I am so glad I’m not a cat!
They develop unfounded fears.
Shadow’s latest concern has to do with fans. Ceiling fans.
We have nine in the house and he has decided he is mortally afraid of them…
…while they’re on.
He keeps casting his gaze upwards
and quickly vacates the room if it starts spinning.
“He’ll get over it in time,” I tell Hubs.
I hope I’m right because there’s really no need for this behavior; ceiling fans at Footlights are nothing new.
They’ve been going round and round since he moved in almost 3 years ago.
“Somewhere between November and April he’s forgotten that they’re harmless and pleasantly breezy…if only he’d give them a chance,” I comment.
I’m certainly not going to adapt my lazy summer day habits to suit his fan phobia.
By the middle of May he was venturing onto the back of the couch and keeping an upward gaze just in case the whirring monster advanced.
Vigilance is the name of the game.
Poor boy seems to have completely lost the ability to relax.
His birdwatching has been curtailed,
He no longer spends the night on the bed,
He won’t watch Netflix with us in the evening,
and he leaves me alone to practice yoga.
Sometimes he forgets and rushes helter-skelter into the bedroom for a treat,
stops dead in mid dash sensing the overhead fan spinning towards him,
then, squirrel-like, changes direction to hurtle back from where he came.
Things are slowly getting better, yesterday he joined us for coffee on the outside settee.
Keeping his eyes open and his ears alert for the tell-tale hum of the motor he pressed himself against Hub’s leg.
The fan was on but not directly overhead.
He stayed put when we left, snuggled tightly behind fearless big brother who was sound asleep on his back oblivious to the danger.
It’s really quite pathetic.
Emboldened, I found him today quite literally hanging on one of the porch chairs,
as far away from the fans as he could get…
enjoying the cross breezes from the shifting of the air through the open doors and across the fan blades.
Slowly, one cat step at a time he’s finally accepting that they’re here to stay,
at least until October!
No comments so far!
2019-06-14 22:38:37
Hahaha! We’ll have to catch him off guard!
Leave a Comment