“Big Dumb Boy”.  This is a phrase that we seem to utter quite often around our house.  Usually these words are spoken in reference to Quincey…usually.

Last Friday, Nicole and I were about to end the night and head to bed.  Before going upstairs, Nicole opened the closet door to put her blanket away.  As normally happens, Quincey saw the door opened and ran straight in.  He knows the cat toys are in here so he always comes racing when the door is opened.  The isn’t such a bad thing, but he can be hard to get out of the closet.

Since I like to pretend that I know something about cat psychology, I told Nicole exactly how she should handle this situation.  I told her to close the door on him, wait for about a minute, and then open the door.  Cats love to see what is on the other side of a closed door, so after being closed in the closet, he’d be anxious to see what was outside the closet.  About a week ago, this same situation happened and it worked perfectly.  I looked like quite the brilliant cat psychologist.  This time, it didn’t work quite so well…partly because Nicole was anxious to go to bed and didn’t want to wait.  So, she closed the door and asked me to let Quincey out before I went to bed.

Flash forward until the next morning.  Nicole and I both woke up feeling pretty refreshed.  We slept pretty well and were ready to start the new day.  Even though we did sleep well, we decided to be a little bit lazy.  While we were lounging in bed and petting cats, we heard a little cry from Quincey.  He does this often when he can’t find anyone else, so we do what we always do and call to him so he knows where we are.  Normally this is followed by the sound of a sprinting cat.  Strangely, that didn’t happen.  We heard another little cry and called to him again.  Still no racing cat.  Odd.

After a few my cries from Quincey, Nicole turned and looked at me with very wide eyes.  ”You did remember to let Quincey out of the closet, right?!?”  The only way I could reply was to say…”Oops”.

Nicole ran downstairs and let Quincey out of the closet.  He seemed very happy to be free and spent much of the rest of the morning nuzzling us and being cute.  Luckily he doesn’t have it in him to hold a grudge.

So once again the words “Big Dumb Boy” were uttered in our house, but not at Quincey.  This time they were uttered at me…and I deserved it.