Tuesday 18 September 2018

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?



10 comments:

Suzan said...

I love cats but my cats are a bone of contention at present. Thank you for the story as it has made me smile.

Jen Liminal Luminous said...

Buster the dog has leanrt when my husband is finishing his conference call 'ok, that's it, thanks very much everyone, same time next week' and comes up and put his head in Gavin's lap....

So sweet.

He's not clever enough to reconfigure user profiles on the computer though. Although my archeive drives have thrown a hissy and decided they are formatted for PC ratehr than mac, despite the fact they have never touched a PC before in their life.

Maybe I should say that Buster did that.

Pen Wilcock said...

Suzan – uh-oh – sounds like your cats are in trouble!

Jen — I think Buster might have done it!

GerriHultgren said...

They look sooo innocent when they're sleeping,don't they? I think that's their game,to look cute and adorable so we can ignore the naughty behavior,right?

Rapunzel said...

Ted is learning technology very quickly!

Pen Wilcock said...

Gerri — Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!

Rapunzel — Who would have believed he could pull off such a complex stunt?!

Rapunzel said...

Hereafter he should be known as The Amazing Ted.

Julie B. said...

Ted is beautiful and efficient.

BLD in MT said...

HA! What a story! Oh, Ted....

(Also--that colorful knit/crochet blanket is gorgeous!)

Pen Wilcock said...

Yes — my family crocheted that bed cover for my birthday one year. It'e huge, it took them AGES!