True Cat Stories II: Box Drama (not WoW)

So my cat, Sparrow, is obsessed with boxes (my other cat, Klio, is obsessed with purses, but since my mom gave her an old one, we haven't had any drama caused by this). Sparrow especially loves open boxes, which she promptly climbs inside of. She then launches herself at the legs of passersby, stealth-pounces the other cats, or generally makes an adorable nuisance of herself.


(Please ignore the awful photo — I had just gotten a new camera and didn't know what the hell I was doing yet.)

We have a small office/storage area in our apartment — it was originally intended to be an office, but my roommates, who are teachers, have stored boxes of school supplies bought out of pocket (yay state budget) there. Because it is a storagey area now, it holds a few empty boxes (for carting school supplies back and forth, I think), which were, until this morning, stacked neatly in a pile.

I'm sitting watching Paranormal State recordings when I hear Sparrow in the office, mewing. Every so often, she will give a little mew and as long as you answer, she's happy, so I just said, "I'm in here, Spar," and went on with my viewing.

Unfortunately, this little questioning mew is the same one she also uses to ask permission to do something (such as steal my stuffed animals — and yes, it's actually asking permission, because if you say "Go ahead," she does whatever she was planning on, but if you say, "No," she runs and sulks under the coffee table). And she interpreted my response as permission, because she's a cat and cats don't speak much English. Or else she just figured I wasn't in there to stop her.

So as she tried to jump into the top box, the entire stack came crashing down, her with it, onto a plastic crate. I go running in there and find her huddled on the crate, eyes wide, shaking. So I comfort her for a minute, then restack the boxes.

By that time, she had recovered, and looked up at me with another one of those little mews. And then, after I pet her, she reached out with a paw, hooked it onto the edge of the bottom box, and pulled the whole stack down again, quite deliberately, and ran like hell for my bedroom. When I finally got the boxes stacked again and went to yell at her, she rubbed all around my ankles and then did what my roomies and I call the Wiggle Worm, where she rolls around on the floor like a kitten — basically, she was cuter than it ought to be possible for a cat to be and I couldn't even be annoyed.

I think my cat is an evil genius.