Stringy

    The poor Monkey. Amelia the cat, aka The Monkey (or this week, YippieYippieYippieYippie for some reason my brain has yet to explain to me) has to put up with a very slow-witted roommate. It took me years to figure out that she might like playing with string. I think that this is because when Alice and I used to try to play with Alice's older (now late and lamented) cat Madeline with string she showed little interest unless we swung a yoyo towards her so that she could bat it away. So maybe we decided that the legend about cats playing with string was unfounded. Or maybe I'm dumb as a brick.
    I did however eventually figure out that Amelia dug string if only after 6 years or so. But what I thought was that she liked string-like or stringy things, so a bootlace or yarn would be just as good. And often she will play with a bootlace with a fair degree of abandon. In the hot months, I prefer the bootlace because it's brown and ought to show up better against the white bedspread than the white string does. But no!
    Yesterday, Amelia was nagging me to be played with, and I kept getting out the bootlace and she kept ignoring it. So finally I got out the string (which is better hidden, since she could actually eat it and die). Instant rekittenization! She was enthralled. So maybe she got bored with the bootlace, or maybe she's scared of the aglets, or maybe she wants to show off that her eyesight is better than I thought. Regardless, I've learned that stringy isn't good enough; sometimes there's no substitute for string!