Send Help.

If you get this message, please know that we may seem okay...but the noose is tightening.

I'm beginning to think that we are being held as prisoners by our cat. Sure, we're let out for a little work release program now and then, but last night he maybe showed his hand a little and we are afraid. Very afraid.

Boo Boo, the kitty we rescued from a feral life, has always had a few quirky tendencies. Quite honestly, we liked him better when he lived in the basement and only came up for an hour or so after Josie as asleep and then headed back down there after we went to sleep.

Then, he got a little more confident, and things began changing. Oh, it's subtle. In fact, I think that part of the abuse is that much like how Charlie torments Shelly on Coronation Street, he wants us to think we're crazy for suspecting him.

First, he started rejecting his food. I KNOW cats are funny that way. But that's part of his plan - other people will just say, "That's so normal." It's the WAY he does it that's hard to explain. Because now, if he doesn't like his food, he'll stare at me and swipe it off his plate with his paw and look at me as if to say "I'm bringing it."

He began creeping upstairs - after weeks of never trespassing up there, he's now made the foot of the bed his daytime sleeping place. Right after we received a new down duvet and beautiful lavender duvet cover for Christmas - because we no longer had pets to ruin it.

Then, he began coming upstairs at night while we slept. He'd prowl around the bed, meow a little and go back downstairs. He got bolder. He'd began jumping on the bed while we were dead asleep and then scurry off when we woke up. So we started to shut the door at night. So he started to hide under the bed, wait until we were sleeping, then emerge to torture us.

Now we're very very careful to check the room and shut the door, and he then reminds us that instead of being in control, we've really just imprisoned ourselves by throwing his mousies and balls around upstairs and making a huge racket. All through our sleep, our dreams are peppered by the thump thump thump of him launching himself down the stairs to chase the balls he drops. The other day I washed the rug in the front hall, so instead of "thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump stumble scatter, scramble" we heard thump "thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump swoooosh bang" as he slid in the entry and hit the front door. I think it made him mad. He's downstairs plotting right now about new ways he can keep me awake nights, I'm sure. That will involve more noises, because I'm the person in the house who can hear every single little noise, from the toilet running, to the furnace, to the sound his paw makes when he reaches under the bedroom door and gropes around in the middle of the night.

Except when he wants to be quiet. If one of us should get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, we will usually find him sitting quietly on the edge of the bathroom sink - a black shadow guaranteed to give you a heart attack when you're sleepy and stumbling and susceptible to frights.

Yes...the sink. He's learned to turn the water on. He wants to keep us poor by upping our hydro bill we thought. But no, that's not all. He has more insidious plans. The other night when Steve was taking a bath, Boo knocked his pajamas from the edge of the sink into the bowl and turned the water on to soak them. He is an evil genius, and knows that depriving Steve of one of his comforts and causing more laundry for me is one way to fray our nerves.


He is a magpie. Things disappear. Josie's socks disappear and re-appear. They re-appear right after I've given up and thrown out the matching one. He watches. He waits. Other small things are gone, and when I'm doing my handwriting work, he has stolen my three dollar gel pens off the table from right in front of me. We can't find his stash, and it's becoming a real curiosity because I'm very concerned about one disappearance. My glassses. They live on my nightstand, and they have been gone for over a month. So I did not misplace them. He wants me blind at night.

That is probably because his new trick of waiting at the top of the stairs as if he's going to let me walk down safely and then dashing ahead of me to spread himself in front of my foot and refuse to move is being honed and perfected, he just needs me further disabled by my horribly nearsighted vision. He has become bored and impatient that standing on the railing to the basement and launching himself at my head when I come up with a basket of laundry hasn't resulted in a fall backward and my early death.

My nerves...my nerves are shattered. He has the heaviest feet I've ever heard in a cat. Fog does not roll in on little Boo Boo feet. Golf ball sized hail stones sound like fluttering rose petals in comparison - we listen to him run around upstairs in the evenings, launching himself from one piece of furniture to another. His bum hole, which Josie includes in every drawing of, is offensive on so many levels. Pink and crinkly, his perpetually raised tail means that we can see how it comes in contact with everything he touches in the house. If you ask Josie what Boo Boo did on Daddy's pillow, she will shriek gleefully "Boobie put his bumhole on Daddy's pillow!" It's an insult, and Steve and I have had a giggle or two about how just as there are so many words for snow in the Inuit languages, in our house we need to find alternatives for asshole. Shrivel, crinkle, pucker hole, balloon knot, sphincter, air lock...our daughter will have an interesting vocabulary. And carpal tunnel syndrome when it becomes her job to clean his litter box when I've become completely debilitated. He is a prolific pooper, despite his refusal to eat his food.

But now, if you don't hear from us after this, it's because he's made his coup. He jumps on our laps when we're at the computer. Steve and I have noted that he watches the curser, and is interested in the words appearing on the page. I don't think he can read...yet. But the other night, when Steve was paying bills online with his bank card handy, Boo Boo was around as usual. Yesterday morning Steve could not find his bank card. We've searched high and low, and can only conclude that Boo Boo has absconded with it. What he does with all our money, we may not know, because unless Steve can get a new one today, we'll die of starvation from having no groceries in the house except cat food even he won't eat. We don't think he'll leave, because he has it too good here. But now, he has all the power, and I think instead of being allowed to post, I may just be kept around in order to send for the chicken wings he loves so much and to find some fine feline porn for him online. If I can manage it, we're going to stage an uprising and take him to get his wee nuts cut off on Monday. If I can't, well, pray for us.