Sugar Time for KiKi

The past two nights in a row, my sweet lil' Otis has tried to take a chunk outta my right wrist with his kitty teeth! Now, before this week, I could have counted on one hand how many times Otis has ever tried to bite me and only once ever had he broken the skin, which was more my fault than his, but I won't go into that - - point is, it has only ever happened when he's feeling incredibly SUPER neglected... It's his way of saying, "Hello! Love me now OR ELSE!"

See, the last two nights, I guess I was focusing more upon tapping my fingertips against the colorful glowing thing I often have set in my lap --a place he's believed to be rightfully his since he came to live with me 6 years ago-- than upon his fuzzy backside. And while in the years before now, he could totally, patiently handle sharing some lap-space with the glowing whirring thing, only occasionally perturbed by the finger clicking and the 'mouse pad' taps beneath his chin resting upon either wrist of mine, he now has to be doubly patient and it seems he can no longer handle it.

It began 18 months ago...
First it was 9 months of sharing lap-time with the glowing thing AND a "baby bump" that gradually, steadily grew, and then altogether took over my lap near the initial 9 months' end, and the baby bump even kicked at him repeatedly when he's tried to reclaim some lap-time. And now, for the last 9 months? Well, Oatie's lap-time has been severely cut, doled out between the glowing thing, and a now ever present, relatively new, and very noisy, wriggling, squirmy thing that actually moved in with us 9 months ago! Yes, sadly for Otis, the squirmy thing seems to be here to stay.

Like his first days sharing lap-space with the glowing thing, Otis has done very well, too, with the noisy, squirmy thing, but its obvious to us he longs for the days when he reigned king-supreme over my lap, when he collectively spent a couple hours in my lap each day, even if those hours were spread throughout a days' time, over breakfast and dinner and the evenings and bedtimes. He just doesn't get much concentrated lap-time anymore, and well, to make matters worse, the tapping on the glowing thing has reached an all time high, so he's noticed, with all my working from home.

And it was bad enough a couple months ago, but now that little noisemaker routinely chases after him on all its fours, squealing loadly at him, and it goes after his tail and pulls on it harder than ever. Oh, and he's had to endure countless naptime interruptions as well... blasted lil' noisy thing.

Anyhow, long story short (too late), Otis apparently needs to tank up on some sugar from his mommie, so tonight, after putting the wriggly thing to bed, I let Otis reclaim his lap-space for a good solid 2 hours, while the glowing thing sat on the coffee table playing through the last two episodes of "Glee" from online. And I swear he was purring for those 2 hours... and now he's content to sleep beside me while I work (and blog), my sweet lil' kitty-cat.

P.S. I nearly wrung his sweet little neck though last Monday night, when he'd bitten me. I was about to send a Christmas email to a number of friends and family (which never happened), and I just had to attach three professional jpeg images of our baby girlie sitting with Santa Claus, taken at Town Square (and that is another story in itself that I will not get into right now). Although I had sensed and known he was irritated with me and all my typing while he was trying so earnestly to get my attention for some cuddles, when Otis bit me, I was so surprised and stunned, I jumped up from the couch. Consequently, I dumped my laptop on the floor and the usb drive with the jpeg files busted off in two pieces. And of course, I hadn't attached the files yet, nor had I made any duplicate file copies. Yeah, dammit. The swearing that ensued thereafter was explosive. Humpht. My sweet blasted kitty!