Don’t touch that “back” button on the browser, you are exactly where you are meant to be: welcome to TheScratchingPad.com.
There comes a time in every young cat’s life when he has to strike out on his own and define a domain. Have no fear, I’m not going to get too big for my furry boots.
While I was planting a pee in my people’s garden the other day, fertilizing the new sedum, I decided to apply some wisdom recently gathered from my male person: drastic, root-pulling change is good. (Guy cats take pretty long pees so I had some quality time to develop this idea.)
Boo has been redoing the little garden at the front of the house. A nice neighbor lady named Yvonne offered my people the chance to go dig holes in another lady’s yard and take some of her plants away. From what I can figure, this is yet another form of potlatch or recycling – humans customs cats generally approve of as it brings new smells and marking opportunities into our world. So my people came back with a whole bunch of mostly very tall flower plants. That seemed cool and I was ready to assist…I love digging holes with the folks, it is excellent exercise for the tree climbing muscles, gives me a chance to contribute to a prairie jungle garden for Alex, and, if you hit me at the right time of day, I’m happy to place little nuggets or pools at the bottom.
What ensued was a shocking wholesale destruction of the front bed to prepare for the new plants. But from the big mess a new garden is rising…albeit slowly, you can depend on my folks to do these things one step at a time. They think of it as savoring the process…the word slow keeps popping in my head, though…
Creative destruction. When you think about it, this is something at which cats are quite advanced. Under our miraculous paws, for example, a simple couch back becomes a display of tantalizing, dangling string play toys, papers stacked neatly on the study floor become a visible metaphor for autumn leaves scattered on a forest floor, and a litter box – once the litter itself is removed (preferably with a brisk, 360-degree, spin-dig-fling motion) – can become a nice place to curl up and consider the fundamentals of life. My cat pal Alex has even earned herself the nickname Entropy for her extraordinary reorganizations of our male person’s study.
Anyway, looking around my world, I decided it was the blog that needed a little creative destruction. So, out with the Garp and the pretty colors…down to basics. Like the garden at the front of the house, though, this is a work in progress. I’ll be sticking to what I know best – kibble, catnip and observations on my greater ecosystem, inclusive of human antics, all from a feline perspective. But I’m considering how best to dig a few new holes or add a few new fertilizing elements in my efforts to inform and comment on my world.
