Gypsy does this thing, usually in the middle of the night, where she burrows into my knitting/crochet projects, pulls out a ball or two of yarn, carries them into the bedroom and drops them somewhere near the bed (occasionally in one of the shoeboxes the cats like to sit in), and then calls out a few times in what sounds like distress — not a total emergency distress cry as in “There’s a fire and I am saving your life RIGHT NOW,” but more of a “something is amiss and requires your attention” cry of concern. It’s the same cry she uses when she can’t find Jayne (I swear that’s why she meows. He comes running from wherever he was hiding, she swats at him then grooms him a bit, life goes on as usual. They both tend to aggressively groom each other. It’s fun to watch, but I digress). Last night she pulled out all the separate components of the sweater I’m working on and dragged them into the bedroom, along with two balls of yarn. Her meows woke me up, and I got up to put everything back where it came from and then hide the project bag under a blanket on the couch. I know, I know, I need a better system.
There is a part of me, however, that is so intrigued and amused by her behavior that I don’t know if I really want a better system. She’s not destructive (unlike Jayne, who just bats yarn all over the place until the living room looks like a Family Circus cartoon—and fortunately, neither of them actually eat yarn); in fact, I can’t shake the feeling that she’s treating my yarn like, well, children, based on what I witnessed of her behavior while nursing her own kittens. It’s like she recognizes the yarn as my kitten litter and she’s moving the skeins closer to me, alerting me to their presence, admonishing me for being neglectful. There’s something sweet about it.
Or am I reading too much into this or otherwise misattributing her motives? Has anyone experienced something similar or heard of similar feline quirks?
