Can This Be Bugs?

This is how Bugs usually reacts to any crink in the weather involving stuff coming out of the sky and making noise.

So yesterday there’s me racing to finish cutting the lawn before yet another spring storm. There’s Teresa starting to work with Bugs while I put the mower up.

Then, all too soon, there’s the rain and the noise etc. etc.

No storm pictures, so this will do for sound effects.

And right on cue, Bugs slinks away off into the Hell Room.

Here’s him mountain-climbing awhile back in the Hell Room, in case you missed that.

But no scaling of heights in a storm.  In a storm our Bugs is in war-mode.  Hunkered down.

So Teresa and I try a bunch of stuff to wheedle him out.  Extend unto him every treat in the box.  No dice.

So Teresa and I use what would be Bugs’s session to talk –

No other pictures of the actual event in real time, so let me just fill in with library snaps I haven’t shared with you yet.

Teresa imagines what life was like for Bugs on the streets –

She notices that he wasn’t in the kind of extreme panicky state some of you have described your animals going into – so she thought it would simply make sense for him to continue doing what worked for him on the streets, to find a nook or cranny to squeeze into, to wait out the storm safe and dry –

And then it was time for Teresa to go.  So I try one last time to wheedle Bugs out, to say goodbye.

Keep in mind that historically, once a storm starts, this is Bugs and this stays Bugs.

For many hours.  It can be a long, long time after a storm stops, before he’ll creep out again.  From wherever he goes in the Hell Room.  This is the principal attribute of the Hell Room.  Once you go in there, it’s even money whether you ever find your way out again.

The storm was abating – a little – and I’m calling Bugs.  With scant hope in my breast.

Out he trots!  He says goodbye to Teresa!

Pause for amazement!

Then he creeps back in to the Hell Room.

And then he creeps out again!  He gets right up between my feet (another big change) and then he grooms and grooms and grooms.  And then he simply stays there, still.  Meditating, I guess.

So I think, well, it’s early yet but maybe I’ll try feeding him while he’s out – this storm looks like a long one and he may go back in again, for the rest of the day.  But he doesn’t tend to eat when he’s like this.  But – let’s give it a try.

Ate everything scarf hoover nom gone.

Well – will he stick around, then?

Yes.

So I’m still bruised from the events of the past week, so I just go to bed and pull the covers over my head.

And –

(Bugs in a more characteristic mode:)

I put on Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Freedom-Ladysmith-Black-Mambazo/dp/B000BVEKSQ

Praise Bast.  As soon as that heavenly soothing music starts, Bugs hops up on the bed and joins me.  He crams up against me, taps my lips with his paw a few times.  We both sigh, sleep.  For hours.  It’s crashing around out there, I see his ear twitching, and from time to time he bolts up at a really big one –

But he stays and stays and stays.  And I cry off and on, and drift in and out of sleep –

Can this be Bugs?

Was it all that adulation from being Cat of the Day?

In case you missed it, please – adulate!

http://catoftheday.com/archive/2011/April/18.html

On the day this ran, this past Monday, 1,468 people came over from there, and had a look over here.  From all over the world.  Many stayed and subscribed.  Welcome new friends.  Was it you?  All of you?

Or – was it Catsparella kissing the screen (see comments from yesterday)?  Frogs turning into princes?

Thanks are in order, no matter who to.  All in all, I am devoutly glad.  Sad and glad – alive.  We are together.