The joys of youth

Back home after dinner on Christmas Day, sitting on the sofa watching Skyfall, I heard a noise in the dining room. Went to look, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Went back to film. Heard the noise again. Went back, switched the light on. Ah! 

I hadn’t properly tidied up after brunch earlier in the day and two of the napkin rings had disappeared from the table. Found one on the floor. The other is gone until such time as I decide (if I ever do) to shift the sideboard.

A noise in the kitchen the other day. Go out to investigate and at first cannot figure out cause. Then I spot a fridge magnet on the floor. Look up and there’s Maisie on top of the fridge.

Look at this.

Butter wouldn’t melt, right? She can spend hours in the evening in this chair by the woodstove. But, ten minutes after lights out I can hear her tearing from one end of the house and back.

She likes to play. There are toys all over the house, including ones she found under the bed that go back many years to Tri and Angie’s days.

Maisie is about four years old. It’s reckoned that the litter of kittens she delivered in my friend Jean’s spare room was her third.

Oh, my god! Look at them! The one at the back on the right is the spitting image of his mother, including the amazingly blue eyes.

No more kittens for Maisie now, but the fact remains she’s still a kid herself. A playful kid.

It’s been a long time.

Tri and Angie, kittens themselves when they came to us, were 18 and 19 respectively when they acquired their rose bushes in the garden. Roxie was 13 when she came here, 18 when she died. Stella was only seven when she became part of my life, but she was never one for toys and playing. Or getting up on the top of the fridge. 

Roxie, the day after she arrived, started scratching the couch. I went out the next day and bought her a scratching post, which she loved. She immediately lost interest in the furniture. Despite spreading catnip on that and another scratching board, Maisie still seems to prefer scratching the couch and the chair. During a recent phone call with my friend Donna, the conversation was interrupted so many times with me saying “Maisie, no!” that Donna laughed and said it sounded as if I had a two-year-old child in the house. I suspect that is exactly what it is like. 

I’m hoping that in another week, when I open the cat flap and she’s allowed outside (hopefully not to make her way straight back to Jean’s place, which isn’t far away), that she’ll find trees a better place to scratch than my old wing chair. 

Oh, and did I mention that for some reason she likes to chew and shred paper? Just before I managed to snap this picture of her sprawled out on me, she went for the book I was reading.

I shall have to apologise to the friend from whom said book was borrowed for the bite marks. Oh, but look at those eyes!