Jingly Balls All Night Long
Monday, September 29, 2008 I found myself wide awake at 3:30 a.m. wondering where my hotel went. I had a hotel in my dream, and as I slowly rose to consciousness, it dissolved, and I spent the last part of my dream grinding my toes into the hallway carpet to try to restore its reality.
Then I realized where my hotel went. It disappeared along with my lovely, deep sleep, because Lula, our young female cat, was batting one of her jingly balls around the living room hardwood floor. I pulled myself out of bed, got on my hands and knees in the living room, and starting groping around in the dark, because it had not even occurred to me to turn on a lamp. My brain was only capable of thinking CAT + JINGLY BALL + 3:30 A.M. = NO FREAKING WAY. Eventually, one of my hands landed on Lula, and I used the other to pry the ball from her mouth.
"Mew."
"Shut up," I said.
Cat-wrangling is incredibly thirsty work, so by the time I had slaked my thirst and emptied my bladder, I was too awake to bother the Palinode with my falling asleep ritual, which involves much rolling from my front to my back repeatedly, pushing my pillows first up and then down and then up again, and rubbing my foot into the mattress. So, I instead sat down with my laptop in the living to catch up on some reading.
Jingle, jingle, jingle, BAM, jingle, jingle, bounce.
"LULA!" I hissed.
"Mew."
"Shut up."
I grabbed a second jingly ball from her paws and put it next to the other one firmly wedged under my butt on the chair. A few short moments later: jingle, jingle, bounce, BAM, jingle, BAM. She had found another one.
"LULA!" I hissed.
"Mew."
"Shut up."
Now I had a third jingly ball under my ass. It was 4:00 a.m. This replayed itself another two times, and, according to my calculations, this was nigh on impossible. I swear that we only had three of those jingly balls around this house, which I found yesterday when I rearranged the living room furniture.
I don't know if it was my lack of sleep that had me feeling so mighty and powerful over such a small situation, but I felt positively royal nesting those five jingly balls under my butt. Lula scaled the chair from behind and tried to sneak down my back. She scooted over the side of it and vainly tried to jab her little paws under my right butt cheek. She even tried the old dive-into-my-crotch tactic, but to no avail. I HAD ALL THE JINGLY BALLS, BITCH. She eventually sulked off to another chair and eyed me covertly, waiting for me to leave my seat. I was one step ahead of her, though. When I decided to head back to bed at 6:00 a.m., I jambed all the jingly balls down underneath the chair cushion.
I had just lied down and was finding my dream hotel again when I heard a tiny jingle under the bed. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the covers up around my ears. This could not possibly be happening. I had already retrieved more jingly balls than already existed in our apartment. Jingle. This was most definitely happening. Damn. She was trying to be sneaky about it, but she was right under my side of the mattress, so her sneaking was more like screaming "OH HEY I HAVE MADE ANOTHER JINGLY BALL", and then, all of a sudden, she completely lost her little kitty shit.
JINGLE JINGLE CLAWS-ON-HARDWOOD BAM JINGLE BOUNCE BOUNCE BAM CLAWS JINGLE JINGLE JINGLE. I shot up in bed.
"LULA!" I hissed.
"Mew," she said.
"Shut up."
"Groan," went the Palinode.
I leapt on her in one hop from the mattress to the floor and grabbed the jingly ball from her mouth. This one was green. Hmmm. None of the others were green. This was a SIXTH jingly ball.
"You're a little piece of Satan, you know that?" I whispered to her as we both traipsed down the hall to the living room where I checked under the chair to make sure that she was, indeed, manufacturing jingly balls out of the ether.
I had the green one in hand and counted five under the chair cushion. That made six jingly balls. They don't even come in packages of six. They come in packages of five. FIVE.
Do you think I could go back to sleep after that? No, I could not. I just kept counting the jingly balls in my head - two purple, two pink, one yellow, and one green = six jingly balls - each time after which I would imagine Lula yelling "Six, six, SIX JINGLY BALLS! MWAH-HA-HA-HA!" à la the Count from Sesame Street.
Jingly-ball-conjuring bitch.
Reader Comments (18)
Ah the joys of being owned by cats. My favourite sound in the middle of the night is feline hurling, barely three inches from your head.
I'm going to have to stop reading you at work...they think I'm nuts from all the giggling!
My dear departed Otis used to wake me up with his purring...ever tried to make them stop that?
The couch cushions are not Fort Knox enough for my cats. I have cats who can open cereal boxes and climb inside to eat the contents...before horking it back up on the threshold of the bathroom in the dark. I keep all potentially freak out inducing toys in the freezer. They find them everywhere else.
Ooooh. This is the best design ever. Please do not change. Thank you.
I love it!!!!!
I love Lula, because I think she is the bad-ness from all three of my cats, personified into one ravishingly gorgeous (innocent??) kitten.
That is exactly what I love about cats! Whenever I lose a jingly ball they can find it, even months later!
Too much giggling to sleep! You described it purrrrfectly! (sorry couldn't resist:)
You're so mean. I want to know how you ended up with 6 jingly balls!
My cat pulls that shit too. Especially with the change in the seasons - fall perks him right up!
I'm in love with the new header. Love.
good lord!
you have one persistent kitty there.
mine mews in the middle of the night cuz she wants to go out side, and when nobody gets up to let her Royal Highness out, she comes into the bedroom and cries in our ears, or starts batting stuff off the kitchen table. kitties.
also, love the new header!! hooray!
I had to smile at the image of you sitting their with all the jingly balls under your butt. (That sounds fouler than I intended it!) I don't have cats, but my two dogs occasionally wake me up with their squeaky toys and loud food-crunching. I have been known to throw any nearby object in their direction when this happens, and it usually works. ;^)
i too am awake at 4 in the morning, my cats are upstairs, either on top of the kids' bookshelf, or in bed with them...thankfully no jingly balls...and i'm lauging my butt of at lula and her jingly balls...cats certainly do get things from odd odd places...hehe, and you with the count from sesame street in your head....*sigh*...only makes insomnia worse...
Too funny - but I'm sorry your lovely dream was interrupted! Also, I love your new site design - it's fantastic!
Jingle! Lulu! Mew! Shut up! lol
That sequence was cracking me up.
Cats seem to find the perfect thing to annoy us in the middle of the night.
So funny and so not funny at the same time. As a person who used to remove her dog's collar before bed each night because I couldn't stand the jingling when he moved, I'm so sorry. But, man, the image of you hatching a litter of jingle bells is so hilarious.
hilarious. I love cats but they must be creatures of Satan. My cat is a jewelry thief. You have to lock up jewelry in my house. My sister's cat does the jingly ball thing with her toy mice. Its like she is making the darn things when everyone is asleep. The funny thing is she piles them all up on my sister's bed everyday like a present. It drives my sister batty.
Yeah I experienced something similar.
I had two male cats in their "early teens" [not quite full grown] who were batting something around in the kitchen, the room next to mine... bump bump bump... so I got up and discovered they were playing soccer with some small apples. This was after midnight and I really wanted my sleep... So I took the apples off them. Not long after it happened again. It turned out they were going up the neighbours apple tree, picking the apples and bringing them inside to play with.
Wolfie!
Oh my gosh, I was laughing so hard by the end of this that I couldn't see through the tears. My own spazz cat likes to wake me up in the middle of the night by walking through my blinds or attempting to remodel the house by ripping up the carpet around my room's door frame.
I laughed so hard at this. I don't have cats, but my goldfish used to do a similar thing. Every time they get hungry (which is all the frikkin time, goldfish are Labradors with fins and gills), they pick the gravel off the bottom of the tank and drop it back down again. ::clack clack clack:: while I'm trying to fall asleep is quite irritating, too. :P