Close to Nowhere

I haven't killed my cat yet and it's a thousand wonders that he's still stalking around my house.

Hobbes Jr, has decided he's really a mountain lion and he can't possibly walk on the floor around a room. He has to climb on the shelves or tables or baskets or whatever keeps him off the floor.

Sometimes that's my back. If I bend over to pick up something, it doesn't matter where in the house he is, he's instantly on my back with his claws dug in so he doesn't fall off. I have to walk bent over to some place I can dump him off without further injury to my skin.

But that's not why I'm contemplating murder.

I have a shelf that sits right beside my computer desk. On that shelf I have stacks of paper and other junk, along with my printer and the actual computer box itself. He likes to lay on top of my printer and watch me while I'm at my desk. I think he's stalking me and waiting for me to bend over.

Last week, I was at my computer, being stalked of course, when something startled Hobbes. If you know anything about cats you know that it takes absolutely nothing to startle one.

He jumped straight up in the air, knocked my copy of The Desiderata (Go placidly amid the noise and the haste... it's a very calming piece of advice and I read it several times a week) and my clock right off the wall. He managed, in his wild scramble to avoid whatever startled him, to land between the printer and the wall. In the ensuing struggle he somehow managed to knock the printer off the shelf and dump the entire shelf on it's side in the floor.

Now, I have stacks of paper and stacks of pictures and stacks of stuff my granddaughters drew while they were in elementary school and stacks of pictures and CDs scattered all over my desk. The clean, unused paper is stacked back on the shelf, along with some folders and legal pads. My computer wasn't hurt. My printer is trashed.

I used some tie-downs around the poles of the shelf and nailed those suckers to the wall.

At the moment, Hobbes is sitting on a different shelf, having dislodged the dolls and knocking a bunch of sewing patterns to the floor. He's already jumped in a fabric box, where I keep assorted good junk.

But he is alive. And he's looking at me, wondering how he's going to get around the room so he can jump on the back of my chair.

I'm not guaranteeing how long he's gonna live though...