I know all pets have….quirks. Some more so than others. For instance, I once owned a dog named Twinkie who liked to eat bubblegum. Shadow, my dog who passed away, used to bury food if we didn’t feed it to him in small bites. Anything huge, and he’d try to find a place to hide it in case hard times came again. Old stray survival habits die hard I guess. He even buried ice cubes, which he loved to eat when he was a pup. No fooling.

Baker, however, takes the catnip laden cake when it comes to oddball. A true 11 out of 10 on the Weird Pet-o-Meter.

First off, I think he suffers from narcolepsy. He just collapses in a fuzzy heap whenever the urge strikes him, and when he does, he usually ends up sleeping on his back with his paws in tight kitty fists.

Comfy couch or hard, unforgiving coffee table—it makes no difference apparently!!

This is a rare moment when he passed out right side up.

More often than not, he looks like this….

He views people as his own private furniture. But I think that’s pretty much standard operating procedure for a cat.

We believe he’s trying to do an impression of a comma when he lays this way. Oftentimes, after assuming this position, he will use his claws for purchase and drag himself across the floor like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the final scene of The Terminator.

We really should have named him “Oxford”–both for the punctuation-shaped pose and for the color scheme (like Oxford shoes!)–but we named him Baker because he likes to “make biscuits” or “knead” with his paws when he’s happy.

He’s also been caught sitting on more than one occasion. He looks like a drunk sitting outside a bar in a spaghetti western when he does this.

So, yeah, my cat collapses like a flan in a cupboard. If that weren’t weird enough, the only time you’re guaranteed uninterrupted time to pet him is when you’re using the bathroom. For some reason, he wants to be thoroughly petted when there’s a toilet involved.

When he jumps into your lap or onto a piece of furniture, he looks like Kramer entering a room on Seinfeld. And the harder you pet his butt, the more he likes you.

He also tries to get away from the vacuum cleaner by going in four different directions….at once. He knocks himself over when he sneezes, and he tries to “hide” from us, forgetting that if we can see his fluffy butt sticking out from under a pile of pillows, he’s not invisible.

He likes to be made into the bed…both under the fitted sheet and under piles of blankets. He’s fond of sticking his nose in right up against your mouth, but you can’t get up in his grill. He’s a hypocrite like that.

But the newest thing involves his collar. He’s learned how to take it off. Not because it’s too tight mind you. He’s worn it since the day we adopted him and has not protested one iota. (By the way, we got him “reduced for quick sale” from the Fayette County Humane Society. He was the “Star of the Week,” so his adoption fee was half price and we got a sweet bag of goodies including a pound of gourmet pet food, a huge water dish, and a ton of treats and toys. They practically paid us to take him, which was pretty swell. As weird as he is, he’s a perfect fit for us…and he was a bargain. I only wish I could find a way to harvest his fur and knit sweaters out of it like they do with alpacas. But I digress.)

No, he now takes his collar off because he likes to play with it. He slides it across the kitchen floor.

He throws it in the air, dances with it, and chases it around the house until it gets wedged under a piece of furniture.

I’ve found it in two dozen different places around the house. Ranging from his own food dish….

…and outside the litter box, left behind like a pair of discarded socks.

Believe me, he’s not hurting for gewgaws. There’s an entire box of jingle balls, fluffy mice, rattles, crinkle toys, and other assorted feline delights in addition to TWO scratch pads in the house. One has a ball that runs around it, and the other is an Emory Cat. We buy quality crap for our cats, that much is for sure. You can do that when you don’t have kids. You can also indulge in frivolous things…like sleep, adult conversation, and clean clothes.

However, despite the bountiful cornucopia of cat-related paraphernalia around the place, he takes his collar off to play with it. That’s what I keep telling myself at least. Otherwise, I have to admit that my cat is a fluffy nudist who gets his jollies from being “nekkid” around the house.