Incoherent Scribblings

Curiosity and the Cat

For some reason, I keep thinking about this story that involves Scooter when he was still a little tyke, so I thought I would share it with the world on the blog.

As is the general rule for most cats, Scooter is a curious thing. He has an extraordinary knack for getting into trouble and being everywhere except where is supposed to be. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except as I have documented before, Scooter is also a very clumsy kitty.

Now when Scooter was a kitten, I had a gas stove/oven. It was old and the pilot light didn’t work the best. More often than not, I had to pull out the bottom drawer of the oven and reach underneath to light it. However, if I pushed the drawer shut after lighting it, it didn’t always stay on. Therefore, it was my practice to leave the drawer open while preheating the oven and cooking. It probably wasn’t the safest solution in the world, but it was just me, my ex, and the cats. We didn’t have any kids to worry about, so that’s what I did.

One evening when Scooter was about 3 or 4 months old, I decided to make a frozen pizza. As usual, the pilot light didn’t come on, so I lit it and left the drawer open. I proceeded into the living room to wait for the oven to preheat. At the time Mouse was sleeping on her pillow, but baby Scooter was out of sight. I knew he had followed me into the kitchen, but figured he had either stopped at his food bowl or the litterbox on the way back to the living room. I sat back to watch a little TV and drink some Coke while waiting for my pizza.

A few minutes later, I heard a great commotion in the kitchen. Even as a kitten, Scooter was a klutz and it sounded like he had gotten into something he wasn’t supposed to. Before I could get off the couch to go see what he had done, he came racing into the living room. I went into the kitchen and didn’t see anything out of place, but when I went back into the other room, I noticed he was sitting in a chair washing his face. It wasn’t until I got a little bit closer that I noticed something odd: His whiskers seemed awfully short. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious from the curled ends that they had been singed!

I suppose in his desire to check everything out, he stuck his head a little too close to the heat of the pilot light which in turn singed his whiskers. I guess I am lucky his whiskers were the only thing that got scorched. After that, if I had to leave the drawer of the oven open I didn’t leave it unattended anymore. However, to this day, Scooter still steers clear of the stove.