The chief culprit, Shasti, below
Right. So, i am super delighted that my two fat house cats are loving the extra apartment space since we recently moved to Philly, and it's really great that they are finally exercising their chubster bodies, but J.F. Christ, man, why do they feel the need to go thundering around from one end of the apartment to the other between the hours of 3:00 and 5:00 every god damn morning? It is like the fucking Cat Grand Prix. It is damn noisy. They do 180 degree turns mid-sprint which involve sticking their claws into the wood floors and whirling around, scraping and raking across the floor the whole while, and then they accelerate by cartoonishly scrabbling in place until their claws gain traction, allowing them to noisily tear off once again. Occasionally they enjoy bouncing off the bed and/or my body for good measure.
And this latest development in my cats' nocturnal behavior is adding to an already extant list of feline-related late night racket. My beloved cat Shasti is inclined to knock objects off of tabletops and to caterwaul in the dead of night. You know those old Looney Tunes where a cat is singing on a fence and someone throws a boot at it to shut it up? Shasti is that cat. She meows extremely loudly at the top of her voice which, unfortunately, is surprisingly loud for an animal her size. Even more disconcerting is the fact that her screams are not unlike that of a wailing demon baby and they can take on the sound of english words, most notably, "hello," or more like "herrrooooo???" It is pretty awful. I mean, shit, if i wanted to wake up at ungodly hours of the morning, i would have given birth to a humanoid or taken a job at a bread bakery.
Shut the bedroom door, you suggest? Oh, you fool. Shasti hates a closed door. She will scrape and claw and moan at that door until you open it. Totally not an option. For now i am going to employ a slightly propped open bedroom door technique, which will hopefully slow the momentum of the charging little beasts. As for Shasti's caterwauling, i am fairly certain this behavior is triggored by toy mice and other items that she thinks she has "killed" and therefore must announce as a trophy. You see, house cats are simple creatures who are slaves to their often useless, vestigial instincts. One must dumb oneself down and imagine a life of acting on the meaningless whims of primitive instincts in order to get inside the "mind" of a cat. My solution for Shasti is to remove her "kill" from the premises.
Incidentally, my husband has just informed me that the BBC reported this morning on studies which reveal that certain cat vocalizations are similar in frequency to that of a human baby's. Fucking fantastic. My cats are lucky they are cute and that i am a vegetarian.
