I remembered what I meant to post, so I'm writing it now and I can edit and post tomorrow. If I'm not stricken with empty brain syndrome (EBS (definitely do not confuse with IBS)) again.
My mom, my brother, my friends all have cats who aren't really into playing. Oh, they'll jolly around with the feather on a stick or fish on a line or cardboard on a wire (no, really) while you jiggle it. But once you stop making the toy move, they stop even feigning interest.
Ivan liked to play. Ivan liked to throw. Seriously. It was hard to accept that he did not actually have opposable thumbs so could truly throw like a major league pitcher throws a baseball. Somehow he still threw his toys and threw them hard. You'd hear a soft stuffed cigar wham! against the wall. Or, worse, against a window. Between the toys and him running full tilt to and then into the window, well, it's just a miracle I didn't have a local glass repair on speed dial. He only grew less aggressive with his toys in the last year of his life when his body and some serious drugs were really battling GI cancer. He still played, tho.
Torii is all about playtime. Her first favoredist toy after I adopted her was a seed. An old seed, probably a green bean. She would bat it around, of course, but she also carried it from room to room in her mouth. I took more than one shower with Seed. That's what we called it, beeteedubs -- Seed. I got her a six-pack of brightly colored felt meeces that Christmas (I got her the day before Thanksgiving). Regularly readers here know she abandoned all interest (more or less) in purple and blue and green meeces when she got to play with real live squeaking mice on the Night of the Rodents. She is quite the snob now and only wants toy meeces which looks like they could suddenly run and squeak on their own.
I found a furry mousie (the singular of meeces) that had a squeaker. I absolutely refuse to get it. It looks too real (the current approved meeces still have blue or pink tails) and I don't want to hear more squeaking. Because of course my wee demon has a very small high pitched squeaky sort of mew.
She hasn't forgotten her roots, tho. In addition to the acceptable meeces, she also has pasta. Yes. Rotini to be exact. See, a couple of weeks ago I was going to make pasta salad. Enough for a couple of days. I measured out rotini into a bowl while waiting for the water to boil. And because I know what a pest she is trying to steal rotini to play with, I put the bowl full of pasta on top of the fridge.
And the water came to a good rolling boil.
And I'm a klutz.
It felt almost like stop motion animation. I could see each frame of action as I knocked it just so and it fell. I couldn't stop it, tho.
It was a very cheap (4 for $1) bowl from some dollar store. My mother gave me a set years and years ago for Christmas because she felt they were just the absolute best bowls in the history of bowls. They are a nice size, not too big not too small. But they're made of the thinnest cheapest shatteriest faux-porcelain ever. I broke one maybe fifteen years ago. And then another a couple of weeks ago. (Proving they really are sturdier than you'd think.)
It shattered. I doubt there was even one piece longer than 1/8" and most were far smaller. So there were shards of bowl and what I can only think of as bowl grit everywhere. And there was rotini -- less pasta on the floor than bowl bits, but still a lot.
And of course an insane wee demon cat trying to get in the middle of it all to play while I tried to get out of it to grab the broom. Fortunately I hadn't taken off das Boot walking cast or I would have shredded my feet in just the two steps from the kitchen to the living room.
Every day I sweep up more little bowl bits that somehow hid under the fridge and then, I dunno, crawled out into the open at night? And every day Torii has another piece of rotini, probably also from under the fridge. She plays with them like Seed. I haven't named them; I throw them away, assuming I get them away from her.
There was a piece of uncooked salad rotini in the shower this morning.
She got to it before I could grab it. I heard her batting it across the hardwood floors. It is a distinctive sound, dry pasta on wood. I saw her jogging toward the bedroom in the way that I know means she had a toy in her mouth.
So I need to remember to check my bed for stray pasta tonight.
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