My daughter got a camera for Christmas. My college student sons got new phones. My husband got an electric hammer. I got Irritable Cat Syndrome.

ICS can afflict anyone at anytime, as long as they have a cat. You are more prone to getting ICS if you have recently adopted a cat from an animal shelter.

Cats confined to small cages for long periods of time after having been abandonned by previously loving families are five thousand times more likely to inflict ICS upon their new owners. ICS is not readily apparent while the cat is still in the animal prison, laying in his cat litter because his cage is too small.

At this phase, pre-ICS, the cat is extremely loving and snuggly and on its best behavior in his attempts to force you to fall in love with him and go into utter panic, when the last chance adoption sign is put on his cage. In pre-ICS, the cat will gently touch you with his paw as you walk by his cell block. If you remove him from the cell block to pet his soft orange fur, he will purr and rub his cheek against your cheek. He will not try to get away because he wants to get away with you at this point, rather than away from you.

After you pay the adoption fees, he will remain grateful for a period of time. He will bounce five feet in the air from a sitting position and catch all flying pests. He will kill these pests and lay them at your feet. Then he will rub against your legs and purr.

When you leave the house, he will run to the window and watch you leave, wondering if you are coming back. When you come back he will run to you and meow loudly that he is glad you came back. That being left alone before was traumatizing and he doesn’t want it to happen again. He will not jump on your counters or furniture because only bad cats do that and he is not bad, so please don’t take him back to animal prison.

Then ICS begins to set in. He realizes, the cute little kitty, after gaining five pounds from being fed properly, that you are more in love with him now than he is with you. He can begin to test your love. He hops on your dressers and steals jewelry and hides it under your bed. He hops on the counter and knocks food stuffs off and the dogs eat the stuff and when they get into trouble, he waits for them to be taken to the animal shelter.

When they are not, he must concoct other ways to irritate you. ICS is full blown now.

And, joy of joys, you set up the Christmas tree. He can climb inside the Christmas tree and try to knock it over. He can whack the ornaments off the tree and watch the dogs get into trouble again. He can pull all the bows and tags off the gifts under the tree and cause mad confusion on Christmas morning. He can rub against the gifts and leave clumps of orange fur and make everyone sneeze.

During ICS, you will wonder why the hell you brought him home from the animal shelter. When you lock him in your bedroom with you at night because the Christmas tree cannot be destroyed, even bringing all of his necessities into the room with you, he will torment you at regular two-hour intervals, pawing at your face, nipping at your nose, scratching at the door, leaping at the door knob to open the door. See, he had figured out how to open long handled doors. But, the bedroom door knob is round. He can’t open that. So, he stalks you.

And this is Irritable Cat Syndrome. It is worse than Irritable New Baby Syndrome. It makes you take down the Christmas tree two days after Christmas and say to him, “Hah! You can’t ever make me take you back to the animal shelter, you Devil Cat. You’re stuck with me til the day I die!”

And at this, he rubs against you and purrs.