Life with Sparky: Screens

Sparky lies calmly on my lap, sleeping.
Until the phone rings.

It’s my daughter and grandson, calling on FaceTime.

Sparky hears the sound of people he doesn’t know and investigates. He looks in the front, he looks at the back. He doesn’t understand where the sound comes from and who are those people she is talking with?

When he first arrived, he would sit behind my computer. He liked the warmth of it.
But he’d hear my fingers bouncing on the keyboard and peek around.
His paws crept around.
And then, he’d pounce on me!

Later, he decided my keyboard is the place to sleep. He likes to lay on the keyboard close to the screen where he can change the pictures. Before I got a new computer, he managed to turn on the music almost every time.

I never did.
I’m not sure I knew where to do that.

Worst, he thinks his path into the room should include jumping onto my chair, walking across my keyboard, then on over toward Jack. Sometimes, he stops to sleep on Jack’s feet. Other times, he bounces off to play with his toys.

The problem is he always changes the document I’m working on. And when it’s taxes or a book, it can really cause problems. I’m learning to pick up my computer when he jumps up.

It was a big problem when he bumped the power cord out of my computer, and everything went off.
And I lost everything I was working on.
Because the computer battery died.
Good thing my new computer came!

Sometimes Sparky focuses on our television. It sits on a stand. He likes to jump up in front of the television and look at the picture.

He walks around it.
He knocks off the modem …
And the router.

Suddenly we don’t have internet service again!

Sparky!

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Life with Sparky: What Happened to My Clean Floor?

The red dot moves slowly past. Sparky watches as it leaps onto the sofa.

He crouches.

The dot sweeps back to his toes, then off it dances around the room. It bounces up onto the back of the sofa.

He explodes from his crouch leaping and bounding up and across the back, following the dot.

He catches it.
And somehow it slides away from his grasp

He tears after it again.
It eludes his grasp until he plops on the floor, seemingly uninterested.
Until it dances near his nose, his toes, his tail! And he is off, chasing it again.

Thanks to friends who read my blog and made the suggestion, we purchased a red dot laser light. We can now play with him without being scratched and he gets some running in.

My house looks like a 2-year-old lives here again!

Scraps and bits of things I’d never leave on the floor before now lie in wait for Sparky to attack.

Soon after he came to live with us, a stuffed rabbit made its way out of the guest bedroom into the living room. It had been waiting for a granddaughter to return and love on it. Cuddled and tortured, it became one of Sparky’s best friends.

And then the seam split and part of the stuffing came out.

Now the poor bunny waits behind a closet door where Sparky can’t get to it. I need to sew the seam back together.

A strip of paper tied to a length of yarn is a favorite toy, especially when grandchildren come to visit. They drag it around behind them and Sparky chases them. When they are not here, he finds the yarn and wraps up in it.

Yarn!

My bedroom had yarn strung from one end to the other when he found three balls of yarn. It is tangled in a tie and a strap I detached from a purse and left on the floor. When I attempt to untangle the yarn, Sparky is in the middle of it once more.

Like all other cats of all sizes, Sparky loves boxes. His favorite place to play and hide, however, is inside a paper bag. It rattles and makes a noise when he runs into it. It is dark and safe. He can hide there waiting for someone to pass by to be attacked. He plays with them long after they are shredded.

Sparky is smart. He has searched through the toys I have in another room, waiting for grandchildren to come play with them. He has claimed toys from the toy basket: a straw, a stuffed lizard, a plastic man, a piece of string, a big Lego block, anything he can get his paws or his teeth into to carry.

He found two small stuffed animals he loves to play with. One is a little cat, the other is a dog. I think it is fitting that he plays with and attacks the dog.

One morning, I sat writing in my chair. Sparky played with a stuffed animal, the paper tied to yarn, and an elastic.

All of a sudden, he raced past my feet, growling! He ran behind the chairs and around to play with his toys. Away he ran again past me. He stopped to rest. Then, up he jumped and he ran past me at top speed, growling. I think he carried the dog in his mouth.

Where did that big growl come from? He has a loud purr, but I’ve never heard him growl before. He must have decided he’s a big cat again, chasing his prey!

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What Big Cat is He?

He crouches low, creeping toward his prey. He bounds forward, leaping before it gets away. He races through the tall grasses, over a log, then hurdles the final obstacle. The female wildebeest jumps away.

He misses.
Yet again.
Next time.

Sparky thinks I’m his prey.

I have to dance away as he leaps over the sofa toward me. I heard him coming. Good thing, or he’d be dragging me down like a lion drags down a gazelle or a wildebeest.

I have to watch out for him. He hides behind the furniture and under the bed, streaking out to attack my calves as I pass. Sometimes, he manages to leap higher than my waist.

It’s a good thing he has learned to pull in his claws. Jack might be accused of abusing me with all the scratches and bites I’ve had on me.

Sparky is lucky he is a beautiful cat.

My scratches are healing.

I wonder if he descended from a lion, a tiger, or a cougar. He has beautiful stripes along his back legs like a tiger. He’s fierce like a lion. He lies in wait to attack along the back of my sofa like a cougar.

I wonder if he dreams of being a big cat?

Perhaps he does, as he lies across my keyboard.

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We Have a Problem

Early on, we knew we had a problem.

I walked into my closet to see a quilt I had stored on the top shelf now lying on the floor. The quilt, made by my mother, waits for a granddaughter to grow old enough to graduate or get married. I had to take a chair into the closet to get the quilt on the highest shelf.

Now it lay on the floor.

Sparky!

But how?

I watched him when we were there for the next day or so. It didn’t take long to learn how he did it.

He leapt up from the floor, or from my husband’s oxygen machine, crawled up the sleeves of Jack’s shirts, and on up to the shelf above the clothing.

Later, we found Sparky sleeping on the shelf.

We banned Sparky from our bathroom.

I walked into the guest bath not long after and found claw holes in the toilet paper he had unrolled, completely.

Enough!

He’d jump up on me and onto the counter by the sink. Once, I had to move him from the sink so I could wash my hands!

He’s banned from both bathrooms.

In the living room, Sparky climbed on top of the empty birdcage and starred at the moving ceiling fan.

That wasn’t going to happen.

I moved the birdcage outside. I can’t give it away yet. I can’t get another bird yet. So it sits on our back patio, waiting.

Meanwhile, Sparky jumps from the floor to the top of the printer, which rests on a bar stool. He sits on the back of my chair, higher than me.

Brat.

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