My cat Delmar has OCD. This is what I conclude from watching his behavior in the litterbox. He digs his neat little hole--it has to be perfect--he squats, positioning himself just so, then once he does his business, he covers his mess.
For five minutes!
He scratches, scratches, scratches at the litter, stops, sniffs the area, scatches some more, turns to leave, thinks about it, decides to scratch some more, scratches the outside of the litterbox, scratches the papers underneath it, stops, turns to leave, starts to leave, then comes back for one final scratch.
When he does this at, say, three-thirty in the morning, it wakes you up. ("What? Huh? Is the fabric of the universe unravelling? Oh, wait, it's just Delmar tearing up papers again?") And when I wake up at three-thirty, I start writing rambling posts about either something that is currently annoying me or something that makes me happy.
Delmar is both of these.
He's sitting at my feet right now, slowly raising and lowering his head and making this weird little moaning sound. He does this a lot, and I'm not sure what it means. It's not the same as his hunger meow, which is loud and strident and usually punctuated by chomps on my leg. When he does his little moan, I reach down and scritch his head, and he purrs and seems to genuinely enjoy it for about twenty seconds, then he bites my fingers and storms off.
Did I mention I'm convinced he's bipolar?
Now he's wandered off--oh, he's chasing a bug. Bugs frustrate Del, because they exist outside his world. They're beyond his control, and when he goes after them it's like watching Charles Bronson waste punks--we're talking righteous vengeance here. "How dare you even exist," he seems to sneer, as WHAM WHAM WHAM his paw of justice repeatedly slams down.
Either the bug is dead or interest has waned--Delmar is back at my feet. And since he's here, I might as well let him have the last word. Anything you want to say, Del?
Del?
Oh man, he's in the litterbox again. This could take awhile.
