Category: Cats

Cats, of several kinds

When I was hanging laundry upstairs, I heard a rattling noise from below. I casually thought our garden cats were poking at plastic bags full of dried leaves, so didn’t go down in a hurry. But what I saw in the back yard was…

	One day in December, I heard a rattling noise, so I looked at our back yard from the window. ‘Hey you guys what’s that sound?’
	Kogu: What?
	Kuro: What?
	Kogu: We aren’t doing anything.
	Even if they say so…
	Kuro is playing with the roots of a silk tree he pulled out from the planter.
	Kogu sits down on a flat planter like it’s a pillow. (He doesn’t use it as a toilet.)
	Kuro: See! we aren’t doing anything bad.
	Then, they left.

I apologize for the fuzzy pictures: they were taken through the window.

Kuro seems to love to play with soil. There are many pots where the plants inside dried up in the last summer’s heat. He rolls them around, pulls out the plants, and kicks the lump of roots instead of a ball. Mainly Kuro does this, but I saw Kogu also doing it following Kuro’s example. Naturally, the towel we put in the box Kuro and Kogu use as a bed is very dirty. Our house cat, Kyoku, used to be a half-outside cat and slept in the house at night, but I don’t remember him making a mess because of dirt. (However, he makes a mess on the floor for other reasons…)

In Kyoku’s case, the toy he unexpectedly loves is a tied-up plastic bag from the supermarket.

When we throw the bag it makes a rustling noise, and he runs and chases it through the living room and kitchen. He also likes wine corks, but we feel the bags keep him excited for a longer time. Because of that, there is a large quantity of corks and supermarket bags around his handmade cat ‘tower’ (it’s made from cardboard and includes a scratching post.)

As we love cats, the dream ‘we want to live in a nice house with a beautiful garden’ goes far away. Probably it’s a hope that can’t come true without effort and patience…

–YS, 10 December 2005

10 December 2005