CRAPtastic

    When I moved back home after graduating from college, I brought my cat (Jaxx) into our already-two-cat-too-many (according to my dad) household. So now, including Jaxx, we have three cats. My dad, suffice it to say, is not too happy.
    Of course, that doesn’t include my mom Cat. He has no right to complain about her, especially because she (unlike the furry cats) does not poop in the laundry basket or cough up hairballs in front of the fireplace. She doesn’t even run through the house like a maniac at all hours of the night!
    Anyway, the point of the matter is that our furry cats do ALL of those things and more, and Jiffle and Joe (yes, we have a thing about cats and “J” names... It extends to the racing cars as well) have only gotten worse since Jaxx arrived. I think they’re a little ticked off that I brought an intruder into their house, especially since he just won’t seem to go away, loves to pick fights, and insists on having everyone’s full attention at pretty much all times. Their solution is increasingly poor behavior, forcing all of us to put up with their crap (literally).
    And CRAP is exactly what my dad is threatening back-- the Cat Reduction Action Plan. He announced this to us tonight at dinner, and went on to elaborate that “it’s funny because that’s what they do! Crap!” (he may have had just one or two beers). He thinks he’s so clever.

    Some potential elements of CRAP:
1: Stop feeding them. If you don’t feed them, they can’t produce poop, right?
2: “Accidentally” leave a door open and hope one of them escapes. If they leave to go make friends with the mountain lion prowling around the neighborhood, that’s an unexpected and welcome bonus.
3: Watch helplessly as they plummet off the staircase railing... Or, even better, the ledge over the mantlepiece. Too bad they weren’t more graceful... And didn’t know better than to stand on narrow railings.
4: Lock them in the pantry for an extended period of time. Not my fault they don’t have thumbs and don’t know how to open bags or cans.

    Okay, so it’s not really all that funny, and the only reason it’s funny at all is that I know my dad would never follow through on the threats. Though he would never admit it, he loves the cats and would be devastated if anything happened to them. He loves that they love him, too, even though that’s part of why he threatens them so often. Joe in particular has laid claim to my dad, and gets jealous if the human Cat is even sitting next to him on the couch. Joe hangs out in my dad’s office, sleeps on his legs (or face) whenever he gets the chance, is aggressively affectionate toward him all the time, and has created a bald spot on my dad’s head from licking him in that same spot.
    My dad won’t do anything to them because he enjoys the furry attention, and will be the first to lean over and pet Jaxx’s belly when he flops over, or give Jiffle a taste of the leftover steak juice on his plate (even if he usually dabs it on Jiffle’s fur, so the cat has to do some fancy yoga work to get it off). Even when he “accidentally” pushes a sleeping Joe off the top of the couch, exclaiming “Oh! I’m sorry! Were you sleeping there?!,” he does so lovingly, with no intention of causing any real harm. He just thinks it’s funny.
    Though the cats may continue to be complete miscreants, we don’t have to worry about my dad’s wrath and the implementation of CRAP. No matter how upset he gets, my dad is still the one who likes the cats enough to sit on the couch beside them and give them wet willies.