And he would TALK TO HIMSELF

I see that in the very art post that I sold his portrait, I mentioned his odd habit of talking to himself and biting his feet.....

He would mutter a bit. He was not the Siamese that The Kid was, he had a regular cat voice. The original (when I first brought him home, all oozy and tiny, had a set of lungs that sounded like a siren all the way home!) was of serious Thai origin. Big "MEOWOW" in an oddly baritone. But the Dude, had his bird yammer, and a round mournful call when a cat would jump BACK over the wall.

I was used to cats talking... but his night antics were a bit distracting. Everyone used to laugh when I would tell them but he bit his feet, yelling at them all the time. Stood up, decided his tail was acting out of line, and fall on it an on the ground and wage war on himself.

Summers seemed worse but finally one 5 am, when he CHARGED into my bed, landed on my chest and HISSED right into my face, I decided when the vet opened, he was a-goin'!

Of COURSE he was the picture of health. Fat and sassy, the vet said it was "behavioral" . NO DUH!

For years I tried to figure what triggered it. He let up when the weather was cool enough to open a door and look into the night, but come the 100 degrees he would begin with long low rumbles and it would not let up.

He never actually injured himself, but he was hugely irritating to me and would look grumpily at me as if to say "YOU DID IT! NOW YOU STOP IT!" or something like that. He would telepathically yell at me. Like he thought I should speak cat!!!

A couple years later I tried again. I did figure his butt had something to do with it.

I have long hair. Longer than a woman my age really should (but I am an artist and I get special treatment :-)) OCCASIONALLY I could only describe them as streamers.....

The Old Kid made us give up icicles on Christmas because he would sparkle out both ends!

The dude liked to chew my hairbrush when I was gone.... you figure it out!

But that was not all. We thought it might be constipation.

So there was a year of Pumpkin. He really liked it for a while. Apparently (you cat fanciers should know this) a good source of roughage is pie stuff without the spices. It was going in and going out smooth as spit... but he kept yelling.

I finally got a good video of him. Two years ago, this was the ONE thing that helped the vet see he was in trouble. (My mom cried when she saw it.) Nobody believed it was all that bad. By the time I had this, I was not sleeping but one or two whole nights a week if I was lucky. This was taken at 2 AM:

Yeah, they call it Feline Hyperesthesia. Over sensitive and ..... well "Heebie Jeebies" says it all.