Reason My Cat is a Jerk #22. She’s Still Greedy.

I left a full bag of treats on the table. I found a mostly-empty bag of treats on the floor. And I didn’t even get a thank you.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #21: She Sits on My Clothes

Do you know where Jezebel’s favorite place in the world to sit is?

On top of any clothes I own.

Jeans?

Check.

Dry cleaning?

Check.

If I leave any clothes out on the bed, or on top of the dresser, I can be sure it will be covered in little black cat hair when I get home. Even when she has the whole bed to spread out, she’s not interested. (Pants, thankfully, has no interest in me or anything I do, so she’s not a problem.)

Not unless she can make my life—and my laundry— harder.

Jerk.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #20: She Always Sits in My Drawers

I think drawers are for holding my stuff.

My cats thinks that drawers are for holding them.

I don’t know what it is about an open drawer that lures them, but they just can’t keep away. Never mind that there is stuff IN the drawer. The fact that I put it there to keep it AWAY from the jerkholes only makes the drawer more appealing, and they suddenly find they can’t resist themselves,  and plop their butts right on down.

In this one, Pants isn’t even enjoying herself. She’s clearly doing it just to piss me off.

Jerks.

Reason My Cat is Jerk #19: She Sheds All Over My White Furniture

See my nice white couch?

See my nice what couch after I haven’t cleaned off the cat hair in a couple weeks?

This is Pant’s favorite spot to sleep. Naturally. It’s the one light-colored fabric in the house, so obviously that’s what she’d choose to rub her little black catty fur all over.

Jerk.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #18: She Messes up My Laundry

Laundry might be my least favorite chore. It’s also Pant’s favorite. I don’t know what it is about a big old pile of nice clean clothes, but she cannot stop herself from jumping right up on top and rolling around on it. The more cat hair she can distribute on my nice clean clothes, the happier the little jerk is. While I sort, she rubs herself all over my clothes, and I end up with a big pile of clothes covered in cat hair, which is exactly what I started out with.

I give up.

Reason My Cat Is a Jerk #17: She’s Greedy

That’s two separate bags of food she decided to help herself to. Never mind the full bowl on the floor. It tastes better when you act like a complete jerk.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #16: She Tears Out All The Stuffing From My Couch

When Pants was a kitten, she used to climb up inside the arm of the sleeper couch and crawl around and bat at us from inside. If you tapped on the fabric, she would claw back at you. She was tiny, and it was adorable.

 

It is not longer cute. Pants does not just climb up inside the couch and hang out. Of course not. Ever since she turned into a class-A jerk, she’s preferred to climb up inside the couch, claw at the stuffing, and rip it all out and dump it on the floor.

 

Here’s her latest attempt at ruining my couch. 

All that white stuff on the floor? That’s all the stuffing she tore out in one night. I didn’t know my couch had that much stuffing. It no longer does.

 

 

I don’t know what Pants has against my furniture, but she’s on a quest to ruin everything I paid good money for. What a jerk. 

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #15: She Poops in the Bathtub

We’d only had the catholes for a few weeks when we started noticing that one of them had a rather annoying habit. We’d go away, and when we came back, she had left us a little present in the bathtub.

They both had a perfectly fine litter box, right there next to the tub, so it wasn’t for lack of proper facilities that they left little gifts for us in the bathroom. And the box itself got used, by both of them, so it wasn’t like they just didn’t understand the whole litter box concept. The culprit knew what she was doing.

At first we weren’t sure one was responsible. They’re sneaky, my little jerks. They know what they’re supposed to do, so they’re careful not to get caught when doing bad stuff. We kind of hoped it was Pants who was responsible, because then we could call her Poopy Pants and all sorts of hilarity would ensue. But eventually we discovered it was Jezebel, because she would slink around and act guilty whenever there was a fresh offering in the tub. Once I even caught her in the act—she was scratching around at the porcelain of the tub, trying to bury it (with no success).

To combat the problem, first we took the litter box out of the bathroom and kept the door closed at all times so she couldn’t get in to do her business. But she kept sneaking in anyway, and we gave up and decided to move the litter box straight to the bathtub. If she’s going to poop there anyway, we decided, we might as well give her the option of getting it done in the right spot.

That’s right. I gave up my bathtub for the little jerks. Now I can’t take a bath without soaking the whole thing in bleach, and even then, it’s still vaguely reminiscent of Eau de Poop, so I generally just don’t bother.

The good news is that most of the time, Jezebel uses the box now, but about once a week, we still poke our heads into their little poopy domain and find that she has left us a little present right next to her litter box.

What we can’t figure out was why. Why is she ignoring her perfectly good poopbox in order to turn my bathtub into a place I never again want to take a long hot soak? Well, we started to notice that she often did it when we were gone for a while. So maybe it’s partly that she misses us when we leave. We started making sure to give her lots of attention before we left for work in the mornings. She also seemed to do it whenever it had been more than a few days since her litter box had been cleaned. She’s a priss. So we bought another litter box and started cleaning more often. That still did not stop her.

The only logical conclusion is that she does it because she’s a supreme jerk. Sadly, this is the one reason we can do absolutely nothing about.

Poop away, jerkhole. Poop away.

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #14: She Messes Up My Knitting

I recently learned to knit. This seemed like a great plan at the time: I was going to visit my in-laws, and needed something to do to keep me from going crazy.  Knitting is safe, legal, way cheaper than drugs,  and would result in a warm scarf. It seemed like an all-around good idea.

It worked out great until I got back home and tried to finish up my scarf with two jerky cats around. One thing I didn’t take into account? CATS LOVE STRINGS. They especially love moving strings. They love knitting like nobody’s business.

Now, it would be fine if they just sat and watched the string move, but of course that’s not what they do. No. Jezebel’s new favorite hobby is to sit next to me and try to entangle herself in the string. She loves to reach out and attack it, and she seriously loves trying to unravel the parts I’ve already knit. It would be kind of cute, if she didn’t look so darn evil while she’s doing it. It’s like she knows I hate it, and that makes her want to destroy my knitting even more. I know I should expect no less—after all, she’s a total jerk—but for some reason I expected better. Some day I’ll learn.

 

Reason My Cat is a Jerk #13: She Loves to Walk on My Freshly-Mopped Floors.

I love it when my floors are clean. I love it so much I sweep them all the time, and mop them as close to every week as possible. (You know why I have to mop them so frequently? It’s because they’re always covered in cat hair, and cat puke, and cat poop. But that’s a story for another day.)

You know who also loves clean floors? Pants. She absolutely adores walking all over them—while they’re still wet. I don’t know what it is, but she can’t for the life of her keep away. Maybe it’s the fresh clean scent of a wet kitchen. Maybe it’s the way it looks, all shiny and spotless. Maybe it’s the feel of the water on her paws. Maybe she’s just a jerk who’s trying to make my life miserable. I don’t know what her deal is, but when she sees me get out the mop she hides under the stainless steel counter, behind the boxes of cat food, just so she can make a break for it as soon as I’m done. She’s devious, I tell you. Cunning.

So then, when I inevitably notice her jerky plot, I have to somehow get her OFF my perfectly clean floor, which then entails walking halfway across the kitchen to grab her. Oh goody. I get to re-mop over not only her footprints, but also my own!

And then, naturally, her paws are covered in bleach water. I’d be inclined to just leave it and see if her fur turns white, but my husband doesn’t want to have to have to pay for vet bills when the cat licks her paws and gets sick, so this means I get to lock her in the bathroom and attack her with a wet washcloth. Not a favorite task for any party involved. I think next time I’m going to just tie the stick to her back and use her for a mop.