or, Why You Should Never Teach Your Cat to Jump on Shoulders.

My father had surgery on his left eye today. Lens replacement to remove a burgeoning cataract, vitrectomy because the vitreous was getting gooey and non-elastic, and, as Dad puts it, they ironed out a wrinkle that was developing in the retina. Once fully healed (probably a week or so before the sutures can be removed) the vision in that eye is going to be markedly improved.

So that my mother wouldn’t have to drive and try to manage my stoned father, and also so she would’t have to sit alone and wait for the approximately 2-4 hours this procedure was scheduled to take, I volunteered to drive up to Bellevue this morning to be an extra sent of hands and legs and, honestly, to be moral support. A good thing, as it turns out, because there was mid-procedure excitement involving their burglar alarm, the city of Bellevue police department, a lost parking garage ticket, and my mother’s copy of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, but that’s another story.

I got up this morning, ate my breakfast, checked my e-mail and went for my walk. Came back home, checked the checking account, paid a couple of bills, then decided it was time to hit the shower and get dressed.

Lovely shower.

Pogo, as y’all may recall, has a thing for water. What it is about water that so attracts that little weirdo….. Well, I’ve long maintained that cats aren’t really from this planet. God knows mine aren’t.
So it’s not unusual for Pogo to wander into the bathroom as I’m getting out of the shower so that he can play around in the puddle around the drain.

Pogo also has a thing for high places. Pogo LOVES to be tall. And when Pogo discovers something that is taller than he is that he might be able to get up on to, he spares no effort in getting there.

Lovely shower.
I’m busily sqeeging the glass shower door when the phone starts to ring. And ring. And ring.

Andrew’s at work, maybe he’s tied up on his work phone, and I’m expecting calls this morning anyway so I don’t want to let the call go to the machine.
I bolt out of the shower grabbing the towel off of the towel bar and head for the phone in the bedroom.

Pick up the phone. It was my dad making last minute arrangements for today.

So that I wouldn’t continue to drip on the carpet in the bedroom I went back into the bathroom to drip on the mat. All very well and good.

Then the Spotty Belly Jerk walks in.

Here’s the picture. I’m in the bathroom stark naked and dripping wet trying to juggle the phone and the towel when Pogo decides that, instead of playing around the shower drain he really, REALLY wants to get up on top of the shower head.

[Brief interlude: I always wanted a shoulder cat. When we adopted these two I thought about how much fun it would be to have a cat that likes to ride around on my shoulder. I never thought that the cat might have different ideas of when such a ride was appropriate.]

For those who are not familiar with mammalian anatomy, girls have parts in the area of their shoulders that REALLY don’t appreciate cat claws. Especially when the cat that owns said claws hasn’t really managed to get as high as he’d like to get so he tries to take a flying leap from the afore mentioned shoulder associated anatomy.

Pogo is currently on my shit list. And I may actually shackle his little ankle to a concrete block to keep him from jumping me.

It’s a good thing he’s cute!