*yelling at an animal that can't possibly understand why I'm yelling and will only be sad

From about 6pm to, uh, bedtime, Binx wants something but I can't figure out what! And to get what he wants he will jump up on the coffee table and start
-pulling things off the lap desk I keep felting projects on
-stealing and chewing wool/wool objects
-picking at other things

-pushing stuff off

Because this is annoying and causes upset, Luna (dog) has decided that her job is to now aggressively police the coffee table from cats in general and Binx particularly

It used to be that she would grumble if he was actively bothering things

Now she starts growling as soon as he fucking LOOKS at the coffee table

Constantly

Endless growling

Escalating occasionally to barking to attempt to warn him off of doing crimes

But Binx? DOesn't care! He will continue blithely committing his cat crimes, thus agitating the dog literally all

goddamn

night

He has food, so it's not that

The fountain is running fine, it's not that

He maybe wants to play, but actually getting him to engage is really hard and involves a lot of just sitting on the cold floor between VERY brief bouts of him batting at a toy

(he will NOT play with anything on his own)

He doesn't like being groomed

If I try to hold him he will sit for a minute or two, but then jump off my lap and BACK ONTO THE COFFEE TABLE TO COMMIT CRIMES

I've given him a place to sit next to me on a soft blanket but he's seems to only accept that when he's given up on getting anything else

The only thing that reliably works is if SHIRA lets him on HER lap, which, understandably, she doesn't want to allow all that often because in the evenings she's on her computer doing things

So lately, all of our evenings have been endless cycles Binx jumping on the coffee table to do a crime > me removing him > Binx jumping > me removing > pointless attempt to get him to play >binx jumping

To a NON STOP soundtrack of the dog growling and barking

your beasts are on a mission to drive you insane, I'm sorry

*hisses in frustration

oh god how frustration

ing*

can you put him in man timeout for a bit?

When he was younger he was a nightmare at night, and we actually had a big crate sat out in the hall as cat prison

I'm kinda feeling like cat prison might need to return

yeaahhh it sounds like it

if you catch him red handed yeah, usually there's no point if you do it after the fact. otherwise yeah, cat prison for baby