Nature Makes Cats Too Smart

~ Christine Goodnough

It’s time for another round of Friday Fictioneers, the delightful group hosted by our devoted and tactful host, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. If you’d like to join in the fun, check out her blog and click the blue frog to add your own 100 words to the melee.

The picture today was donated by Dale Rogerson expressly for today’s prompt. The copyright belongs to her and you need her permission to borrow it. No doubt there’ll be many different tales spun out of this photo; I myself came up with two. I’ll go with my first idea, revised and hopefully clarified.

So, gentle readers, here’s another dose of Winnie’s wry wit and wisdom.

From their hotel window Winnie observed the commotion below. “It’s that irritating cat again. Up in that tree, smug as can be. Third time this week.”

Raylene and Winnie watched the crowd milling around. The owner wrung her hands; someone shouted orders; someone fetched a ladder. Perched on his branch Sir Whiskers blinked superciliously.

Winnie rolled her eyes. “Imagine bringing your cat on a holiday!”

“And it loves to lead a merry chase. Sir Whiskers seems to relish having everyone scrambling after him.” Raylene shook her head. “Nature shouldn’t make cats that smart.”

“Or people that dense.”

Published by Christine Goodnough

I'm a wife, mom & grandma, a writer, homemaker and nature lover at home on the Canadian prairies. I post short stories and poems about life and personal experiences, writing from a Christian perspective and adding a dash of humor where I can.

65 thoughts on “Nature Makes Cats Too Smart”

    1. A lot of people take their dogs on vacation, but generally they aren’t able to escape quite as slyly.
      But really, if I want all three of our cats around my feet in the twinkling of an eye, no matter where they may be totally zonked out, all I need to do is take the crinkly foil bag of cat treats off the shelf by the door.. 🙂

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      1. Same here with my two!
        And there is no way in he’ll of bringing my pets unless it was to a cottage. But that’s me…

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      2. I wouldn’t bring my pets on a trip in any case, too afraid of losing them en route. thanks for your feedback — glad you enjoyed the tale. I might just give these two travellers a spot of their own in my menu to keep the stories all together.

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      10. Same here with my two!
        And there is no way in he’ll of being my pets unless it was to a cottage. But that’s me…

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      1. Just write in ‘serial form’ and use the hundred word format for writing individual scenes. You could do it. Personally, I write books using a shorter 250-300 word scene, then bridge the scenes at a later date. It wasn’t anything I thought of doing, just something I’ve recently noted that I do.

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      3. Just write… the rest will fall into place. I don’t by any means post all of what I write. If I posted them all, then what would there be to buy in a book, eh? It’s really up to the individual. Personally, for the most part, I post only a small, action scene, usually. I’m known for posting ‘hanging’ scenes without the ends because 1. they haven’t been written, yet. 2. Don’t really want to give it away 3. not sure how it will end, yet. I think that you could do both of what you suggest. That is, post what you want, and then pick out the ones you want to publish later.

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    1. Thank you. I’ll admit, it is a rather “dark and stormy night” type scene. Maybe I should post my other take on it, too, but my cell phone (the only way I can access the links to FF or post mine) has a bad case of indigestion and its innards are acting odd.

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  11. I love the name Sir Whiskers. He reminds me of a cat I owned years ago, who kept climbing to the very top of the silver birch tree in my front garden, where he would yowl pitifully, gathering quite a crowd sometimes. He loved the attention. If I told people to ignore him and that he wasn’t stuck, they’d argue with me that I was wrong, but once they’d gone and nobody was taking any notice of him, he’d climb down without any difficulty.

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    1. I thought of Mr Whiskers, but it’s been done — and this makes him sound more aristo-cattic. 🙂
      Thanks for sharing your cat story. Yes, they will do that. 😉
      We had a cat that often climbed the catalpa tree and leaped over to our second floor balcony. But she’d been declawed by a previous owner so of course couldn’t get down again, so there she’d sit, crying for help.

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    1. Thank you. Glad it gave you a chuckle. My initial story was them seeing the scene below and realizing a cat was up in a tree, but then I moved it forward in time a bit to their observations about what they were seeing and the last line just popped up in logical conclusion.

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    1. Thanks. I don’t do “dark” really well — which is what this picture first suggests. Or maybe I just like to swim upstream?
      As to cats on holidays, I’ve heard that petting a cat can actually lower your blood pressure, so maybe folks bring them along for health reasons — this is haw some folks cope with the stress of all those crazy drivers on the highways? Mind you, if the cat routinely gets stuck up in trees… She’ll no doubt leave him home on her next trip. 😉

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  24. Pingback: Winnie and the Optimist | Christine's Collection

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