OCD or ... The Lone Re-arranger

Today I thought I would share some of Spook’s peculiarities, of which she has several. Now this fierce jungle cat, this paragon of bathroom bravery – insists on visiting me when I am trying to take a nice, relaxing bubble bath, this cat of rescue cats is has OCD . Yes, you read correctly, OCD. Now ordinarily one might think that OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, one of the myriad of disorders listed in the DSM . Close, but no cigar as they say.


OCD in Spook’s case refers to the fact that consistently tampers with anything that is framed on the wall and within paw reach. She has Obsessive Cat Disturbance. It seems, poor thing, she cannot bear that things be “squared”. Many of the “other” OCD types try to square things. Spook spends her life, reaching up with her little paws to dislodge and disturb pictures and the like. Making this more annoying for me is that fact that there is a picture in my room that she can just, just get at and at night she seems to think it is particularly good sport to rattle this rather large framed picture around. Not so smart if the darned thing falls on top of her. Sometimes I try to think of things to throw in her direction when she is doing this but “thinking” and just waking up don’t belong in the same sentence for me. At least I have the sense NOT to heave anything of significant weight and thereby damage MY stuff and have Spook laughing all the way as she dives under the bed! Now I’m not sure if the fact that things are square disturbs or distresses her or whether she things there might be some kind of secret path out of the house under the framed object d’art but I DO know that she knows she is NOT suppose to be doing this stuff as she moves really quickly when I go to grab the camera. Even now, as I type this, I see her eyeing the frames with a wistful look.