It is really amazing that a feralish street cat loves his toys so much. LOVES...his....toys!!!!
Well, I did invite them into the cortile when they were all kittens together....and I did my best....an aluminum foil ball, a leash attached to the side of a kennel...(a snake!!)...and then there were the side ties of the cushion underneath the kennel...(more snakes!). They rolled and chased and batted and threw, jumped and rolled.
Now, the clowns have a plethora of "fancy" toys...rope mice, rubber mice, fuzzy mice, fuzzy balls, sparkly balls, jingly balls, rubber fish (supposedly good for their teeth, they have now de-nosed and de-tailed two of them) and tunnels. Sometimes I haul out the laser pointer!
But Scruff. Ah, my Scruffy boy, my sweet, fluffy Scruffy boy. What am I going to do with him?
Scruff has asthma...a rather severe case, the worst of this clown troupe. I have finally figured out a medicine regimen for him that keeps him breathing and cough free most of time. And...when he isn't cough free I worry myself sick.
The sound is godawful. What is it like? Like wet sand heaving, like gravel being shoveled....from deep, deep within his tiny body. Unlike Imp, who is smart enough to know his limits, who is tuned into his physical needs enough to understand that he has to "sit this one out" and go rest a while.....Scruff wants to party till he drops. He won't stop. He is addicted, obsessed, completely unable to make himself stop. He is a mousie junkie.
He loves them all, but most especially a fuzzy gray one and a fuzzy gray and white one. When all his clown companions have decided it's nap time, he is still flipping and flopping and jumping and leaping and smacking and chasing. The only way to stop him is to take it away. Which I have done. While he stares at me. With BIG, SAD aqua blue eyes. WHY????? Why you take my mousie????
The weather has suddenly changed to Autumn overnight. It was 100 degrees one day and in the 70s the next. With that, the clowns not only decided they were ravenous banshees, but they also decided it was time to party like it's climate change apocalypse.
Scruff is the ONLY one who just.....will....not....stop. Not...stop. Can't...stop. Can't...stop. Can't stop, can't stop, can't stop!!
Serendipity! He managed to slam the white and gray beloved ball of fluff under the dispenza (pantry) in the kitchen today. It was a grand slam, way back to wall, forceful slap and he tried and tried to make his little kitty arms longer but they could not stretch to the back wall no matter what.
The gray mouse is in my pocket. He knows it, too. He is not a stupid cat. He knows, in fact, where every one of his mousies are....I know he knows. He gets VERY excited when someone decides to retrieve one. So, he is watching me...carefully. Mousie? Mousie? I know you're there........please come out!
When he stabilizes, when we all get accustomed to the sudden switch from full-blast furnace summer to cool Fall, when he stops coughing every damned day......mousie will return. And not a moment before.
I love you, Scuffy.
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