rearranging the hierarchy

I've been holding off on doing this for some time because, if I were to blog about it, I know it would earn immediate honorary entry into Uncle Tim's "Cats Are Stupid" blog sub-section. I like my cat - I wish him no disrespect. Oh well...

So Steph and I were hanging some pictures the other day... and of course, hauled out the old laser level to provide assistance. Gotta love the laser level - bright red beam shooting out across the wall. At the very least, if you don't get the level setting correct, your pictures will all be hanging in a straight diagonal line going up towards the ceiling.

Linus (the cat) of course caught sight of the laser. We're talking immediate change in life priorities here. There was a time when his ultimate goal was to escape through the front door during the brief few moments that it is open after we come home from work and take off beyond the bushes that inevitably block his path. However, he now intends to capture and hold captive the mysterious red dot which, apparently, lives in cracks in the floor and underneath appliances. This, he surmises, will give him new status in the social ranking and order of the house - maintaining a slave will obviously make him eligible for certain voting rights in the failed socio-political environment he is now an unwilling member of.

Anyways, so we've got the laser level out, we're playing with Linus. Doing all those things you do when you've got a cat and a laser. He's utterly bewildered of course.

My favorite part of the evening: I'm in the kitchen and I've got him spinning around in a tight circle, around and around, chasing this thing - 30 or 40 times around. Deliberately making him dizzy. Then I point the laser off into the living room and he attempts to go chasing after it, after which he immediately crashes into the dishwasher because he's so tipsy. This makes me laugh (loudly) and as a reaction I slap my hand on the counter... this scares him even more, and he takes off across the living room in fear, tail puffy, and dizzy... and runs directly into the TV.


Today you should listen to:
The Hold Steady "Stuck Between Stations"