Mandatory Parker: “At Midnight, All The Agents Orange…”

When the Kitties Don’t Sleep, Nobody Sleeps

Oh, life is cruel for the 10-Kilo Lint-Covered Breast Implant. Among other things, he’s now down to about 8 kilograms, mostly due to his extensive exercise regime. While other cats get to lounge around, taking in the sights outside and occasionally chittering at a squirrel, poor Parker gets a workout. Mostly it’s a workout of his growling gland, because that part of him gets worked out the most. Everything else, though, gets plenty of exercise: frantic races down the hall, leaping in and out of boxes, attempting standing long jumps across the bed, and wrestling matches under the kitchen table. Parker now knows what it’s like to be awakened from a dead sleep by an unstoppable, implacable bundle of neuroses and demands, and he gets about as much sleep at night as I do. Worse, I’m not the one being held down and getting the earwax licked out of his head until every last crumb is gone.

Truly, nights belong to Winston.

To their credit, after 90 days, Winston and Parker have taken well to each other. They’re a perfect example of life imitating art, to the point where Parker camps out on the floor of my office because Winston knows that my office is MY space. Well, that and the fact that he’s terrified of the hermit crab. (To be completely fair, it’s not that Winston is afraid of anything at all. It’s just that with three brain cells rattling in his skull like the pea in an empty spraypaint can, he’s perpetually surprised by the hermit crab, and he responds to new things with a frantic scrabbling panic to which we are all thankful that the words “bowel-loosening” have not attached themselves.) The rest of the house, though, is his domain, and if Parker is in his domain, then Parker needs to submit to having his earwax extracted. Parker, though, hoards his earwax like Bitcoin, so he decides that he’s tired of having to pay for dinner five times a day, so they’re off to the races. In this case, quite literally: it’s been three decades since my domicile thundered with the sound of cat galloping, and it’s taking a while to get used to it.

The problem is that like his person, Parker is a textbook example of an outgoing introvert. He generally has no problem with socializing and cutting up, but when he wants his personal time, he doesn’t need a 10-kilo doorstop with a head three sizes too small rearing up and bugstomping him. He sees the new cat in the neighborhood, a brown tabby that loves to camp out on the front porch just to irritate him, and he has no intention of sharing his new girlfriend with Winston in any capacity. Same goes for his favorite perches and hiding spots: one of Parker’s favorite enclaves is a recently emptied packing box, and Winston responds to Parker’s need for solitude by pushing on it and knocking it over. And Winston’s favorite game? Hiding in the garage until Parker goes through the cat door and bushwhacking him in the dark. The modifier “bowel-loosening” gets used a lot in this house, and not just when I’m nearly knocked down by a fortieth of a ton of cat come racing down the hallway, but not by Winston.

All of this is brand new for Sarah, Abby Arcane to my Alec Holland. She’s only had a cat in her life for the past two years, and she’d never had two cats at the same time. She also hasn’t had two cats so diametrically opposed in temperament and intellect, so this is all absolutely new to her. When Winston camps on her side of the bed, waiting for her to come to bed so he can lie on her feet, this is new, but not unlike dog behavior. When Winston decides to lick her hair while she sleeps, THAT’s new. She’s never had a dog get up on her computer desk to yell at squirrels in the back yard, she’s never had a dog frantically patting at the front window in an effort to get outside, and she definitely didn’t have dogs climbing onto a bedroom bookcase in an attempt to avoid the other and get some sleep, much less one dog trying to yank the other dog off the bookcase by his leg. Sarah is a very lucky woman, or until last February, “was.” Her main advantage is sleeping very deeply, so she doesn’t have to listen to the interruption of the latest feline war on my side of the bed by way of a size-13 foot impacting the side of Winston’s head. (It’s a slow push, enough to get him off the bed, but the world hasn’t heard that much impotent whining since the release of the last 20 volumes of the “Sounds of the 1990s: The Portland Years” CD samplers.)

And so Parker plots. And Parker schemes. And Parker complains. Oh almighty Elvis, does he complain. Of course, considering how much he complained about not having a playmate and traveling companion before we adopted Winston, the complaints are muted. You see, while Parker’s night vision is terrible, Winston’s night vision is worse, so he compensates by homing in on prey based on frequency and volume. Parker thereby avoids the worst of the “jump up and down on thy opponent’s bladder” strikes from above by staying very, very quiet and still in the middle of the night, letting Winston take out his own wee hour boredom and ennui on me instead. Somewhere in the dark, as Winston aims both front paws for a final destination on the other side of the ribcage he’s staving in and I’m realizing that pain is an incredibly efficient alarm clock, Parker is snickering.

(As to the Ween song that best encapsulates that which is Winston, there’s only one answer. Make of it what you will.)

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