It's 6:30 AM. A cat has taken over my life.

Three cats, the boys PBG and Tiger, and the girl, Jaguar. They live at our camp and we sometimes let them in during the day. There background complete.

I couldn't sleep all night because of indigestion and because a sad, precious, tiny Jaguar was mewing insistently outiside my basement bedroom window. The indigestion stopped at 5:30 with an antacid, but amazingly, the mewing didn't.

It just got louder and more pathetic.

She's out there in the cold wind, shouting like a reporter in a hurricane, and I'm all tucked in my bed. Something is wrong with this picture. If I don't do something she's gonna keep me up all night.

So I go upstairs to both the front door AND back door and open it and call her, and she doesn't come.

So she's kind of a stoop.

I come back downstairs and she's still at the windows. So I open my window (at which point she gets even more desperate) but we are separated by a screen. I love this cat, but I love me father more, and he worked hard to put up that screen. I ain't breaking that thing for her.

So I have to close up the window. And she keeps mewing. And it breaks my soft, tired, half-asleep heart. I start crying, and my sweet sister (BLESS HER SOUL) goes upstairs to get her again. This time she came downstairs victorious, holding a cold fuzzy bundle.

These cats are learning, though, that being inside has conditions. They must not wander and run, but instead settle and relax in one place within our reach, they must not even LOOK at our pet canary, and they must not relieve themselves. This kitty knows those conditions very well....except, somehow, for tonight.

She breaks free and goes RITE UPSTARRS. RIGHT TO OUR SLEEPING PARENTS' BEDROOM. And starts MEOWING AT THEIR DOOR. I snatch her up and get her back downstairs, closing the gate up. I try to get her to settle but she goes riGHT BACK UP AND AT THE GATE.

Thank the Lord she didn't jump over it.

She can do that.

I got her and brought her down and said "WE NEED A WAY TO MAKE HER STAY PUT"
So I locked her in our weird boiler room. First thing we hear?

"MEOW MEOW MEOW"

The same problem as before.

So I searched around the room for something to use as a leash.

I found my bra. Ye dat works.

I'm pretty hopeful this is the only time I mention my ladies' undergarments on ETF.

So I unhook her collar and hook the bra to it, and the other end I tie to my bed, in the corner against the wall so she doesn't jump down and choke herself.

Right by my face.


SO THAT'S WHERE SHE IS RIGHT NOW.

As a barn kitty, she's not really accustomed to leashes. All three kitties have tried them and find them TERRIFYING. Fortunately, my undergarment and the gentle way I used it made it not scary for her, but still confusing. Pulling back on it, trying to lay at the very edge of its radius, crawling back and forth over my body AS I TYPE THIS, purring all the while, she clearly doesn't understand "leash physics".

So it's 6:30 AM. (Actually 6:54 now.) I am tired and sleep deprived and there's a cute cat on my shoulder, whose cuteness I've grown numb to. For this long, sleepless, obnoxious moment, I'm pretty sure she's taken over my life--HONEY DONT GO OVER THERE JUST GO TO SLEEP LIKE A NORMAL--aaaaaaagh gimme a min plz thx

I actually woke up at about 4:30 cause of a bad dream (urgh I'm having so many lately) and so was awake-and laughing-the whole time. Poor Stealth was so stressed xDDD