List #270: Things My Cat May Be Chasing Around the House

By any definition, our house is not huge. But it is big. It is old. And it does have tons of nooks and crannies. The basement is a hodgepodge of rooms and is basically filled with (still) unpacked boxes, furniture we aren't using, and toys that a certain little boy has outgrown.

I make note of all these little details becuase when we moved into this house, the cat got weird. Fast.

He'll spend all evening in the basement, sometimes just sitting the third stair from the bottom, and then cry like crazy when we decide to head upstairs to bed.

He has poked a few holes in our screens and knocked over a few plants, cups, whatever else just happens to be in his way.

But more than anything, oh can the cat run in this house.

He often chooses to run and run and run and run when I'm home alone and basically my imagination runs wild (all thanks to the scars of finding a mice in my laundry in college. and one dead mouse in our house in early fall of this year). I made the husband put out mouse traps and with the exception of that one we haven't seen any evidence of mice in the house at all.

But still.

Here are the things I think the cat is chasing at any given time:

• Stink bugs
• Spiders
• This green stress ball we grabbed for free at the Home & Garden Show and that he's inexplicably obsessed with
• Matchbox cars
• Flies
• Mice
• Rubber bouncing balls
• Lids to things. 
• Plastic toy rings
• Beads
• The green sticks that go inside your Starbucks cup
• Pens
• Pencils

I'm heading to bed in a few minutes and he'll surely drive me bonkers with all of this chasing for at least another forty-five. Before he's up tomorrow at dawn with the birds. Which he seems to forget every day are on the outside of the house and no amount of force is going to will them inside.