high anxiety

Poor Simon his losing his marbles over having Jackie in the house. Now that she's all healed and getting stronger, he is SO worried that she's going to usurp his place as our #1 noodge and snuggle-buddy. On the one hand, he seems downright happy to have a new friend. They actually touched noses in the kitchen the other day. We went away for the weekend, as we are wont to do, and upon our return he was much calmer and much less clingy than he usually is after we've been away. My sister, our dedicated and long-suffering cat sitter, reports that he acted much less nutty than usual while she was visiting, and we all feel like we ought to give the credit to Jackie.


look! just 18 inches apart!

On the other hand... he's going batty. Last night Simon broke his second food dish in a week. As you surely know, food dishes are sacred objects. But Simon has been so worried about protecting his dish from Jackie the Night Food Marauder - and rightly so - that in his fervor to scrape every item on my desk over the food to hide it (receipts, bicycle headlight, jar of mod podge, knitting magazine, small ganesha statue), he goes a bit overboard, and whoops! His darling dish falls the floor and smashes into many pieces. His food is up on my desk in the first place because Jackie will eat anything she can get near, and her hind legs aren't strong enough to jump up there (see previous post on grievous injuries). Though I think that last night she actually pushed my desk chair out enough to jump from there to the desk. That cat still thinks she could go back to living on the streets at any moment, and she's not taking any chances on missing a meal.

But WHY Simon, why break your own food dish, fool? The first one he broke was no real loss, just a vintage thrift store crystal candy dish that made him look stylish while eating. HWWLLB warned me against this (repeatedly), but as the replacement I used Simon's treat dish, which was a gift from Miss Bugheart, a very funky and wonderful and not-highly-replaceable item from Kri Kri pottery, and, well.... I found it smashed on the floor in many pieces this morning. Unglueable. (I hope Miss Bugheart isn't reading this). You will notice that Simon is now eating from a plastic take-out container, which isn't terribly stylish, and that's the way it's going to have to be, because he's too messed up to handle having nice things. Look at the dazed look in his eyes. He's not even enjoying his food, he's just mechanically chewing and swallowing and worrying himself sick over Jackie's next plan of attack.


the depressing evidence.

As further evidence of Simon's nervous breakdown, I could cite how on Friday night while Mindy and I were having a little mini Stitch & Bitch in the living room, he managed to tangle himself desperately in her yarn while attacking my arm, and nearly pulled out all the stitches she had just picked up (for the first time EVER!) on the neck of the baby sweater she's knitting, or how he keeps shadow boxing with himself, or how he gets up three or four times a night to check on his food dish, but then I'd feel like I was just telling stories on him, and that would be rude.

(In case you were wondering how I managed to spell 'grievous' correctly with apparently no effort at all, I'll tell you my secret: the Biggest Viewable Dictionary on the 'Net)

And by the way, for those of you who commented that Jackie looks like she's getting a little, well, rotund, you're right! That cat is eating every crumb she can steal, and her tummy is round and hard and it bounces when she runs! Maybe we could get some sort of alarm installed on Simon's dish (that would make him less nervous, right?)