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King of the Clumsies

Connor hasn't done anything really outrageous for a while now. He hasn't set anything on fire, or fallen into any bodies of water, or gotten lost in the house, or broken any body parts in bizarre, ridiculous ways. I have to admit, I'm a little worried. Is he just saving up all the havoc in order to make one big, unforgettable scene?

Am I going to come home one day to find my house reduced to a pile of toothpicks and my cat sitting on top of the wreckage, in a pot full of water, with a singed tail?

I am afraid!

Connor! Oh Connor, you poor foolish creature!

The other day, Sean was feeding the dogs. The King of the Clumsies, hearing the sound of a food container being opened, launched himself towards the chair in the kitchen so that he could perch right over the food container and steal some as Sean pulled it out. The King of the Clumsies failed to notice that there were already two cats sitting on said chair, those cats being svelte and tiny Lola and large, rotund Boots, meaning that the space on said chair was rather limited and unlikely to be accepting of another feline quite so large and graceless.

As he failed to notice this before he leapt, he had no choice but to notice it after, whereupon he crashed, with his chest, into the side of the chair, bouncing off and sliding down, butt-first, into the half-full water bowl situated directly under the chair. He hopped up and ran away, rather nonplussed by the fact that he was now kind of soggy.

Oh, god, we just about died laughing.

Yesterday when I was opening my new cds, he insistently attacked me until I gave him the tiniest sliver of the plastic adhesive strip to eat. He likes to eat tape. Anything tapey, that's his favorite treat. Not tuna, or Pounce treats, or little bits of meat, but tape. If he's somewhere in the house and won't come when you call, all you need to do is to pull out a roll of tape and start slooooooowly pulling off strips. He hears the distinctive "riiiiiiip" sound and comes running. And he doesn't just chew on it, no. He devours it. He ingests it, and then in the middle of the night I find sodden, hairball-shaped vomited up strips of tape deposited on my carpet. I'd hate to think what would happen if he managed to eat a large portion of tape and then didn't vomit it, and subsequently developed an intestinal obstruction.

My cat is such a spaz.

In which the tale of the stovetop is related

I can't believe I never related the quintessential Connor story here!

He set his tail on fire.

Yes, he set his own tail on fire one morning.

I was preparing their breakfast at the same time I was boiling some water for tea, and Connor jumped up on the counter to eat the food before it was done, and laid his tail down in the flames coming from the burner. I smelled this horrible smell and looked over to see all the fur on a portion of his tail singed and curling, while he was sitting there eating his food like, "la la la, yummy yummy food, la la la i am so happy!"

He burned his tail by laying it directly in flames, and he didn't even notice.

(And before you ask, I yelled and pulled him out of the fire before any real harm could be done, so he was fine.)

What's worse, he did it one or two more times, even after I instituted a strict "no cats in the kitchen or someone's getting sprayed with the water bottle" rule. His clumsiness thwarts one's best attempts at preventing disaster.

The other day he tried to leap two and a half feet from a bookshelf to the dining room table, and instead smacked the side of the table and slowly slid of the table, onto a chair, off the chair, and to the floor.

Poor, poor, graceless cat.