Adventure + curiosity = a bath and curly eyebrows

So Jojo Kitty is a bit of a dope. I’m certain he can’t help it – he is after all a very pretty young man and every pretty young man I’ve ever known has been a dope.

Over Christmas he thought he’d have a bit of an adventure. I still have no idea how he got out of the house. I suspect the Bandit had something to do with it, although when asked he claimed to have no idea what I was ranting about. That boy wouldn’t notice a herd of stampeding elephants bursting through the door. I worry about that kid.

Anyway, no one noticed that Jojo was outside. In fact it wasn’t until I realized the idiot dog and his stupider friend had been barking for ten minutes that I put two and two together and got a missing cat. The only time Winnie the Wondermut barks is when she’s trying to get the cats to play with her. I have no idea when she’s going to learn that the old cat, Geddy, isn’t going to play with her. Ever. I guess she’ll learn it when he actually kills her. Still, her endearing attempts are pretty funny, but not as funny as the look on the cat.

I got a flashlight and went out into the backyard. I found him by the prancing Labrador – filthy and pitiful under the picnic table. The dogs had roughed him up pretty good. I’d warned him that the living room was his but that the backyard was the domain of the dogs and they can get pretty rambunctious. He was unharmed, just muddy and annoyed. Of course, he was more annoyed when he got a bath in the sink. Actually he did pretty well considering that I held him by the nape and My Honey squirted him with the hose attachment. I think the part he hated the most was being forced to cuddle with me on the couch for half and hour swaddled in towels.

That’s life.

Today, Ava and Jojo and I all had to go back to work. We don’t know what his problem was, but he was all kinds of testy and difficult. He yelled at me the entire time I was in Ava’s office discussing appointments for the day. Literally yelled at me. I kept inviting him over but he refused to come. Instead, he sat in the doorway to my office across the hall from Ava’s and meowed and squeaked in the most plaintive way. When that didn’t get him what he wanted, he attacked the office plants and then sat in the bookshelf outside her office and stared at us in the most unsettling fashion. Finally we decided that all he really wanted was for me to come back to my office so he could go to sleep. I have no idea why he found it absolutely necessary for me to sit next to him while he did it, but when I sat down, it finally shut him up.

The problem was, I had back-to-back appointments so I was out of my office again for about two hours. During that time, I heard that he roamed around acting fretful and whiny. He wandered over to Ava’s office where he stuck his face in a lit candle not once but twice. Ava moved it away from him the first time but he was compelled to climb around on her desk, over her computer monitor and past the phone just so he could stick his face in there again.

He has two curly eyebrows now, singed for our amusement. Curiosity did not kill that cat but it leaves the smell of burning hair and a glob of mud in the sink.

See. He’s a dope. A gorgeous, moronic dope.