Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

Do you live with a cat? Then you know that if you put something down on the floor, they will come. A good box is hard to resist. Maru knows it, my cats know it. This, then, is the story behind the photo above, which I think ranks second of my all-time favorite my-cats stories.

A few months ago I finally joined the 2000s and got a large, flat-screen TV. I had been lumbering along with my old 21-inch CRT television that I think was close to twenty years old. I unpacked the new beauty and set it up, and put the box in front of some bookshelves in my middle room while I decided if I was going to keep the TV and then, having decided yes to that, whether I thought I needed to keep the box. During the time in which I was ignoring that monumental decision, my parents came to visit and I moved the box to the front room because I needed to get it out of the way. 

(Even if you just started reading my blog a week ago, you can picture this, can’t you?, since I helpfully shared my floorplan on May 26. If you read that post—in which I semi-whined about the cool temperatures we’ve had so far this spring—please know that the forecast for the next week doesn’t show highs below 80F/28C. That’s how it goes in Minnesota. You can’t quite bring yourself to stash your winter coat, and then all of a sudden you’re screaming for air conditioning. But I digress.)

In the evening as we all were lounging in the front room where the large, flat TV box now was, none of us humans were really paying attention to what the cats (and rabbits, mine and my parents’) were doing until Dasie perched on the arm of the chair next to the box with obvious intent. She’s very athletic, generally, but somehow she managed to be in some weirdo position so that when she finally did vault herself into the box, she ended up doing a backflop into it. Not a bellyflop, but a backflop.

I grabbed for the iPhone because I knew there would be a photo opp. According to my mother, during the three seconds that I had my back turned, the cat came leaping right back out of the box, only it wasn’t Dasie. Unbeknownst to anyone (Dasie included judging by the look on her face), CJ was already in the box. My mom started howling with laughter at the sight of a black and white cat going in, and an all-black cat coming out. I just managed to snap this photo as Dasie surfaced, confused by any or all of the above.

This might be my favorite photo that I’ve ever taken of any of my four cats (two past, two present). It’s the gift that keeps on giving partly, I suppose, because I know that it fits right in with the rest of her personality. It makes a wonderful lock screen on my iPhone.

It’s not my favorite cat story though, because I didn’t actually see the cause and effect. Favorite story of all time goes to my original cat Dhia, pictured below also in a box. When she was just a squirt (read, young and spastic) she was lounging on the back of my bed, not asleep but not paying attention. I snuck up on her and smacked my hand down on the bed very close to her. She launched straight up into the air. Well, apparently not quite straight up, because when she came back down, she slid right down into the six-inch gap between my bed and the wall like a piece of bread in a toaster. The look of utter surprise on her face was priceless. Priceless. Mind you, I don’t make a habit of laughing at others’ misfortune but right now, twenty years later, it still makes me giggle out loud.

Just like I chuckle every time I look at this photo of Dasie.

May 21, 2011