Something new

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
--Alexander Pope

"What in %$@! is this?"  First Loki, and then Muldoon, stare at the appalling structure, glancing at me briefly out of the corner of their eyes.  "Why would the old fool drag this piece of junk into our home?" exclaim my loving felines.

I flush with embarrassment.  Yet another small gift, another attempt to ingratiate myself -- another effort gone horribly awry.

Friday, I leave for two weeks of hiking in England.  So far as I know, the cats are not yet aware of my plans, although they have an uncanny ability to read my mind.  But I know that they'll be outraged at being left alone, with only a daily visit from a paid care provider.  Or -- if not outraged -- even worse, they will feel abandoned and forlorn.  So ... I thought I'd provide them something with which to amuse themselves while I was gone.  A kitty toy.  A play thing.

I consulted a pet store.  I ordered it specially made.  When I found, after it was constructed, that it was too big to bring home in my car, I even rented a van to transport it to my house.  I dragged it into a back room -- the very room from which I pen this report -- and positioned it as best I could.  It stands there now, off to one side.

I waited.

The cats drift in, separate but equal in their behavior.  They freeze.  "Something new!"  They look appalled.  They scan my eager face in an attempt to grasp the significance of this bizarre intrusion.  They drift quietly back out of the room.

Oh, they've come back several times since, because they like to keep track of my inscrutable behavior.  But they haven't given my gift another glance.  They tactfully tip toe past it, as though it weren't there, as though it weren't awkwardly defiling the austere interior design of the room.  Hoping I'll ignore their rejection, and will decide on my own to remove it from the house in the dead of the night.  "We'll just pretend this little incident never occurred, doesn't that sound best?"

They don't fool me.  If not tonight, tomorrow night.  I'll awake and hear hilarity downstairs -- cat-like shrieks and the sound of cat bodies bounding to the floor.  I won't even bother getting out of bed to see what's going on.  I'll know.  They'll be bouncing around on my gift like a couple of school boys on their mother's sofa.

But the next morning they'll be prim and circumspect.   They'll never confess to liking it.