Raymond: Let the Games Begin

The cat throws down the gauntlet

Raymond

I was sitting at the kitchen table over my usual bowl of bran flakes and a cup of coffee, mechanically deleting my way through spam and texts, when I noticed something odd – something over there under the coffee table. I went to investigate and found that it was a polishing pad – one of those white wool buffing pads I use out in my workshop. How the hell did that get in here?

I keep a cardboard box of mixed buffing pads up on my workbench. I imagine one of the cats got into the box and helped himself. The usual mischief. I picked up the pad and took it out to the workshop and threw it back into the box.

About four this afternoon, I came into the house for another beer ( happy hour begins early on Marnell Avenue ), and there, next to the window was the fuzzy buffing pad again. Sitting next to it was Raymond.

He stared at me and said, “I found it. I like it. I’m keeping it.” Well, no, he didn’t exactly say that, but I have this astounding ability to be able to read cats’ minds, and Ray’s mind is a very simple mind to read. I told him, “Oh yeah? Two can play this game, buddy.” I picked up the pad, showed it to him and let him watch me walk out the door with it. He followed me to the workshop, tail in the air like a mobile antenna, and watched me put it back in the box. He saw me fold in the flaps and move the box to an upper shelf.

The next morning, I went out to the workshop and the box flaps had been torn open, and there were six buffing pads scattered about – two white ones on the floor, a purple one in a coffee mug, two yellow ones on the work bench, and a blue one next to the lathe. Raymond had apparently taken up the challenge. Let the games begin!

When I went back to the house, Ray was in the hotbox – a large cut-out cardboard box placed over the heater vent where the cats like to go to worship. Heat is their god. Raymond had his head in the box, sleeping with his new best friend, the white buffing pad. He has a whole basket full of cat toys, but this guy wants what he wants.

Over the next few days, it was flat-out GAME ON. I hid buffing pads all over the shop — on top of the car, behind the crates, in the pile of wood scraps, in a coffee can on the workbench, and in an old rubber boot. Ray found them and left them out on the floor — or brought them into the house where I could see them. I even threw one up into the loft where it landed on a pile of canvas sails. He went up the ladder to look around and found it. Then he left it on the top rung of the ladder for me to find, and I knew something was up.

Ray had changed the rules. The pads that I’d been hiding for him all disappeared! I looked all over for them and came to realize that Ray had skunked me. “You look for them, Dennis,” he said, “and lots of luck to you, man.” So I quit.

Now, after his big buffing pad victory, we are playing “Find the Button”, a new game Raymond invented. He found a large white button somewhere in his world and brought it into the house and dropped it in his water bowl. I put it out in the garden behind a rock ( then under a leaf, then on top of the fountain) and he finds it and brings it in. So far, the score is Ray: 9, Dennis: 0. That animal is a gamesman, and he plays to win.

---

Sharron Bassano