My furry, bratty children have been losing their little cat minds since 3 am … when I was awakened by the sounds of Ronin thudding around in the hall. How did I know it was Ronin? The only way a cat can make that much noise on a wooden floor is if it is large and extremely heavy just like Ronin.

So what was the original thudding about? Mr. Oh-So-Brave, the cat who merrily pounces on crickets and outdoor roaches, carries them around the house in his mouth, and growls when you try to take them away from him was freaked out by a pill bug. A pill bug! His fur was all on end, and every time it walked toward him, he jumped three feet in the air, moved two feet down the hall, and landed with a THUD. When I located it, I put my finger down by it, and it rolled into a ball. I then rolled it over toward his feet, and he ran away from it as though it was going to eat his feet. Since he obviously wasn’t going to leave it alone, and it was also obviously scaring the whits out of him, I tossed it out the front door.

Well, then he got in a mood about it and began harassing his poor sister by chasing her around the house and pouncing on her. They know they aren’t supposed to fight, so every time I would enter whatever room it was I heard the snarling fighting noises in, they instantaneously transported themselves to opposite sides of the room in that way only cats can. But they just wouldn’t calm down and stop!

I finally put a stop to it when I heard them running loudly down the hall to the den, where I am sitting, and they started chewing on each other right next to my chair. Oh, they were chewing on each other quietly, but really … I’m sitting right here. It’s not like I won’t notice. So I smacked them both on the butt at the exact same moment. They’d been so wrapped up in beating the hell out of each other, they didn’t even see it coming, and afterward they didn’t know where it had come from. They both just sat there looking around as though the hand of god had just reached out to reprimand them.

At least the beasts have calmed down now and are sitting on the floor beside me looking as innocent and sweet as ever. Unfortunately, I have to be awake in about 30 minutes, so there really isn’t any point in even trying to go back to sleep. Dammit.

I’m going to have to take some time to run the excess energy out of them today. With me spending a lot of time horizontal and/or medicated mostly out of my head lately, they have apparently been running wild around here. How quickly they forget the rules!