Hapless

OK, I got curious. If one is “hapless”, then what is “hap”? Immediate guess was “hap” as in “happy”, or “with hap”. This would make “hap” the gladsome quality a happy person possesses. That didn’t quite fit the definition of hapless as I knew it though, so I poked about on the web and discovered that “happ” was the Norse word for luck. Guess that that makes a happy person lucky. It certainly goes a long way in explaining the use of “happy” in such terms as a “happy coincidence”, and goes further in explaining “happenstance”. It explains nothing about “happened” however.

But I digress. The literal translation of “hapless” then becomes “luckless”, which makes sense to me in the context of something deserving pity. This, of course, segues nicely into today’s story.

Last weekend I manned a booth at a local pet fair for the cat shelter I volunteer at. While there, I visited the other booths and took advantage of some of the free giveaways they had. I brought home some cat toys, a plastic lid for cat food cans, some literature on electronic ID storage for your pet in case it gets lost, a pen and some refrigerator magnets. Some of the goodie bags came with dog related material as well, such some mini-doggie biscuits and a couple of doggie jerky strips.

I set my accumulated freebees on the kitchen table, took the stuff I wanted out of the bags, and left the rest to be doled out to some dog owners I’m friendly with in our condo community. Of course, anybody who isn’t me can see where this is going….

Enter Steroid Cat, aka LGS. Barred from the other cats’ food bowls, LGS has fine tuned her foraging skills in other areas of the condo. She’s become expert in going through the recycling, in raiding the kitchen sink for any residue that might remain from dishes that had been rinsed there, and has learned to jump up on the counter and open the kitchen cabinets. I’m torn between pitying her and wanting to skin her and post the hide over a litter box as a warning to the other cats. At this point though I’ve resigned myself to letting her make the rounds of recycling/kitchen sink/cupboards behind my back and yelling at her when I catch her at it. This approach has resulted in the creation of a smart stupid cat; she’s smart enough to know not to do it but stupid enough to think she can get away with it anyhow.

LGS strictly follows had her appointed rounds (sink to recycling to cupboards), so it actually took her half a week to notice that one of the bags I brought home from the pet fair had doggie treats in it. It then took her an extra day to figure out that the doggie treats were edible. I woke up Wednesday morning to a small pile of meowf* on the kitchen floor, with the treat bag missing one treat next to it. (*I’ve decided I can’t call it barf, “barf” being a dog term.) The other cookies and the jerky strips were intact, so I figured LGS had learned her lesson. I left the bag on the table, stupidly assuming that I’d run into my neighbor at some point during the day and would give her the remaining treats then.

You know what they say about the word “assume” (makes an “ASS” out of “U” and “ME”). That is totally incorrect. It doesn’t make an ass out of u. Just me.

I was sitting in the living room last night, cruising the news sites on my lap top, when I heard a commotion in the kitchen that sounded like someone repeatedly punching an empty paper bag. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I’d left a couple of paper bags on the floor for the cats to play with. They will sometimes mock-battle for supremacy of the paper bag kingdom, and that’s what the rustling and crunching of paper sounded like. After about fifteen minutes of this racket things went silent. Silence should have been the big clue that something was amiss, but I still didn’t pick up on the fact that something was wrong until I happened to glance up from the computer screen and look into the dining room. This was the tableau as it was laid out before me.

[click on thumbnails for full-sized pictures]

Notice that LBrS has “it wasn’t ME!” written all over her face. I couldn’t help it – I laughed. Laughed as in guffawed. Laughed as in split my sides. Laughed as in publicly humiliated my cat.

And as anyone knows, a cat that is publicly humiliated will find better places to be. LGS got up and walked as best she could dragging a bag around under her neck. LBrS knew better than to follow, but turned to watch every disgraced step LGS took until she disappeared from view.

I felt a little guilty at that point, so I followed LGS with the intent of resolving her predicament. I found her huddled under the glass end table in the den, looking miserable. Try as I might, I couldn’t get her out from under the table – the bag was in the way of my being able to grab her, and each time I reached for her she retreated further under the table. (I will thank one and all for kindly NOT noting the dust on the under-shelf of the table; it would appear that I forgot to clean that when I cleaned the table top but have since remedied the situation.)

I finally had to carefully reach under the table with a pair of kitchen shears and cut her free from the bag while she cowered in her hidey-hole. As soon as I’d removed the bag, she trotted out from under the table as though nothing had ever been wrong. In the world of cats, if you act like nothing happened, then nothing happened.

I haven’t the heart to break it to her that I have pictures.