I love my kittens but they’re driving me insane

Debora Pape

2.6.2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

Pictures: Debora Pape

Cats tread softly? Wrong! If anything, more erratically. My little kittens are testing my nerves as well as the physical integrity of my home. Of course, I still love them dearly.

Since mid May I’ve been living in a mental institution. In other words, my two new housemates are turning my quiet, tidy home into a madhouse. The two terrors, as I affectionately call them, are Bonnie and Balu. I adopted them from Greece and they’re not even four months old yet. But the two of them are really tearing up the house now.

Kittens are no different to human babies: they put everything in their mouths. And then chew on it. Whether it be fingers, hair or power cables. I constantly have to reach into their sharp tooth-filled mouths to extract something.

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I can no longer walk in a straight line. The little ones are always scurrying around my feet. Bonnie will dive in from God-knows-where and slip under the foot I’m about to place in front of me. Then a loud cry follows – but, to be honest, I think my emotional pain was greater than her physical pain.

So I’m left with no other option but to change how I move. I no longer walk, I shuffle like a zombie to reduce the risk of accidentally booting them across the room or stepping on their tail or paws. The stairs are particularly challenging. If something goes wrong here, one of the cats will definitely be falling down the stairs. And perhaps me too.

3rd place: they spread cat litter everywhere

My old cat Lopi did his business in the litter tray calmly and everything was fine. Bonnie and Balu, on the other hand, love digging around in the cat litter. With force. Despite installing a lid and vacuuming daily, the area around the toilets is almost like a sandy beach ... a smelly half-sandy beach. Smelly because in their eagerness, tiny bits of excrement fly out of the tray.

And because the small grains of litter also get stuck between cats’ toes, they drag the litter all round the house. It’s everywhere. I’d be lost without a vacuum cleaner.

2nd place: they’re remarkably persistent

How can you be so young and yet already so persistent? I take Balu out of the cactus pot for the hundredth time. He looks at me sweetly and hops back in. Bonnie walks across the keyboard. Balu tries to catch the mouse cursor on the screen. Bonnie nibbles on the cables on my desk. Balu jumps onto the kitchen table. Again and again and again.

With young cats there only seems to be total calm or total chaos. When they’re not sleeping like little angels, they use all their energy to run around at top speed and with their claws out. From the scratching tour across the sofa to the emergency stop in their full food bowl, to what feels like 24 hours of F1 on my duvet in the evening.

Every day I’m confronted with the question of whether the cats will reach the end of their energy first or whether I’ll be at the end of my tether, lying on the floor whimpering in a foetal position while they misuse me as a trampoline. So far, they’ve always won. Always. With all the tearing, crashing and scraping noises coming from the direction of the frenzy, I pray they’ve only broken my easy-to-replace furniture. I think to myself: please leave the wallpaper on the walls, don’t dismantle the door frames and don’t accidentally kill yourselves!

Kittens are hell. And at the same time, the cutest things this world has to offer. With that said, here comes the sweet side.

A robot vacuum cleaner can only move along the floor and doesn’t reach many areas. But cats do. They get everywhere. They have the ability to collect fluff and cobwebs in their whiskers from crevices and corners that I didn’t even know existed. This makes them excellent feather dusters and cobweb detectives.

Balu has also recognised a problem area I was never aware of – the brush seal fitted under the kitchen door. One day, the little rascal thought it would be a good idea to scratch it. He thoroughly enjoyed freeing the brush from the dust, dirt and hair of the past centuries. Fortunately, my vacuum cleaner cleaned up the rest.

4th place: they actually play with toys

While Lopi increasingly turned up his nose at silly toys like cat fishing rods and small balls, Bonnie and Balu love anything that moves. Or doesn’t. A cheap-and-cheerful paper ball is just as interesting to them as a hair tie or their own tail.

Everything that can be destroyed seems to be the most exciting. The first fishing rod with feathers only survived for three days. A small ball of wool was already completely tattered after two days. So I probably don’t need to explain why there are scraps of paper lying around next to the cat litter.

3rd place: they sleep soundly

Every escalation has its end. When Balu and Bonnie have caused enough destruction, they turn from wild fluffy things to sweet fluffy things. They lie down next to each other and I can watch as their heads get heavier and heavier until they flop down – sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards.

The two are inseparable and no matter how much they were fighting before, sleeping is cuddle time. Balu lies across Bonnie and she doesn’t mind. Bonnie hugs Balu and the two sleep nose to nose. Sleeping together is something they continue to do from their nursery days, where a litter of cats always lie snuggled up close together. If needed, I can carry Bonnie and Balu when they sleep or put them around my neck – they hardly notice.

2nd place: they’re funny

The unexpected somersault while playing with the fishing rod, the record-breaking jump with a twist in the air, the sudden fall of the wrestling cat ball from the edge of the bed and other accidents bring a whole lot of fun with them. Even though I worry about my belongings, Bonnie and Balu always manage to make me laugh precisely because of their annoying characteristics. The cable-chewing fetish drives me crazy, but the guilty look on the face of the offender who continues to chew always makes me smile, despite all the stress.

Since I don’t want them to go outside, I got them a running wheel. They can really let off some steam on that. Plus, they learn that they’re also subject to the laws of gravity.

1st place: they like to cuddle

I’m reminded of how young the two of them are by how whiny Balu gets when I pay too little attention to him. He uses his squeaky meow to get my attention and looks up at me: the little guy wants to be in my arms. From there he climbs even higher until he snuggles up to my face.

My senior cat Lopi, who we unfortunately had to put to sleep at the end of April, also demanded attention and liked to sit on my lap as soon as I sat down. But the two little ones want to be even closer. They greet me with loud purring, lick me and nudge me with their noses. Is there a better feeling?

Enjoying the trust of such little rascals is worth all the hassle. And at some point they’ll be more calm. I can already tell I’m going to miss the wild baby days.

Have you ever had kittens? What’s your favourite thing about it and what really gets on your nerves? Let me know in the comments!

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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