Little furry friends

Here is beautiful Esmarelda.  What a handsome cat she is!  She is sitting on my knee in this photo and is about to lean over and chew the leaves of one of Jessica and Steve’s pot plants.  Cats don’t eat leaves, Esmarelda.  She doesn’t listen.  She only hears what she wants to hear and if you say something not to her liking she puts her ears down and glares at you.  Some times she talks and says rude words in cat language. But guess what?  She likes to play Fetch.  You know, when the master throws a stick and the faithful hound runs and fetches it and brings it back to the master all waggy and slobbery, waiting hopefully for the master to throw the stick again? Except Esmarelda has changed the rules slightly.  She has a toy at her house which is just like a wristband with a bell tied on to it with string.  It was connected to something else but Ezzy didn’t like the something else.  She just wanted the wristband and the bell.  She brings it to you and puts it down near your feet and then she miaows at you.  You are meant to pick it up and throw it.When you do, Ezzy runs after it very quickly and sometimes when she’s caught it, she continues to slide across the floor, rather like a cricketer who is trying to stop a  ball from making 4 runs.  Then she brings it back to you.  She has a special run for bringing back the toy.  It is a sort of slow loping run which is supposed to look like one of her jungle relatives, bringing the prey home for supper.The problem is that the bell hangs down and sometimes it hits her legs as she runs.  She doesn’t like it doing that so she puts her ears down and runs with her legs further apart which really looks very comic.But you mustn’t laugh or she becomes very offended. Jessica says that she is going to buy Ezzy a harness for walking in the street.I’m not sure how this is going to work as Ezzy has definite ideas about how things should be done and I don’t think she will like being told where to walk.  But we will see.