Ghost cat

Ozzie refused to go outside for several weeks this summer. About a month or so ago, something spooked him while he was outside, and he's been really freaked out ever since. I'm not really sure what happened, but I think it probably has to do with there being a lot more people around outside here than there were in our old neighborhood in Woodland.

It all stated one Friday night. I was sprawled in the living room watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when some skateboarders went past. You know how loud skateboards are with their hard little wheels. They must have been screwing around because they were out there making noise for some little while. All of a sudden, Ozzie hurled himself onto the screen door. Apparently the 2 seconds it took me to get up and walk to the door were too slow, and he dashed off. Just then, I noticed a distinctly skunky odor. Oh no! I was so afraid that Ozzie had gotten skunked! I walked around calling for him, but he was nowhere to be found. I was getting pretty worried. He was obviously freaked out, and who knows what he might do or where he might have gone. For all I knew he was lost forever.

Fortunately, he came back a few hours later, just as sweet-smelling as ever, not skunky at all. Phwew! But ever since he's been very afraid of the outdoors. Whenever I let him out, he would only snoop around the patio for about a minute, the whole time swishing his tail in high anxiety, before dashing back into the apartment. If I shut him out, he'd completely flip out and start frantically pawing and leaping at the door to be let back in. Only now is he finally starting to be comfortable with the outdoors again. He'll finally leave the patio and he doesn't freak as badly if I shut the door, but he still doesn't like to stay out for more than a few minutes.

I think that all this fear might just be a scheme on Ozzie's part. Maybe he's not as dumb as he lets on. Maybe he's really a cunning little monster. You see, now that he spends all his time indoors, I have to give him a lot more attention. I have to play with him since he can't go entertain himself outside and expend his energy that way. Our favorite toy is the cat dancer, which is a piece of wire with little cardboard twists on the end. Ozzie loooves jumping around after it. He's quite an acrobat and can jump really high! I tried to take some action shots of him going after it last night, a la Shasta's photoshoot with the kong. Unfortunately, Ozzie moves much faster than my camera's shutter, at least given the light environment of my room, and you can see the results... Pretty spooky, eh? I actually really like this spectral picture of Ozzie. His back half is relatively solid and rooted on the floor, but fades away into a see-through blur of a ghost cat. It's like the ghost dog in Topper, by Thorne Smith, who is only partially there depending on how much ectoplasm he has and how hard he tries to materialize, but for some reason, what does show up always starts from the back end. He starts out as just a disembodied tail :).