Kitten in the Hood

Shattering the peace of a late Sunday afternoon, the kitten careens around the corner at breakneck speed, loses her footing on the linoleum and skids like a hockey puck into the bottom of the refrigerator.  Unfazed by the indignity of the landing, she recovers quickly, scrambling to her feet with an indignant squeak and setting her sights on a new target – the previously sleeping tabby, now in full alert mode. Forewarned is forearmed and the elder cat watches the kitten’s stalking approach intently.  When only a few feet separate them, she gives out a malignant hiss, defiantly arches her back and lets loose with a blood chilling cat scream.  I imagine it’s the feline equivalent of “Bring it!” and the kitten – young and wild as homemade sin but not stupid – feigns a sudden disinterest and smoothly changes direction.  It’s like Nascar meets The Wild One and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the tabby thinks she’s Marlon Brando.

The kitten spends the next several minutes racing from one end of the house to the other with no obvious goal except mild mayhem.  The older cats watch from respectful distances, none inclined to join in or interfere.  Perhaps they’re remembering their own frantic kittenhoods, I think, or maybe they just find it entertaining, it’s hard to tell since their faces give away so little.   Inevitably the kitten gets bored with these solo, enthusiastic sprints and makes a final run culminating in a fatal error of judgement when she detours under the dining room only to crash very nearly head on with one of the black cats.  There is a ferocious, fur-flying but mercifully short battle and then they go their separate ways.  Not long after the kitten returns, strolling casually across the room as if she hadn’t a care in the world.  She curls up next to the sleeping dachshund  and calmly begins to knead his exposed belly.  He wakes enough to notice, gives her an affectionate nose nudge and laying one shaggy little paw across her neck, goes back to sleep.

The sun goes down and the day’s last light is fading fast.  There may be madness and chaos outside but for a little time, there is peace here.  It won’t last as long as I’d like – to paraphrase Robert Redford, the kitten has “the attention span of a lightning bolt” but you take what you can get when you can get it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.