Going Full Mr Bean

Clumsiness is a symptom of ADHD, I know. I seem to have spells, or days, when I'm more dangerous to myself and others (but mostly myself), completely unpredictably. In general I'm more dangerous to myself than waxjism is to herself (or others) though, and that's why she does almost all of the chopping when we cook. As it's happening it feels a bit like dissociating, but milder: like there's a slight time-lag in my brain and the, you know, hazard alert that was going to remind me how physics works ("that thing is heavy", or "that thing is hot: don't touch it", or "your finger's in the way", or "you have to swallow when you drink a liquid") somehow got delayed in the queue and so the popup didn't appear untl my mind had had time to initiate the unadvisable action, but as soon as I started, the popup arrived, and I thought, "Uh-oh, that's gonna..." but I already knew there wasn't time to avert the disaster: the "Don't touch that!" order has already been sent and I can SEE it happening and I know that it's going to tell my hand to reverse course and not touch the edge of the pan, but I also know it's going to arrive too late! And it does. So anyway, I burned three fingers on my hand earlier this week because I put frozen vegetables into a pan that was already hot and then briefly forgot that the pan was hot, because usually when I'm putting it INTO the oven I don't need a potholder. Just for example. I also cut myself slicing tomatoes about five days before that.

As I was saying, I have got in the habit of thinking "I might be having a bad day, so I'd better not try to do that" from time to time. These events seem to come in waves. But sometimes they are worse than others. Last night was one of the times when it felt like everything was just happening to me. As waxjism said, "You went full Mr Bean." (I didn't do this, though - I mean, recuse myself from proceedings - and if I had I could have saved a bunch of our dinner.)

Wax was verbally walking me through the steps of cooking one of our favorite meals, a recipe that she always makes. I was carefully squeezing a lemon with a citrus press over a vessel of cream - Wax always does this directly into the glass liquid measure, which is almost an ideal size and shape and nicely heavy, and it would also have prevented disaster, but it was dirty so I was using a steel one instead. I decided to squeeze the last little bit of juice from the lemon by hand because it was slightly bigger than the press. But I bumped the edge of the liquid measure and knocked it over, spilling two thirds of the cream all over the butcher block, over the edge of the counter, down the cabinet fronts (the corner cabinet, so also the sides of the doors and the hinges) and the floor.

It took quite a while to wipe up enough of the mess to continue, but luckily we had enough cream left to replace it. Wax had already drained the pot of pasta for me, but when I reached the point of plating it, I saw a little pool of liquid in the bottom of the pot and for some reason tried to tilt the whole pot and pour the liquid out, even though the pot was mostly full of cooked pasta and there were only a few tablespoons of this liquid there, and there were all kinds of utensils and tools lying around that I could've used. About half of the pasta flew into the air. It landed mostly in the dirty sink, but also all over the floor. Luckily there was enough uncooked pasta to make a second pot, once I stopped crying from laughter.

This was one of those evenings that I know in a few years we're going to be saying "Remember that time when?" to each other and then laughing until we cry again.

Tristana's panic level: acrobatically sprayed pee on the bookshelf

After last week's setback that involved Tristana and Sipuli growling at each other on the sofa, we returned them to Complete Separation (Sipuli confined in the kitchen and diningroom, but the door between the diningroom and livingroom is open and blocked with a babygate so they can see through it). We gave them about three days to recover, and Tristana seemed to be feeling more confident. She consented to eat her dinner inside the livingroom for the first time. She wasn't NEXT to the babygate, or close to it - she was in fact behind the corner of the bunny cage - but the babygate was still visible from where she was, so that was big progress for her. Last Friday, we thought we'd give it another try and let Sipuli out of confinement in the evening.

Tristana had disappeared upstairs, but she has been doing this in the evening on and off. Sipuli didn't try to explore the livingroom again, either, but slunk up the stairs as well. To explore? Or to hide? Or possibly looking for Tristana? But anyway, a few minutes later we heard hissing, growling, and then a lot of thudding, and then full Halloween sound effect cat screaming, so that I thought they were actually fighting.

I ran up the stairs and followed the racket to our bedroom, and... well, the scene was very [Troy from Community standing in the door with a stack of pizzas, looking around at the room where everything is on fire].

Both of the cats were under the bed, and I crawled under there immediately, thinking I was going to have to pull them apart, because that's always been the case with two cats under the bed before: it was Anubis under there trying to beat Tristana up or it was Tristana cowering and Snookums beating Anubis up to prevent him from reaching her. Not this time.

There was fully a meter between Tristana and Sipuli. Tristana was cowering against the wall under the headboard, growling and hissing and screaming. Sipuli was sitting about a meter away from her in an incongruously normal cat-pose - a loaf with her paws neatly tucked under, her back rising symmetrically, positioned at an angle to Tristana and her head turned to one side to watch her. She was just sitting there looking at Tristana, making those little tiny huff/sneeze/hiss noises, "Ssshw! Sww! Whsh!" This was her only response, calm and restrained, to Tristana's histrionic noises. The entire floor under the bed was wet in a big puddle of urine, I discovered as I crawled under there. I reached to pet Tristana first, and she let me pet her, but she didn't stop alternately growling and hissing at Sipuli. She was also all wet with urine. She started peeing on herself in terror after the first couple of times Anubis attacked her, so this isn't new, but I quickly determined that she hadn't been attacked. I don't think they even touched. So I turned my attention to Sipuli, and she let me pet her too, and when I gently shooed her away, she ran out of the room, crouching low, and went to hide under the sofabench in the next room.

I got Sipuli situated back in her Isolation Suite, not too upset, and returned to the bedroom. In addition to the lake of urine under the bed where Tristana was still crouching, frozen, the bedroom also contains this cabinet with an ancient tv on top of it, and this bookcase on the adjacent wall (the fan is back in the attic now that summer is over). On top of the bookcase you see what was once a neatly folded flannel sheet, and that's where Tristana hangs out when she is feeling worried, eg when Sipuli is on the bed. She jumps from in front of the TV to the top of the bookcase.



All the books from the bottom two shelves of books visible on the left here were on the floor in piles, and there were puddles of urine on both the empty shelves, and a big spray of it on the wall next to it. Sipuli must have approached her and caused her to panic in the process of going up on top of the bookcase. Wax thinks she must've done a flip while peeing to account for the urine pattern. Luckily Tristana's urine is comparatively mild - the enzyme cleaner is very effective anyway, but it would've been awful to confront that much Anubis pee. Wax sprayed all the puddles in the corner with enzyme cleaner and we stripped the bed and removed one of the mattresses (under a 160x200 mattress pad, our bed has two identical 80x200 cm springy mattresses, which is a pretty standard arrangement here - some people even have separate mattress pads as well, particularly if they have different mattress preferences) and the bed slats. Tristana was revealed to view, crouching against the wall under the headboard right next to the void, growling occasionally. Again, she wasn't growling AT us: she'd let us pet her and she didn't run away from us, she just... was notifying the world of "Nope". This hollow allowed me to mop the floor under the bed, and Tristana didn't run away from the mop either. In fact, I had to sort of gently sweep around her with the broom.

She did eventually emerge from under the bed, because a while later she crept back down the stairs - sometimes Tristana moves in other ways than slinking and creeping, but she was definitely creeping - and snuck up into my lap, where she curled up into a tight little ball on my lap, gingerly, and let me cover her up with a throw blanket. She stayed there for hours and growled faintly to protest when I had to move her to stand up. At bedtime she was still tightly curled up in the chair, but peering up at us, and growling faintly, so Wax carried her up the stairs to the bed, thinking she was suffering from brain freeze but would feel more secure under the duvet because it's usually her favorite hiding place. She ate a little bit of her dinner while I was making the bed, but then she slunk back down the stairs by herself and curled back up in my chair again. I guess she was temporarily associating scary thoughts with the bedroom? I was quite worried about that, but she came up a little while later and slept with me as usual, and the next day by noon she was acting normal again.

Cat post picture tax:



Tristana's reactions are obviously comparable to panic attacks. And equally obviously she's triggered by being approached socially by another cat, no matter how gently and non-violently. For now we're keeping them separate and we're going to focus on bringing them closer to the baby gate by gradually moving their food closer to it (once Tristana will eat in the livingroom again...). But we might need to consult a cat behaviorist.