Yes, I’m cute, but I’m a psycho

My cat is trying to drive me insane.  Actually, my cat is succeeding a little.  I don’t know what to do with him.  I got him when he was 5, now he’s 9, and seriously he is not trainable…at all.  The only really great thing about my cat is his name, Vin Scully.  Also, he sleeps on a Dodger pillow pet during the day – that’s pretty great too.  Other than that, I sort of hate him.

The people that I got Scully from were very nice, but maybe a little too nice in that they didn’t actually treat him like a cat.  She told me at one point that when she got up in the morning she would immediately feed him and sit next to him on the floor of the kitchen and talk to him while he ate.  Uh, what?  That seems totally insane to me, but maybe I’m just not enough of a morning person to handle that – but even after four years of living with me, he still expects this.  He has the loudest voice I’ve ever heard on a non-human (bears excluded), and just starts screaming first thing.  I walk over and show him that, yea, there’s your food bowl and it’s FULL, but he still seems irritated that I don’t want to chit chat.

When my ex was living with me they got along famously, and if I was traveling I would get long texts from him telling me about their morning conversations.  They liked to debate.

He also has all his claws and YES CAT PEOPLE I KNOW IT’S CRUEL TO CUT OFF THEIR CLAWS – so far he has used those claws to ruin my couch, a chair, and he’s currently working his way through my pretty new carpet.  I’ve spent about $200 on cat scratcher things, and I can tell you honestly that he looks at me and laughs every time I open one, like “that’s very cute, but what the hell do you think I’m going to do with it?”  So what should my tolerance level be?  How much should this free cat cost me?  Sometimes I want to take him for a long drive in the desert so he can make new friends, but of course I won’t do that.  Probably.