I have all the time in the world to make my heist. It is not time wasted but fully lived inside the scheme, before the scream.

Delayed gratification has a particularly calming rhythm that lays my hair down flat, puts a shine to my coat and my eyes. I feel focused and alert when any task is just a holding pattern that has value only as a means to occupy me near the opportunity for gaining more, namely, more dietary variety.

There was not a moment to waste with haste. I will lose all if I raise their suspicions. I try to withhold any show of attention to their meal. The subjects are eating a potato and milk product.

It was whipped in a bowl much like my own. They consumed in the cultural custom common to them, probably common to you as well, with bright reflective pieces of metal. An odd practice that, when they already have been equipped with handy thumbs and palms rather than dew toe and less manipulatable pads.

After eating their fill I can only assume, they left the remainder for the lower in the pecking order. They may plan to come back and graze, ravaging the remains further, at their leisure. I have even observed food being thrown out or to put grams of it in the fridge and only bringing it out when mouldy. With lobe tingling milk involved, it is only moral for me to prevent such squandering of resource. I planned to get my share guaranteed.

They sat for minutes, hours, each burrowed away in their tasks. As they calculated I calculated. When they were deep in their concretration, breaths shallow and regular, heads steady and eyes in a tracing pattern, once it seems, according to my observations, they had completely forgotten about having eaten or where they left it, I began to scan a route.

On silent feet, I bounded from floor to chair to chair to countertop and with the stealth of a forest hunter ducked behind bags and book stacks until I had the bowl within whiskers. Checking over my shoulder that my last approach remained unnoticed I bowed my head to thank Catess Mror for good fortune so far.

As I commenced the lapping of the sweet starchy condiment I stifled back a purr. For all the work, it was rich and silky as cream, and I savored it, lick after lick,

… until the scream and flapping of limbs. With an agile arc I lept away.

I lick my lips, and chin, between my spread toes, start to see if that loose sheath of claw is ready to come off. We stand and blick at each other, then I lick my butt. She, doesn’t oddly.

Everyone needs a hobby. So, I’ve been working on honing my telekenetic abilities this week.

My ultimate task would be to release the slightly vacuum sealed food cooling area. The goal: to free the tuna I know to be within *it*, instead of within *me*. Clearly this oversight needs to be remedied in some way.

It is a challenge to focus my energies on the appropriate place. I find my powers getting misdirected and I blow a light bulb out instead or make a water tap spurt on. As lighter practice I focus my abilities on a lighter door first. The screen door flies open after a sustained concentration but the medium weight glass door eludes my mental grasp.

There are a few sounds that can grab me by my brain stem.

This first one, being common, won’t surprise you: the sound of a can opener. It has been over 7 years since a can delivered gravy and processed meat to me but just the jangle of the opener, the seal being broken with the steel blade causes a rush of stmulus to my hindbrain. Out of a dead sleep, out of a delicious dream, it can snap me out of mid-snarl or from deepest contemplation. All of my limbs get a burst of tingling alertness at that sound.

To a lesser degree of reaction, there is a certain stiff plastic that has often lead to cheese, or its more common name, /see – aych eyey ess ee/. That crackly sound bobs my head out of nodding to rapt attention. That whisper of synthetic material causes something of a buzz that must be more pavlovian than evolutionary.

Thirdly, and far less commonly occuring, is the provacative auditory signal of a light rattle of pills in plastic. This has been known to be a precurser to any number of ocean species: white fish, haddock, salmon or tuna. Like can openers, the effect seems to register at spinal sensor level. My limbs are in motion before I even know why but my collegues fevrent cries make everyone apprised of why shortly. Her problem is patience. She sounds the alarm and gives us entirely too quickly. A few rounds around the ankles and she declares the fish a no show and goes. I however, 🙂

Miao for now…

As the season cools I watch the maples as they mimic me. A pool of shed leaves puddles beneath the limbs of trees. A puff of cool wind for them and in here the hum of heating system strumming to a paradaisical life. As I relax, my follicles seem to release like a porcupine. My hairs weave themselves into the nap of chairs, bedding and carpeting so that the whole world feels an extension of myself. I shed a whole litter’s worth of inert, unmewing minisleves the last time I sat down for a good petting.

It seems odd that I write so much in the afternoon but I have had a touch of insomnia that has been keeping me up days. I seem to be keeping quite sporadic hours, echoing the study subjects patternless patter of clunking comings and goings. They are decisive, but sequentially by turns, like the monogomy defined by a serial tom.

They’ve forgotten some item and have returned and turned on heel and gone out again. Hardly worth the time to log that observation.

Let me give you a brief language lesson. In my mother cat tongue, catonese, more harshly hissing than the caterwauling curse of Mror, the equivalent word in your language would be *hairballs*. It is an obscene utterance, just as it is an obscenely knawing feeling.

And if they shine that halogen light in my eyes again as they adjust where the task light should be, (The light is fine where it is mror it. Let it well enough alone.) my proprioception may just escape my calm, low lidded control and I will take out all this pent up stress as dotted lines of a path right up their legs t shimmying those scrawny poles like curtains.

But of course, I will not. I have utter control of myself, even if not 100% control of them, yet.

While I accept that for the time being I am not alpha of the pack, deferring to that nearly nippless gargantuum preemies that I live with.

While I concede that they have a (pardon my catonese!) *Hairballed* dib on anything that passes for food around here leaving me to scrounge the floor for dried up droppings of their careless luxury.

While I submit to their skimming right past my imploring eyes as they devise more and more dizzying odors and admit that they can’t help being the selfish cads they were born to be, I do reserve the right to be most regally, flicked off and will withhold all further cuddling until further notice.

Go ahead. Say something positive. I dare you.

I know that they are reading to each other, but just the same I enjoy the pleasant burble they make. I can easily imagine I am the centre of their attention. I get lost in the sounds cascading and add layer on layer of my own sounds to theirs.

I can feel the vocal waves purring across my fur, the puffs of breath glancing off my back as I walk back and forth across their laps, can feel the tiny tongues of steel press paper on my toe pads, glad to have this time to socialize, I proffer my tailend to their faces, momentarily forgetting that this isn’t their custom. They only smile, understanding but not reciprocating or acting on my gesture.

They go on reading and I go on receiving the nearness of the gap between us, almost reaching their meaning and feel sure they reach mine.

By the fierce flash in the eyes, the rising arch of the back, the baring of teeth and terse hissing fricatives starting to be periodically emitted from between the rounded enamels. Their tailbone stump is all but thumping to thrash as she shifts restlessly gesticulating increasing agitation at the one-eyed blue screen. I found this of use
http://www.primat.se/primat/apelogic.asp
but how to get it to her?

The subjects have been sitting suspiciously quietly rearranging lighting. They are exceptionally earnest in focus, almost catlike I would say. They shift the physical beams of lights through filters and focuses and if it is an image taking device, it is a kind I have not been briefed on. The flashes and beams are atypically ongoing.

Why they desire lighting when the stars are perfect gazing and the energies of the night can creep speed into the marrow and give a spirited run to the feet I can’t begin to imagine.

It isn’t their usual procedure. Perhaps there is another holiday? No, checking the references I have the closest match is Divali which won’t fall for another moon yet. There is a granparents day tomorrow but I see no remark made to lighting. Perhaps it is incidental. I’ll chase the new belled ball and see how time unravels the ball of string.

Feels good to stretch out the spine and limbs right out to the fully extended claws reaching as far as I can to scratch a new groove through the cardboard boxes, taking strip after strip off the hide-boxes. They are at perfect height stracked 3 high to accomodate a perfect spine stretch. I exercise my right to make the most of this advantage while it remains presented knowing full well that these boxes like the ones before could disappear without notice at any time