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11:35pm June 11, 2012

Fey, playful then pissed then dignified again.

While I was typing an email to a friend, Fey came up and kept putting her paw on my arm lightly with claws a bit out. She made clear she did not want nuzzling although she would politely sniff my finger but pulled away if I approached with my face. I decided to just sit there with her until I figured it out. She kept pawing my arm more and more urgently. She rarely does that.

Then I realized she wanted to play. She has used that same gesture many times to request play, sometimes deliberately aiming the gesture at some dangling piece of my clothes, but just enough to request I move a toy around for her. She’s not much for solitary play.

I didn’t want to leave bed so I grabbed an unused necklace cord. She enthusiastically started batting it around while I held it and moved it sideways past her face back and forth. So enthusiastic she forgot about her dignity, which is rare for her. But I got uncomfortable with the idea of her swallowing any pieces.

I got up and got her cat dancer from the other room. Hoping she wouldn’t leave the bed. She didn’t. Which is unusual for that kind of situation. She played with that for awhile.

Then she stopped responding to it and just lay on her side with her tail thrashing more and more until she was pounding the bed with it. Right now we are doing a cycle. Where she does that for awhile then we play then she does that again etc. At one point she seemed almost angry with the toy, and was biting it, and she accidentally knocked it out of her mouth.

She got so angry she BIT MY PILLOW! Hard. Just a big chomp on it all of a sudden. I don’t know what switched her from playful to pissed but it happened. And she was definitely playful not angry to begin with. But after she stopped playing and started lashing her tail (not in a playful way at all) it was clear she was angry and she’s been angry ever since. No clue what’s going through her head.

And then right as I wrote that last paragraph, she sat up, kittyloafed, and composed herself with her usual level of dignity. I checked by putting a finger by her nose and she sniffed it. When she’s as angry as she was before, she bites any fingers that close. So she calmed down for real. Then she put her head down and now she’s asleep.

I still have no clue what most of that was about. Sometimes I wish she’d explain things more often than she does. She often gets pissed after playing, but usually not this extreme. And I mean genuinely playing. Not that shit where people violate a cat’s personal space and go “awwww, it’s frisky!” when the cat tries to defend herself.