I don't know if any of you out there have ever experienced what I am about to tell you. My 12½ year old cat, Ziggi, has one of the strangest behavioral "characteristics" that I believe I've ever seen. Perhaps someone reading this can help me understand.

It all began in 1995 when in the early morning hours I heard her caterwauling like she was either in heat or severe pain. I veritably flew out of bed to her side only to find her with a crumpled up piece of paper in her mouth.

Bewildered, I straightened the paper out to see if it were anything of meaning; nope, just a piece of paper thrown away earlier in the day. Confused, but satisfied that she wasn't hurt I stumbled back to bed.

The next night, I was again startled out of bed with terrifying meows. She honestly sounds like she's dying. This time she had my stuffed monkey that I had gotten while I was in tech school in the Air Force. You know the kind, the little monkey with the red polka dotted shorts holding a pacifier in his mouth in one hand.

From that night forward within minutes of turning off the lights and shutting down the house and crawling into bed, she would take this monkey off my desk where he "belonged" and begin her piteous meowing. If I went in there to her, she would immediately stop and give me a look of innocence, as if she didn't know what came over her. I began to even find the monkey on the floor during the day too.

Even a move to New York didn't stop her; every night, without fail, she would perform her ritual. I couldn't figure out if she thought it was her baby or if she thought it was prey. One morning I awoke to find she had carried the monkey upstairs and placed it on my daybed in the sitting room outside my bedroom. That is where the monkey stayed and never again did she perform her ritual with him as her victim.

But, she didn't stop there.

From there it began to be an assortment of items: a sock, a volleyball kneepad, a stuffed hippopotamus, a bra, pieces of paper, anything she could get her teeth into, literally. One of the most hysterical sights I ever saw was seeing her walk across the floor with a purple hippo in her mouth; she had to swagger as it was almost as big as her!

"Lynelle, where is my sock? It was just sitting here with my shoes!" was all it took for me to break into gales of laughter. The next word spoken would be yelled in unison: "Ziggi!!!!!!"

Now it is five years later and Ziggi still puts on her nightly performance, only now she prefers the Post-It note pads that I keep on my desk. Many times have I found them on the floor with teeth marks in them and known exactly what she had been up to while I was gone.

Sadly, I've had to begin shutting my office door at night because now, with a baby, the little sleep I get I try to protect at all costs. So many nights I would crawl into bed exhausted and immediately upon that final sigh as I curled into my pillows, I would hear that all too familiar wailing. She won't stop until you get up either.

When I began shutting the door a few months ago, the wailing stopped. But, let me forget to close the office door and it happens every time. Oddly enough, she has yet to choose another "victim" which has surprised me.

The monkey still sits on the daybed too, no longer disturbed by his mommy/hunter.

Copyright © Lynelle M. Dawson, 2000