Retrospective: Pippin Likes to Play Chase

Imagine for a moment that you're living with someone who is 25 feet tall, and you are five feet tall. The house you live in is sized for the 25 foot tall person (25 feet is between two and three stories tall, if you have problems imagining sizes like I do).

Would you like to have this person chase you? Would you really like to have them thundering after you as loud as they could make their feet?

Pippin did. That's the approximate size difference between him and me. And he loved to play chase. Not where he chased me. That was fun, but it was only the leadup. He wanted me to chase him.

I really couldn't believe it at first. This cat who'd been so terrified of everything when he came to me; this same cat wanted someone as big as me to chase him? Yup. He'd come into the living room and catch my eye, and then dance away a few steps, and if I didn't get up, he'd come back in and repeat the process until I got up and chased.

Then he'd tear away through the den, down the stairs, through the basement and into our room, where he'd make a flying leap onto the waterbed and flop in the middle.

Things were not properly ended unless I chased him into the room and leaped onto the waterbed, landing on all fours with him in the middle beneath me. If that were me, I'd be terrified.

Pippin just cat-giggled.

He did this repeatedly through the months until I had to get rid of the waterbed (for other reasons, not anything to do with him) and got a different bed that was much higher. It wasn't nearly as much fun for this game because I couldn't leap onto it after him. And so that ended the chase games. Apparently the finale was necessary for it to be sufficiently fun.

Pippin on the bed

To be honest, I rather was grateful when he quit asking to be chased. That part at the end always stopped my heart. He wanted me to do it. He wanted me to land where if he moved at the last minute, I'd be landing with all my weight on him. I could have done serious damage! I had to trust that he understood the game (he'd made it up, after all) and that he wouldn't move. Even with two tons of human bearing down on him. (I exaggerate.)

And he never once moved when I leaped. He always stayed exactly where he had jumped and then flopped. That's what I call trust. On both sides.