Colby's Food Toss

Colby has started a new game.

Don't ask me how I knew what he wanted, but one evening when I was gathering the leftover food into the food dish that goes in the crate with Thimble, Colby asked me to throw a kernel. So I did.

He was absolutely thrilled. He ran after it, pouncing with great vim and vigor, trapping it beneath his paws and checking to see if it was going to run away before eating it happily. And then coming back to me, asking me to throw another one.

I did, a little bemused at his enthusiasm. Again the hunt, the pounce, the happy crunching. Thimble, on the other side of the corner of the bed, asked me if possibly I could toss one his way, so after I tossed another for Colby, I threw one for Thimble.

Thimble doesn't think the game is nearly as fun, but if Colby is enjoying it, then by gumption, he'll enjoy it too.

Colby likes me to ricochet food bits off the wall, or toss them over the cat stairs at the end of the bed, or try to throw them around the corner of the other side of the bed. He often comes back all the way to me in order to get a good run-up on the next food toss. He'll try to catch them out of the air--and succeeds more often than not. Or he'll "accidentally" bat one with a paw as he "catches" it, and then he has such great fun running down the errant bit.

Sometimes he puzzles himself when he knocks it out of the air but doesn't catch it, exactly, and it landed somewhere on him, and he turns himself around several times before it falls off and he sees it, dark against the cream carpet. And then he's all excited and pounces on it.

Thimble will walk after it should it go beyond where he's sitting. He'll watch it fall in front of him if it's out of easy reach, and walk after it and eat it. And occasionally he'll forget himself and snatch it out of the air with both paws, or try to catch it and end up having it land on his legs between his paws which is puzzling to him. But it has to come at just the right angle for this to happen. Thimble's only participating in the game so as to keep Colby from having all the fun. Thimble doesn't quite realize that Colby isn't paying him any attention at all during the game.

Apricot usually stays out of the bedroom when this is going on. He's come in once or twice and eaten food bits when presented to him on the tips of my fingers, and extremely rarely he'll walk after one that's fallen from a toss to Thimble (when Thimble hasn't gone for it). But mostly he stays out, simply because I'm sitting at the corner of the bed, facing the bed. There's a giant kitten on one side (Thimble) and another giant, extremely excitable kitten on the other side of the bed (Colby) and sometimes Colby rushes by me to Thimble's "side" in order to get a better runway, so there's really no place for a small (normal sized) cat to sit where he won't eventually get run over.

Even though Colby doesn't mean to.