Cheri the Book Licker

Cheri is our resident weird cat.  One of her strangest and sometimes most annoying habit is her love to lick.  And slobber.  This cat loves, I mean seriously loves to lick our monthly Game Informers.

 

She loves to lick books too.  We had one of those fancy type books that I picked up because it had red tipped pages, you know, like how bibles have the gold edging on the pages.  Well, Cheri found this book and decided she really, really liked the taste of the red dye.  By the time we found out, her tongue was bright red like a kid with a cherry Popsicle and the red on the book was all streaked from where she'd licked it off.

Serious, this cat has issues. 
She has this morning ritual where she has to get pettings from me when I first go to work, or she pouts all day.  I work from home, so normally I'm totally fine with giving her some good scratchings before I get to some serious work, but sometimes she wants endless petting.  She's not the type of cat to just ask and meow, though.  If she doesn't think you're petting her, she'll reach up and bat your hand.  With her claws.  This was really fun in the summer when she found out scratching my legs worked really well to get my attention.  With these cats, I probably have various scratches on my body at all time, but the leg ones were really annoying.

She hates it when we're in the main room and she's not.  But instead of just coming out to find us, she sits in the closet in the bedroom and "ralphs."  And by ralph I mean she meows, but her meows sound like she's saying Ralph, hence her nickname being Ralph. She meows in the bedroom as loud as she can, probably until the neighbors can hear it, and won't come find us until we yell back at her "Ralph!  We're in the living room!"  Then she'll come prancing in, stare at us, and then usually leave.  It's like she forgets the rest of the house is there until we remind her it is.  Then she's happy and just wants to go back and sleep.

Sometimes she does stay, but then she's usually on the couch arm-rest and she watches what we're watching.  Honest to goodness, I think she understands these TV shows.  So weird.

In the bedroom where I work there's two windows, one of them looks out over the next door neighbor's driveway.  Just the driveway and the side of their house.  They don't have anything interesting out there, but Cheri goes crazy if that window is opened.  She couldn't give two hoots about the other windows, but this one with nothing going on she goes bonkers for.  Quite often I'm opening it up, and she'll streak out of no where and jump into the window while I'm still opening it... and get caught in the blinds and get all tangled up in them and "Ralph" madly until I get her out of the blinds and onto the window sill.  I have no idea what's so fascinating about watching parked cars or pavement, but Cheri finds this endlessly fascinating, way more interesting than watching birds or something.

But the books.  Oh the books!  I'm a huge reader and my husband has an awesome comic collection and we both have learned if we have anything we don't want slobber on, we have to store it so she can't get to it.  I have tried to hide new books in my desk drawers before, but somehow she uses her new book smell radar and knows they're in there.  She knows, man.  I'll crack open the drawer to get something out and she's right there, digging her nose into the drawer to lick frantically at the edge of the book until I catch her.  It's like she's addicted to it.  The only books she hasn't licked are the ones in the bathroom, which is Vivi and Binx's domain. 



Cheri going to town on Swan's Song

So I took my giant novel (Swan's Song, a good 856 page monster) out of the bathroom where I'd been storing it and ploped it in front of her.  Her eyes got huge and she gave me this loud "Ralph?" and went to town on it.  I mean, she did this little back quiver she does when she was excited, ignored me petting her, and wiggled herself into a very awkward position just so she could get that perfect spot to lick the edge of the book at. 

And she went to town.  It's become our "Here Cheri, lick this book instead of our really awesome comics or my brand new book or the Game Informer before we've had a chance to read it without slobber!" book. 

Well, that book and new boxes.  She also loves licking cardboard box edges and the tape that's on them.  I have no idea why.  Oh, and strangly her tongue isn't smooth from all this licking.

What a weird cat.