Kittens are Fun Wrapped in Fur

It had been a long time since we'd had a kitten around the house and we'd forgotten what that was like. What a wonderful thing to rediscover! Kittens like to play -- all the time. They don't really need to sleep, although they do quite a lot of that, too, but playing is always the right thing to do. Anything that is small and not attached to anything else is a potential toy, which means that any small object that is no longer where Carol or I thought we had seen it last is probably somewhere on the floor, or under a couch. Though he wasn't very big, there would soon come a time where nothing was safe, no matter how high above the floor it rested. He was always testing his limits to see how high he could jump. He couldn't quite make it to the top of the kitchen counter yet, but you could see him thinking about it and biding his time and practicing his skills.

He soon found a favorite toy among those we offered him, a tiny mouse-shaped thing made from some sort of fur, probably rabbit. He batted that little thing all over the house. The kitchen soon became the favorite playground, probably because when Carol and I are home we spend quite a bit of time there cooking, washing dishes, making lunches in the morning, and dinner in the evening, plus that's where Quint's water and food dishes are. More and more the little mouse thing would wind up under the stove, which meant that either Carol or I had to get down on our hands and knees and poke a stick around under the stove to retrieve it. It got so bad that Quint was spending a good part of his day sitting in front of the stove waiting for someone to come and get his toy for him. I gave that problem a bit of thought and then contrived a sort of shield that would fit across the front of the stove to keep the toy out from under it. It was quite an effective solution, but sometime thereafter the tiny mouse thing disappeared and, though we searched, we have never been able to find it since, so we've had to move on to other less satisfactory toys. I suspect that someday, when we are doing a bit of spring cleaning, we will find the little mouse thing. I'm pretty certain that Quint will remember it and be very happy to have it to play with once again. But in the meantime, he was running and jumping and eating and sleeping and playing and growing stronger and longer. All of that was fun. It was fun for him to do and fun for us to watch. Being the clever kitten that he is, he found ways to get Carol and I to play with him. The best games are those where all three of us are crawling around on the kitchen floor chasing one of his toys. Yep, kittens are pure fun!