How the Rotten Cats Celebrate Autumn

The Rotten Cats love autumn, it seems.  All three have been busy driving me crazy enjoying the fall decorations around our home, visiting with an old friend, and honing their haunting skills…

Cat One is our interior designer.  He is quite enjoying the baskets of silk leaves I have placed artfully around our home.  He disagrees with my aesthetic choices, however, and sees fit to remove the leaves from the baskets and strew them about all over the house in whatever particular manner suits his fancy.  Every day I rearrange my leaves.  Every day Cat One rearranges my leaves.  Today, we are at a stalemate and Cat One has been issued an ultimatum: He touches one more leaf and he can look at all the pretty leaves out in the big bad wild outdoors.

I suspect Cat One would come quickly back to the warm and cozy sanctuary of our Happy Home.  He has it way too good here.

Last October, Zilla picked out a very silly black cat made of garland at the local supermarket.  We aren’t big Halloween-ers, but since we do put up with own three actual non-garland style black cats, we couldn’t resist.

All three cats spent time getting to know this strange new cat brother last year.  And when we brought him out again this year, they were all happy to see him.  He’s a strange fellow…fits right in with the Rotten Cat Gang here.

Cats One and Two seem to have the tightest relationship with this brother from another mother.  (That’s Cat Two in the photo.)  Cat Three can’t be bothered much; he is too preoccupied practicing to be a scary ghost.  At night, he gets himself between our bedroom door and the wall and pushes the door closed.  It was more than a little bit creepy the first six or seven times until I figured out it was just a Creepy Rotten Cat.

OK, it’s still creepy.

Tuesday night, however, he went to new heights to be frightening…

Cat Three is a bit…well, different.  He’s needy.

Around 3:30 AM, I heard crying.  Yes, crying.  Like a baby.  At first, I thought it was Zilla, but it sounded too much like an infant to be her.  The crying continued.  It was Cat Three, sitting in the middle of the upstairs hallway crying… howling… mmmmmeeeeeeoooooowwwwwwwllllliiiiiiiinnnnnnnngggggggggg at the top of his Rotten Cat lungs as though from the tormented depths of his little Rotten Cat soul.

I tried to get him to be quiet.

“Cat Three! Shhhh!”

But he continued.

“Cat Three! Shut. Up. People are sleeping!”

More crying.

“CAT THREE YOU SONOFA$*%&#! SHUT THE H#*$ UUUUUUUUP!” (Screaming at a Rotten Cat in a whisper is highly ineffective, by the way.  Just in case anyone needs to know.)

He continued to wail.

For thirty minutes.

The only thing that got him to quiet down was putting him on the bed with us.

Sigh.

He seemed fairly calm while he was sitting there next to me and I began to drift back to sleep…

Something startled him.  As though electrocuted, his hair stood on end and he jumped straight up off the bed – four paws in the air at the same time.  He made a strange chirping sound and took off down the hall like a bat out of hell.

Thunk.

He began to cry again.

Soooo…I brought him back to the bed.  I petted his Rotten Cat self to calm him.  He got settled…I drifted off to sleep again…

And something else startled him.

Jumpbzzzzzzt!  Mreooowwwl! And off he flew again.

Thunk.

He began to cry.  Again.

This continued until five o’clock in the morning, during which time I decided that I may as well be productive.  I watched a sitcom re-run.  I sang songs in my head.  I prayed for the Rotten Cat’s tormented little soul, just in case he was possessed.  I planned my dinner menu for the week.  I’m a bit stuck on Thursday night’s meal, though.  Maybe if Cat Three pulls his midnight shenanigans again, I will get an inspiration…