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Last night while I was lying in bed and the cat was going absolutely crazy all over the damn house with what I have come to call The Cat 11 PM Flimflams (as in, “Goddammit, Cat has the Flimflams again . . . oh right, look what time it is.”), I started googling things like So Are Cats Nocturnal Or Like What’s Going On Here, and How Can I Encourage My Cat to Calm the Fuck Down At Night Before I Kill Her By Driving a Pencil Into Her Tiny Helpless Brain-Meat.

It turns out there is lots of advice on this topic, the main point being that you should try and swap your cat’s natural schedule by keeping her active during the day. I was sort of eye-rolling over the idea of adding “Entertain Cat” to my daily list of to-dos, but then I got to this one simple phrase on a web page titled “How to Stop the Night Time Crazies”:

Discourage catnapping.

Okay, I can’t really explain it, but I started laughing at that and could not stop. Discourage catnapping. Oh my god.

So I was already in a semi-hysterical state when I came across this advice under the paragraph heading “Sneak Attacks”:

If he is meowing outside the bedroom door, first reach for the water sprayer

Heh. Ha. First reach for the water sprayer.

… quietly get out of bed and creep towards the door …

Haaaaaa. CREEP TOWARDS THE DOOR.

then suddenly fling the door open, squirt the cat and then immediately shut the door

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH SUDDENLY SQUIRT THE CAT. IMMEDIATELY SHUT THE DOOR.

At this point I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I had tears running down both sides of my face. I was trying to read this out loud to JB, who kept looking at me with great annoyance and saying, “I don’t get it. This isn’t even remotely funny.”

Try to stay alert for five minutes …

HAAAA TRY TO STAY ALERT. HAAA. FIVE MINUTES. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!

By the time I got to the final sentence I could barely choke it out (JB: *giant impatient sigh*) and then I had to rush to the bathroom because I was thisclose to peeing my pants.

waiting by the door with the water sprayer ready in case of a second attack.

I don’t even know, you guys. As I type this, I’m laughing all over again. IN CASE OF A SECOND ATTACK. Oh god why is that so funny WHYYYY.

Anyway, I have no real point in sharing this, except 1) I love the Internet, and 2) holy crap I hate the Cat Flimflams.

What is your favorite color he asks me and I realize I have no idea. Did I, once? I think of a certain autmn leaf’s fire-tinged maroon, dappled green light from sun pooling into a forest clearing, the cerulean turquoise of a warm-water sea. I can’t color these moments, they’re slipping away from me even as I remember them. Red, I say, and he digs through the box.

I want to draw the snap of twigs underfoot, the scent of Ponderosa pine, the teary salt-taste of raising your face from the ocean and seeing where the blue of sky touches the water, the cold late-light October burn, but I have this blunt piece of wax and I do what I can. I draw a square house, a triangle for a roof, a door. Draw me and Dylan and Daddy he says excitedly and now there are three stick figures. It’s us, he says. Make the cat, too.

I am not good enough at this, I think. I want the paper to dance, I want to bring something to life. I want to stop wanting things, maybe.

Outside the window the clouds have joined together in a swath of flat grey and the trees are letting go their armfuls with every gust and I draw one red leaf, not the right color at all, and he says that’s pretty and okay. Okay.

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