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Hey there, it’s Winston here. Based on our last article, I don’t want you to think that all we do for entertainment is follow Deborah around. We’re certainly not toadies or anything. Actually, however entertaining following is, we spend just as much time trying to find times to sneak away and do things when Deborah and The Roommate aren’t watching. (If we haven’t mentioned The Roommate much yet, the easiest way to explain her is to say that she’s the one who sleeps in that room whose door under which we’re always shoving toy mice.)
You see, we spend a lot of time in Deborah’s room (a.k.a. Our Room/Kitty Romper Room). We’re not sure why Deborah and The Roommate don’t let us roam the apartment at all times, though we suspect it might have a bit to do with the fact that we get just a little bit hyper and curious and clumsy sometimes. We might have even knocked a few things over and broken a few items in our day. Still it’s really mean of Deborah and The Roommate to keep us in here so much and we get bored.
So one day when I was, as usual, groping around for toy mice under the bedroom door, I realized that the door was beginning to wobble a bit more than it used to. A couple of days later, it was getting positively loose. It got to where we could hear Deborah having to jiggle the doorknob to get it to shut securely, every time she closed it.
Then one day it happened. We were in the room for the day. The rest of the apartment had been quiet since Deborah and The Roommate had gone, presumably to that place they refer to as “Work.” Emma was foraging about for lost treasure under the door. I was sitting by to see if she dredged up anything worth playing with.
Suddenly, as she foraged, we heard something slide back and the door swung open. My sister hung back, but I, Super Spy Cat, poked my head around the door to case the situation. Sure enough, the door was really open. And no, it didn’t appear that there were any humans home.
I felt a huge release. This was a miracle! All our hours of carefully monitoring Deborah’s whereabouts had finally paid off—we were free. Free at last. Free to roam around the apartment. To jump up on those fascinating bookcases and inspect the knick knacks. To jump up on the table, the end tables, the counters, and the refrigerator. All of those surfaces we’d normally get yelled at and shut up in Our Room for jumping on.
It was beauty. It was glorious. It was real.
But it was also a little bit scary. What would happen if Deborah—or especially The Roommate, who keeps threatening to sell us to these mysterious people called “gypsies”—came home and found us out in the main room? What would they do to us? Would we ever be able to leave Deborah’s room ever again?
But all that didn’t matter as long as we were proper superhero cats, which we were, of course: I was Super Spy Cat and Emma was Liquid Kitty. (My title is natural, because I’m a cool cat; Emma’s comes from causes I’ll explain a couple of articles from now.)
Anyway, we saw our chance at forbidden pleasures and we took it. We romped, we sniffed, we rubbed our whiskers on things. We cavorted. It was the best hour of my life.
We knew the end was bound to come sooner or later, though. And we knew the signs when we heard them—a rustling outside and footsteps coming up the stairs. Emma liquidly ran to Our Room, but I saw my chance and prepared to take it. This could be my one and only chance to see what lay outside that door.
I stood by that door as the key turned in the lock, poised like a sprinter with every muscle tense. And when that door opened, I was off like a shot around The Roommate’s legs. Wow, what a spacious new land it was Outside the Apartment, with actual steps going down to a whole other level and lots more doors. Lots of new area to look at and sniff and rub my whiskers on.
I didn’t dare pause to take too much in, though—I knew The Roommate’s speed and swift tactics way too well. Every Super Spy Cat knows how to run, so I did, down the stairs and around the corner…
She was too quick for me, and so I never did make it to that elusive outside door, but at least I got to experience a taste of adrenaline, of freedom, of life. I saw What’s Out There.
Now, as I’m sitting here watching the fixit guy tighten the doorknob on Our Room, I’m sad but at least enlightened. At least I have that moment of achievement to look back on. From now on, I can always say truthfully: “Hello, my name is Winston and I once got out.”
It’s a beautiful thing.
Well, time to go revel in the nostalgia of it all. Until later, this is Winston for the “Cats’ Eye View of Entertainment.”
*Want to know more about Winston’s exploits as Super Spy Cat? Come back on May 16 for Emma’s perspective on a couple of them…*
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