Litter Dancing

I was in the kitchen waiting for water to boil when I noticed Eli in the
utility room in the act of methodically pulling scoop after scoop of litter
out of one of the boxes. He spent quite some time at this, taking great
care, and eventually made a neat pile of perhaps three cups of litter on the
floor next to the box.

And then he did a strange dance on top of the newly liberated litter....

I've noticed that this kind of wild action always begins with the insane
expression on the face and especially in the eyes of the affected cat. I'm
sure most of you have witnessed what I mean here - that momentary intense
blankness, an inward stare at nothing, as if in a trance, as if receiving a
concentrated jolt of the vibrational essence of catnip into its brain,
directly from the mothership. This dance started off in such a manner.

Eli then pressed his chest and belly into the floor while splaying all four
legs out to the sides, followed by another split-second pause and blank
intense gaze. Next, he performed what appeared to be a frantic effort to
scoop up the previously bailed litter up with his whole body, which
succeeded only in scattering the granules over approximately 12 square feet
of floor area.

As suddenly as it began, the dance was over, and the task of gathering up
the evidence and redepositing it into the litterbox was all that was left to
me. It was a small price to pay for the privilege of witnessing that little
bit of black cat madness.