Scatty-cat

Today

On facebook today, my niece wondered how long it would be before her kitten got bored with attacking the Christmas tree baubles. It's interesting; much of the charm of kittens is their enthusiasm for chasing and attacking dangly things. Then we get upset when they can't resist a huge source of dangly things which we have created.

In My Day

When Abby was a kitten she just loved to attack the Christmas tree. She raced round and round, smacking every bauble within reach. I made sure that the bottom row, so to speak, wasn't made of glass and tried to relax. Paul had other ideas and kept trying to stop her. Eventually she pulled a bauble right off the tree. It was a tiny cylindrical painted wooden Santa. Paul expressed exasperation.

"Let her keep it," I said to Paul "She's broken the string anyway." Abby loved this toy and played with it much over the next few months.

At that time, she was rather the dominant cat; Arietty kept out of the way as much as possible and often had to be coaxed indoors. On one occasion Abby was playing with the father Christmas across the floor while Arietty looked on from a perch on the arm of the sofa. When Abby lost interest, Arietty got down and began to bat this toy about. Boy! Did she know what she was doing! She smacked and jumped and clawed at this rodent substitute. She gave us a virtuoso display of vicious merciless killing. It was like a kung-fu master showing a child how it was done.

Abby watched, appalled and fascinated, and never again dared to challenge Arietty's authority. Arietty became number one cat from that day on. And Abby has ignored every Christmas tree since, perhaps because it reminds her of her humiliation.

Actually I blame Phillipa for having put the Christmas tree up so early.