Thursday's World for AngelBoy

There we were this morning in my sitting room. My husband and I were talking while I was wrapping up the gift-bags for our Valentine's party. Gracie was sleeping out in the hallway, Rusty was sleeping on my pink velvet sofa in the sitting room, ShadowBaby was on the screen-porch, and AngelBoy was curled up in the closet in my sitting room.

AngelBoy loves to curl up in closets. And he looks so perfectly cute, I must say, but I hardly ever let him into the closets anymore because he gets deep into them and I can't find him. But this morning, as I was taking Valentine gifts out of that closet, he walked in and curled up on top of a plastic shopping bag. You know the kind... the ones with the looped handles from the supermarkets that make a crinkling sound. He was right in the front of the closet, so I let him stay there. Big mistake.

Well, there was AngelBoy, curled up nicely and every once in a while patting the bag so it would make that crinkle-crinkle-crinkle noise. All of a sudden, my husband and I see a streak of white flying out of the closet and running underneath the pink velvet sofa. Crinkle! Crinkle! Crinkle! CRINKLE!

We didn't even have time to say anything to each other, and out comes the CRINKLE! CRINKLE! once again--- it was AngelBoy, of course, with his little head sticking out of one of the looped handles of the plastic bag, with the rest of the bag flying out from the back of him. The faster he ran, the more air streamed into the plastic bag, puffing it up till it looked like a hot-air balloon. He looked like a plastic-covered caped crusader. He ran as fast as I've ever seen that blue-eyed cat move.

He tried to run through the open cat-window between the breakfast room and the screen-porch, but because the plastic bag was flared out behind him, he couldn't fit through it. He bounced backwards into the breakfast room, and landed up against a small table next to the sofa in that room. That resulted in a small glass candleholder falling from that table and shattering on the tile floor.

It sounded like a shotgun blast in there, that heavy glass breaking against the tiles. It was more than AngelBoy could take. He ran underneath the sofa in the breakfast room, forcing his little body and the shopping bag under the barely-four-inch space between the floor and the bottom of the sofa.

We knew he was okay, and we knew we had to get him out of there, but I told my husband to just let him stay there for a few minutes while I swept up the broken glass. I was afraid that if he came racing out from under the sofa, he'd run through the glass pieces or the plastic bag would spread all those pieces all over the breakfast room.

Thankfully, it was a small candleholder and didn't take long to sweep up. Then my husband moved the table in front of the sofa and reached under there to get the looped handle of the grocery bag off of AngelBoy's neck. That took all of ten seconds, because by that time, AngelBoy was too scared to move.

Poor AngelBoy. My most sensitive cat. He was too embarrassed and scared to come out from underneath the sofa right away. We didn't dare laugh at him, because I swear this cat would've known we were laughing at his expense. The new rule in this house is to keep all cats out of the closets and all shopping bags away from the cats. That could've easily happened with a paper shopping bag, because AngelBoy loves to curl up in those also.

You know, they say that if you have a cat in your home, your blood pressure will be lower than someone who doesn't have a cat. I'd like to talk to the person who came up with that theory.