The delectable tabby Buffy is only just past kittenhood and still retains one or two acrobatic kitty habits and skills. It's such fun - as I can well remember myself - to have such springy ability as to reach the parts and places that other moggies cannot reach. She has been climbing the keeper's curtains of late, leaving tell-tale zips of torn velvet as evidence. Keeper takes all this in his stride, as a price worth paying to rescue the angel mogg from a life of torment.

The other evening our keeper was slouched dozing in the armchair, half watching some soap sludge on the tragic lantern, when the Avon chimes rang out. Struggling to his feet he waded through into the hallway and swung open the door to greet the night - ziltch. No one. My keeper shrugged his shoulders and sat back down. Immediately DING DONG. Repeat step 1.

This farce continued for ten minutes until an infuriated keeper squeezed past my lookout post/ chest of drawers to lean over, pull back the nets and glance out sideways to the doorstep, illumined from the hall through the door's leaded lights. I joined him in this whacky vigil, atop my tassled cushion on the drawers. After a minute the oddest sight transpired.

The "cripple" Buffy appeared on the step and sprang the full 5 feet up to the white bell button on the door jam and, in mid-flight, jabbed it with her right paw - DING DONG - before twisty-turny falling on her feet and scarpering quickly under the nearby bushes.

"The cheeky little madam" commented my keeper, " I wonder where she learnt that trick". I cat sniggered in the disguise of sniffles.

The next morning our keeper was standing in the kitchen, busy grilling some toast, whistling away to himself in some jolly mood. He was wearing his rather tatty blue towelling dressing gown, tied closed at the waist. He is quite attached to that old robe because some ex-girlfriend called it his " huggy bear suit". Sad the way human males cling desperately onto lost loves. Some mother issues there, me thinks.

I was looking up at him pleadingly, unblinkingly, and giving him a now-and-again short meeow from my squat on the tiles, half-expecting a corner piece of the Allinsons to fall like manna from heaven when done ( to a blackened crisp, as usual ). Suddenly, flashing across my unblinking vision at human chest height, like some mini trapeze artist in full flight and all a blur, was the open-legged outstretched form of a cat who had sprung from atop the upright fridge-freezer standing 6ft across the tiles.

Next thing a truly terrible piercing human scream of agony filled the kitchen as I witnessed the cat - now indentified as that rascal Buffy - stuck onto my keeper's blue back like spidercat and as if by superglue. Only I knew that she was clinging on by four sets of razor sharp bird-killers, sunk like drawing pins through the huggy bear suit and into keeper's delicate back skin. There followed another blur, this time of blue towelling as keeper swung violently around, cursing and spitting as he instinctively tried to shake off the 4 X 4 sharp surprise attack.

Buffy flew again, this time downwards and out of the kitchen to land awkwardly with an thud on the living room carpet. She scuttled under a table in the corner and gazed back up in shock.

" Oh God, it's you Buffy! " lamented keeper. ." Oh God I'm so sorry baby, I didn't realize."

She had twisted her left hind leg on landing and later on was transported to the vets for a check-up. Luckily it was only a bad bruise. So she has lately been sharing basket with the good Cathead, who spends most of the night licking the sore leg until the tortoise shell fur is saliva wet, flattened and of a darker shade. Buffy stares meaningfully back into my eyes and licks my cat head, especially the lump on the top of my cat skull left behind by the drilling at the animal lab.

I'm sure she knows I'm not all cat you know, ok she's affectionate in her way, but there is a slight waryness there still, and she cannot outstare me I notice. She's still a little freaked from the kitchen incident, which I sense has re-triggered trauma memory of the abuse she received as a kitten.
trauma still there, poor Buffy
Time and Cathead will heal but

I think her days of imitating circus acts are over.

Yours
CATHEAD