My daughter moved up here to stay with us temporarily. She brought her cat, Link.

At eight months old, Link is still a kitten, with all the playfulness, mischief and energy the word, kitten, implies.

It’s amazing how one’s household changes with another person residing upstairs. But the presence of a cat totally changes the way Bruce and I operate.

For one thing, we have to be very careful where we step. Link likes to weave through our feet, a recipe for disaster when you’re walking downstairs.

Link likes to bite. Not bad bites, and he stops as soon as you go “ach!”

Like most youngsters, Link has boundless energy and loves to be the center of attention. It’s hard not to pay attention to him. He’s adorable, with marmalade fur, amber eyes, and a line of darker fur which slants downward from his eyes to his temples, giving him a somewhat comically sad expression.

And his tail. What a tail! He’s got medium length, very soft fur, but his tail is the tail of a Persian cat. I find it hard to resist playing with that wondrous tail even when he’s getting more playful and more prone to bite at each passing second.

Link likes to watch TV, especially when I’m watching my favorite Nat Geo animal shows. He runs over to the TV and tries to bat at the wild animals moving across the screen.

As a growing boy, he’s always hungry. He’s gotten me so soft that I gave him my last bite of sliced roast beef.

I have to keep the lid of the piano down any time I’m not practicing because he loves to explore the length of the ivory, jumping at the strange sounds that tink or plunk or growl from the throat of this big mahogany beast. I say, “Link, get off Joanne! She doesn’t like you running on her keys.”

Like any youngster, Link loves to explore. He accidentally got locked inside our storage room the other day when Kiri went down there to get something. But he wasn’t upset. He spent those two dark hours,—I imagine—inspecting, sniffing, jumping up, jumping down, discovering and batting about a bug or spider carcass, mapping in his cat head those places he might explore more thoroughly at a later opportunity.

A dog would have howled if he’d been left locked up downstairs, away from his person. But not Link. He’s a cat’s cat, a miniature tiger, a natural-born killer, roaming his new domicile, ever hopeful that a mouse or bunny will appear to satisfy his craving for the hunt and the kill.  Vocalizing, “kick,kick,kick” softly, in the back of his throat at the sight of birds or squirrels at the bird feeder on my deck.

Everything about cats is stalking and killing. Besides procreating and rearing their young, cats only think about murder. Sure, they’re affectionate, and they enjoy the attention of their people. But even when they’re enjoying your attention, their tails twitch and their eyes watch the movement of your hands for any signs of becoming  prey. If Link were thirty pounds bigger, he’d probably kill one of us in a second of unbridled instinct.

Still, I’ve grown fond of this marmalade-colored murderer. With a few adaptations on my part, I think I can keep my feet and ankles safe from his claws.

When Kiri is ready to move, I’ll miss the cat, too.

This is totally off the subject, but I wanted to give you a heads-up about the release of book three of The Hunted series. Haven’s Fire, the exciting, slightly creepy, romantic suspense-filled completion of this trilogy is due to release on May 10th. It will be a paper-back and an ebook.

I’m currently looking for volunteers who would be willing to read an Advance Reader Copy and post a review on Amazon a few days before the book releases. If you’re interested in doing this, the Advance Reader Copy will be sent to you as an ebook. (No paper-back copies. Sorry!) I need tons of reviews, so please consider this.

Let me know in the comments section if you’re interested.

Have a wonderful day!