The Marie Kondo of Cats

     

       Lil’ Miss Mess With? Is that any name for a Princess?  I realize that Dad has nicknames for the Royal Pooch, and sometimes Lord Banjo refers to me as Jelly Belly … but Lil’ Miss Mess With?  Dad says this moniker stems from my habit of, well, “messing with” things. I say I’m tidying up. In fact, I may be the Marie Kondo of cats.  She believes in the “magic of tidying up,” and I practice the “magic of messing with.”

I see it as my mission to remove unnecessary items from tabletops. One of my favorite positions for doing this is hanging over the arm of Dad’s recliner and extending my pretty white paw towards his end table. From there, I can swipe coasters into the basket next to the chair.  I can also knock the remote controls, envelopes, pens, and pencils into the basket. Honestly, if I didn’t periodically clear off his table, it would be piled to the ceiling with “stuff.”

Mum’s downfall is her desk. It’s seriously cluttered. Just imagine this: the keyboard on a shelf beneath the desktop; above it on the desk and to the left are notepads, a calculator, and a laptop; stacks of books and more paper are piled to the right; two pencil holders, a tape dispenser, sticky notepads, and paperweights lie beyond the desk calendar around the big monitor.  

And, that’s not all.  There are scraps of paper tucked all around with notes on them, a dish for my treats, a glass of water, a box of Kleenex, a lamp, a photo of one of her previous cats … get the picture?   It’s a mess and needs “messing with.”

I’m partial to the left side of the desk and like to knock off the notepads, any loose pens or pencils, occasionally the calculator, and who knows what else.  Sometimes I do all this while Mum is sitting there; other times I do it at night so she can see my handiwork in the morning. The right side is best for perching on top of books but I don’t “mess” with them.

Nibbling the corners of papers is another of my favorite pastimes, and Mum thoughtfully keeps loose papers lying between the laptop and the monitor, so I have corners available. She claims the papers are there so she can easily put her hands on them, not for my chewing pleasure.  Mostly I stretch out on top of the papers, but every once in a while, the chewing urge strikes. The sure sign I’ve been hard at work nibbling is the confetti scattered beneath the desk.

Now, I don’t often get to the bulletin board, but it too needs tidying up.  I jump to the credenza and then to the top of the printer, and I stand up to reach the board. I knock the whiteboard markers and erasers to the floor and pull down the push-pinned notes. If I can’t pull the note all the way off, I nibble the corners instead. Can you tell I have a thing about corners?

I wonder whether Marie Kondo's book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," has a section on decluttering bulleting boards or whether she appreciates the art of corner chewing.  Since Mum bought the book years ago and didn't follow the directions for "tidying up," I guess she'll have to rely on Lil' Miss Mess With to keep things straight.

Princess Puddin’ Penn resides in Georgia with her dad, her mom Kathy Manos Penn, and her canine brother Lord Banjo. Please send comments, compliments, and questions to inkpenn119@gmail.com. She appears in “Lord Banjo the Royal Pooch,” a book that can be found on Amazon and has her own chapter in the new Lord Banjo book coming this summer.