cat tales

The kittens finally went to sleep.  The cool kitten stretched out in debonair fashion on the back of the sofa, the energetic kitten curled up on the seat, and Mr Fluffy made himself into a neat china cat under a coffee table.  The spell was broken by the sound of Our Ginger squawking at the glass hall door to be let in.  I went to open the door, followed by the scampering of twelve little white socks as the kittens came to greet their hero, in from the wilds of the garden.  Our Ginger was a little damp, and had to be coaxed past his bevy of admirers and up the stairs.  He is now resting his chin heavily on my right wrist, making it rather difficult to type, and a minute ago he pressed a key and Blogger asked if I really wanted to leave the site.  Ernest Hemingway famously had cats, and goodness knows how he got anything written.

Earlier today two of the kittens lay at one end of the kitchen table, while Our Ginger lay at the other end, and the cool kitten who has still not quite mastered the bend round the edge of the table from the current kitchen chairs lay on the seat of the chair.  It was not awfully restful because every so often one of the kittens on the table would go to Our Ginger's end of the table and prod him, and Our Ginger would hiss or take a ritual swipe, or the cool kitten would get down from his chair and go and play with Our Ginger's tail which Our Ginger had left carelessly hanging over the edge of the table.  I, caught in the middle, was trying to keep the peace while researching open gardens looking for somewhere to visit with a college friend.  We manage to go garden visiting most summers, and have been meaning to go this year since May, only she had a cold, I had a cold and then her daughter had a baby.

The sitting room curtains are now drawn away from the sofa to make climbing them from the back of the sofa seem less attractive.  One is tied to a door handle with a proper curtain tie, complete with huge tassel, supplemented with the last of the kitchen string.  I ordered some more string on Amazon, since I like to have some in the kitchen drawer in case I suddenly want to make a steamed pudding or something, and was amazed to see that a reel from one supplier had one hundred and thirty Amazon reviews.  Who on earth posts reviews of string on Amazon?  No wonder we are all so time-poor in the modern age, if that's what we're spending our days doing.  One of the reviews did simply ask how much there was to be said about string, but several were glowing.  It had a lovely texture, apparently.

We do not have a water pistol, so the Systems Administrator has been using the pastry brush to flick water from a glass at the energetic kitten when he starts climbing the curtain.  I'm not sure it's helping, since when I saw the technique in action all that happened was that the energetic kitten partially lost his grip and dangled from the curtain by two claws while looking flustered.  He's probably more likely to pull threads that way than if he hung on and spread the weight over all four feet.

We now have all three kittens lying on the hearth rug, while Our Ginger spills into my lap, snoring gently.  It's an advance, compared to the first time we showed him the kittens, and several times after that, when he refused to look at them and then howled to be taken out of the room.

Addendum  They fidget about faster than I can type.  It's now Mr Fluffy's turn to lie on the back of the sofa.