Persephone is a really sweet, gentle cat, but she is a little lacking in the brains department. We enjoy watching her solve problems because we get to see her cognitive processes in action.

Persephone recently discovered that our "new" bed (which we've had for about a year) has a header board that is wide enough for her to walk along, providing a handy elevated link between the two filing cabinets. So now, every evening, Persephone runs along the headboard of the bed and plays "tiddles" with our fingers as she goes. It's really cute and she's very gentle, so there are no bites or scratches. She seems to enjoy it and keeps up a running commentary of mmmrrrps and brrrrreows as she goes.

The only problem for her is that there isn't room for her to turn around, so once she is committed to going in one direction, she has to continue in that direction, no matter what interesting things are happening behind her. She has not yet figured out that if she jumped onto the bed she could turn around, so until recently she has been going all the way to the end of the headboard, jumping on to the ground, running around the bed and jumping back onto the header board from the other end (by which time, whatever is interesting is long gone). We have tried to show her that she can turn around on the bed, but it obviously does not compute.

We thought she was doomed to forever run in circles, until she figured out - a couple of days ago, that she can go *backwards*. Yes, our little baby can now walk backwards. It is hysterical to watch because she inadvertently does a reasonable imitation of Michael Jackson moonwalking. One foot put very carefully behind the other foot and, of the four feet, only one is ever moved at a time. Of course, being a chatty girl, there is a special "I'm going backwards" noise that accompanies this (kinda like a truck beeping as it backs up).

Her friendliness and clowning around are the best sanity tonic I know!

Copyright © Tish Silberbauer
May 27, 2005