Wild Child

Here's something I've noticed - if you follow the noise, the panicky little footsteps that skid to a sudden stop and the inevitable hiss, the clatter of curtains falling or a tabletop being unceremoniously cleared - in other words, if you follow the mayhem, at its center there is always a small gray kitten.  I'm beginning to suspect it may be in her genes.

Not that the house was all that serene before her arrival - cats being territorially sensitive and in some cases, outright bullies - but it does seem to me that armed conflict has escalated and peace talks appear to be stalled.  I hear her little pigeon-like trill - I've come to think of it as a kind of Emergency Broadcast System warning - and I ready myself for whatever small chaos is about to be unleashed.  The older, established cats are weary of this nonsense, this wild child in their midst, they have no patience with her and no interest in her frantic games so they will only engage her in self defense.  As if to compensate for her diminutive size, their submissiveness brings out her assertiveness - she pounces, they run, she chases - and the house rings with unhappy wails.

She is a small cat, double pawed in front and low to the ground - I've sometimes wondered if somewhere in her history there might not have been some Munchkin blood - her body tilts slightly down so that her shoulders are not aligned with her hips but her lack of physical stature is deceptive.  She can, as the saying goes, rock and roll with the best of them.  

At other times, when I discover her peacefully curled up and asleep with the little dachshund, I wonder if she has an evil twin.

Beware of masks.