Crazy Cat

I own a dainty little puss we called "Suki." She is part Siamese and has the blue eyes and seal point coloring, but also a white streak on her nose and a few white patches on her paws.

Yesterday I had a client come for a visit and one of the tasks at hand was to grind up some valerian root for her in my coffee grinder so that she could make capsules from it. Now I don't know if you are familiar with valerian root, but it is the herbal equivalent of say, Valium, but has none of the side effects, is non-toxic, and non-habit forming. It is a great tonic for the herbs and a wonderful sedative for those who suffer from insomnia. It is also exceedingly smelly.

How smelly is it? Smelly enough that Suki could smell it through the closed and locked office door. She was soon scratching at the door wanting in, but I thought she just wanted to be sociable. She came in and leapt up on my desk where we were working, so I shooed her back out the door. Very soon my client left and I returned to some work I was doing on the computer.

In front of my computer monitor is a small space where I had been working to encapsulate the powdered valerian root. I had done this on a piece of paper to minimize the amount of herb scattered about. Suki scratched and fussed at the door again, and since my client was gone, I let her in. She was immediately back up on my desk and to my amazement she started going wild -- licking the paper with the remains of valerian dust on it, rubbing herself in it and then biting, licking and scratching at it and anything else that happened to have valerian on it. If you have ever seen the wild gyrations of cats with catnip, then times it by a factor of 5 for increased wildness. I never knew that valerian held such attraction for cats.

After spending a good 15 minutes wrestling with the herbed paper and attacking various things in the office, Suki settled down at my feet and I forgot about her as I returned to my work. My husband arrived home a little later and found my cat laying at my feet in a very deep herb-induced sleep.