When you’re home alone, and you don’t think about closing the bathroom door, it is one of the absolute certainties in life that you will hear a little thump on the living room floor, and a click click click, as the cat jumps down from his window perch, and pads along the hallway to come and stare at you while you’re sitting on the throne.  This is more important and entertaining to him than his usual pastime of licking his behind.

Someone wrote on Twitter the other day that if you get into a staring contest with a cat, and begin to wonder how intelligent it is, you can be assured that the cat is thinking the same thing about you.

We had an old tuxedo cat that lived to be about 18, and he was my infallible companion.  Followed me everywhere, and we somehow got into a game that was mutually fun.  He would lie down on the bed and eye me expectantly, knowing what was gonna happen next.  It started off with my lightly touching each of the pads on his four paws until he got pretty pissed off and grabbed me.  At the moment of the grab, I would toss him up in the air until he did a complete somersault.  He learned to enhance the thrill by going totally limp as soon as I grabbed him, so as to make it more graceful.  This went on for many years, until I buried him last year.  Cried like a baby.

Two of the surviving three (yes, three), seem to have wanted to train as his replacement, so I now have double the pleasure of being followed and pestered incessantly, and, yes, they are eager to learn the mattress games.  The third, who is the youngest and fattest, seems incapable of thinking about anything other than food.