Cat in a Box FINISHED STORY

Cat in a Box ©

By Michael Casey

You find with children that when they are very young sometimes they enjoy the packaging more than the toy itself. Well let me tell you, cats are no different. Totoro our cat is more dog than cat, she’ll fetch a scrunched up Aldi till receipt and return it to your feet, if I had a small ball she would no doubt do the same with that. Aldi feeds  the family and provides fun for our cat when she gets to chase and play with the till receipt.

We finally got a new living room carpet, and as a precaution I bought another cat toy to keep her from scratching the new carpet. She spends most of her time upstairs but when she is roaming all over the house she does admire the furniture, which is a posh way of saying she tries to scratch it. Then scolded by us she leaps on top of our fridge freezer which is about 2 metres tall, or 6 feet 6 if you use normal measures. I have a new fans in Venezuela and Kuwait so I have to use metric in my stories for their benefit, hello to Latvia too if you are reading this the latest story.

So while I was out shopping I stopped by the pet store in the market, high up on a shelf, higher than the top shelf for magazines in a newsagents I spotted a cat scratcher. If Totoro were with me she could have jumped up and knocked it down to me. Instead I had to go on tip toes and reach, I’m not tiny either, stretching is a pain for me as all my scar tissue hurts if I stretch, both my legs and on my chest where I have my pirate scar.

So I bought the scratcher and brought it home, do any of you mix up bought and brought? Lots of people do when they speak, if English is your 2^nd language it can really confuse, see the former Esol English Teacher in me coming out. So I came home and Totoro was delighted to play with the receipt for the cat scratcher. I took it out the box and clipped it together, it’s an arch with what looks like giant loo brush material on a base for the cat to scratch. Plus you insert something called catnip it’s like skunk/cannabis but for cats. No its not drugs before I get the RSPCA or Humane Society on my back, not to mention the drugs squad. Catnip is something cats go mad for, they will dig and scratch for it, on the cat scratcher, and NOT on your furniture or brand new carpet.

So much for the theory, our cat, our Totoro, did have a little go but as she is part retriever dog, she just ignored it and may have gone upstairs to sleep on or under one of the beds, just like Goldilocks.

So I gave her the box to play with, this was more pleasing to her, she dived in and forced the other side open. In and out like a jack in the box, half in and half out. I then had inspiration I threw the till receipt into the box, that was perfect or should I say purrfect, Totoro was delighted. She played the box like a pinball machine, knocking the paper back and forth and through the box. She dived in and out of the box, she was a pinball wizard, Elton John could have even have written a song about her.

Later when she had finished I hid the box behind our piano so that we could use it another day. This morning we got a bit more rope in the post to tie to the old scratch post, we used it like a skipping rope stretched the whole length of house upstairs from bedroom to bedroom along the landing. Totoro was not very good at Double Dutch if I’ve remembered the name of that skipping game, but she was good at chewing her new 15metres of rope. My wife wondered what we were all up to, so I told her I’d bought it for her, 50 Shades of Michael.

Later after breakfast I decided to get the box out and give Totoro more fun, only my wife had tidied it up, it was in the recycle bin, sometimes mums are no fun at all. I still have the rope though….