When I first came to live with the pernickety old woman I was about a year old, having spent my kittenhood secretly entertaining a pair of young lay-abouts in rented accommodation that had a strict no-pets rule blanketing it.
The young lay-abouts … I call them that for their lack of tables chairs or even a couch. They owned a mattress on the floor to lounge about on, satin cushions, a velvet couch cover, and a refrigerator. I had my toy bucket with a ball that spat kibbles.
Not so here. There’s furniture galore, many places where my toys go to hide when they’re too tired for more play. But anyway, I prefer getting the pernickety old woman to waft the red-feather-on-a-springy-stick. When she tires I’ll slip away as if for a cat-nap.
Then, when she’s busy at whatever humans get up to when they’re not attending their feline companions, I stalk through the house looking for an open window, an open door, a propped up sky-light.
Aargh! Even a chimney will do! How can I get into the backyard for my Hand-of-God work?
The pernickety old woman has a lot of bad-fangled ideas about what a self-respecting cat should do all day.
Rita de Heer 