Still Life, With Cats

Every so often, I get a yen to do those things that mature, responsible adults are supposed to do around the house – you know, things like checking the fire extinguisher, or replacing the batteries in the smoke alarms, or cleaning the gutters (although with a two-story house, we pay someone to do that last one for us). Tonight I decided it was high time we flipped the mattress.

I have to assume that in other households – normal ones, that is – flipping the mattress is a quick process that is done by two adults, who swiftly and efficiently pick up the mattress, turn it, and flop it back down with a minimum of fuss and bother. I suspect that in these (normal) households, making the bed is also a quick, albeit boring, procedure, where sheets and blankets do not mysteriously sprout lumps that randomly attack you when you try to smooth them, or purr when you poke them, but I digress. The point is that normal households likely do not have the following extenuating circumstances when trying to flip their mattresses:

• An 8-foot ceiling with a a light fixture directly over the foot of the bed
• Six hyperactive cats.

Step 1:

Start by dragging the mattress off the bed. The mattress immediately became three cats heavier. The instant an inch of space opens up at the top of the bed, a fourth cat dives directly into the space, meaning that you no longer have the ability to drop the mattress back down. Try to do this while giggling uncontrollably.

Step 2:

Discover that you cannot lift the mattress, even on its side, high enough to flip while still *on* the bed, due to the aforementioned light fixture. So after some careful rearranging of other furniture, get the mattress completely off the bed, and on its end. The *instant* it starts to go upright, it is immediately scaled by two cats. I will leave it to your imagination to guess which ones but I will give you a hint – they are both grey.  All remaining cats (that would be four, for those of you who are counting) immediately bounce onto the exposed box springs, because this is a New And Exciting Place For Cats. Take a moment to recover from laughing before you accidentally drop the mattress on your spouse.

Step 3:

Try to shoo the cats off the box springs. Fail. Try to jiggle cats off of top of mattress end. Also fail. Decide to sloooowly tilt the mattress back down (after turning it around, still adorned with cats, on its end) and hope that the cats figure it out before they get squished. Try to do this while not dropping mattress from even more laughing, because third cat  decides to scale Mattress Mountain, from below, as it is tilting back toward the bed.   Get mattress nearly onto the bed, but then one human must hold mattress slightly askew, while second human crawls *under* the mattress to rescue a cat who has decided that diving around between the box springs and the slowly descending, heavy mattress, is Very Exciting and who does not actually *want* to be rescued.

Step 4:

Finally extricate all cats. Position mattress fully onto bed. Do quick headcount to make sure that no one got themselves trapped. Heave sigh of relief and cross it off the list of Things Responsible People Remember To Do for another mumblemumble length of time.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.