Cat(nip) Burglers Caught!

We stepped out for an hour last night and when we got home our big black cat Joey was sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen floor. Slightly alarmed - this is not his usual resting place - I entered the kitchen to see what was up and then found this:

Ahah, caught red handed (pawed??) - a bag of catnip chewed open and our lovely Joey Bear kitty rolling around in it. No wonder he was lying in the middle of the floor - he was nipped!

Joey is scared of the camera for some reason, so when I snapped this photo he ran away. That left the floor - and catnip - open to the real culprit, who was just waiting for Joey to move so she could have some herself:

Si (pronounced like sigh, not like Spanish for yes), the darling little princess that she is, managed to suction up a small handful of it before we could chase her away (okay, we let her have some since Joey was hogging it all when we got home). Then she went and curled up into her Kitty Kondo and slept it off like a good little addict.

How did this happen? Well a quick look at the cupboard above the microwave and the evidence was clear. The plastic shelf paper had some abrasions and a few claw marks (yes, I've watched CSI a couple of times) and we knew what happened, how it happened, and who the culprit was. First of all, by the process of elimination, Joey couldn't balance on the cupboard or microwave - he's not on the skinny enough side to do it. He's purr-fectly able to jump up there, but the shiny things on the stove would scare him.

That left either our shy (ha!) little princess Si, or some outside force. Now both of our cats are nip-addicts, but we don't let them have enough that they need to join Nipoholics Anonymous. And we haven't given them any for a week or so. I guess it's really our fault because their food bowls were almost empty, and anyone with a cat knows that they start complaining before they get to the actual bottom of the bowl. And that catnip was left in a place where any feline could smell it - directly in front of the yellow container in the picture, on the second shelf of a cupboard, behind a closed door, almost 5 feet off the floor. It was definitely our fault! :-)

Just a word of warning to you cat owners out there - don't let their bowls run empty, and don't store catnip in a cupboard without a airtight container - preferably armored!