Put It Back! - Please, Mama - Put It All Back!

Our tabbycat, Dexter, has his own bedroom. I myself, as a middle child among six children in our family, never got my own bedroom until the summer before I went away to college. Is Dexter spoiled? Nah, not too much.  ;-)

When we adopted him, we would put Dexter in his own bedroom for the night, and it is a tradition that stuck. He doesn't wake us up at 3 am running over top of us with a case of the "zoomies," and we don't worry about tripping over him when we get up for a drink of water or a restroom break in the middle of the night. He goes into his room around 10 pm and is let out in the morning around 6 am.

The room features every amenity a cat could want: several scratching posts (some climbable), food and water bowls on a plastic tray, a comfy chair for sitting, a small table with a red blanket on it by a big window with a view of the front yard, a cat igloo, a litter box, pet carriers, and let's not forget the TOYS! Above eye level there are many areas with blankets for Dexter to hang out. The floor is also lined with several layers of soft, clean blankets.

A couple of times each year, I do a major cleaning and redo of Dexter's room. I take everything out, pull up the blankets, shake them off, launder and dry them, vacuum the floor, do any scrubbing that is needed, and then reassemble the room from the ground up. This day was such a day.

Now, I want to tell you this: I try to accomplish the cat room redo as quickly as possible, as the whole tearing-things-apart process is very stressful for Dexter. I don't know if it's just that cats in general don't like change of any kind, or it's that he fears that this is somehow part of a process of getting RID of the cat. (Oh no! Not that!)

After I took everything apart and put the blankets in the washer, I came back to find Dexter sitting disconsolately in his room. He looked around sadly. Everything he loved was gone.

Could this be the End of Everything?

And then my husband, who knows how cats think, moved one of Dexter's favorite big boxes in and placed it in a sunbeam in the middle of the floor, with a few toys scattered around. Dexter immediately went into the box and took refuge there.

Dexter lay down and made himself as large as possible, stretching his paws out so he was as big as big could be. He played with his toys and luxuriated in the sunbeam. He took some comfort in the box, and was somewhat mollified.

I went in to snap a few pictures of poor Dexter trying to make due with what was left him, and I found a rather troubled look on his face. The look itself almost seemed to be pleading:

Put it back - please, Mama - put it all back!

And as quickly as possible, I did just that, and the room was beautiful and fresh and sweet smelling. And order was restored to Dexter's universe. And we all lived happily ever after. . . . At least, until the next time.  :-)

The soundtrack: 38 Special, with Back Where You Belong.