One of "Those" Days

Before the alarm clock even sounded this morning, Darling Husband and I had already looked at each other and said, “I hope this morning isn’t an omen of how the day will go.” Man, oh man, I hope not.

The day actually started at 5:30, when Toddler decided to get up. This early wake up usually means he is about to fill his diapers, and since we have no other advance notice from him, early morning means potty training. Sheesh. Thank you, Universe, for giving a woman who hates mornings a child with a very early morning constitution. Love you too, man (or woman) (or non-gender-specific entity).

Shortly after we got Toddler all changed and back to bed, the cats started fussing. I swear, I have the weirdest cats on the planet. First, Girl Cat chased Houdini onto the bed. There is nothing quite like having the cats race around in the morning staging the Kittyopolous 500. At least with racing, the trips on the bed are short and too the point. With arguments, though, comes the combined weight of 22 pounds thundering on the bed … Girl Cat on the attack, with Houdini running to mom and dad for HELP! HELP! HELLLLPPPPP!!!!!

Don’t worry, cats, we were already awake.

But then, just to keep the drama going, Houdini picked a fight with himself.

Yes, you read that right. The cat picked a fight with himself. No, I’m not talking about that trick where they chase their tails and get upset when they actually catch it. Nope. This is something altogether funnier. Lots of cats find it very irritating to have anything touch the inside of their ears. They’ll scratch the ears with their back paws or at least think about starting to. (You’ll see the paw go up and the head go down, but they sometimes restrain themselves.)

Well, Houdini can never do anything quite like a typical cat, as we have well learned. His compulsion to scratch his ears when something touches his ears is quite acute, and it includes when HE touches his own ear. Yes, when Houdini has a super-itchy ear, he starts a feedback loop where he scratches his ear because it itches, then he scratches his ear because something is touching his ear. Well apparently this morning that left ear was so darn itchy that he couldn’t control himself. He kept scratching, then getting “stuck” to the point where he couldn’t stop scratching, scratched even more frantically, and finally ended up growling at himself. This happened at least 3 times – mostly with Houdini flipping around at the foot of the bed trying to get away from himself so he could scratch his ear.

Well after 3 tries at this, DH and I decided there was no help for it. Toddler got us up first, and now we were going to get up again to clean out a cat’s ear for him. Yeesh, the things I do to catch a little shut eye!

Thankfully, after a lot of kicking on Houdini’s part (I was touching his ear, you know), he started to feel better and got a hold of himself. We all went back to bed for 5 minutes and then started the day on time.

Like DH and I said to each other this morning, I hope this isn’t an omen for the day.