Let Sleeping Cats Lie

Wumpus is my new cat, my replacement cat, my a-bit-weird-even-for-a-cat cat.  He is gray tabby on the top and white  bunny on the bottom.  His full name is Wumpus Boris McCoy, but he’s known as Mr. Puss or Wummy or Wum Pudding. 

You’ve heard the saying Let Sleeping Dogs Lie which means, I suppose, that if you suddenly wake up a sleeping dog, it will be startled and will attack you.  I don’t know about that.  All the dogs that I’ve known, if you startle them away, they’ll lift their bleary heads to look at you, flap their tails a couple of times and then go back to sleep.  That’s about the extent of their ferociousness. 

On the other hand, if you startle a sleeping cat, well, then you’ll see some action!  Faster than a speeding  bullet, it will twist itself into a pretzel and sprint away (unless it was the dearly departed Elaine, in which case you’d feel the searing pain of a claw ripping down your hand before she fled).   In most cases, dog or cat, the adage doesn’t seem to be much of a warning for not letting the animal lie there like a lump on the carpet.

The big threat, really, is that the animals won’t let YOU lie.  You want to get an extra hour in the morning?  Unh uh.  A dog will, well, I don’t know what a dog will do because I’ve never owned a dog, but a cat will meow at you, just out of reach until you get up and feed it.  Or it will walk right over you and, just as you're drifting off, over you again, and as you feel the comfort of your bed, over you yet once again, or it will sit on your chest, suppressing panic as you begin to suffocate, or put it’s nose one millimeter away from your nose until you are awakened by staring.  We had one cat that would sit on the night table and push things off one by one until you got the hint.  There went the pen, smack, rollll; then the keys, jingle jangle; then your watch, thump.  Even if the cat suffered from, let’s just conjecture, being propelled off the nightstand at that point, you were good and awake and looking for your watch before you stepped on it. 

Wumpus, however, oh, Wumpus is the gold standard of cat.  (Well, okay except for that one time he threw up all over the quilt I’m working on.  I SAID gold standard not platinum standard). 

 

Here's Wumpus on the rinsed-and-yackless pocket quilt.  You can see
both the tabby half and the bunny half. Both halves are bunny fur soft. 

Wumpus will let you sleep and sleep.  He will lie on the bed next to you purring until you feel like getting up.  With Steve here for a week taking his spot next to me, he curled up at my feet until I rolled out of bed.  One morning it was at the crack of 8:00.  A couple of times, if he’s been particularly hungry, he has awakened me, I admit, but he’s done so in a particularly peaceful manner and only after 7:30 A.M.  No noisy yowling or throwing of jewelry for him.  He pads right up to my face and touches my eyelids with his little pink nose.  Kisses on the eyelids:  it’s a charming way to wake up. 

In return, I always waken Wumpus Boris with a gentle petting.  Usually, I let sleeping cats lie. because, well, what would you wake them for? 

P.S.  Huh, I just wondered if the adage meant to say Let Sleeping Dogs Lie as in "not tell the truth."  That would have to be a different Blog post altogether.