iDJ never spent a lot of time with cats until I descended upon him from Americay with a Bengal. I also brought a big dog, and a big snake. But this is about cats.

I, on the other hand, have been around cats my whole life. My mom had a Siamese before she had kids. We picked up other cats over the years from family, friends, and the streets, but there was always a Meezer. I do a damn fine impression of a pissed-off cat, and I can read their body language as if they were talking. As Socks would say, I speak Cat.

One day, shortly after we were all settled in, iDJ turned to me and asked, “What’s that noise?”

“I didn’t hear anything. What did it sound like?”

“I don’t know. Kind of a flapping noise, maybe?”

As the sound wasn’t repeated, we forgot about it until a few days later.

“There it is again! What is that?”

“I got no clue, hon, I didn’t hear a thing.”

A few more days pass, and we are settled on the couch watching TV. Spot (the cat) gets up from my lap, stretches, and shakes himself.

iDJ jumps, startled. “That’s it! That’s the noise! Spotty made that noise!”

I stare at him blankly, then it hits me and I fall over laughing: cat ears. Cat ears make a very distinctive flappity-flappity noise when a cat shakes his head. I’d gotten so used to it, I didn’t even hear it anymore.

Of course, now that I do hear it again (sometimes) I always try to mimic the sound, so’s my man knows I heard it. That, and I really like doing sound effects. I sound like a 5-year-old boy playing with toy airplanes when I swoop anything through the air, because I cannot do any swooping without making a ‘swoosh’ noise.

A few days ago, iDJ walks into the room and tells me this: “Cats’ ears cause a rift in the space-time continuum whenever they shake their heads,” and he walks out.

Perhaps he had beer on board; in fact I’m sure of it, but I’m blaming this entirely on the fact that we are working our way though the Star Trek: the Next Generation box set.