Retrospective: Pippin Plays Monkey in the Middle

Pippin was still a young cat, probably the first two years of his life but after he was mostly grown (up; not out; it took him years to put on the muscle weight to match his body frame!)

Young Pippin in the living room

For whatever reason, my dad and I were both sitting on the floor in the living room, which had a wooden floor. We had a small ball and were idly rolling it back and forth. Pippin arrived (either woke up or walked in, I forget) and saw this.

Instead of pouncing on the ball in mid-roll, like a normal kitten, he positioned himself at the point of a triangle that the three of us formed, my dad, Pippin, and me. I looked at my dad, looked at Pippin, kind of gave a mental shrug and rolled the ball gently toward Pippin.

He stopped it with a paw when it got to him. And then he looked very deliberately at me, and then at Daddy, and pushed the ball toward Daddy. Daddy made it go to me. I rolled it back to him. He rolled it to Pippin. Who again, deliberately and obviously chose who to roll it to, and rolled it to me.

Now I don't actually remember the sequence like that. What I remember is that we randomly sent the ball to one of the other two people in the triangle, and that Pippin got the concept and did the same. It was fun.

I don't think we ever played Monkey in the Middle (modified version) again, though. Not really due to Pippin or anything like that, but simply because my dad doesn't sit on the ground much, and with only two of us, it didn't work properly. Pippin now knew what the game was supposed to go like and he wasn't going to play it with only two.