Alien astronauts

Sometimes I write down little notes to remind me of things I want to write about; this morning I woke up early and wrote on the notepad by my bed, "cats are aliens." This had to do with something Bob said the other night, something about cats only visiting this planet, I think, but I can't remember now what the whole story was . . . Oh, it wasn't that cats were aliens, exactly, it was more like "cats are astronauts."

The cats tend to hang out at the windows, either the back screen/sliding-glass door or the front window where my desk is, or at night, the bedroom windows. I was sitting at my desk the other night and both cats were sitting in the window, and Bob came down to go out to the car for something, and as soon as he started for the front door, Pyewacket was down and next to him like a shot, ready for an opportunity to run outside.

We started talking about how the house is the cats' universe--they've heard rumors of a world outside, but they've only seen it through the windows. It might as well be a television show. Except for Pyewacket, she's escaped a half dozen times for brief periods, and Bob said she's like an astronaut, exploring new worlds, being brave and venturing out into space, where no cat has gone before.

Dinah, on the other hand, has never tried to get out the front door. Her avenues of exploration are smaller--the basement, the garage, the half bath. She's more interested in interior exploration. She'd be the explorer rather than the astronaut, going to Africa or Antarctica while Pyewacket went to Venus and Jupiter.

Although, now that I think about it, maybe he did say, "Cats are aliens." Something about them having come to earth millions of years ago and gotten a foothold, and now they're integrated into our society, although not really. They still hold themselves aloof, apart. They tolerate us, and may even love us, some of them, but when you get right down to it, they're an entirely different species.

I think about that once in awhile, mostly when Dinah is curled up in my lap, purring. She doesn't do it often, so when she does, it's like a special occasion. And I think how strange it is that these little creatures who are so different from us have forged this bond with us, have become so much a part of our lives, and have come to depend on us to feed them and take care of them and protect them. They've trained us really well, actually.

Dinah has a toy that a reader sent her a couple of years ago. It's a three-foot long piece of heavy wire with some little brown cardboard pieces strung on it--it's a very basic toy. She adores it. She would carry it up and down the stairs--upstairs at night when we were sleeping so she could play with it in the bathroom, downstairs during the day, either playing with it in the dining room or the kitchen.

We hadn't seen it for awhile, and Bob went looking for it. He found it underneath my chair. She'd chewed most of the cardboard off it, so he got a brown paper sack and made some new little rolls to thread onto the wire--poking a hole in his finger in the process--and he's been playing with it with her a lot.

One night this weekend, late at night, he was sitting in his chair in the office watching television. I was asleep. He said something pushed the door open, and he looked up to see Dinah dragging her toy into the office. She dropped it in front of him, looked up at him, and cried, obviously asking him to play with her. So he did, of course. This morning I found it in the bathroom when I got up. She has her toy back, and we're all happy about it.