Animals are like people. Some are balanced, calm, and respectful of others, while others are brash, rude, and completely unconcerned about the opinions of others. Our gray cat, Mickey, falls into the latter category.
This boorish, chubby fellow weighs at least 6 kilograms before lunch; afterward, he weighs much more. Yet, he apparently feels like a graceful ballerina, as he loves to climb high and perform various pas.
His favorite pastime is rock climbing. His favorite peak is the soft, 10-15 cm wide headboard of our bed, where my husband and I sleep.
But the cat practices his climbing techniques at night. And we're so tired from work that we consider it a blessing to get at least six hours of peaceful sleep a night.
However, Miki doesn't understand this. He believes his owners live like him: sleeping all day, interrupted by massive meals.
Completely disregarding our right to proper rest, the hippopotamus cat climbs onto the headboard every night and begins practicing ballet fouettés. At the same time, he uses this simple method to conduct a tour of his domain, to which he has no doubt.
But either he's not very good at ballet, or he's just clumsy and overweight, so he loses his balance. All his nightly strolls along the back of our bed, on the fourth or fifth try, invariably end in a deafening fall.
And it's fine if this creature, with its absolute lack of grace, plops down on soft pillows, but it's worse when it lands on our heads. It's terrifying to even imagine six kilograms of cat lard flying in the middle of the night. Naturally, even Ramses the Mummy would wake up after that, let alone my husband and me.
When you're that tired at work, waking up to a thick mascara landing on your face isn't the best option, especially if it lands on your butt.
It's even worse and even more dangerous when, at the crucial moment, the cat starts to pretend to be a swimmer and actively paddles with its paws in an attempt to get up, leaving scratches on our cheeks, ears, and noses.
At first, I reacted relatively calmly to these nocturnal antics. But my husband's patience snapped immediately, and he declared that he no longer intended to tolerate a six-kilogram cat on his face.
Then I sat down to study the stories of virtual advisors with similar life situations. And then I came across a story from a girl who had an equally fat cat who regularly landed on her head. She cured its addiction to flying with the help of ordinary balloons.
Before bed, my husband and I decided to come up with a defense plan. We put our son to bed and removed six balloons from his room, left over from his birthday.
We inflated them and wedged them, like little pimples, between the headboard and the wall. It turned out bright and beautiful, just like at a children's party. After admiring this spectacle, we, in anticipation of the cat's fright and his subsequent escape from our room, went to bed contentedly, rubbing our paws like cockroaches after dinner.
The cat waited until we turned off the light, lay down and fell fast asleep, and then set out on another crusade to conquer the bed summit.
The next "bang" shattered any hopes we had that he'd given up ballet once and for all. The shot apparently startled Miki, and as usual, his fat sides made it impossible for him to keep his balance. Right in the middle of the night, he plopped down on the pillows and then retreated somewhere.
Realizing in our sleep what was going on, we reached for the switch and saw a pleasant picture: the cat was sitting on the floor, completely confused, surrounded by the remains of a blue ball, squinting with displeasure.
His face even showed a semblance of contempt for us, his slaves, who dared to make such fragile scenery and disrupt the ballet performance on the improvised stage.
Since it was dark outside and we were terribly sleepy, we didn't bother to console the cat or analyze his emotional turmoil. Instead, we gave him a kick, moved the balls closer together, and, satisfied with our successful revenge, went to bed.
But how wrong we were. A little later, we had to admit that we were terrible strategists, and we knew nothing about cats. After a loud bang and a kick, the offended cat began planning a counterattack. It took him only twenty minutes.
After waiting for us to fall asleep peacefully in each other's arms, the cat crept up and made a deliberate "bang", and then, a few seconds later, another one.
We jumped up on the bed, disheveled, not understanding anything, turned on the light and saw only the impudent expression on the face, and then the sparkling heels of the cat that had run away.
He was clearly pleased with his prank and took our precautions as a new amusement. Disappointed, we put the balloons away and went to bed. Needless to say, Mickey woke us up several more times that night.
But this fat, insolent man attacked the wrong people. My husband and I finally found a way out of the situation and refused to accept defeat.
Now we always close the door to our room before bed. Mickey screams outside the door, scratching at it with his thick paws all night, never giving up in his attempts to get inside.
But this noise is a mere song compared to the sound of a balloon popping and the six-kilogram cat slamming onto our heads. So the fat falling beast is no longer a hindrance. Now my husband and I can get a good night's sleep.
