The Cat's Pajamas

I should start by confessing that we have entirely too many cats in this house. I'm not sure at what point "too many" starts, but five is beyond that point, that much I do know. Four of them are getting to be old codgers, slouching through feline middle age, sleeping extensively, losing teeth, developing paunches. And diabetes. And heart problems. The aggregate amount of energy displayed daily wouldn't trigger a motion sensor.

And along came Charlie Bucket. I'm not sure why we let him in the house, aside from the fact that he's floofy, absolutely adorable, was tiny, and was about to take up living like a groundhog under our deck in the backyard or dying like a groundhog on the major state route in the front. The other cats were not sympathetic. They did not intend to descend into their dotage with a Tasmanian devil in the house. Neither did I, but there you have it.

Mostly, he just engages in "normal" kitten behavior. He feels sudden compulsions to leave and enter rooms. He does laps around the house. He has strange prejudices regarding knit blankets, camera bags and the bathmat. He takes issue with how the carpet "looks" at him.

And then, there is his fascination with pants, or more specifically, with the inside of pants. Dare to go into the bathroom in our house, sit down to conduct your business, and begin perusing a back issue of Entertainment Weekly, and the next thing you know, you'll have a cat in your pajama pants. He just plucks the band back like a harp string, slips over the edge, and he's in!

If you try to get him out, he bites and retreats into the depths of one pant leg. Finally, you realize that even if you could grab him, you'd have a hard time negotiating your underwear and your waistband without having your legs scratched to pieces, so you decide he'll just have to go out another door. You slide one foot back inside the elastic cuff of your pajama pants, and attempt to get him to recognize light at the other end. He begins to crawl down your pant leg, gets halfway, becomes bored or disoriented, and lays down. In your pant leg, on the floor, looking like a plaid sausage.

You decide to extrude him, pick up the leg, and begin shaking. He slides further down and part of his head, including one ear, emerges. Suddenly, he decides he likes this. He's snug, you're close by, and he feels hidden and capable of surveying everything at the same time. You're losing feeling in your legs now, and you start to shake with more purpose. No luck. You reach in the cuff, past the little needle teeth, are thinking that this must be how a veterinarian feels, and draw one paw forward. He sticks the other paw out willingly, but then assumes an attitude reminiscent of Tom Hanks trapped in the rug in The Money Pit: two abbreviated arms, paws stuck under his chin, slight hysteria. You fight the urge to begin singing "The Name Game," because, at this point, frantic shaking starts to have some effect, but he continues to be limp, like a creature being born, as he oozes the rest of the way out of the cuff and flops onto the bathmat, blinking, confused, and generally disoriented.

Yoga pants are no better. He uses the wide legs to curl up in, and if disturbed, he assumes the stance of a small child playing "ghost" under a sheet - arms begin to wave above his head behind the fabric and strange noises start to come out of your pant leg.

The entire thing is both hilarious and frustrating. How do you explain to your non-catloving friends exactly how you sank to this level? Worse yet, the entire production is guaranteed to be a viral video, popping up on CNN, Youtube, and in email forwards everywhere. If, that is, you could bring yourself to go into the bathroom with a camera. I can't. And, Charlie apparently only performs on stage. It is no use to attempt to explain to your husband what he does. If you poke him into a pair of pajama pants fresh from the laundry, he'll crawl promptly down the leg and out the cuff, casting a worried glance at you over his shoulder as he sits down to bathe. As a result, Charlie gets to be a "monkey not seen" of sorts for everyone else, and you have the task of attempting to convey the monkey's charm through words. Words are amazing things, but they can only go so far and they make a poor substitute for actually having a cat in your pajamas.