Ellipses started hissing somewhere in my bedroom and I awoke immediately and sat up, looking for him. He appeared to have gotten a claw stuck in the window sill again (yes, it’s happened before—it greatly upsets him when the window attacks), so I threw my blankets off and jumped over to help him escape. At the same time, his back legs slid off of the sill, so he’s hanging by a paw, still hissing and spitting. It’s happened before that when I’ve helped him I’ve also been ruthlessly attacked, but this time was different. As I tried to lift his body in order to help him stop being in pain and hopefully remove his claw from the sill, he fell to the floor. He ran to the other side of the room (about 3 or 4 feet away) and was still hissing and spitting like a madcat. I had never seen him so upset! And he wouldn’t let me come near him. He was hissing at both the window sill and me. So I put my glasses on and turned on the light (darkness never helps in situations like these). Slowly he seemed to have forgiven me, but was still hissing like crazy at the window.

I peeked through the blinds and sure enough: a stray cat was peering back at me with his round, flat face. He wasn’t making any noise, but I’m sure he was silently conveying some bullying thoughts to Ellipses. So I closed the window and the blinds, but Ellipses was still rather upset. I tried distracting Ellipses with food, because that works so well with humans. Roundface cat was still looking back at me when I checked in a couple minutes later. Ellipses came back to the window sill with a weird mixture of curiosity and seething rage. So I closed the blinds again.

I went outside to confront Roundface, but of course I couldn’t get very close. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to get close, though, because Roundface was looking a little grungy. So he got away from me and hid under a nearby car.

I went back inside and everything was okay for a moment; Ellipses seemed to have found a bug. I opened the window again, but a few minutes later Roundface was back. I had been sleeping quite well despite the Minnesota humidity, but I closed all windows and turned on the A/C.

I find it hard to believe that stray cats live downtown, but Ellipses seemed to have angered himself to sleep. It must be exhausting being him. I went back to sleep around 4 a.m.

P.S. Ellipses is still kinda cute and funny when he’s hissing pretty constantly for about 10 minutes and rubbing all against me (making me his territory, of course).