Day 27: William, weary

I think WordPress got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

First it refused  my perfectly good password and tried to get me to log in to the  Hotshots! account.

Then, instead of saving this post as a draft, it posted the picture above with the title Private so only I had access. A check of my privacy settings showed no change–To write was still (supposedly) visible to the public. Unclicking and reclicking the same box then published William for all the world to see.

I presume he’s still there. I’m typing as fast as I can.

William has developed an intense interest in the piano. He jumps on it when he wants me to turn off the laptop and go to bed.

I’ve been operating all these years on the assumption that cats do as they please when they please. I thought a sleepy cat could just curled up any old place and lose consciousness.

Not William.

When he decides it’s bedtime, usually around 1:00 a.m., he wants everyone to close up shop. To get my attention, he jumps on the piano.

At first I tried to discourage this. He tended to stray from the piano to the sideboard. There are things on the sideboard I’d like to see stay there. Intact.

One night he jumped from the piano to the top of the china cabinet. There are a few breakable objects up there, too.

I admit William is graceful. That surprises me. As a kitten he was so tubby he couldn’t leap and climb as  (other) kittens do. When he tried to pull himself onto a higher shelf of the kitty pagoda, his little body would just dangle there, bottom-heavy, until he let go and fell or was discovered and rescued. Instead of jumping onto the bed, he walked up the stairs we’d put there for Chloe.

The difference was that Chloe was sixteen when she stopped jumping. William was six months.

The adult William is enormous, but his paws are delicate and tapered, beautiful, but small  compared to the rest of him.

And yet, he’s agile and light of foot. Earrings, cough drops, rubber bands, ballpoint pens–these things and more have found their way from high places to low, and in perfect silence.

If I hadn’t made an uncharacteristic decision to sweep under the refrigerator, the flash drive would still be lost.

There’s a reason they call them cat burglars.

Last night, or rather early this morning, a weary William had already traversed the mantel, the case of David’s collectibles, the dining table (I wash it often), and who knows what else before resorting to the piano. I was tired of popping up every five minutes to drag him off wherever he was, so I decided if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em and just kept typing. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure he didn’t have designs on the china cabinet, I saw the display that begins this post.

It was like the time my three-year-old cousin Chip sidled into the kitchen, hands behind his back, face and overalls covered in grease, and told the flock of gawking women he’d been “fixing the lawnmower.”

Just so darned cute all you can do is get the camera.

So I got the camera.

Then I took the hint.

He was tired.

I turned off the laptop and went to bed.