Fun With Cats

Jenna has always been sort of a... prickly cat. She will snuggle up and get a nice bit of a pet from someone, purring like an engine, then suddenly she'll hiss or nip (non-contact only-- she's way too much of a wimp to actually attack) and run away for no apparent reason. But she's not a cat that plays very much, in large part because she's getting old, but also, I think, because she considers it beneath her. You can get her pretty wound up with one of those feather toys that has mylar strips in the middle of it sometimes, but even that isn't foolproof. Sometimes she just sits there and lets you shake it, poke her with it, and generally make a fool out of yourself while she acts like you don't even exist.

So it's always a cause for celebration when we discover something that really gets her going... even if it's making her mad. We've recently invented a new game called "The Thing Under the Covers" that makes me laugh hard enough to cry.

Like many of the good things in life, "The Thing Under the Covers" was discovered quite by accident. Ash and I were laying in bed one night, reading. Our big poofy down comforter was pulled up nice and high to keep us toasty warm, and Jenna had wedged herself inbetween our legs at the bottom of the bed. One of us-- me, I think-- moved a foot around lazily under the covers, and Jenna started to do this weird little moaning growl. The more the foot moved, the more upset she got, until she finally attacked, biting and yowling. When that didn't kill the Thing Under the Covers, she got angrier and angrier, until she had to run out of the room while Ash and I laughed ourselves sick. The thing that makes it so funny is that she doesn't get this worked up about anything, ever. Not even the Stripey Catnip Sock.

What do people who don't have cats do for entertainment?