Loki vs The Harbinger of Doom

Nothing much happened today, which was nice.

This morning was my "sleep-in" morning. On weekends, Jer and I usually alternate who gets to sleep in on what day. When I'm going to a church, Sundays automatically become Jer's sleep-in day, but since I'm between churches right now, we usually do some half-awake version of Rock, Paper, Scissors on Saturdays to see who gets the first sleep-in morning. I'm having a hard time finding a church that has a good balance of services for Connor and that I also feel comfortable with. Connor and I are Episcopalian, and it seems that all the Deaf churches I've found are of the Baptist megachurch variety. There's nothing wrong with that-- it's just not the way I like to worship. I'm sure I'll stumble on one eventually.

So anyway, I slept in until almost ten o'clock, and then had a cup of tea and a nice chat on the phone with my mother. Then it was off to the Olympia Farmer's Market. Since we aren't getting a Christmas tree this year, I have this overwhelming compulsion to fill my house with things that at least make it smell like Christmas. I picked up a very pretty Christmas wreath and some root vegetables (for making turkey carcass soup) and we headed back home.

The wreath looked very, very nice on my dining room table. I got to keep it on my dining room table for all of about five minutes before I had to relegate it to the back bedroom behind closed doors, which is where all of my plants and flowers end up. This is because my cat is insane.

We have two cats: Cricket and Loki. Cricket is about four and she rules the roost around here. She's way more intelligent and also has way more good sense. That's why this post is not about her. Loki is about two now, and he's named for the Norse God of death and destruction; a name that he has earned many times over by now. Having Loki around the house is kind of like having an extremely stupid dog. He's really overenthusiastic about everything, sticks his nose everywhere, and is forever trying to eat things that don't look even remotely edible. If he thinks that you aren't paying enough attention to him, he will come up alongside you, bend down, wiggle his rear in the air, and spring up in the air to chest height just in front of you before dashing off down the hallway. It's like living with a furry, demented jack-in-the-box. He found my Christmas wreath in about five seconds and proceeded to try eating the pine needles. When he didn't find them appetizing, he decided that maybe the branches would make fun toys and started ripping them out of the wreath with his teeth.

Take a look at this picture:

Can you guess which cat is Loki?

Loki considers himself the guard of the household. Whenever the doorbell rings, this cat actually growls and races towards the door, just on the off chance a mass murderer is on the porch who has a fondness for petting cats. This cat pursues petting like some sort of guided missile. All humans are his friends, and he would never dream of hurting anybody. He has only two enemies. The first is our neighbor's cat. Our neighbors let their little grey cat roam the neighborhood, and she picked up this charming habit of capturing and killing the birds at my bird feeder and then leaving their heads on the porch for me to find. This cat would oftentimes come up to the window, where all 15 pounds of infuriated Loki bristled in outrage, and casually put her nose up to the screen, as if to say "Nah nah nah nah nah." Well, last summer the cat tried doing this when the window was open, and was unpleasantly surprised when Loki crashed through the screen and tore off after the bewildered animal. I was sitting in the office, happily typing away, and glanced out the window to see the grey cat frantically sprinting for her house, while behind her was a giant brown tabby blur that looked suspiciously familiar. By the time I managed to make my way outside they were halfway down the block. When I finally caught up with them Loki had this cat cornered under a bush and was reading her the riot act. Since then, while the grey cat still kills and eats my birds, she no longer flaunts it, but does it surreptitiously while throwing nervous glances at my windows.

Loki's other enemy, his true arch nemesis, resides within the house and is the constant bane of his existence. This enemy is my printer. Loki is convinced that my printer is the Antichrist.

He's already vanquished one version of this foe. We made the mistake of keeping the last printer up on the desk, and Loki finally killed it by shoving it off the desk and onto the floor, where it lay on its back, its guts exposed, emitting its last evil dying squeals until Loki eviscerated it just as I came back from the bathroom. But the new replacement, the HP Deskjet F380 All-in-One, which is apparently the name The Beast goes by these days, now squats on the floor like some nefarious toad and has thus far thwarted all of Loki's attempts to do away with it. It doesn't help that the people in the house Loki is attempting to protect seem to have been taken in by its innocent looking facade and actually try to protect it from all of his attacks.

Loki has developed a battle strategy for this printer. Whenever he hears it begin to contemplate some new terrible deed, such as printing out Mapquest Directions of Inequity or scanning Photos of Despair, he will drop whatever he's doing and sprint for the office. He then skids to a stop about two feet away from the printer, hunkers down behind my chair leg in an effort to render himself invisible, and squints. This is because he knows that I am armed with a spray bottle and, in some misguided attempt to defend the Incarnation of All Evil, will spray him with it. Loki then begins inching forward, paw by paw, in an attempt to get as close to the printer as possible before the dreaded spray gun emerges. Every time I put my hand near the spray bottle, he freezes and squints again. Finally, when he deems I'm not paying attention, he makes a final charge for the printer, claws extended, receives a face full of water, and backpedals abruptly before stalking off to the living room to nurse his injured pride and plot revenge.

I think he must have consulted with Cricket, because lately he's become smarter and is trying to assassinate the printer by stealth. He managed to rip the paper tray off the printer and so we are now unable to close it off from his grubby little paws. I tried to print something the other day and the machine began making this horrible noise. Loki was suspiciously nowhere in sight. I took the printer apart and extracted four of Connor's oral medication syringes, a pencil, a baby sock, and a catnip mouse from the interior of the machine.

I managed to get the thing working again, but I'm keeping my eye out for a newer model. Maybe they make something with a nice Kevlar exterior.

~Jess