I keep all my fuzzy family members out of the sewing room now. I have a baby gate set up that technically at least the youngest cat could hop over, but he doesn't. (I think he's too dignified.) They cause chaos - batting bobbins off of tables and rolling them places I can't get to them, leaving fur everywhere, but that's not what made me finally booth them out. The younger cat developed the annoying habit of gnawing through the thread on my machine all the time and then one day about a year ago I walked in and found him chewing on my sewing machine NEEDLE! While it was still in the machine! He'd managed to poke himself in his cheeks and tongue several times (but naturally did not STOP) so there was all this bloody cat slobber on the machine and around his mouth. Scared the poop out of me and prompted an emergency vet visit! (He's fine, aside from being insane. The machine is fine too.)
I've also had to pull lengths of thread out of his throat and who knows how bad that is for him. He'll fish thread and paper out of the trash to chew on. He's like a rat or something.
So now he and his 'brother' are forbidden from the sewing room; partially for my sanity but mostly for their health.
I do miss his "help", though. He was great at messing up my work in the cutest way possible.
My helper and insane rat-cat, Zeb:
"Here, let me just put some fur on here for you, and re-arrange these stacks a little bit...and oh, have you noticed that nobody at all is petting me right now? You should probably do something about that."
