Good morning, cat

You have probably gathered by now that the tabby is, as his previous vet's assistant liked to say, "a piece of work." It's a miracle he can still perform basic tasks like breathing, walking, and flapping lids on boxes...

...because every cell of his brain seems to be devoted to locating and devouring edible objects.

We keep him in the bedroom at night so he doesn't eat the other cat's food, or chew through containers holding food, or knock said containers off the shelf in case they break open, or wander around testing the edibility of random objects like electrical cords.* Unfortunately, every morning between 5:30 and 6 he decides he Must.Be.Fed and he tries to wake us up.

His routine used to consist solely of really loud meowing. Then he threw in some pathetic whimpering and I'm-so-hungry-and-weak-I-can-barely-make-a-noise crackles. A while later he started knocking objects off the dresser, and wandering around the room chewing on anything that looked edible. We were able to deal with this by dousing wires with bitter apple spray, hiding everything fragile, and ignoring him, but then he discovered the CD player.

This CD player has a cover that opens when pressed on the corner. At some point Chester learned that he could get a really quick response (foodwise) by opening the CD player and knocking the CD onto the floor. Finally we piled clothing on the CD player each night and restored some order.

In the last few days, though, he has begun playing music on the clock radio. He sits on the radio and gently shifts his rear end until it aligns just so with the "sleep" button. There's not much we can do about this, except (maybe) buy a new radio with less accessible buttons, and I refuse on the grounds that it would signal yet another victory for the cat.

It's obvious, too, that he is testing us, because just before he does anything he looks at us for a reaction. It's probably only a matter of time before he learns how to flush the toilet.

*All on a single night.