Rota the Cat-Dog

Clay and I invested in an "apartment minion" a couple months ago. AKA - Rota the cat. Clay suggested that it would be a great source of entertainment around the apartment, and I totally agreed! Isn't there some saying out there along the lines of "A house is not a home without a pet..." I feel like I have seen it on a doormat, or some DIY sign... But I definitely feel that way! Growing up, my mother was the animal whisperer. She LOVES animals. When I was younger there was never a time that we didn't have at least 2 dogs, a stray cat coming from the vet that she worked at that needed love and affection before it was strong enough to go to a loving home, we would dog sit everyones dogs, we even had stray cats just show up on our doorstep that wouldn't go away, and last but not least - we actually owned a cat, a cat named Splat. I'm pretty sure Splat ended up living up to her name...

Back to the topic on hand - Rota - Our apartment minion, or we like to very accurately refer to him as - our Cat-Dog.

It starts at bedtime.
We climb into bed, and to him, it means "LIGHTS OUT - TIME TO PARTY. WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS MOVING UNDER THE COVERS. I THINK I NEED TO ATTACK THEM TO PROTECT MY HUMANS."
Everyone told us that we should lock him out of our room at night, but the first day we brought him home, he claimed the bathroom in our room (of course) so if we shut the door at night, he will tear that bitch down - without a doubt.
Somehow - in the midst of him biting our toes under the covers, playing with his damn jingle ball, or the empty gallon of milk, or ANYTHING in the house that makes noise - we will fall asleep.

I understand that those are pretty normal things for a cat. But the real strange things start happening around 4AM. He will climb onto our pillows, and literally walk on our eyeballs. You know, the first time I just wrote it off as his foot just happened to end up in my eye socket - but then it started happening every night. Im starting to get the feeling that it is intentional. After walking ALL over our faces, he will situate himself on top of one of us, and start to attack our jewelry. Chewing on clays necklace or earrings, and when he gets frustrated and pushes him off, Rota will move right on over to me. We started taking our jewelry off before bed, and he still goes for the area where the necklace WOULD be, if we hadn't taken them off, which just ends up hurting.

Once the alarms start going off around 5/6, its game over. I will never be allowed to snooze again in my life. No matter what he is doing when the alarm goes off - he will run as fast as he possibly can, claws gripping the carpet to round the corners, and he will launch himself onto our eyeballs - yet again. (I only know this because I watch him every morning when Clays alarms go off. I will have to record it next time.) He will actually lick our eyeballs in order for us to wake up to feed him. Right when I climb out of bed - he SCREAMS until i feed him. He is the hungriest, and most vocal cat I have ever seen. For real, tonight we had to take his food out of the pantry to clean something up, and I just caught him face deep into his bag of food. You would think that we starve the guy. I already fed him dinner tonight which was a fiasco in itself. I was reaching down to put his food bowl down, and he swatted it out of my hand because he was SO hungry and food went EVERYWHERE. Then it turned into a game for him to not let me clean up. I ended up locking him in the bedroom so i could clean it up, and i wasn't kidding, he almost tore that door down.

I think this is the ONLY time he relaxed before finishing his food.

All in all, I love this cat. He is family. An asshole, yes. But family nonetheless. He knows cool party tricks like eating food out of your mouth and koala bear hugging your arm, while kangaroo kicking you with his hind legs. He begs for your food, and if you don't give it to him he will find a way to get to it. He gets locked in closets and cabinets because he is too curious for his own good, and he cries when you leave the house. He will look me directly in the eyes as he pushes something off the coffee table, and he hides all my chapsticks under the furniture. He is wild and crazy, and he fits in perfectly with this family.