Life With Boys

Life with boys … life is getting back to the new normal-ish … two boys are safely back in their dorms … no one is preparing a six-course midnight snack … no one is bingeing the latest season of something on the TV below my bedroom … the back door is not alerting us to arrivals and departures in the wee hours … and it is weird … so, the cats are making sure to pick up the slack … last night at 2 am … when the boys might have been making second breakfast or seventh dinner … Zeus (the short-haired cat with white paws) awakens with a jolt on my pillow and proceeds to have a sneezing fit … two inches above my face … yeah, a cold, wet, cat snot shower in the dark … I was telling the boy about this later the next day and he does a little happy dance and tells me about how he slept like a baby …

Fast-forward to 1:57 am … Zeus must still have a cold … except this time he has a much better cat-snot target in mind … and it is not me … karma is something isn’t it? … the boy gets up, washes his face and gets resettled … all is quiet-ish again for about six minutes … Zeus has gotten himself resettled and the sneezing starts again … this time the boy erects a sneeze-gaurd pillow-fort for protection from future invasions … forcing Zeus to make himself at home on my third of the bed …

Not to be outdone … Hermes, the long-haired 16-pound cat (that we thought was going to be a short-haired smallish cat) … decides to start his midnight routine again since all has been disrupted … he goes downstairs and selects a stuffed toy treat for our enjoyment and announces the eminent arrival with yowls that sound like he is saying “hello” repeatedly up the entire flight of stairs … toy firmly locked in his mouth he proceeds trance-like kneading on my bed … this trance can go on for a bit … and of course can only happen on my one-third of the bed as the sneeze-guard pillow fort is still present … if you try to snap Hermes out of the trance by stealing the toy from him he will just start the entire process over so I usually just let him get in with it …

Now the boys are settled … all snug in my bed … and I am downstairs on the couch, writing this post … waiting for my cue for act three … I bet it begins with an explosive series of cat sneezes …