Feline Assistance Goes Awry

It is seldom in this house that anything at all is done without feline assistance.  This has been particularly true since we have had temporary cats in the formerly cat-free zone; these guys, who are wonderful cats, belong to friends who got divorced and lost their house.  Grout, one of the temporaries, helped me sort my mail yesterday, and Spackle would very, very much like to be hired to keep the tablecloth from coming off the dining-room table.  She has been persuaded to guard David's duffle bag of lighting equipment instead.  Mora has not yet seen a task worthy of her, but I am sure the time will come.  Ninja and Nuit downstairs and Saffron upstairs help make beds.  Cassie watches everybody eat and wants to clean plates.  She also helps pack suitcases, and she helps me cook by trying to clean up anything that I drop on the floor and watching the whole process narrowly.  Naomi takes on a purely supervisory role and makes a lot of suggestions.  Arwen, like Mora, has not really found many tasks that are worthy of her talents, but she will often help hold a book or magazine open or make a person rest by holding said person firmly in place.  She's also a good masseuse, having large paws and a dedicated stomping routine.

This afternoon I was sorting laundry on top of the dryer.  There were upstairs towels and downstairs towels.  Nuit leapt upon the dryer and flung herself onto the first towel that I put in the downstairs pile.  I accordingly put the other downstairs stuff on the open door of the dryer.  For some time she showed no interest in the upstairs pile, and I became careless, piling the washcloths high.  Suddenly she tried to head-butt the washcloths.  I put my hand out to stop her, and she banged her head into it with considerable force.  The towel she was sitting on slid off the dryer; it vanished between dryer and wastebasket, and Nuit landed plumb in the wastebasket, compressing several weeks' worth of dryer lint.  She levitated out again before I could even draw breath to laugh, and vanished into the back of the basement.  I put the towel back into the laundry monster, removed the rest of the towels to their destined storage places, and went to find Nuit.  She was washing her face on the edge of the uninstalled Jacuzzi.  Fortunately she didn't bear me any ill will.  I suspect that she thought she had offended the washcloths and they had shoved her off the dryer.

Ninja, who witnessed the entire thing, was more upset about it than she was and insisted on helping to wash her.

Pamela