parental guidance of my boyfriend when he returned for the remaining week, they seem to have decided that they are the master's of the apartment. I can only imagine that a cross between Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies had occurred between Christmas and New Year's. Rules such as not getting on the kitchen counters and reclining in unsafe places like, say, the cook top, and shredding unapproved scratching surfaces have gone unenforced, and according to the cat collective, never really existed in the first place. I woke up this morning to one standing on my head. Not a cute little paw padding your cheek for a "Good Morning! I love you!" But three paws out of four bearing the majority of twelve pounds of cat standing on my head. I admitted the defeat of my sleep and got out of bed to absolute and utter cat mania. Selkie, the head-standing cat, now gives two warning meows for attention or treats and, if none is immediately forthcoming, jumps onto the kitchen counters for a stroll, and perhaps later a repose on the stove. The cat's hierarchy, which has remained relatively unchallenged with each cat knowing his or her place, seems to have fallen and is now up to renegotiation in the form of free-for-all skirmishes in the style of tag-team wrestling with some mixed martial arts thrown in for good measure. (A few bouts of which took place on my sleeping self prior to the head stand incident.)

I would be willing to believe that if the cats had spent my entire absence in the care of the pet sitter, the equivalent of the grandmother that spoils two siblings rotten while the other three cower in fear, that they would have forgotten their good manners. They spent the last week with my boyfriend, however, and it seems his single-parenting did not include rule enforcement or anything more than spoiling with treats and holiday cat toys. (I called every night to make sure he was doling out the day's ration from their holiday stockings, so I will accept partial blame.) And now I must resort to drugs (catnip) so the cats will fall asleep, just to get anything done on the computer.