Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Leaf Season

This is a very busy time of year for Thunder—leaf hunting season. With all the leaves falling, he seems to be glued to the windows. We have 2 large picture windows—and they both belong to him. If we have one of those gusty days, and he is busy elsewhere, he will run to the window when he hears the wind whistle. He just gets so keyed up.

In the morning, after a big breakfast, he will go up on his tower and refuse to come down for his teeth brushing. I can’t pick him up because he just hangs on tightly with his claws. Sometimes, I have to put the chair by the tower and threaten to brush his teeth while he is up there. That convinces him to come down for a couple of minutes. I brushe his teeth—and back up he goes.

In the evenings when I come home from work, he is definitely more tired than normal. I think that leaf hunting is cutting into his napping.

He has even been coming to bed late. He wants to stay up and watch the leaves. I am feeling so irrelevant.

Still, it is only a few short weeks in the fall and spring that he gets like this. (Much of my trees are red oaks that lose most of their leaves in the spring.) I do find I can get more things done around the house because he is so busy.

If I bring a leaf into the house, he doesn’t make the connection that it is just what he has been so intently hunting.

Maggie, aka Dumb Dog, doesn’t get leaf hunting at all. This is a good thing—since she tends to mess up his squirrel hunting. When she starts to bark at the squirrels, he climbs down his tower just far enough so that he can reach her—and bats her in the head. At least he can hunt his leaves in peace.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Silly Thunder!

Achieve1dream said...

Your oak trees lose their leaves in the spring? Weird!

Silly Thunder! We all have our obsessions hehe.

Judi said...

Yes, the red oaks lose about half their leaves in the fall and the rest in the spring. We learned long ago not to rake in the fall--because there is just as much to rake in the spring if you do. They end up turning an ugly brown--but right now they are are pretty red-brown.