Lunch, anyone?

I keep forgetting we have kittens at home – kittens as opposed to adult cats. And I’ve forgotten how vastly different kittens are from adult cats.

Adult cats like to find warm, sunshiny places so they can nap uninterrupted for approximately 22 hours a day. The other hour is for eating. And the last hour is for creating stinky messes in their litter boxes. Okay, maybe they only nap for 21 hours a day as it seems physically impossible for the stinky messes in their litter boxes to be the result of one mere hour of effort.

But I digress. (I could write a book on stinky messes in litter boxes. Sadly, no one would want to read it. Or ever have an appetite again.)

Anyway, as I was saying…

Kittens, on the other hand, are rambunctious and extremely curious. Like when there is a lovely bouquet of red roses in the center of the dining room table from my wonderful husband for Valentine’s Day. Kittens who have never before seen red roses think they are something to be explored. And they think it is their kittenly duty to chew on said roses to see if they are edible.

When they discover the flowers are not as good as say, whipped cream, they continue to pounce upon the innocent petals and shred them to bits.

Now I know where the saying, “Curiosity killed the cat” comes from. The kitty funeral will be tomorrow at 10AM. No, I kid. Like shredding my roses warrants the death penalty. (This was not as easy a call as you might think...)

No, instead, the first time I caught them on the table chewing on my roses, I shrieked. While that startled them into immediately jumping down, it didn’t deter them for long.

Since I didn’t want to spend the entire day shrieking at kittens or standing guard at the dining room table causing Vince to regret purchasing the roses in the first place, I moved the vase to the sideboard. I then piled stuff on top of the chair closest to the sideboard in hopes that it would keep the kittens from reaching the roses.

Ha. Like that worked. Apparently I didn’t use enough sharp, pointy objects on my barrier.

Eventually, Twinks and Jinx lost interest in the now-shredded roses and moved on to other pursuits. Like clawing their way up my leg and sliding back down, claws fully extended, of course, in an attempt to create their own human amusement ride.

By the next morning, three of the roses were black and had to go to that great rose heaven in the sky (also known as that great trash can in the garage).

And for the next four days the roses sat way back on the sideboard barely visible and somewhat neglected. Finally, Vince suggested I bring the survivors to my office so I could look at them without fear of reprisal from destructive kittens. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that before?

So now they sit on my desk to be enjoyed and admired for another day or two.

And, surprisingly, not one single co-worker has come in to my office with the intention of chewing on my roses.

How great is that?!