Cat Musings - The Andre Experiment

This post will be the first of a series. Thank you, Kris, for the inspiration behind the title, “Cat Musings,” which you may recall is part of a comment you wrote recently about my “Entertaining Angels” post. It’s perfect! I hope you enjoy this first installment.

Sleep eluded me last Saturday night. It was nearly 2 o’clock on Sunday morning before I finally felt my limbs growing heavy, turned out my bedside lamp and closed my eyes. I woke at 7 o’clock with Andre staring at me expectantly.

“Give me a few minutes, Andre, and I’ll feed you.” I stroked his head and he began to purr softly.

It occurred to me after that greeting from Andre that it is more evidence to me that he and Samson and probably the others can sense that something is amiss with me. Andre’s behavior, in particular, is very different than it used to be when I would set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. so I would have time to eat breakfast, watch the news, and read a little before I readied for work. Let me tell you what he was like then.

Cats can tell time, you know. They are creatures of routine, and they anticipate such things as the time you normally rise to start your day. Unfortunately, Andre couldn’t wait. As if 4:30 wasn’t early enough, he would make an effort to begin waking me between 4:00 and 4:15, sometimes earlier, every morning. He would do it gently, softly trilling as he paced the floor from one side of my bed to the other. The sounds were just loud enough to disturb my sleep, and it was quite annoying.

“Andre, stop it!” I would demand, but it was for naught. The trills would soon elevate to full-blown meows, and eventually he would hop back up on the bed and get in my face to do it.

I tried tossing him out of my room and closing the door. It was futile, but I chuckle now to think about what he would do. I have lever-type door handles on my front door that I love. It makes it easy when my hands are full to simply press down on the handle with my elbow to open it. Thank goodness I have regular round door handles on my bedroom door, because Andre could have easily opened a flat, lever-style door handle. He would stand outside my bedroom door and jump up to the door knob, I can only assume in an attempt to somehow turn the knob to open my door. Imagine, if you will, the force of a 20-pound cat hurling himself over and over against your bedroom door at 4 o’clock in the morning.

So, I took another tact. I have previously written in my “Cat Clowder” post about Andre’s unique personality. He is a rather peculiar animal, and this next strategy I used revealed just how unusual he is.

I have a large, mesh-sided cat carrier that I use to take Andre to the vet for his annual visits. Although the sides are mesh, there is an aluminum or hard plastic frame that gives it some support so it doesn’t collapse. One evening after I got home from work, I retrieved it from the garage and carried it up to my bedroom. I sat it on the floor next to my bed with the zippered front open. It has a Sherpa-like pad on the bottom to make it as comfy and inviting as possible, though every cat owner knows that most cats are reluctant to get into a carrier willingly. Thankfully, Andre is not one of those cats.

The next morning when Andre’s soft cooing and trilling began, I slid out of bed and patted the Sherpa pad in the carrier. As I expected, without hesitation he ducked slightly, walked straight into the carrier and turned around as I zipped the front flap closed behind him. I picked up the carrier and lugged it downstairs where I sat it on the middle of the living room rug.

“Sorry, Andre, but this is where you’re going to have to stay so I can get a little more rest.”

I have wondered what he might have been thinking, though I really have no idea how cats think, especially this one. Did he consider this to be some new adventure he was about to embark upon? Who knows. All I knew was that spending 30 minutes or so in the carrier downstairs wouldn’t hurt him, and I would get a few more minutes of peace and quiet.

A short time later when I went back downstairs, I found Andre still in the carrier; however, it was no longer sitting in the middle of my living room rug. I found it upside down on the other side of the room. It was apparent that he had tried to escape his captivity, and in doing so, he rolled around the floor inside the carrier like a mouse in an exercise ball. He meowed a tad pitifully when I finally unzipped the door so he could get out, but he was none the worse for the wear. In fact, he emerged from the carrier almost nonchalantly, seemingly not put out with me at all. In retrospect, his demeanor was a lesson in how to just go with the flow, take things in stride, blow with the wind. You get the idea.

You’re probably thinking that was the first and last time he ever got into that carrier willingly, but you would be mistaken. This became a routine every single morning, and every morning I would find the carrier in a new spot in my living room, sometimes on its side lodged against the patio doors, other times askew against the sofa or the coffee table. My ultimate goal, of course, was that he would associate his alarm-clock behavior with being imprisoned in the carrier every morning and stop being the early alarm clock. I think my expectations might have been a bit high. The odyssey ended for two reasons, one of them very surprising indeed.

The last time I wearily carried Andre downstairs and deposited him in the carrier onto my living room rug, I dragged myself back upstairs, climbed into bed, and promptly fell back to sleep. About 20 minutes later, a familiar sound caused me to stir. When I suddenly realized what it was, I sat bolt upright, rubbed my hand across my face, and stared into the eyes of Andre, who was sitting on his haunches staring back at me expectantly.

“Where did you come from?!” I said in astonishment.

Wide awake now, I threw back the covers and hastily made my way downstairs to investigate. There in the living room floor sat the carrier, the front flap unzipped just enough to allow Andre to squeeze through and escape. Of course, he had followed me downstairs and was standing in the kitchen meowing. I stared at him, my mouth agape, and visualized his efforts to snag the zipper with his claw and pull it open.

The experiment had lasted a few weeks and was now effectively over. I resigned myself to the fact that although he had the intellectual capacity to unzip his own carrier, the true purpose of the trial eluded him. Besides, I was tired of trudging down the stairs with his heavy ass.

It has taken a disproportionate amount of time just ignoring him before he finally realized I wasn’t getting up until I was good and darn ready. Now, he sits quietly next to me with his amber eyes steadily boring into my skull until I finally stir, throw back the covers, and make my way downstairs to feed him before he starves to death.