new sport for Tamanya

One of Tamanya’s great features is her natural athleticism: she’s a fabulous jumper and climber, even by cat standards.

Today I invented a sport we can probably play a lot together, because it’s an interesting challenge for me as well as for her.

What I do is take the mug full of spare Egyptian coins from the desk and take them into the spare bedroom, where all the other cat playground objects are.

Then I roll the coins across the floor on their edge, one at a time. It’s a moderate challenge to do this in such a way that they roll at a uniform speed for a long distance, in not too straight a path but also not going in a circle.

Tamanya loves this. She pounces on the coins like a hockey goalie. Once in awhile she misses, but usually she knocks them down flat with a single stroke of a paw.

She gets really excited by this game. After about half an hour of it she was panting with fatigue, and I was going to stop, but you could tell from the serious look in her eyes that she wanted me to keep rolling more coins.

So I did, for another 10 minutes or so. Then I gave her a round of applause, which she seemed to enjoy. Then she went and drank a lot of water from the dish.