The king size duvet fight.......

Allowing cats to roam your house can make it hard when you don't want them in the same room as you when you are busy! It was always easy to make Ripley vanish as she hated the hoover....and still does. Turn it on, drag it into the same room as Ripley, watch Ripley haul herself up and whizz out of the room. Peanut has always ignored the hoover and simply stays asleep. Jonesy, on the other hand, had to follow you from room to room. As I have said in a previous post, he loved water and the bathroom. This made for exasperating moments where I would clean the bathroom, clean the bath and sink, exit the room and then hear the scrabble of cat's paws. I would go back into the bathroom to find Jonesy cat ALWAYS sitting in the damp bath. If he had recently been outside there would be dirty paw prints dotted around, and if not, then ginger cats hair would be scattered everywhere. Even if I turned the shower head on to try and get him to jump out, Jonesy would simply watch the water trickle towards him and disdainfully edge backwards. I never learned to shut the door after cleaning that room!!

Changing the bed was an exciting game to Jonesy. The girls would simply move to another room if they were on the bed, but Jonesy would obstinately sit upright, watching me intently. He would allow me to yank the duvet slowly from under his feet, so that he toppled over and ended up sprawled out on the sheet. I would do the same again, and he would also do the same! The rest of the bed clothes Jonesy would ignore as he perched in the middle of the mattress. Now the fun would begin as I would try to remake the bed with clean bedclothes. Cats LOVE clean bed clothes....indeed they love clean freshly ironed anything, as I have found out to my cost....and Jonesy was no exception. Trying to place a king sized duvet cover on a king sized duvet, while a cat tries to help, is no fun. First Jonesy would stay in the middle of the bed. I would manage to get part of the cover on and shake the duvet. Jonesy would end up under the duvet. There would be a mound in the middle of the duvet. I would chase him out from under the duvet. I would then try to finish getting the covers in the duvet. While I was at one end doing this, Jonesy would somehow manage to get inside the duvet cover. There would then be a spell of 'chase the cat in the duvet cover' round the duvet trying to get him out. In the end I would have to literally haul him out, while he meowed and protested and generally gave me a hard time for spoiling his fun. The remainder of the bed making time would be spent with the cat and the duvet having a game of 'which can stay on the bed for the longest'.  Most of the time I would win simply by sheer will power of shoving Jonesy off the bed, and then racing round to position the quilt before he could leap back onto the bed. Sometimes he would win. That was when I would have to just ban him from the room. (No idea why I never did that in the first place?) The noise of a cat who is upset, because he has been shut out of a room, is enough to make you weep. The protesting chirp would start first, then that would progress to a pitiful meow, which then went on the a full orchestra of yowls mixed with howls, depending on if he was being ignored by me. Do you know what? It was easier to let him in and fight the king sized duvet fight than leave him to make his displeasure known. That was one indulged cat!