I had an idea once today, involving our cat Pinkie. Since Schuster is unrelentless in his pursuit of Pinkie around the house, reminding me of Captain Ahab's pursuit of Moby Dick, Pinkie thus stays either on her island, continuing the watery theme, or she stays downstairs in the dark, shredding boxes, or she lays on a chair in our downstairs hallway.
I was coming downstairs to go outside and down the driveway to pick up the Sunday papers. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I was surprised to see a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back at me. Pinkie was lying on one of the three dark chairs sitting against my wall bookshelves, the middle chair. When she startled me with her presence, I immediately saw how Lewis Carroll might have been inspired to create the wonderful Cheshire cat in the Alice stories. For a moment all I saw were Pinkie's bright yellow eyes against the dark chair, even though the rest of her face, head, then body came quickly into view. If she had only grinned, that would have clinched the reference.
In the picture, which seems to be pre-Schuster, she is on the sofa, I think, and the pale spot in her middle is the absence of hair from constant licking. The vet says cats lick themselves like that out of boredom. You would think that with the advent of Schuster, she would not be bored, but given the abundant, hairless spots now present, that seems not to be the case. Of course a cat's mind is as mysterious as a dog's mind, though not nearly as interesting to me.
An aha moment: Pinkie is not lying on the sofa but on our bed. I recognized the bedspread, which covered the now-discarded old mattress. Pinkie used to spend enormous amounts of time sleeping on our bed, as she is doing in that photo, until Schuster began his persecution. Go Schuster! If you ever witnessed the pursuit, you would find it amusing too, I imagine, though it is probably not politically correct for me to enjoy it. It is also very nice not to have cat-stink on the bedspread.
While Schuster is ardent in his pursuit, if Pinkie for some reason stops, Schuster stops too. It seems they both might enjoy the chase. I have seen Pinkie walk calmly into the kitchen, stop, gather herself and jump onto the kitchen stool, then onto the island, without bothering in the least that Schuster has also walked into the kitchen and stopped. He never approaches her, really. And she is not really afraid of him.
Another interesting aspect of this odd relationship is that even when Schuster is running to the kitchen door to be let out, if Pinkie is in her box on the island, Schuster will, stop in his dash to the door, bounce up and down on the floor below her, bark several times, then hurry on. Pinkie, of course, without getting up, either peers over the side at him, or simply ignores him, more usually the case. Both behaviors, I think, are instances of the mystery of being in the animal world, in my animal world, at least.