This morning while I was trying to get myself organized to start work, Sally came around looking for some attention.  Which of course meant that I had to stop whatever I was trying to start doing and give him some.  I scratched his chin a bit and when he was walking away, I grabbed the end of his tail and shook it.

There was something about the way the morning light was coming in from the windows that lit up all the dust that came flying out of his fluffy tail.  It was like shaking out a feather duster!  Of course, my first thought was bath time!  But I also realized that I hadn’t really thought about how much dust these kitties must pick up as they go through their days waving their fluffy tails around the house.

Mr. Man and I tend to only think about the messes that the cats make – cat hair on everything, cat food all over the floor by their bowls, the little bits of cardboard that they rip out of their cardboard cat scratchers…we never think about what they do to help clean up around here. I decided that today I would give the kitties credit for all the ways they help keep things clean.

Aside from their fluffy, feather duster-like tails, they also have very fluffy tummies that make excellent dry mops as they slide and roll around on the wood floors. You would think that they wouldn’t like chasing their toys around on the wood floors, where it is harder to get a grip. But the slipping and sliding is part of the fun.  Anabel has some moves when she is chasing after her ballerina mouse where she starts to slide, then sprawls out and spins around.  She winds up facing the opposite direction.  Sally prefers the belly-flop slide when he is playing catch with Mr. Man.  He chases after the toy mouse, sliding in to capture it.  Then he picks up his prize and returns it to his playmate.  Mr. Man can get the whole floor dusted just by varying where he throws the mouse!

Anabel and Sally also have that well-documented cat quality of not tolerating cluttered surfaces.  When we leave something laying around where it shouldn’t be, we aren’t surprised when we find it on the floor.  Many times, we find it because we step on it (ouch!). One of these days the cats will finally train us to put things back where they belong in the first place.

And perhaps one of the most under-appreciated ways that they help out with keeping things cleaned up around here is their paper-shredding talents.  Anabel is particularly concerned with potential identity theft and will regularly shred any papers she finds sitting out.  She was quite fanatical about it when she was a kitten; I have the scraps of book covers to prove it.  As she’s matured, she has become more selective about what she feels needs to be shredded, although she continues to have a big hang up about post-it notes.

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