A few years ago my partner and I had a black cat named Elvis, a tuxedo tabby named Darrin and another black cat named Tasha. Elvis was not the brightest.

Almost daily Darrin and Tasha would chase each other from one end of the house to the other at breakneck speed. When they went through whatever room Elvis was napping in, he'd just keep sleeping. Seemed to be oblivious to the whole thing. Then a 30 seconds or so after Tasha and Darrin had raced through the room he's suddenly sit up and look around confusedly trying to figure out where they were. He'd also start off in one direction, very determined like he knew exactly what he was doing then after a minute or so he'd stop dead, look around and then wander off. Cracked me up every time. Chased bugs like that too. Jumped for the spot the bug was a minute after it had moved on.

The best was one afternoon when my partner and I were wrapping X-mas presents and talking about which cat would remove an X-mas bow from it's head first. I wish we'd had a camera and I'd have sent this in to America's Funniest Home Videos. We decided it would probably take Elvis the longest. So we took on the of those sticky backed bows and stuck it to the top of his head while he was sitting on the arm of the couch. He jumped a bit, then slumped down on the couch arm and began bobbing his head back and forth like a pigeon!!! We were both laughing so hard it took us a bit to remove the bow, which Elvis never did figure out how to remove.

Copyright © Raven Tompkins
October 5, 2000