My housemates' cat, who I am looking after whilst they are away for a couple of days, came up and meowed strangely at me from her vantage point atop one of the kitchen chairs.
This struck me as unusual, since I had just tricked her into coming into the kitchen by calling her whilst stomping towards the cupboard containing her food so that I could photograph her - I would have thought she'd want nothing more to do with me after such a trick.
But no, there she was, meowing at me. I figured perhaps she simply wanted affection, since her human parents are away, so I went over and gave her some pats, which she seemed to enjoy.
But, as I started doing so, it occurred to me that perhaps she was itchy! The cat is currently wearing a surgical cone after her recent operation, after all, and my housemate and I had seen her scratching ineffectually at it on one occasion as though trying to relieve an itch on the skin below.
So, I altered the method of my patting, scratching her down the side of the neck instead of those more-typical cat-pleasure spots such as the throat and cheeks - and she loved it! Even better, she actually started doing that "convulsive phantom scratching" thing, her hind paw making a scratching motion in the air like dogs sometimes do when you scratch them
just right oh my god.
I've never seen a cat do that before!
The time I spent scratching the cat's neck and subsequently trying to film her when she decided to drink from the tap may have made me rather late for the bands I'm currently on my way to see, but it was so ridiculously cute that I can hardly be annoyed.