Hope’s quirks

She will never jump up on the bed directly from the floor below. She has to jump up onto my windowsill, tippy-toe along the sill, step delicately out onto my scanner, and then leap onto the bed. A more roundabout way you could not imagine. I don’t know why this is the case. It is delightfully eccentric.

She sometimes likes to lie on the kitchen floor beneath one of my cool retro chairs. It is always the same chair. I imagine there must be a warm spot there but it’s so cute. If I can’t find her I know where to look.

She only likes Fancy Feast that is in MORSELS. She doesn’t like the hard CYLINDERS of seafood delight, or whatever. I’ll put down a CYLINDER in front of her, and I don’t care if it’s filet mignon, she stares at it, and then looks up at me like, “But … where are the chunks? You know I don’t like these … these cylinders.” It’s a heart-cracking expression.

Sometimes I think she gets confused when she’s eating and thinks she’s in the litter box because she reaches out to do scratching motions after her meal, to “cover up” her food.

She loves my red fleece blanket. If I am washing it, leaving my down comforter exposed, she stares at the bed in confusion. Like: “where is that blanket I love so much?”

She lets me pet her belly when the moon is half-full and only when Scorpio is on the cusp of Uranus. But when she does let me pet her belly, she has a moment of hesitation and then basically hurls her body backwards and open, displaying her entire underside including Uranus to me. It is so vulnerable. I feel honored.

She is completely fascinated by the window sill in the kitchen which I don’t want her to leap up onto because I have a plant there and a little china teapot and other things I don’t want her to knock over. Hence: all she wants to do is be on the kitchen window sill. If she could just be up on that window sill, according to her, all would be right with the world. SHE MUST BE THERE.

She now blatantly sleeps wraps around my head.

When she sleeps on my bed, she prefers to be curled up directly ON one of my pillows. She doesn’t so much enjoy being on the center of the bed, red fleece blanket notwithstanding.

She uses the red fleece blanket mainly for the whole kneading-of-paws thing that she does when she is feeling particularly relaxed and decadent.

She has really gotten into a groove with her cardboard box scratching post. She’ll be racing around the apartment, having a spontaneous nervous breakdown, and suddenly she knows what she needs – and races over to the post to attack it like a maniac.

If I pet her while she’s sleeping, something she makes a little dove-like chirrup in her throat as she wakes up.

She’s only sat on my lap once. I held my breath the whole time, wondering when she would decide to get sick of it. She chose it, too. I was on the bed and she sat next to me, staring at me. It was completely clear what she wanted. I couldn’t believe it. I petted my lap once or twice, like “come on, you can do it” and suddenly there she was, curled up and letting me pet her belly. I keep hoping that we will share such a moment again.

The love affair with the banana continues and shows no signs of abating.