Sunday, December 07, 2008

A Still Life with Cat



I have a lot of left-over yarn so I make cat toys for the feline residents at Stephanie's place: Fu Man Chu, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Anne Richards. They lead fairly sedentary lives — I figure if I can't get them to do some sit-ups I can get them to chase something.



The toys get their fare share of wear and tear. One of the orange mice was accidentally tossed through the living room window. Do cat's perceive color? I was told that cat's see with low-chroma vision — which helps them see at night when they seek to pee or barf in your shoes.



I searched the bushes the next morning, but had no luck. I imagine that a dog walked away very excited that it found a cat-scented mouse that fell from the heaven. Considering this is Brooklyn Heights I suspect the mouse was purloined by a puggle, lifted by a labradoodle or confiscated by a cockapoo.



So far the smaller cashmere mice do very well with the cats, as does the fingering-weight alpaca blue sausage. Fu likes chewing on the squid's eyes, but the tentacles confuse him — he prefers the string that's attached to it's head.



The bulky-weight merino blend mice are too heavy to bat around, so Anne Richards (above) enjoys cat-napping with them. She uses them as pillows. Suu Kyi is the most active of the three, but prefers fetching plastic bottle caps to playing with plush toys.

No comments: