Welcome to the Circus

My mornings have become a three-ring circus.

Maybe a five-ring.

I have animals doing tricks for food, and freakishly strange animals showing up to entertain anybody who happens to be visiting.

My morning begins with yowling. Percy starts the festivities by squalling, yowling, and screeching while running through the house. Meanwhile someone else is downstairs going crazy in the litter box. Usually it's Puckett because Willow reserves her litter box behavior for the small one in the cage on the fourth landing. Any other time she'll use the litter boxes downstairs. At night and in the morning she uses the one on the fourth landing.

No doubt because it's closest to my bedroom and thus, I can hear her better.

Once Puckett is done downstairs (and believe me, it doesn't matter where they use the box, I can hear them just fine), Willow or Percy or both will proceed to use the litter box. Like Willow, Percy will always use the one downstairs except in the mornings, when he uses the one underneath the cage because, most likely, it is also closest to my bedroom.

After litter box activity, there is more yowling. Percy races through the house, and Willow sacks out on the floor at the foot of the bed and attacks the blankets hanging off the mattress.

Tess paces around, first from bedroom to downstairs to the kitchen, then back upstairs and into the bedroom. Then she'll go to her bed which is just outside the bedroom. Then back into the bedroom.

Sometimes there's a bit of whining. Usually because Percy is annoying her. If I ignore his yowling he starts bothering Tess.

So after the litter box scratching, the yowling, and the thundering of cat paws throughout the house, all I hear is "click click click" as Tess paces.

Then Puckett comes into the bedroom and sits next to the bed, staring up at me with her big eyeballs. She doesn't make any noise, just stares.

Finally, I get up because I can't take it anymore. I let Tess outside. She explodes down the stairs of the deck either to do her business or to lap up the entire bucket of water outside.

Keep in mind I do not dehydrate my dog on purpose. She can't drink water after 9 PM because then she pees on the floor. She's either too polite or too lazy to ask to be let outside when she has to pee.

I also don't dehydrate my cats on purpose, or even at all. They have a huge water bowl in the living room they have access to all night long.

Upon getting out of bed, I take a shower and Percy immediately is on the ledge of the bathtub lapping the water drops that spray from the showerhead. So I play with him a little. I move aside and the water hits him. He screams - and I do mean SCREAMS - at me, jumps down and takes off like a shot. A second later he's back on the tub, lapping away. This time I'll aim the shower head right at him. Bullseye, one drenched cat.

This time he screeches the equivalent of a banshee threatening to end a life. The devil himself as taken over my cat's body and turned him into a fluffy demon.

He takes off like a shot once again. Then he sits by the door and grooms himself.

He comes back. I flick water at him with my fingers.

MRAOWWWWW!

Thump. Scurrying as he races out the door.

This goes on until the shower is over. I get out, dry myself off, and go into the other room to get dressed and make the bed.

Almost immediately Willow streaks into the bathroom like someone shot her from a cannon, launches herself into the bathtub, and starts lapping away at the drain like she is dying of thirst.

There is soap in that water. And hair (mine and the cats' as they have taken to playing in the tub). She has a bowl of clean water downstairs. She doesn't care, she'd rather drink drainwater.

Okay, then.

I pull the curtain aside, she looks up at me with huge eyes like she's been caught stealing the Mona Lisa, and leaps out of the tub, streaking from the bathroom.

As soon as I leave the bathroom she's back in there.

As soon as I walk into the bathroom she jumps out of the tub and thunders away like the devil is after her.

The devil is after her and has possessed Percy.

Where is Puckett, you ask? Either using the box again once she's eaten or else yakking what she has just eaten all over the floor.

Tess is outside, under the deck, ignoring everyone because she's pretty sure we've all lost our minds.

Then it's time for codependent breakfast.

I feed them after I've gotten dressed and made the bed. They each eat a few pieces of food, then leave to go do their crazy stuff - Puckett in the box, Willow in the bathtub. Percy actually calms down after eating and lays in the sun for awhile. He will eventually use the box too, though.

I go about my own business, but every time I set foot in the kitchen they are all right there again, eating because clearly food cannot be consumed unless I am there to supervise.

Right before I leave for work I pick up all the bowls (my cats each eat something different and they also don't need to be hogging out all day, that just encourages more pooping and they do enough of that). As I put my shoes on and pull my keys out of my purse, they all magically appear and start yowling for food again. They obviously haven't eaten for hours, maybe days, and they let me know it as I walk out the door.

Amazingly they are all still alive when I come home at lunch to feed them again.

One morning last week I left my house to a chorus of chirping and meowing only to find this hanging out on my walkway, right outside my front door:

Let the freak show begin.

He was oddly grasshopper-shaped which made me wonder if he hadn't just consumed one.

That's fitting because when I got home from work later that day, I pulled a few carrots, neglected to check them before bringing them into the house, and had to contend with a grasshopper hopping around my kitchen. I caught him and tossed him into the front garden where that monstrosity above happens to live.

At least I assume he lives there as I had to prod him off the walkway that morning just so I could get to my car. I wasn't about to step on him and ruin my shoes (and really, why? Spiders are people too), and I definitely wasn't going to walk past him. He might have decided I was his next meal. I used a stick to nudge him off the cement and at first he was quite sluggish about it. I guess he was taking a nap.

What a stupid place for a nap. Any bird could have come down and snapped him up.

I know what you're thinking:  I should have just let it.

I finally managed to prod him off the cement and he scurried into the garden, where the rosebush lives. I just hope he doesn't end up in the house. He was too big to kill (can you imagine the mess he'd make on the carpet?), and too big to trap. Even I won't brave dropping a glass over something that size. I'd just move. Grab the pets and leave the furniture for the spider.

It occurred to me that the freakishly large spider is my own fault. He's probably one of the critters I trapped and put outside years ago, and that's only allowed him to grow to the size of Montana.

God, I hope he hasn't eaten Fred and Winifred. Or any of my other jumpers. My boss made the comment that if I hear a knock at the door and there is nobody there when I open it, I should probably just run for my life.

Welcome to the circus.