Stokely and His Favorite Lump

My apartment is painted white. Ev-er-y-thing is painted white. The walls. The doorknobs. The outlets. Everything. My theory is that every single time someone moves out (they have 6-month leases and month-to-month after that, so I think there's high turnover) they just douse the whole place in another coat of white paint.

Which is why my walls are lumpy. Have you heard of cottage cheese ceilings? That's what my walls are like. There's one lump in particular on the west wall, about three feet high, that drives Stokely absolutely bonkers. Just about every day he launches himself at it repeatedly -- making contact with it for just a fraction of a second before gravity sucks him back down -- until he tires himself out. It's absolutely ridiculous!

One day after watching him do this a few times I picked him up and held him in front of the lump on the wall, trying to give him the opportunity to connect with it the way he seemed to be so desperate to do. He couldn't have cared less! It was like he didn't even recognize the object of his own fixation.

He still jumps at it daily. I don't understand. It's one of hundreds of lumps. But it's his favorite.

Stokely and the New Litter Box

In my house on the Cape, there was a little closet in the living room that perfectly fit Stokely’s litter box. In Denver, I knew I was moving into a tiny studio apartment. Given Stokely’s messy litter-scattering habits, I had to go for something with steeper sides to have any hope of keeping our new home clean.

What I bought was an obnoxiously large dog-house style litter box. Stokely knew right away that what it was intended for and he used it without hesitation. He then decided to multi-task while he was in there and laid down for a nap. Yes – he snuggled into the litter, put his head on his paws, and closed his eyes. I couldn’t believe it! Part of me was flabbergasted, part of me thought it was adorable, and part of me really didn’t want my cat to constantly be coated with his own poo.

Fortunately, after a few uses it became less appealing for him to doze in, and he has since found plenty more fitting spaces to sleep.

Stokely and the Ceiling Fan

The day I moved in, the first thing I did was turn on the ceiling fan so that the apartment could get as cool as possible as fast as possible. The cord clicked when I pulled it, and the blades whirred as they made their rapid revolutions. Stokely heard nothing of this.

After being in the room for perhaps twenty or thirty minutes Stokely must have turned on his back or otherwise looked upwards, because he bolted into the kitchen as if he were escaping the talons of some monstrous creature. From around the slight corner, he sat and simply stared at the ceiling fan – while I doubled over in laughter. Sometimes I think we give cats too much credit for their keen senses…