Salamander
Fire Walking

One good thing about the Losing My Driver's License Incident was that it caused The Prof and I to once again do a thorough under-the-furniture seek and destroy mission. This means that once again we have found about two dozen of Adolescent Cat from Hell's toys that were strewn throughout the apartment. The Prof put the toys in the old TV stand, behind the glass door. ACfH, evidencing far more intelligence than I would have credited her with, sits and stares through the glass at the toys. She doesn't mew, she doesn't reach out and try to touch them, she doesn't even look particularly pitiful. She just likes looking at her toys.

Last night, feeling a tad guilty about it, I opened the door so that she had access. I told her she could pick out ONE toy to play with. She walked up to the cabinet, stood up on her hind legs with her front legs on the shelf where the toys were, and ... just looked. I moved a couple of the toys closer to her, trying to reassure her that it was OK to take one, but she would have none of it. She was only window shopping.

Which didn't stop her from playing fetch with me for 45 minutes when I selected a fuzzy mouse the color of her coat from the cabinet and threw it across the room. She uses the new furniture as a launching point for attacking the mice, preferring to go over the sofa and leap rather than simply go around it. Her ability to jump is becoming more and more impressive; she easily covered in excess of six feet during many of her jumps last night during the game of fetch. I probably should not be encouraging this exercise as it will only make her more dangerous. But I love watching her soar.