Cat Tales

There are so many funny cat stories.  Where to begin?  I guess I will begin with Cheeto.  What a character he was!   Below is a picture of Cheeto.  He clearly is showing his personality in this photo! Shelby, our daughter, definitely belongs to Cheeto!  He OWNS her!

We live in a two story home that some call a split level.  I am not sure that is still a term they use.  It means that when you enter the house, you have to go either up or down.  The lower level is finished as well.  We all slept upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms upstairs.

Late one night there was a horrid crashing noise, and a loud piercing scream like an injured woman! I will have to work to describe this in type, but when I tell it in person, it seems that many people are laughing throughout the story.  Part of that may be due to knowing the people involved, my husband, Wes, me, our son, Cody, and our daughter, Shelby. Shelby belongs to Cheeto, the cat, there is no doubt about that!  That cat and her had something special that we have never seen before or ever as of yet.  Cheeto was so unique and had such a personality.

The bedrooms are all together with our bedroom to the left of the hall, Cody’s to the right and Shelby’s at the end of the hall.  When the crash/scream was heard, my husband ran out of the room. For some reason, my husband had in his mind that something like a bookshelf crashed down on top of Cheeto.  We do not know he is thinking this at this time, however. All I can see is that my husband is sort of running in place and jumping up and down alternating legs and repeating, “Cheeto! Cheeto!”  He is screaming it as if he is asking where Cheeto is or calling  him and I guess hoping Cheeto would come running.  I join him in the hallway and am trying to get him to quiet down and to actually move out of the way and go see what did happen. Shelby becomes more fully awake and realizes that something must be wrong with Cheeto since her dad is carrying on this way so she then runs out of her room and starts crying/screaming,  “Cheeto!” more crying…. “Cheeto!”  She is crying like she knows something terrible has happened to him. She finishes her lines, so my husband starts up with his lines again, seeming to be asking where Cheeto is but just calling out the same thing again.  Shelby then repeats her lines on cue.  I am trying to quiet them both.  Then we have the son on the other side of the hall….(he never does wake up well and lots of times I think he may be sleepwalking).  He comes running out, looks around, assesses the situation and sees that his father  is screaming out….”Cheeto! Cheeto!”  He then turns toward Shelby and she cries out her lines again.  So, not knowing what everyone is thinking about Cheeto and not being fully awake, I think Cody tries to yell out in sympathy but all that is coming out of his mouth is a noise that sounds like, “BAAAAAAHHHHH!”  and is yelled in a groaning/screaming way.  This noise is not like a sheep sound, it is like the beginning of Bah Humbug, an extended bah……

We are all out in the hallway outside of our respective rooms, 4 of us crowded in there. So, here is what you need to picture….   First Wes yells,  “Cheeto! Cheeto!” while doing his dance, Shelby and Cody are both watching Wes and then Shelby looks at Wes and cries/screams, “Oh Cheeto! Cheeto!” Cody and Wes are both watching her scream and then Cody gets to take his turn, he looks at Shelby and makes his weird noise, screaming “BAAAAAHHH.”  Shelby and Wes, of course are watching Cody.  Then Cody and Shelby look again to Wes and Wes takes his turn again. They just keep repeating this pattern. It is so funny!   I think they are all still half asleep.  That is the part that usually makes people laugh.  I wish you could have seen them.  It was hysterically funny to see and to hear!  They were in perfect timing and so polite to all watch while one performed their part and then they would peform their part.  It is hard to describe in writing, but I hope I succeeded. This went on and on.

Now, here comes mom’s part.  Also picture this, as some of you know, Wes and the children are somewhat taller than me, okay maybe quite a bit.  So picture the four of us in the hallway and those 3 screaming and acting all scared/worried/sad towering over me.  Mom is trying to tell each one of them one at a time to stop screaming/crying/making weird noises. They seem to not see or even hear me.  They just keep looking at each other and taking their turns repeating their “noises” all while Wes is doing his dance.  Cheeto, by the way, was still screaming in his injured woman voice. I finally get tired of trying to quiet them and head down the hallway toward the stairs to see what actually did happen.  Since brave Mom is going down there to conquer, they all stop screaming and cautiously follow me, of course, a distance behind me.

It seems that Cheeto is a big “scaredy cat” as well.  There is a neighborhood cat named Percy who would come around in the daytime and hang in the back yard.  This would terrorize Cheeto.  Cheeto would sit in the kitchen window and hiss and make an odd growling noise.  Cheeto was in such anguish that when Percy was visiting, we would have to go put Cheeto in another room and close the door.

This event I am talking about is happening around 3:30 a.m.  I am sure that the neighbors had to have heard all of the screaming.  I am surprised the police have not been called due to some neighbor being concerned.  Anyway, to get to the end of this story, evidently Percy came visiting and was sitting in front of the downstairs windows.  Cheeto was screaming his head off in terror and knocked something down on his way to jump onto the window ledge.  This explains the crash.  Such a big fuss was made all over little old Percy!

The wonderful thing is that this story has brought so many laughs to our family upon the retelling of this story.  Such a fun memory.  We learned from this to keep Cheeto away from the downstairs windows at night and this was done with the construction of a sort of pet gate that Wes built. I learned that I am still living with chickens!!!! Haha!  Three of them and one “scaredy-cat!

In Loving Memory of 

Cheeto Lay Sanders

07-15-2010 – 09-22-2018