Adventures with Arty: The Great Chase

Pear shaped body

This is Arthur, Arty for short.  He was named after King Arthur.  He's far from being a King unless you count King of Trouble.  None of the other cats in the house like him much.  They mostly just tolerate him and wish he'd go away.  He's the youngest and the only adopted cat in the bunch.  My other cats all came from the same mother and father, so they've grown up together.  He's a stout little cat with the the strangest body shape, tiny front end, large back end.  You would think his heft would slow him down but it doesn't.     

And this is DMC floss.  I have a lot of this stuff.  I'm pretty good about keeping it out of the reach of cats.  One of my hobbies is cross stitch.  It's something I picked up from my mother and do when I don't have more important things to do.  The floss is sewn into a design on cross stitch canvas following a pattern.  Normal DMC floss is fairly inexpensive.  You can usually get a skein of the stuff for about 25 to 30 cents each.  The more specialized stuff can run you anywhere from $1.25 to $3 depending on what you're getting. 

A few nights ago while looking for my extra Ipod USB cord I pulled out 3 skeins of DMC floss out of my "catch-all" desk drawer.  One is a regular skein of floss and the other two are white iridescent.  I laid them on my desk, with the idea to put them with the rest of my floss collection but of course, I forgot and never tossed them back in.

Big mistake.

So, last night I'm sitting on my couch watching the GOP debates, actually I was rolling my eyes a lot and refraining from throwing things at the television, but that's another story.

Anyway, I'm sitting on my couch and Arty is sitting on the desk.  I can see him out of the corner of my eye fiddling around, pulling his paw to his mouth, something dropping, him scooting back to pick the object up again and then a flash of buttery yellow, then white drops to the floor and I realize what he's doing.  He's playing with the floss.   

I jump up shouting, "Arty stop that.  Leave those alone."  His eyes spark with delight, it's time to play.  He crouches, I reach for the floss, he lifts the white bundle, clamps his little mouth around it and flies out of the room towards the kitchen.

I chase after him, trying not to laugh as I see his big butt bouncing away from me as I scream, "Arty you little shit!  Come back here!"  He stops at the table, drops the floss as I reach him and looks up at me giving me his most adorable mischievous smile.  "Don't smile at me, you brat," I say.  He keeps his gold eyes on me and swishes his tail a few times before bounding back into the living room to look for more trouble.