Fun & Games

Inspirational song: Games Without Frontiers (Peter Gabriel)

It isn't necessary to accuse me of anthropomorphizing animals. I freely admit to it. And to be honest, I really don't see much harm in it. It brings me great comfort, truth be told, in seeing and hearing the similarities between us and our domesticated pets and their wilder cousins. It makes me feel more closely tied to the planet to notice and accept our common traits. I mentioned before, as I held the doomed neonatal kittens how much their cooing sounded like human babies' noises. Having the chance to foster Athena (I got to choose her shelter name) is giving me a chance to notice even more similarities. At this moment, she is finally asleep, tucked into the crook of my left elbow, in a dark, faux-fur draped burrow. I had been putting her back into her bower in my spare bathroom at the top of the stairs when it was nap time, so I could work without worrying about her getting under the dogs' feet. She hated being alone so much, she started resisting naps. She was getting tired and cranky, and fought sleep by making a tiny little noise every few seconds, to keep herself awake. This was the exact modus operandi of my own daughters, especially the elder, when they were tiny. I'm reasonably confident that most human babies have used this trick.

Animals play games as assuredly as humans do, as much to learn and communicate as for entertainment. My white sidekick cat loves to play the stalker game more than any cat I know. This is the one where you make eye contact from a distance, freeze for a second, and then dip out of sight. After a few seconds, you pop back into view, and then hide again. The one from whom you are hiding will creep closer, and stop each time you look at them, a sort of inter-species game of red light green light. Given a long enough hallway or circuitous floor plan, this game can go on for quite a while. This morning, Athena was attempting a little baby version of it, and I realized, she was playing peekaboo with me, at her own instigation. It made me wonder, who thought of it first, humans or felines, or is it one of those developmental milestones that all infants everywhere cross, like learning to walk or to control your bladder? Yesterday she learned to come down the stairs under her own power, and I wished for a baby book to record the moment.

Our old man cat has been obsessed with the plastic rings that come from drink bottles for nearly all of his 15 years. Yesterday I introduced Athena to one, and she's learning it's a great toy to hunt and kill. My kids have said for years that they learned from the cat that the answer to the universe is "ring." I'm just preserving the wisdom of our line by teaching the next generation how to play.