Why Me?

Few things in life are as entertaining as watching a kitten at play.

The new kitten, growing like a weed with a sweet side, flies through the house at high speed, a small, black blur as stealthy as a guided missile and just as accurate. He leaps over sleeping dogs and other obstacles with ease, never slowing or hesitating. If the black dog should wake and show any interest, he simply rises up on his back feet, delivers a brazen and stinging swat to her muzzle, then takes off like a shot - he's long gone before she's had time to react and she gives me a bewildered and faintly resentful look, a long suffering look, as if to ask, Why me? I know the feeling and I gently remind her that once upon a time I got the same looks about her but empathy is not one of her stronger virtues and this attempt at reason produces the usual results - a yawn and an exquisitely bored expression. She lays down and puts her head on her paws, her eyes flutter and close and she drifts back to sleep. A few minutes later the kitten returns, strolling by and pretending not to notice her, as kittens will, but I can almost see the mischief in his eyes - he is full of long term plans to provoke her and lure her into a scolding. Her eyes open and narrow, she bares her teeth slightly and I speak both their names - the moment passes. She shifts position and moves a little distance away while he plays the unjustly accused, looking at me with wide and innocent eyes. He is then distracted by the arrival of the young black and white cat who unexpectedly emerges from under the bed - she sees him and immediately slinks down into attack mode and it becomes a question of who will initiate the first strike. The smart money is on him and true to form, after one obligatory circling, he leaps at her but she's played this part before and is ready for him. They go down together in a tangle of tails and whiskers and playful meows, interwoven so tightly that I can barely tell where one ends and the other begins. To an onlooker, the rules of the game are complicated and they appear to vary depending on who breaks away first. I intervene only if it takes a serious turn, which rarely happens, or if a bystander is threatened by all this commotion, which also rarely happens since the other cats want no part of this juvenile display and both dogs have learned that it's their best interest not to interfere. We all understand collateral damage and the laws of unintended consequences.

I leave them for the day, the dogs safely kenneled, and the cats scattered about here and there. I sometimes wonder what happens while I'm gone, whether they go their separate ways and mind their business or whether chaos breaks loose the moment the door closes behind me. Those beloved and innocent faces never tell.