Friday Cat Blogging: The Red Pipe Cleaner

(Click on any of my pictures to view a larger image of my royal self)

All I ask is that you love me half as much as I love myself. ~ Molly Mog, 2001

This is one of my favorite quotes. I am Lady Wilhelmina Abigail of Brevard, but you may call me Willow. Today I am going to tell you about my favorite toy. I can do without the catnip banana, the striped foam ball, and the stupid ball that gives out cat treats and talks to you at the same time. I mean, do they expect that ALL cats like those funny treats and why should I work to get a treat anyway. I like toys that are not really cat toys because I don't consider myself a limited being.

My favorite toy of all is a pipe cleaner, preferably red although I will play with other colors, even metallic. In my old house, my head maid kept them in an end table in the den. It had a dangling drawer pull and I could get my paw hooked under it and open the drawer. Then I could have as many as I wanted. She figured out that I was doing this, however and made the hiding place different, high, where I couldn't reach. In this new house the assistant maid also put them in an end table but the drawer is very hard to pull (it's an antique...that means it is older than dirt) so I can only have them on occasion.

One excuse they have for rationing the pipe cleaners is that I make a mess and irritate all the other cats with them. THAT IS NOT TRUE!!!! I only irritate one cat with them...Maggie! Everyone else is used to my antics and they have adapted as all good cats should. The staff always twirl up the pipe cleaner into a spiral while I am made to sit and watch and drool and beg for it. PU-LEEZE! Why a spiral, why not a zig-zag or a circle? Hmm...I think it has something to do with the DNA double helix structure of a cat's genetic material? The head maid is into that stuff.

Finally, they throw the spiral pipe cleaner and I oblige them by running and picking it up. Then I will play hide and seek with it for a while, hitting it with my paw, chasing it as it skitters across the floor under the grandfather clock or under the closet door. If it goes in the closet, I have to work to get the door open and get it back out.

When I tire of all this, I will hold one end down with my right paw and pull on the other end with my teeth to straighten it back out in a fashion. Then it is off to my most favorite part. I carry it to the water fountain.
We don't have water bowls, we have water fountains. There, I carefully place it in the water and make sure that it gets nice and wet. Then I dig it out of the water with my paw, pick it up in my mouth and take it to the food bowl. I leave it in the food bowl and then I sit back and watch.


I must say that this game is much more fun now that we live here in Virginia. All of my old cat comrades just ignore the pipe cleaner when I do this, but Maggie. Heh! Heh! She is so spoiled being the "only" cat and getting her way; now she goes nuts when I play this trick on her.

You see, she likes to have her Daddy follow her to the food bowl and if there is any little itsy bitsy dent in it, she whines and cries until he smoothes it out or fills it up. Well! What do you think happens when she sees my red pipe cleaner in her food bowl? Everyone else ignores it, eats around it, it is no problem for them, but not her. No sir-ee Bob! She has a nervous breakdown, stands there just staring at the pipe cleaner, meowing, won't eat around it, won't pick it out with her paw and would never stoop to get it out with her mouth. No! She goes and gets her Daddy and makes him come to take it out. He looks at me watching with my innocent face, shakes his head and says,"Willow, are you playing with Maggie again?"

Sometimes he tries to hide it from me but I will search until I see it...on the washing machine, behind the boxes of soft drinks, out on the hot tub lid, where ever he puts it. I always find my pipe cleaner and back in the food bowl it goes.

I am soooooooo bad. But it's soooooooo much fun to be bad!
Be sure to visit my other animal friends at Friday's Ark and also on Sunday, at Carnival of the Cats, this week hosted by That's Another Fine Mess (TAFM). Bye-bye yall.