This afternoon, I walked into the kitchen to find Kit unconscious on the floor. He hasn’t had daytime naps since he was little, so this was most unusual for him. I called his name, and he didn’t respond. I tried again. Nothing. When he didn’t even respond to being called ‘Kitten’, (he usually bites me), I panicked.
“Eew! Get off, Mum!” he spluttered as I began CPR.
“Thank god you’re okay!” I gasped, hugging him.
“I’d be even more okay if you stopped molesting me,” he grumbled.
“Sorry! I was starting CPR. I thought you were unconscious,” I explained, picking fur out of my teeth.
“There’s nothing wrong me,” he said pointedly, “I was asleep. According to the Spanish, an afternoon siesta in the summer is perfectly acceptable, even for adults. I may be too old for naps, now that I’m four, but I still get a bit tired in the afternoon,” he confessed, “I think a siesta is a good solution for being too grown up for naps, don’t you?” he asked.
“Absolutely!” I agreed, privately thinking that it’s more like a synonym (but I wasn’t going to go down that path and ruin a perfectly good solution to Kit being under my feet). “So what were you doing that left you so worn out?” I asked, and my eye was drawn in the direction of his outstretched paw.
Spilling from his bedroom door was a tsunami of shredded toilet paper, cardboard and packaging material.
“You’re always banging on about reduce-reuse-recycle, so I thought I would reuse some stuff,” Kit explained.
“Yes, true,” I conceded, “Me and my big mouth.”
Kit peered closely at me, “I never noticed that before, but now that you mention it, you do have an enormous mouth!”
“So,” I said, “I give up. What is it? Art? Insulation?”
“It’s not art, and I don’t know what an insultation is but it doesn’t sound very nice,” he answered, explaining, “My meerkat instincts are coming out and I wanted to dig a burrow.”
“And how was shredding all my packaging materials supposed to achieve that?” I asked.
“I never said it worked,” he said sulkily, “Every time I try to dig, it just falls everywhere.”
“If you want to dig, we can get you a sand pit,” I offered, “But I’m not sure we can get the kind of dirt to dig a burrow. I’m sure we can build you a burrow, though, if you would prefer to sleep in one than a bed.”
Kit looked mildly horrified. “I want to sleep in my bed, in the burrow,” he requested, “I’m not a wild animal!”
“All right then. Let’s clean up this mess, and plan how to renovate you a burrow!” I said enthusiastically.
An hour later, I was feeling a bit less enthusiastic. In fact, I could have done with a siesta. I turned around to find Kit asleep in a pile of rubbish.
