That, my dear friends, is my cat Storm. He is a medium-haired black & white, possessed with a unique personality.

Or he's just possessed, I am not sure which.

I know many of you have your own cat. And I know many cats do weird things. But I don't know of another cat who does so many weird things as Storm.

Kurt rescued Storm in the summer of 2001. He was attending classes at the community college when one of his friends told him he needed to come outside and save this kitten. Sure enough, as he peered into the storm drain, he could just make out this little kitten at the bottom. Kurt, with his massive, bulging, manly muscles (okay, y'all can quit giggling now), yanked up the steel grate where it had grown into the surrounding lawn and rescued the kitty. He then brought him home to me, and once the vet determined his only issue was a problem with fleas, we made him a part of the family.

Now you know where he gets the name Storm.

When my sister came to visit me in June of 2003, she forgot to put the bread back into the fridge when she was done making toast. We then left the house for the day, and when we came back, Storm had dragged the bag of bread from the kitchen into the living room, and shredded part of the bag.

It's not just bags with food in them that he hates. It's ALL bags. Michele tends to send me things packed in snack-size ziploc bags, generally things like sample sizes of makeup. If I forget to put them away, Storm will shred the bags to pieces.

My friend J had, when we moved here, four cats. She's now down to one, as the others have succumbed to old age. She can leave food, like bread and cupcakes, out on the counter without fear of molestation by the cat. I cannot do this. If I leave ANY food out, Storm is all over it within minutes.

Storm eats anything. In particular, he eats the dog food. I don't leave food out 24/7 for my animals because Storm will eat it all; instead I feed the cats twice a day, and the dog just once. Koolit (who looks amazingly like Toby the Wonderdog) really will only eat the gravy-type dog food, and even then it's hit or miss. I try to feed the animals at the same time so that Storm is too busy eating his own cat food to bother Koolit, but for some reason Storm has a tendency to abandon his own food (which Karla, the fat cat, then polishes off) in order to push Koolit out of the way to get at the dog food. Storm doesn't take the hint to stay out of the dog food, either. I have sprayed him multiple times with the bad-kitty bottle filled with water in the attempt to keep him out of the dog food, but after about a minute he's right back in the dog bowl. I would have to stand guard over the dog bowl to keep Storm away from it.

Storm also attacks any flowers that I get from Kurt. Kurt's sort of given up on buying me flowers because they stay perched on top of the dryer in the laundry nook. It's the only place I can keep Storm out of.

Even the laundry nook has fallen to Storm's ingenuity. The doors to the laundry nook are just two bi-fold doors, which, when we first moved in, was enough to thwart his attempts to get inside. Somehow he's figured out how to bash the doors just so in order to open them enough for him to gain access. I've had to buy a child-proofing lock to put on the door to keep him out.

A couple of nights ago I forgot to set the lock, and Storm woke me up at 6am by bashing at the laundry nook door. I guess when I'd switched the laundry over to the dryer the night before I had dropped one of Grace's socks on the floor of the nook, and Storm could see it. He was intensely concentrated on getting to that damn sock. He's always been a thief of Grace's socks and even her smaller plush toys. I have lost so many socks by his stealing them and taking them into the garage with him.

Storm also informs me that it's time for me to feed him, if I am on the computer at 10pm, by licking the mini-blinds in the living room. Since a cat's tongue is very scratchy, it makes this godawful, annoying noise. The only way to get him to stop doing it is to either spray him with the bad-kitty bottle (which I never can find) or to get up and hiss at him.

I've gotten quite proficient at the bad-kitty hiss. It at least gets the cats' attention.

Another thing Storm likes to do is to stand on my back while I'm sleeping at 7am and howl into my ear. Why? Because he's starving, of course, since I never feed him! Again he is very single-minded in the pursuit of getting me up so I can feed him; just flinging him off my back is enough to keep him away for about thirty seconds. Every morning is a battle to stay asleep until a more acceptable time of the morning.

So yeah, I have the strangest cat ever. Maybe it was the first five weeks of his life that he spent on a storm drain. Maybe he felt he had to do something over-the-top to distinguish himself from Karla, the other cat in the household. I don't really know what his issue is, but he is quite a handful.

Honestly, I wouldn't wish him on my worst enemy.