Thankfulness some more, Day #2

Considering the question of how and for what we are--for what I am--thankful again this morning.  Staying small-scale for now.  Working up to some sort of cosmic, apocalyptic utterance later (hah!  that at least is the dream).

I am thankful for my cat.  She appears to have had Siamese ancestors; she is black all over, and vociferous.  I think little gold Egyptian ear-hoops would become her, but I doubt she would agree.  Much of the time, or most of the time, she "sleeps at me."  (At this moment, curled up on the sofa next to where I'm typing.)  At night she comes and finds me sometime after I've turned in.  She was a Humane-Society kitten, and on her first night in the house she slept across my throat like a little poultice; the second night she coiled up like a little furry Danish pastry and slept on my ear.

But she doesn't sleep all the time.  Come nightfall, she importunes me for a game of "fetch."  We live in a bi-level house with an open stairway to the basement in the living-room.  Her joy is to persuade me to pitch small balls of paper over the banister and down the stairs, whither she pursues and captures them, trying to make as much noise as a troop of cavalry en route.  How cats can manage to "stamp their paws" remains a mystery.

If I don't respond to her loud invitations to play, she steps up her persuasions, and eventually she will collect all the paper-balls currently in use, and bring them to me like a little dog -- and LINE THEM UP next to my chair.  So there's another mystery.  How does a cat perceive a STRAIGHT LINE?  What moves her to create one?  I'm serious -- three or four little wads of paper all in a ROW.

So for the mystery, and the beauty, and the comfort, and the comedy, of one small black cat, I am thankful.  And now I'll go scoop her box.