When Do Kittens Stop Being Bipolar?

About a half hour after I got home from work today Norbert was flying around my apartment, bouncing off walls, and hitting her head on hard things like tile, the armrest of my futon, and the bathtub. None of this stuff seems to bother her because, I think, she's nuts.

In an effort to wear her out I took my mouse extractor (unfolded wire hanger) down from the wall and fished her little stuffed mice out from under the refrigerator and the oven. We played fetch for a while, and then 15 minutes later, I fished them out again. (It's hard to see under there. I had to use the old light bulbs from my thank you sign and a 12 volt transformer to see. I wonder where my flashlight is.) After the second time she stowed the mice under my appliances, I moved on to taunting her with the feather-on-a-string-stick. When my hand started going to sleep I put that away and proclaimed her sufficiently played with and set off to the bathroom.

She thought the bathroom was an excellent place to continue play time, and tried to climb my towel. Unfortunately Norbert hasn't yet become an expert in physics, and was therefore surprised when the towel came off the rack and she landed with a thud on the tile floor. I guess when she runs into something hard enough it makes her apparate, because when I picked up the towel she wasn't under there, and when I looked to the door she was just poking her head into the bathroom. Amazing.

After the bathroom I retired to the couch where Norbert decided to shoot cat turds out of her litter box. She has an excellent forehand. After the turdcapades where over she decided it was love time. She climbed onto my shoulder, purred, and allowed almost 10 minutes of Fancy Quality petting. She was not happy when I picked her up so I could brush litter off my shoulder and go play with my computer.

She's currently attacking all the portions of my comforter that have ever wronged her or may wrong her in the future. It's my theory that part of her beef with the comforter is that it's covering my pillows. Alas, I had no choice but to cover them after I found some sort of kitty litter mulch spread all over one of them before going to bed last night. She keeps bedtime full of surprises.

I like to keep things interesting for her too. I have a perfectly lovely desk fan that I've put on my bedside table. The reason it's on my bedside table and not near my window is that it has no grill, and I'm a little afraid Norbert will walk into it in the middle of the night and I'll wake up covered it kitty bits. She doesn't have nearly the same interest in exploring my bedside table as she does my windowsill, so I think we're safe.