All I want for Christmas is a good nights sleep

Note to anyone who thinks traveling with a cat is a good idea.

You're wrong.

See, my furry little ball of joy is with me in Victoria for Christmas as his nasty chin infection requires twice daily washings and once daily oral liquid antibiotics. Both of these tasks are akin to a feline exorcism, so I couldn't really expect to leave him with Uncle Paul at the Fat Bastard Hotel as usual. What with Paul probably preferring to keep his eyes intact and all. But I digress. So Griffin is sequestered in the downstairs bedroom at my Dad's house, where he apparently spends all his waking hours devising ways to torture me at night. Not that this is totally new, for years I've suffered the 4am kitty fit, but I've safeguarded the room against all the usual torture tactics. All rattle toys and any sign of crinkly plastic has been removed. But Griffin is resourceful. Apparently, like the little ninja he really is, he's aware that the most dangerous weapon is his bare hands. Or paws. Which he uses to hit me in the face while softly yowling, or to simply scratch at the wall like a gerbil in the corner of a glass aquarium. Multiply how annoying that sounds by about 400, and you have the true effect. Usually my little Satan starts this at about 6 am, and keeps it going until about 8 am, when he finally settles down for a sleep. I am tired and grotty and try to catch up by sleeping until 10:30, which gives me the overslept-jet-lag-feeling for the rest of the day.

Now I have 2 turkeys and a ham to consume over the next 3 days, so I need to be on the ball. I decided to implement a new early to bed, early to rise routine to try to snap out of my foggy head. I set the alarm for 9am, determined to get up regardless of how hellacious the little bastard was in the night. Sensing my plan Griffin started his kitty cacaphony at 5:10 am and kept it up on and off until 8:50am when he suddenly dropped to the foot of the bed and curled in to a ball. I swear I saw a smug little grin on his face when my alarm went off 10 minuntes later.

There is a good chance the little bugger is going to spend Christmas Eve in his pet carrier locked in the garage, because I am not going to risk a sudden act of felicide knocking me off of Saint Nick's delivery list. And I am certainly going to re-evaluate my little plan of driving around the desert in an El Camino, towing a Airstream trailer, living off the land with just my cat and the occassional cowboy for company.

Word of the Day:

Felicide - the act of cat murder