MoK sent me this sad cat diary.

This reminds me of sumpin’ that happened with my first cat Algernon.  No, I didn’t name him after the rat in Flowers For Algernon.  I named him after Algernon in The Importance of Being Ernest.   In my 9th Grade Dramatics class I played Algernon in a scene from that play.

But I digress.

Let me set the stage.  My first apartment was pretty small and I did not have a table to eat on so I would sit on the floor and use my coffee table after first putting down newspaper as a tablecloth.  I also used it to do my homework when I went back to night school.  I would leave my balcony door open so Algernon could sit out there and sun himself.  He also used my neighbor’s flowerpots as litter boxes.  We had adjoining balconies.  I didn’t find out about this until she put up a screen between our balconies.

Bad kitty!

So, anyway, I was laying on my sofa reading, with Algernon on my chest, when a bird landed on the balcony railing.   Up went his ears and his tail started twitching.  I could see him hatching a plan.  He would leap from my chest to the coffee table and from there to the floor where he would race to the balcony and catch the bird.  He didn’t take into account the newspaper  on the coffee table.  When he hit it, it and he slid off the coffee table and onto the floor.  He did land on his feet, but he knew he had screwed up.  He turned around to see if I had witnessed it and saw and heard me laughing my butt off at him

(Oh shit, meow!)

With that, he put his tail up in the air and calmly walked to the bedroom as if to say, “I planned it that way.”