His Linus Sense is Tingling
October 31st, 2007Linus now spends about 95 percent of his time on his pizza box. I know when he is stretching, because the creaking sound of cardboard under intense pressure resonates through the house. There are a few reasons Linus gets OFF his beloved pizza box. They are all sound-related …
FEARFUL SOUNDS
Linus leaves his pizza box to slink away and hide under our bed, or sometimes in some mysterious spot he’s found where I haven’t been able to discover him (I’m stumped; where does a 20-pound cat hide in this place?) if he hears one of these sounds:
Sound: Mia whining over having her claws trimmed
Reason: He’s figured out he’s usually next, and with a bath to boot.
Sound: The carpet cleaner guy unravelling corrugated hoses from his truck
Reason: Linus fears the carpet cleaning machinery.
Sound: A human sneeze
Reason: He got sneezed on once, by Stevel. Apparently it was severe enough to cause lifelong trauma.
Sound: Workboots, like the termite treatment guy’s or the plumber’s
Reason: I don’t know. Any theories?
Sound: The zipper on the cat carrier
Reason: While being at the vet doesn’t seem to bother him much, the 5-minute car-ride over there is devastating.
Sound: Me, thinking inside my head about the possibility of vacuuming the carpet someday
Reason: The vacuum cleaner = Enemy No. 1
Sometimes he also runs away low to the ground if he hears the blow-dryer, the ice-maker, or my electric toothbrush. At first, he was averse to the sounds of the Wii and would run and hide when we turned it on, but that seems to have abated. Also, once, I witnessed as Stevel played some random chord on the guitar that freaked Linus out. Zoom.
GOOD SOUNDS
Some things get Linus off his pizza box with enthusiastic joy:
Sound: Steve’s car pulling into the garage
Reason: While Stevel claims Linus likes everyone the same, I’ve seen evidence to contradict this. He does like Steve best. He often waits at the top of the stairs for a hello-scratch on the chin.
Sound: Mia going into the kitchen or the basement
Reason: These are two places in which he can trap her simply by lying in a doorway, sometimes for hours. In these instances, Stevel or I often have to play hostage negotiator, or orchestrate a move Stevel calls “The Airlift” to get Mia to the other side of the blockade. Because while Linus is a very quiet cat who rarely meows or makes sounds, Mia lets the entire West Coast know when she is unhappy. (In fact, the raccoonish sound of her banshee-hiss can sometimes send Linus BACK to his pizza box in a “fuck that” kind of strut.)
Sound: Me, getting up at 4 a.m. to use the bathroom
Reason: Someone’s awake. This person likely has hands. It has been hours since the scratching ceased. It is therefore time to walk on the pillows and hair of the humans and paw at their eyes and mouths until their hands are in motion.
Sound: Kibble hitting the stainless steel cat bowl
Reason: While he rarely eats from it right away when we fill the bowl, Linus seems to like to be on top of what’s going on with his food supply. If the bowl gets empty, he goes into panic-mode and starts opening and shutting, opening and shutting, the door to the cabinet where the food is kept. Ka-bang ka-bang ka-bang. He seems to just want to be reassured that food is available, because nine times out of ten when I fill it, he looks at the full bowl and walks back to his pizza box for more sleepin’. If we don’t answer the distress call of the cabinet door soon enough, he begins a tour of the house, opening every single cabinet, closet, and bathroom door in an attempt to find food. Some mornings we wake up to that scene from “The Sixth Sense” where the kitchen cabinets are all open. Except this is our whole house.
Sound: The gardener sweeping the courtyard
Reason: Linus likes to watch through the sliding glass doors as the bottom of the broom peeks under the two inches below our patio fence.
Sound: The filtered-water dispenser on the refrigerator door
Reason: Since Mia’s liver troubles began, the vet recommended we give our cats filtered water. Linus LOVES fresh water. So much. So every single time someone gets a glass of water, he now rushes—RUSHES—to his water bowl and looks up into the face of the person with his most expectant expression. We respond to this by dumping the glass of water into the bowl and, while he gulps, refilling our glass. This quirky response on his part never ceases to amuse me.