Those three in the morning, kitty wants do stuff blues

So, Otis bought a new cat toy: it's a small spherical cage, about the size of a golf ball, enclosing a little bell. Mountie (the scaredy-cat) loves it. He has always been a good soccer player, using other balls or milk bottle caps, but he really likes this ball. He swats it, follows it, swats it some more, and bites it on occasion; he seems to actually enjoy the cheap plastic/tinny bell noise it makes. He has developed a new vocalization that he only uses when he is carrying the ball in his mouth, a kind of kitty chant: mrow-mrow-mrow-MROW. So, hooray; we like happy cats.

Of course, when Mountie decided to have a round of his game at 3:00 am in the bedroom, it was not so much hooray. In the middle of the night, the little toy sounded even louder and more annoying than it usually does. At first, we tried to ignore the activity; hard to do, especially when the game would move onto the tile floor of the bathroom, adding a nice timbre to the sound. Then I got up and threw the ball down the stairs. Mountie followed it, and we could hear him playing down on the main floor, but the sound was a bit muted, so that seemed to be that -- until he carried it back up the stairs and came back into the bedroom chanting. That's when I took the ball away and put it under my pillow.

If our house was monofelinic, that would have been the end of it, but by this time all the activity had wound up annoying Selkie (the bully-cat), who had actually been trying to sleep, so he got up and decided it was a good time to play Thrash Mountie. On their third circuit around the room I got up and took them downstairs and threw them both outside. I did get some nice sleep after that.

When I let them back in a little while ago, the first thing Mountie did was find another of those damn balls and start playing with it. Sheesh. Selkie came back as wet as I have ever seen him; he must have been out patrolling in the rain.

What a way to start a weekend!