Domestic forensics

A particular array of Things On The Counter - still life with glass shards - points to the deployment of a smart missile, most probably camouflaged with cat fur, was launched from the top of the kitchen cabinet to the left of the window, onto the counter top to the right of the cooking range.

Evidence on the countertop consists of two tipped over bottles, one containing olive oil, the other a particularly organic variety of red wine vinegar. No fluids escaped and the bottles are intact.

On the floor, in front of the countertop, lies the weighing apparatus of a kitchen scale. Being a mechanical variety (purchased for fifty cents at a yard sale), the weight of the last object weighed is not recorded.

Glass shards gathered in most of what had been a coffeemaker's brewing pot were the first clue of the occurrence of an Event. The other items described were only noted by the witness after she had raised the level of caffeine in her bloodstream back to the therapeutic level.

Further investigation shows that all cats are fine. The coffeemaker is no more.

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.