When Taylor Nelson heard someone rushing around her apartment, she was in a Zoom conference. Spike, her cat, was sound asleep on his bed next to her desk, so she knew her small kitten, Faye, was the one generating all the ruckus.
She was engaged in a vigorous zoomie session when the meeting began, and Taylor Nelson, Faye’s mother, recalled thinking, “Wow, she’s really having fun right now,” according to The Dodo (Nelson is also an associate video editor/producer there). She sometimes zooms about, but this time she was racing full-speed up and down the corridor and kangaroo-kicked into the walls to maintain her momentum.
Nelson was trying her best to focus on her meeting — when suddenly, she heard a huge crash coming from her bedroom down the hall.
“Both my cat and I looked behind us, like, ‘Oh, God, what did she do?’ and [I] left the meeting,” Nelson said.
Nelson figured Faye had knocked some plants off the windowsill, something she and her brother both do a lot, so much so that Nelson has taken to keeping extra terra-cotta pots in the basement just in case. When she walked into the bedroom, though, she was shocked. It was so much more than just a few plants.
“She did, in fact, knock over a couple of plants like I assumed, but she also somehow knocked over a 30-inch TV and a humidifier along with the plants,” Nelson said. “It was like a perfect disaster sandwich, with the plants broken on the bottom, the TV face down on top of the plants and then the humidifier spilled over. This was also all on my rug, so the water from the humidifier made a nice muddy mess under the plants and TV.”
The smallest tiny offender was responsible for turning the bedroom from a quietly organized space into a complete disaster zone in a matter of seconds.
Nelson added, “Had she not been peering down at me from under the bed right alongside the mess, I wouldn’t have believed it was created by this little 6-pound kitty when I stepped into the bedroom and witnessed the carnage.
Nelson began tidying up the debris while praying that the TV had only suffered minimal damage. There was no such luck, regrettably. It was completely faulty. Nevertheless, she used the additional terra-cotta pots she always has on hand to rescue the plants.
“She definitely knew she was guilty, but was trying to act like she had no idea what was going on and just found out about the mess when I did, because she only showed her face after I started cleaning up, and was slinking around sniffing everything with her ears back,” Nelson said.
As Nelson looked around, she was able to piece together what probably happened. While Faye was doing her zoomie laps, instead of kangaroo-kicking off the wall like she usually does, she likely jumped onto the bed, kicked off of the nearby TV, and boom — destruction.
It was a lot to process, but really all Nelson could do was laugh at how such a tiny cat had caused such a huge mess.
Given how ridiculous the entire situation was and how it was my own fault for not having everything in place, Nelson continued, “I couldn’t even be angry at her.” She’s one of the silliest, oddest cats I’ve ever encountered, so my boyfriend and I are actually going to tie the TV to the wall like in a cheap motel, and I’m planning on obtaining a few of baby cams so I can finally watch all of her antics on tape.
There is no question that Faye will be able to create some trouble even with the TV fixed, and maybe future baby monitors will be able to record it all.
