One of the many joys..

I will now regale you with a tale of Edgar.

This is a classic tale, one of the first moments I realized how incredibly fantastic he was – and how flippin’ insane.

Edgar likes plastic bags. Edgar especially likes plastic bags which contain groceries yet to be put in the pantry. After a trip to the grocery, my boyfriend and I put away all the perishables, but too exhausted from the day’s travails, left a few things on the kitchen table to be put away later on in the morning. We collapsed, worn out, abused, and in need of some Z’s, into our bed.

I dreamt of something pleasant, something whimsical and carefree, one of those ‘If I wake up right now someone will die’ sorts of dreams, which are always preferable to reality. I was warm, comfortable, and getting some much needed R & R.

The rustling awoke us at 3 a.m.

We lived in a studio apartment at the time, so you can hear everything going on everywhere in the whole place. We propped our eyes open sleepily, not sure what was going on and quite ready to go back to sleep. There was a sudden thud. And all hell broke loose.

A whooshing sound bolted around the room like a ping pong ball, swushing and swishing all around us in a series of thwapping that shot back and forth, beneath the bed, into the kitchen, into the living room, and back again. We scrambled for the bedside light, illuminating the room in a sudden flash of brilliant light.

When I finally saw him, my jaw dropped.

There he was, our ridiculous little cat, eyes wide as saucers, fur standing on end, running as fast as his legs could possibly carry him back and forth in our apartment. And trailing behind him, stuck to his foot, was a plastic bag, filled with the whooshing air puffed up behind him. I hollered and jumped out of bed, my boyfriend right behind me.

“What do we do!?” I frantically screamed, my boyfriend’s equally panicked voice answering back that he hadn’t the faintest idea.

In a mad dashed effort to escape the white demon behind him, Edgar ran over my boyfriend’s foot, and I tried to grab him, but he was too quick. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was clutching his gushing foot, now slashed deeply from panicked cat claws and cursing up a blue streak. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I settled for dismay instead.

All of a sudden everything grew quiet.

I dropped down to my knees and peered beneath the bed, moving the bed-skirt very carefully so as not to spook him. And there he was, huddled by my bedside corner with his eyes so wide I thought they were now possibly capable of X-Ray vision. Very carefully I reached for him, and just like that I untangled his leg, with absolutely no struggles from the tortured feline whatsoever.

It was only after we bandaged my boyfriend’s foot that I started laughing. And I couldn’t stop. Remembering the sight of Edgar running around the room with a plastic bag riding his haunches was just too damned funny to forget.