The week before last I took off on vacation and headed up to Bozeman, MT to see some friends and get some runs in with my g/f. We both worked like dogs the week before going up there…all the way until the last minute and then we caught our flight and took off.
It was a bit late, local time and really late “our time” by the time we got there. We stayed at my friend and co-workers house. He and his wife had left to go to Cancun, so we had the place while they were gone. All we had to do was take care of their cats, Cisco and Sadie. Little did I know Saidie was short for “Sadistic.”
I had a surprise of chocolate and champagne waiting for us when we got there since it was Valentine’s day so we stayed up late drinking champagne and nibbling on chocolate. I’d say it was about 2:30am according to my body, even though it was only 1:30am local time. We finally crashed out and then at about 3:58am I woke up by hearing a faint, but distinctive chrip!. WTF? I start to drift back off and, chirp! there it is again! One eye open, mind barely functioning…Chirp! OK, now I am awake but not quite thinking straight and again....chirp! ARRGGHH!! It's a freaking smoke detector! You know when the batteries die they emit a chirp about every minute to let you know the battery is dead. Why does this always happen at night??
So, here I am in a strange house searching for batteries at 4:00am. No luck, and I was about to go to the store but then I realized the one that was chirping was the one over the staircase, about 2 stories up, which I couldn't easily get to anyway. I used a pillow to cover my ears and got some rest, but not much. The next day we got a battery the next day and I fixed that bastard!!
But little did I know I was still not to enjoy a good nights sleep. Sadie is a fat little furball of a cat. She must weigh a zillion pounds and while she isn’t very agile and can’t move very fast she knows exactly where her cat treats are. My friend warned us ahead of time that Sadie would wake us up if there wasn’t plenty of food and water so I made sure she and Cisco had plenty of both before crashing out.
As it turns out Sadie will wake you up....even if there is plenty of food. At about 4:00am she started batting on the door. I got up to see what was going on and she looked at me and then ran off for a cat treat!! I double-checked their food and water, yup....plenty there. So she wanted a cat treat, but I didn’t' give her one as I didn't want to reinforce negative behavior. She did this about two or three more times during the morning.
She also woke me up the next morning doing the same thing at about the same time. This time, though, I opened the door and told her to knock it off and when she ran for a cat treat I didn't follow her out. The following day she waited until about 5:00am but did the same thing. My g/f and I took turns opening the door and screaming at the cat, but not giving her any cat treats. By the time we left she stopped batting on the door, or if she did do it she wouldn't be there when we opened the door. She was learning.
Cisco, the other cat was pretty cautious. We didn’t even see him for about three days and then he finally would come about ½ way down the stairs and watch us. By the next night he finally came up to us and once he realized we’d pet and scratch him it was game over. He wouldn’t leave us alone after that.
We wanted to do something nice for my friends since they let us have their house and we put a little care package together with some wine, cigars, flowers, etc. We also did all the laundry and cleaned up so that they could come home to a clean house and not have to deal with anything. Because Sadie was driving us crazy, we had this thought of signing the card and adding:
" PS, your cats are in the freezer. "
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