It's Like Having Children

Having a cat is like having children a lot of the time. Each day Kiltie jumps up to the third shelf of the bookcase where I keep the tiny bag that contains her toys. After extracting her head from the bag, which hugs her head neatly like a top hat, she comes out with this or that goodie in her mouth. (Click images to view larger version.)

Kiltie's Toy Bag - discarded rubber ball left inside

Every night, I pick up the toys, put them back into the bag and place it on the bookcase. Over the course of the next day, most if not all of the toys have been strewn around the place again.

Feather-tailed mouse left, 'sparkly' to right

Unlike children, cats cannot be trained, at least easily, to pick up their toys at the end of the day. This is particularly given that 'the end of the day' is the start of a cat's day.

Mouse head

Today, I found one disembodied or beheaded mouse, together with all but one of Kiltie's toys.

Mouse body

Kiltie's favourite toy of all time is one of the first items each day to come out of the toy bag. It's a fuzzy sparkly ball that has a bounce no other ball seems able to duplicate. It's the only ball with which Kiltie will play fetch with her human; in fact, she insists on the game throughout the day.

Kiltie's favourite toy, her sparkle ball

Woe are the times when Kiltie loses her sparkle ball. For three years that was the case, until the landlord came in one day to check for air in the heating pipes and reflexively fished out Kiltie's toy from where it had become wedged.