Mending Octopus

Mending is so odious a task for me that my family has taken to calling the laundry basket containing the mending queue 'the outgrow pile'. It has functioned fairly well this capacity.

However, this morning I took up my needle and thread and mended a toy octopus. This toy, a particular favorite of the kitties among us, used to have catnip in its feathery, ball-shaped portion, and its tentacles fluttered and dangled oh-so-invitingly.

I know they liked it because I find it at random places around the house - on the stairs, between Shachaf's bedroom door and the bathroom, very near the sofa, under my desk... ...many places, none of which have been touched by human hand. Rather, places where the octopus was batted or carried by cat-mouth, the better to be wrestled with.

Well, this morning I found two parts of the octopus - the tentacles in the kitchen, the fluffy, feathery, headlike organ decapitated before my filing cabinets.

I gave the matter some thought - then took up the needle.

You can't, after all, outgrow an octopus.