The vast majority of cubicle-sized apartments in NYC are blessed (and cursed) with hard wood floors.

In many of the cities I have lived in, this is a very valuable attribute in an apartment. It’s a sign of prestige and something to be proud of, something to brag about, something to show off.

Archie does not agree.

And he’s winning me over to his side.

(Not that I ever had enough prestige in my wallet to afford hard wood floors before I moved to NYC. And even the fact that we have hard wood floors now is a fluke.)

While hard wood floors are great for cleaning up dog puke, they tend to collect fur into large tumbleweeds which wander around looking for trouble. Couple that with a down filled couch and large masses of feathers and fur appear under our furniture. Guests think we leave dead birds just lying about. (We don’t. We eat dead birds. Especially ducks.)

And no amount of sweeping will ever keep pace with a shedding Archie/feather couch combo.

Having spent his young life amidst this chaos on the floor (often of his own creation) and being quite lazy, Archie runs into a problem I have experienced in the past.

Hard wood floors are just not that inviting when one wants to lie down and stretch out. And if one has an itch on one’s back, the problem is compounded.

Which means that when Archie gets to work, a place filled with nice scratchy carpet, one of his favorite activities is to roll around on the carpet. I like to call this behavior “turtling” as his legs flail around wildly, but it has been compared to a seizure of some sort (which it is not).

As you watch these videos, bear in mind that Archie does this of his own accord with no training (ha!), prompting or even any recognition by us at all.

Freak.