Cats Can Amaze You…Part Two

Meet Calypso, the other cat in our amusing duo. She sports a sleek, solid dark-grey fur across her entire body with the exception of her tail, which is covered with slightly darker rings running its entire length. She is every bit the female, from the quiet way she pads around the house to the way she sits and daintily preens herself. One might look at her and think “what a sweet little thing,” and they would be right, but that is only one side of her. Hang around long enough and you’ll soon discover her secret life: that of a thief!

You probably think that people “our age” are some what odd to keep stuffed animals around, but we do. There, our secret’s out. Our office is sprinkled with the fuzzy little critters adorning our desks and shelves. They fill the room with joy and just plain fun. But that suddenly changed several weeks ago.

I’d walked into our home office to prepare my notes for the day only to discover my beautiful stuffed moose, a treasure I’d brought back from Sweden, in a mangled heap on the floor, one leg slightly chewed on. Before then, it had been sitting serenely in its place on a shelf across from my desk. A moment later both our cats strolled into the room. When questioned about their involvement in the matter, Hunter purred around my legs as Calypso continued on to her food dish.

From then on it became a daily occurrence to find the poor moose stuffed between bookshelves, hiding behind the trash can, or resting below the desk. There was no where I could put the moose that it wouldn’t be moved. Finally, I retired it to the closet, not once witnessing the offender.

My husband’s stuffed Catbert became the thief’s next target. The same things happened to poor Catbert that had befallen my moose! After a time, Catbert had to be retired to the top drawer of our filing cabinet. Still no thief caught in the act. One by one all the other stuffed animals in the room became targets, each one also chewed on, until only a single black teddy bear with red hearts on its paws remained out. This sat securely snuggled between the filing cabinet and my husband’s computer monitor. Over time, it had been pushed back so far that we’d forgotten it was there, but the “thief” knew and it became its undoing.

One afternoon, not long after my husband had returned from work, he went about checking his e-mail. He was not more than five minutes into this when a dark object streaked into the room, landed on his desk, plunged between filing cabinet and monitor, and just as quickly flew to the floor. My husband and I both turned to see our little thief, Calypso, sitting on the rug, bear in teeth. Setting the bear down on the rug before her, she looked quietly up at us. We questioned her concerning this unladylike behavior, but she just smiled back up at us. This thief wasn’t talking!