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Immediately my daughter left for college, Clover, her handsome
yellow cat, began dashing into the house at every opportunity and
forcing me to play Hide And Seek until he had enough play and I had
far too much. To escape providing entertainment he missed and I
had no time to give, I tried squeezing myself in while screening
him out with the door, but Clover quickly learned to dash triumphantly through whenever I carried anything sizeable, and we were
back to square one until I began hurling him high onto the patio
roof and hurrying inside before he could leap from roof to water
softener, to doorway; but Clover tried harder, and I enjoyed
seizing him faster and hurling him higher and farther, although
sometimes it was my third effort that got me into the house.
One day I returned from the supermarket resolved to let Clover inside because I'd brought some fresh kidney I wished him to eat before he could disappear across neighboring fences and roofs, for by this time he had extended his high-level domain that I had thrust upon him, and become a local spectacle and the barking despair of neighborhood dogs who resented his traveling about their territories on roofs, tree limbs, and fences.
Smiling happily at my sure-win game position, I threw open the door and stood back for his mad dash into the house and under a bed; but Clover stopped abruptly, dead-still, in the doorway, and sat quietly looking at me until I knew that for weeks he had been dashing to the door, not to enter the house, but to fly, end over end, and high through the air, onto the patio roof.
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PS Clover was a brave and handsome cat, and if you have read this far you will be interested in knowing what happened to him. I was living alone and when my job was changed and I began working from long before daybreak until long after dark, Clover found a new and better home where he was pampered and entertained.
Occasionally, at about four o`clock in the morning he would surprise me by jumping down from roof to water softener to the floor beside me and I would wish him good-morning and compliment him upon how fat and spoiled he looked. Then I would bring out his old feeding pan and give him a small portion of dry cat-food which he obviously did not need or relish, and he would eat a small amount, politely, as though for memory, and he and I would be off and away into our Different worlds.
Clover liked me and liked being with me as long as I did not ignore his presence, and I liked and respected Clover. He was my friend.
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