MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!

Isn't it so great how vocal Siamese cats are? It's like they're having a conversation with you! They think they're people, and that's adorable. Well let me tell you: not at four in the morning, it's not adorable.

Sasha has begun a campaign of terror, and is unable or unwilling to communicate what her demands are. If she even has demands. She has food. She has water. She has me. What the hell else could a cat want? Whatever it is, she wants it at four in the morning and in her mind, the only way to get it is to walk around yowling.

I have to commend her, she was clever enough to discover that by going into the bathroom, she can treble the volume of her voice thanks to the tiled walls. Fortunately I was clever enough to begin shutting the bathroom door when I went to bed. However, my opposable thumbs will only get me so far in this war. I need to sleep at night, while she has all day to laze about, recovering from her nightly sonatas.

I've tried to think like a cat to figure out what she wants. The only thing I can figure is that she's looking for Tasha, her sister. They've never been apart for more than a week in the ten years that we've had them, and maybe she doesn't like being an only-cat. And before you start feeling sorry for her, know that to all outward appearances, they don't even like each other. Sasha beats the crap out of Tasha for sleeping on anything she has deemed as her own. For Tasha's part, the only time I see her interacting with Sasha is when she chases her around the basement, paw extended to scoop in and then gnaw on Sasha's back leg. Maybe I'm misinterpreting that, but I know my sisters and I don't bond like that. Well, not literally anyway.

I don't know what to do here. I've tried everything. That's a lie. I've tried two things: throwing pillows at where her voice is in the darkness, and scritching my fingers on the bed to entice her to jump up, curl up and (most importantly) shut up. I implore anyone with any understanding of cat psychology to help me out here... not only are classes starting soon, but I have friends coming at the end of this week and I certainly don't need her waking everyone up all night long. I'm open to any suggestions except for drugging her, but if your suggestion is really well-worded or asking my address to send me said drugs free of charge, I will totally take it under consideration. Help!

Sasha's Big Move

As it turns out, when you live in a new city and don't have a job and classes haven't started yet, you have a lot of time on your hands. So judging by the torrent of academic doom-bringing emails I have been receiving from the second years, I seized what is apparently one of my last opportunities for spontaneity and went home for the weekend. Daring, I know. Laura and her cast were home so the three of us got to spend some quality time together. The whole fam also road-tripped down to Bloomington for the day to see Jenna and go to an IU game. Those who know me know my stance on football, and can approximate my feelings towards live football where the distractions that make televised games bearable are frowned upon. Highlights of the game include seeing and then trying to take a picture of my face with a Northwestern flag I saw on the top of the stadium (I know, I know, Big 10 or whatever. I'm still making all the connections) and getting a inverse-raccoon style sunburn thanks to my sunglasses.

One of the reasons I had come home was to transplant one of our cats to Chicago. I had decided to bring Sasha, because even though she has a crippling fear of the unknown, her life consists mainly of laying on the floor and watching me do stuff. It's hard for her to do that when there's 200 miles between us. My car was filled with stuff I forgot and one cat in a crate in a larger crate. I thought that'd be nice for her and me, because I wouldn't have a car filled with impossible to remove cat hair and she'd have a little freedom to move around but be unable to crawl under my seat and root herself permanently to the floorboards. I learned that lesson the hard way. However, freedom was not what Sasha wanted for this trip. As I was paying attention to the road as all good drivers do, my estimate is that she spent 98.7% of the trip like this...

... out of her bag, but wedged beneath it in a pathetic bid for some security. I'd have felt sorrier for her if she hadn't punctuated the trip with bouts of loud, plaintive meowing. I figured out that after the initial twenty minutes of meowing, she only spoke up when I did. This meant no talking on the phone and no singing, two of my favorite things to do in the car. I was down to podcasts, which I don't mind, really. I've got to keep replenishing the font of random knowledge in my head somehow and podcasts provide a easy way to do this. This trip did remind me of a joke, though. What do you call it when someone throws a cat out the window while driving on a highway? Kitty litter. Heh. Animal abuse is bad, kids. Don't throw cats out windows.

Once we made it to my apartment, I brought Catface in first and put her bag on the bed. She made no move to leave or even extract her face from the blanket to see that this wasn't, in fact, the vet's office, which is the only other place she ever goes. I made four more trips back to my car, and with each load I brought in, I checked to see what she was up to. Each time, it was this...

... with no variation. She moved a bit if I petted her, so I knew that the trip hadn't completely broken her brain. I proceeded to watch some tv and put my new stuff away so Sasha could come out when she felt comfortable. For the record, it takes over four hours for my cat to get comfortable enough to skulk out from her bag, look around furtively and then scurry under the bed. She stayed there for the next few hours, looking entirely annoyed with her new surroundings, as evinced below:

I eventually lured her out with the promise of brushing, but as soon as my attention was diverted for even a second she was back under the bed. I went about my business, making sure her necessities were out in plain sight should she choose to leave the bed. She didn't. Oh, well. Cats are resilient little things, aren't they? If they can survive falls off of buildings and trek hundreds of miles to reunite with lost families, they can adjust to moving to a rather nicely decorated and furnished apartment with a person they already know and like, right? Right?

It begins...

That's right - new city, new blog. I was sick of trying to explain the old address too. Bygone in-jokes with a limited scope of recognition do not good web addresses make. Lesson learned. Incidently, anyone who recognizes where my new address comes from will get the satisfaction of knowing we have the same taste in... well, something. No hints. But a quick Google search has revealed a similarity to a certain South Park episode title and I can only assure you that's not what I'm referencing. Ugh. Move your minds along, people.

Anyway, I've moved to Chicago, because the commute to Northwestern from Indy would have been a bitch. I'm sure this will result in hijinks aplenty, and this will be a good a place as any to record them. Classes haven't started yet and I've only been here two days, and so far my adventures have consisted mainly of unpacking and putting stuff away all while watching some deliciously angsty episodes of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman on DVD. (Shut up - it was a great show when I was 13 and it's a great show now. I am so excited for the Lex Luthor body-switch/amnesia/evil heart-stealing doctor plotline that words fail me.) Moving in was epic thanks to one way streets, non-existent instructions from management and an elevator controlled by what must be some severely disgruntled and possibly mentally impaired monkeys. My dad deserves the gold medal in Cirque du Soleil-style parking garage Uhaul maneuvers. And silver and bronze, too. The last time I parked my car, I headed back towards my building, and this is a rough approximation of my internal monologue after a while of walking: "Okay, the lake is this way, so my apartment is this way. This isn't that hard. Those flowers are nice. Hey, this street looks familiar... Well look at that, a silver 'Rolla with Indiana pla... oh. Crap. Let's rethink this... where the hell is Lake Michigan?" I haven't had to drive anywhere since, but I am 98% sure I will be able to find my car again when I want to go somewhere. I'll put up some pictures when there aren't boxes and unhung pictures and unshelved books everywhere. I gotta get going now, though. Lois and Clark are undercover in a marriage counseling camp, and I have a feeling the leader is cryogenically freezing couples to repopulate the earth after some cataclysmic event. I don't want to miss it.