My kitten has developed into the equivalent of a human toddler, complete with escape-games. Her latest trick involves listening for human activity by the doors. When an outside door opens, even if she was two rooms away when hand touched door, she makes a great leap for freedom, eluding both her mother’s blockading body and the ponderous (and usually full-handed) human whose opposable thumbs make door-opening possible. Usually I can drop whatever I’m holding and catch her before she’s gone too far, as she will find a fascinating insect within five feet and examine it so closely that she’s unaware of my approach until her feet leave the ground under the impetus of my hands under her body. Then, of course, she turns around and snuggles against my chest, purring at top volume, as if she had planned all along to be caught and carried back.
Today, though, it backfired on her a little. She executed her leap-and-escape, bounding around the end of the house. There was tree directly along her trajectory, which she failed to notice, running up it to about human head height. There she stopped. With claws firmly sunk into the bark, she looked around, and her eyes got very wide. You could almost see the thoughts running through her head. “Wait…when did running turn into climbing? And how did I get up this high without jumping? And…and…where’s Mama?“ The vocalized result was a single squeaky “mew“, as she dropped to the ground and ran at top speed for the same door out of which she had escaped.
Which was closed. So she dove into the hostas growing beside it, vanishing entirely. But I had seen where she went, and reached in to separate leaves until a black kitten head with enormous green eyes peered out at me from the jungle. She leapt into my reaching hands, and out of them again as soon as I had the door open, to race to her mama. There ensued much feline conversation, licking, and ultimately purring. Once baby was calm, Sophia looked up at me, slowly closing and opening her eyes. “You make a lap for yours” she told me. “You should try licking him when he’s upset. It really does work wonders.”