Kitten meth

     Dropped by my folks' place this morning, but they weren't home. I used my key to enter the house and found Bugsy the kitten standing in the middle of the place—evidently happy to see me, or someone.
     He seemed to want something from me. Play time? I headed over to his turbo toy and tried to get him interested in its rolling white ball. I rolled it, and, soon, he came on over to watch. At first, he lay under a nearby end table, safe from my clutches. (He's still a skittish little fella.) So I slid the turbo thingy closer to him, launched that ball around, and, bit by bit, he got excited about it. The darned guy can't help himself. We played. Together.

      A coupla days ago, my sister Annie came by and used a little laser light to shine a dot of red on the rug. Bugsy immediately scrambled for it. Naturally, he went nuts. Cat people know how nuts cats can get with such toys, but my folks are really dog people, and they've never seen such unbridled enthusiasm. They figured Annie was killing their cat, maybe causing him to have a heart attack or something. They told her to cut it out. She relented, more or less, but not before squawking like she does.

      Well, maybe mom and pop are on to something, 'cause that Bugsy had laser beams on the brain for the next hour of so. I tried to get him interested in his turbo toy, but he was all twitchy and nervous in hopes (if that's the word) of spotting that damned red dot. "Gotta have that red dot; gotta have it now," his body language seemed to say. "That's no way to live, Little Man," I said. I told my sis to leave her stupid laser at home next time. It's like she was selling meth and messing up feline youth.

      That fool Bugsy got himself into trouble three or four days ago when my mom found him "screaming"—mom's word—from inside the goddam Christmas tree. The little guy had climbed up into the tree and then managed to get tangled in all those stupid green wires. My mom didn't know what to do: she kinda freaked, I think, and then my dad showed up and tried to yank the kid out of the tree. (My folks sure can be helpless, now that they're older.) But, like I said, my folks aren't cat people, and they didn't know about the "spinning ball of razor blades" phenomenon, so familiar to cat people (a scarred and gnarled bunch). Bugsy, said my dad later, was doing the ol' "slice 'n' dice" when he tried to grab the little fella. Nevertheless, somehow, dad snapped the right twigs and branches and that knucklehead suddenly came flyin' out of that tree.
     Later, my sister and I rolled our eyes when we were told about this episode. "Next time, just get a towel or something and wrap it around your hand and arm. Cat panic is dangerous but it's manageable."
     We know cats.

     The Bugster seems to have bounced back quickly from that sorry episode. Today, anyway, he was his cute and playful self. He was back to playing with that ball in that turbo thingy, too. He and I batted the ball back and forth. Then Bugsy got all "commando": he'd jump on the white ball to stop it from spinning; then he'd run furiously over to the nearby couch, frenetically finding his way under the blanket that covers it. He'd squirm around under there and then poke his head out from funny places. That stuff makes me laugh every time.

     Took these pics. He sure is one cute kid.