pampered pets

We watched the second part of The Secret Life of Kittens last night, and once again felt inadequate that ours were provided with such a grotty selection of things to play with.  One of the TV kittens had an elaborate wooden box with round holes in it and balls inside. The game was to get the balls out of the box through the holes, which the kitten duly did.  Another had a purpose built climbing frame running all round the room, with ramps.  And one had an iPad.  Seriously, there was an app for a coloured butterfly to flutter around the screen while the kitten batted at it.

Our kittens have the coloured bouncy balls that came with them from the rescue centre as their only worldly possessions, and some soft miniature footballs which they enjoy, and some hollow balls with little bells inside, which they like playing with although when they invented a game involving the jingling balls and a cardboard box it sounded as though we had a Morris man held captive in the corner of the study.  Apart from the balls they have had to make do with cardboard boxes, loo roll tubes, and pieces of newspaper and egg boxes that they have appropriated, plus climbing on and vandalising various bits of furniture.  And hunting spiders.

They might like an iPad.  Mr Fluffy came and poked at my tablet, while I was busy doing something else, and managed to switch from the Kermode and Mayo Film Review programme to the BBC pashtun language service.  He liked the kittens on the television as well, and spent some of the episode balanced on the TV cabinet in front of the screen to get closer to them, occasionally swiping at a tail.  Our Ginger only took notice when a ginger cat appeared on the screen, at which point he rushed up to the television and stood in front of it looking worried, in an Oh god, not more strange cats in the house sort of way.

The kittens on the television disappeared behind the furniture and climbed the curtains, but did not emerge covered in dust and fluff the way ours do.  I suppose that when your living room is going to be on national television you have a good go at cleaning it beforehand.  And one reason people buy their kittens expensive toys is that they don't like having their house littered with broken cardboard boxes and the chewed up remains of loo roll insides and egg boxes, though mainly it's the urge to buy stuff.

The voiceover in the programme referred to the human owners as mum and dad.  That's just creepy. They are not babies.  They are cats.