Happy New Year To All!

(And especially to Miss Hetty, who said I was spoiled. Well, I should hope so! Getting themselves spoiled is what highly effective ... and successful ... pussycats do! I'm just doing my job, you know, but I appreciate the compliment. Thank you very much!)

My first resolution this year is to get more exercise ... especially for Miss Jerrianne. We went for regular walks, with me in the pouch, while the weather was fine. Once the streets got clogged up with ice and snow, our walks came to a crashing halt. Now it's the exercise bike or the Walk-Fit for her and chasing balls and toy mice up and down the stairs for me.

I thought Miss Jerrianne was headed in the right direction when she took me shopping for athletic shoes ... not for me, silly! ... for her! She needed to spend her REI Co-op dividend before the end of the year, she said. Well, she spent it all right ... and a whole lot more.

After she brought the new shoes home and tried them on a time or two, they went up on the closet shelf. A fine lot of good they will do there! So guess who got blamed for that! Sure, I tried to chase her shoelaces and chew the little hard parts off the ends of them. You'd expect me to do that, now, wouldn't you? That's pure instinct, you know. Not my fault!

I like to encourage stretching exercises ... the kind required to fish my toy mice out from underneath the stove. I do my best to make sure she gets a few every day. When she gets down on the floor to look under the stove, I get in her face so she can't see the mouse. While she's fishing around with her long, green stick, I grab the wrist strap on the flashlight with my teeth and drag the light across the kitchen floor. I play hockey mouse until she gets up ... and then I score a goal by sliding it under the stove again.

Anyway, I get lots of exercise chasing my tail, but the only exercise Miss Jerrianne gets from that is laughing out loud. You should have seen her roll on the floor laughing when I dragged my leash around a wicker chair. I tried to pounce on the loop at the other end of the leash, but that loop stayed ahead of me ... just barely out of my reach.

Laughing keeps Miss Jerrianne's spirits up, but if laughing is exercise, then ketchup is a vegetable. That's a joke! Personally, I count running, leaping, pouncing, yoga stretches and gymnastics as exercise. Especially gymnastics on my personal balance beam, which Miss Jerrianne calls the stair railing. I like to chase my tail vertically, between the posts, while she is talking on the phone instead of paying attention to me. When I reach down to grab my tail, my tail goes the other way, to keep my balance. You try it!

Of course, there WAS that time when I chased my tail 'round and 'round on the balance beam and went scooting right off it. Did I see stars! I think I'll take flying lessons before I try that trick again! My hard landing by the front door 10 feet below was hardest on my pride, but other parts of me smarted, too. I have made a firm resolution to face the couch instead of the stairs from now on. That way I'm guaranteed a soft landing if I go flying.

My other New Year's resolution has to do with teaching Miss Jerrianne to understand Cat speak and feline body language, but it's sure to be a long term project, and that's another subject entirely. I'll let you know how it goes.