The brave… the bold… the wet

In the past countless (and no doubt extremely amusing) volumes have been filled with descriptions of all the antics kittens are wont to perform and the trouble they can get themselves into, but I must confess yesterday’s antic-du-jour was a beaut: Hrimnir not only set new records on amazing stupidity, sheer crazyness and plain lunacy, but he also displayed a disturbing tendency towards autodarwination ! Clearly this kitten has a death-wish. We’ve gotten used to him trying to pounce on Zorro, but we’ve never suspected him to be so audacious as to actively court certain death in the following manner.

Barely awake the Mistress performed her morning ablutions and honoured the porcelain throne with a visit, whilst a certain kitten, who shall henceforth be known as “toilet-plunger”, was staring in rapt fascination at her activities. The moment the Mistress flushed the toilet she barely had time to notice a black-grey-white streak flashing past her and into the raging wet torrent of the bowl. She didn’t stare helplessly at this daring plunge though, but -with the lighting-quick reflexes she used to be famous for in her heydays- reached out and grabbed the hindquarters of an already vanishing kitten before he would end up in the sewers. Subsequently a very wet, very bedraggled, very angry Hrimnir was dragged spluttering out of the humid toilet bowl depths and subjected to the tender mercies of The Towel.
He was protesting too, the scamp.

He was small enough to have been flushed away ! I can tell you my heart stopped for a moment there and my mind exploded into a turmoil of frantic thoughts and worries. What on earth possessed him to do that ? But the answer was not found wanting for too long, for I know very well what enticed Hrimnir to make the Death-Plunge: something moved… in fact, a lot of somethings moved. Several liters of it. And he found all that movement overwhelmingly irresistible. It’s programmed into the species. There’s simply no way a kitten will sit still when something in his vicinity moves. He must pounce it, such is The Way. And he will do so with the complete, total and absolute disregard for personal safety we all have come to cherish and dread.

Yes, we cherish it because it makes for so many of those perfect home-video moments and award-winning funny snapshots. But we also dread it because far too often for our peace of mind relatives and friends have regaled us with tales of how a certain kitten of their acquaintance had perished whilst too busy undertaking something too incredibly exciting for it to notice that there is -in fact- such a thing as mortal danger. “Curiosity killed the cat” isn’t just a quaint proverb or a typical example of the rhyming technique known as alliteration. It’s fact.

And you can’t stop it. You can’t spend 25 hours a day trying to protect that precious purrty-kitty of yours whilst it is trying to get to know the world and to explore its dangers. The kitten’s schedule is simply too busy for you to keep track of every little detail. He has so much to learn, so much to see, so much to do… He actually needs to, while his body is still in that typical kitten-stage when it is most flexible, supple and practically un-breakable. It is for exactly that reason that Mother Nature has endowed kittens with an elasticity acrobats can only dream of. And it is the stuff of nightmares.

Busily ambling through the kitchen, pre-occupied by the myriad duties of being a typical kitchen-princess, you won’t notice the tyke having managed to place himself just so that in the next moment you feel your foot landing onto something squishy and your ears are assaulted by a terrified and indignant “IEEEW”. You quickly lift the offending limb with a terrified exclamation and something explodes away, then stops after a few paces and furiously starts to wash itself whilst throwing dirty accusing looks in your general direction. And you find yourself abundantly apologizing to the tyke for not having had the 100 or so eyes needed to be able to perceive its every movements. Hrimnir has been subjected to this painful ritual already, more times than I deign to count, and these days he’s a tad wary about where I put my feet. All part of the learning process I guess.

In the end the learning process taught the simian denizens of the House of Chaos to keep the lid on the porcelain throne. Especially when flushing.

Picture below:
*SPLUTTER* Lookie ! A wet kittie !

He’s wearing a flea-collar that makes him smell nicely of citronella, in order to chase the fleas away. Maybe he thought a bath would help him get rid of ’em faster…

Want more wet feet ? Let’s all get aboard the Friday Ark for some splishy-splashy fun !