What Ted did

This cat —

— this clever, clever little cat, came into our lives as a rescue kitten. As time has gone on he has increasingly attached himself to Hebe; she, more than the rest of us is his human.

But something interesting happened when Hebe and Alice went away to their letter-cutting weekend, leaving the rest of us in charge. During those days, that coincided with the Badger moving down from his attach to the main floor of the house, Ted (this cat) formed an increased attachment to the Badger and me. He enlarged the place of his tent, as it were, to include us in.

Ever since then, he has spent a significant proportion of each day in the  Badger's new room, where he has adopted the armchair as particularly his own, and the bed as an acceptable secondary lounging area.

But that's not all.

He has also taken upon himself new secretarial duties. Now, whenever the Badger (who is a publisher) takes a phone call from an important author, Ted comes to help, rolling on the computer keyboard and kicking all the papers off the desk while the Badger is on the phone. 

This morning, the Badger came into my room looking somewhat wild-eyed to ask if my internet connection was okay (yes, it was). His was not.

He knew Ted had been standing on his keyboard — the H in particular, so that his emails began Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .
but he hadn't discerned Ted's extra contribution. He'd managed not only to throw him offline but also to reconfigure the Badger's work internet settings and change his identity, so that the Badger was now locked out of his email. This brought an eerie respite from the usual influx of communication. The Badger eventually began to suspect the cause of the problem, and reconnection opened the floodgates to fifty plus new emails.

But what a clever, clever little cat, don't you think?