ph-ph-ph-ph-phases

Oh, that Heifer. She is the weirdest. She provides me with such joy, with such amusement, with such hair-covered furniture and vomit-stained carpets, and occasionally, a little inspiration for a blog post when i haven't got much else to say. My roommate's friend's lover's mother tired of her as she hit her teenage years and 5 years after she was trundled to our Washington Heights apartment, squalling in a zippered messenger bag, she streaks through my living room, gnaws on my fingers, kneads her paws onto my back like a masseuse and nestles into my side in a tight stripey ball, purring all the while. She has her wild moodswings, her destructive turns, and, curiously, goes through phases like a child - choosing to only sleep on the plum colored velour cushioned chair near the window for three weeks, ignoring it to sleep only underneath the window seat, and then picking up a brand new fascination or habit seemingly out of nowhere. Bored at two in the morning, trying to calm myself down from a keyed-up night at work where my coworkers flung wadded up papers at each other at intervals all night and i found myself compulsively swearing over my chicken enchiladas, i give you - in no particular order - a Best Of catalogue of Heifer's various phases:

• The Toilet Fixation Phase - By far, the funniest and weirdest. When Heifer was a teenager, she came hurtling out of nowhere each time a toilet was flushed to stand on her hind legs, paws draped over the edge of the bowl, to stare at the water as it swirled into oblivion. This phase lasted for a few months. Freak!
• The Straw Phase - Heifer took to stealing our plastic drinking straws out of the glass canister on the kitchen counter, carrying them around in her mouth and chasing them throughout the apartment. Tired of having to pick up her collection of gnawed plastic straws every day or so, we eventually put the glass canister up on top of the cabinets to keep them out of her reach. our plan worked until one night, a great crash came from the kitchen - Heifer had leapt to the top of the cabinets to retrieve her precious straws and knocked the entire thing to the floor where it lay in a crushed glass mess. This phase ended abruptly as we banished all plastic straws to the security of a drawer. And that was that.
• The Nesting Phase - before leaping on to the bed to sleep with me (also a thing that ebbs and flows), Heifer took to making several trips around the apartment to carry her various toys onto the bed so as to have them around her while she slept. In the afternoon I'd awake and find a strange assortment of delights on the edge of the bed: a bedraggled cheep cheeping fish, a cloth mouse, a wavy plastic ring, a velvet pouch (something that was mine that she appropriated for her own use), and several pens. The collection varied according to whichever "toy" she was most "into" at the time. This phase lasted, also, for a few months and now she tends to drop her toys on the rug near the foot of the bed before she cuddles next to me for the night.
• The Stealth Attack Phase - for a while, Heifer was very fond of hiding behind doors or corners and leaping out at me as I passed, wrapping her front paws in a bear hug around my leg. When she realized that I was too slow to give her much sport - a few weeks - she grew tired of this game.
• The Music Critic Phase - I love to sing in the shower and usually sing something from a musical - most often, it's "Little Shop of Horrors" or, more recently, "Spamalot". Heifer simply cannot abide my singing and for a few months, when I would sing the reedier notes in my pathetic warble, Heifer would shriek and - no joke - leap up onto the edge of the tub to caterwaul in protest, stopping only as I stopped my own caterwauling. Brat! Lately, however, she has given up and allows me to sing as badly as I like - she merely stays out of earshot.

Heifer's More Recent Fixations:

• The Paper and Plastic Bag Phase - after years of not giving a crap about bags, Heifer has recently suddenly begun to care and will crawl halfway into a bag to inspect its contents, her ass and tail the only part of her that stick out. (she never finds anything).
• The Blanket Tunnel Phase - Heifer now likes to tunnel under the blankets with me and curl up into a ball, completely covered by said blanket and forming a strange lump under the covers. She apparently needs no oxygen because she can stay under there for hours, purring and protesting with a meow or a bite if i move too often.

I've said it before and I'll say it many, many more times: Heifer. Is. A. Freak.