The cat is out of the bag

or in the bag, as the case may be.

Around 3 this morning, I awoke to a *tremendous* crash. It was, unfortunately, my turn to investigate the cause of crashes--Mr. G having investigated the one that came about 6 yesterday morning and was the result of La Doof Kitton climbing a bookshelf.

My guard Dawg lifted her head at the crash, pondered getting up to come defend me, dragged herself up, sniffed the air, declared that it was to early for this and she was sure there were no burglars and crawled back onto her bed.

I, on the other hand, wanted to make sure that the crash wasn't the refrigerator falling over, the oven exploding, a pipe bursting, or cats dancing the tango on the remains of my plants. I groggily wandered through the office, the library, the bathroom and the living room--no signs of anything amiss.
I flipped on the light in the kitchen and found La Doof Kitton working hard to look innocent while trying to convince the hair on his back and tail to quit standing up. There were 2 kitchen chairs lying on their backs. I had left my re-usable grocery bag hanging from the back of one of those chairs when I went to bed. That bag was now a full 5 feet from where it had been left.

Apparently, attempting to jump into the bag while it dangles from a chair causes a chain reaction of chaos.
I blinked twice, decided nothing was truly broken, and went back to bed. The chairs waited until morning to stand back up and the bag somehow moved from the floor in front of the oven to the hallway near the living room before I got out of bed. Apparently he wasn't permanently scared off or scarred by his brush with gravity.

So the cat is back in the bag. At this particular moment, he is hiding in the bottom of the bag (like I said, now in the living room) waiting for either Dawg or El Gato to wander past so he can pop out and scare the living daylights out of them. I know this because he already scared me twice today. Never a dull moment :-)

If you hide your toys TO well, you don't get them for a year...

Last year, for Christmas, the kittehs got home-made catnip toys (a felt mouse I sewed and filled with catnip and cotton).

Being kittehs, they took their toys and put them in inaccessible places...El Gato usually puts hers underneath a rug and lays on top of the rug pretending she doesn't know how to get to it. La Doof Kitton prefers to put his in boxes or bags and lay outside them, reaching one arm all the way in to tease the toy.

Apparently, last Christmas, La Doof Kitton put his toy in one of the gift bags I had out to transport gifts from here to there...because when I went to fill it this year, I found his catnip mouse, a pom pom and part of a ribbon. They've been packed up for the last year--maybe he won't hide them quite as well THIS year.
(he's off playing with them right now)

Reason # 51 to use reusable shopping bags...

This is what happens when I forget and have to use a grocery bag (which I threw away):








There is a knocked over trash can, escaping trash, and a suffocation risk.

This is what happens when I use a re-usable bag:





I get to make puns about letting the cat out of the bag (what can I say, I'm my father's daughter) and I get to carry around a cat in the bag until he decides that it interferes with his stalking.