I’m just not sure how they do it. Ever since I adopted my Archy, I’ve had several distractions every hour, from meows for cuddles to demands for playtime, to strange noises elsewhere that require my investigation. In the photo, Archy has scornfully knocked my cupboard-banning implement to the ground and is trying to get into a place it’s really not good for him to go.

It reminds me of trying to write when my children were small – they’d be playing sweetly beside me and I would just get my head into something when there would be a crash, a scream, a demand.

Mind you, this is helping with my short-term memory skills. I needed to relearn these. I have to be able to mentally hang onto what I’m doing while scampering around to save the cat or swing a toy on a string around for hours.

He has other places to play, access, scratch. A cat tree he never climbs. A cat tent he only likes for together play. A tunnel, likewise. I even cleared out a cupboard of toxins so he could go into that one. He has more toys than your average toddler and scratch pads everywhere. When I point these out to him, he laughs, flexes his opposable thumbs (he’s polydactyl to extremes and can actually flex one series of toes like a thumb. I am reminded of the Cravendale cats) and wanders off to create more havoc. His current preference is to a. scratch the underside of my furniture or b. knock over my bedside lamp.

And so my ideas eventually slip away, down the drain like all those wonderful ideas we get in the shower…and I am reduced to running around my apartment with a toy in tow, laughing as he leaps and hunts.

Ah well. Who really needs to write when they have a cat in the house?

And what else are coffee shops for, right? I think I’ll avoid the cat cafes, though…