Cats in Spring

Spring is here - at least chronologically - and the weather has been, intermittently, quite vernal. Saturday morning was very nice, so I opened the front door to the screen and let the cats sniff the smells of the season. No one minded being next to someone else with such distractions, not even Josie, though Tungsten, who was most ardent about being able to sniff, walked away all three times I brought the camera out to take her picture. Poor Tucker: the first thing I grabbed to give the cats more height was a cat-carrier. My roly-poly foster-cat hastened to hide beneath the bed as soon as he saw it. I’ll use a chair the next time.

Tucker did do something new on his own this past weekend. I had the duvet on my bed pulled up to the pillows. All the cats love lying on the bed, but the boys more than the girls. I couldn’t find Tucker at one point, but noticed a longish lump on the bed.

I lifted the covers and, sure enough, there he was, quite content underneath - at least until I disturbed him. He disappeared under there again later in the day, just to prove to me that it wasn’t entirely the novelty of it the first time. I suppose this is the natural conclusion of a cat’s love of enclosed spaces.

Renn continues to evolve into a lap-cat. When I am on the computer, the big boy waggles back and forth, his back arched, wanting to get up but not yet ready to make the jump. So I haul him up. A few days ago, after lying, relaxed, for about half an hour, Renn sat up and glanced at the computer screened. He became transfixed by something he saw there. It wasn’t until I noticed his head moving back and forth that I realised he was watching the words I typed. As they moved across the screen from left to right, his head moved and, when the words started a new line, his head snapped back to the left, like a typewriter carriage. Dark images on a light background may have been little living creatures to him. He has also started imitating Josie, and getting up onto the mantelpiece in the sitting room, though he never seems as comfortable there as my Chubs.

Tungsten likes playing with one of the new string toys the cats were given over Christmas, but she prefers to ambush it. She will sometimes hide under the bed when I bring the toy out; unlike Tucker and the cat-carrier, it’s not fear that prompts her, but anticipation. She will wait under the bed until I flick the toy beneath the box-spring. Then, she’ll attack. Her enthusiasm at this point may carry her out from under the bed to grapple with her prey.

Every day, it seems, these cats find new ways of entertaining themselves and me. Sometimes, it is a new game, or a new attitude to each other. Other times, it’s simply a new desire for my company, rolling over to let me rub a fuzzy tummy.