Now, Bowie taught Arya well. Arya now enjoys exploring, reaching up to pretend to open doors and eating lettuce she steals from PubSubs. She also has a penchant for chocolate brownies, but we're working on that.
Like most cats, Arya is a little neurotic. She whines if there is anything in her litter box. Her favorite toy is a hamburger stress ball, quickly followed by an "I <3 Beef" bracelet and rubber bands. She also has a stuffed elephant I knitted that we call Ugly Oliphant. Ugly Oliphant originally began as a gift for a sorority sister of mine, and I'm not sure what miscommunication happened that led me to end up keeping him, but I didn't know what to do with the hideous thing for the longest time. Then I figured Arya needed something to cuddle with, so he was passed down to her.
I think that's where it began.
Arya has a bizarre obsession with knitting. Note in the picture above that she is wrapped around a pair of size 13 needles and on top of my knitting gauge.
Tonight, she crawled her way into my knitting bag to dig out a small ball of yarn I forgot I put in there. She won't play with the big skeins, but somehow she knows where the little balls are.
Take this picture to the left. The big yarn skein she's laying on is only because she is playing with the white ball next to it. The white ball is what she was getting out of the bag tonight. Like really, cat??
I know, I know. Cats and string go together like peas and carrots and Forrest and Jenny. BUT THIS IS INSANE!
"Nay," you say. "Nay, it is cat behavior."
Tell me, please, at what part of the evolutionary scale did lions start attacking string? When did the mighty tiger who crouches to hunt gazelles begin to crouch to hunt small ... balls of yarn?
Anyway. This is how insane Arya's yarn obsession is. The day before my birthday in March, I walked into my apartment to this sight:
Let's look at this picture closely. To the far right, you'll see yarn. As your eye follows the literal lines in the picture, you'll see that there is yarn wrapped from my kitchen table (where the yarn is) around the back of my couch. There's another piece from a different skein that's in the laundry room, wrapped around my laundry hampers. Another skein (not visible in this picture) is wrapped around the kitchen tables.
I reckon this is just another adventure in the life of this not-so Old Cat Lady — that one time my cat yarnbombed my house.