Late one day last week, I was makin’ my rounds of the small spaces behind various desks in the office — monitoring dust bunny propagation. I must have been pretty involved, because next thing I knows, I am waking up sharing my laboratory with a pair of size sevens.  So, I takes a look at who is in them shoes an’ I am lookin’ at Jen, the cattery manager at just the same time she is lookin’ at me. “What gives,” I sez, “ain’t it convenient meeting you serendipity-like.”

I can tell that she is distracted cause all she sez, vague like is, “Oh, Hi Sherm.”  An’ she goes back to staring at nothin’. Me, I am thinking to maybe get in on a little contemplation time.  See, I sits on a lap and purrs; they srokes my fur and pretty soon, if one of us doesn’t fall asleep, a brainstorm. It’s just one of the ways I tries to help out.

So I jumps up on her desk, not expecting to, but findin’ a folded up fleece all infused like with the unmistakable essence of catnip.  Right away, I can’t help myself and I am rubbin my face against it an’ rolling all over like a kitten or something.

Jen’ she just looks at me eureka-like and sez, “Sherm, that’s it!” Jen is always trin’ to figure a ways to help the cats what are not able to be accommodated in the new cat suites an wanted to get them engaged and not worryin’ their whiskers to a stub — like most cats do when they are in a strange place. So I figured she is on to something.

Turns out Jen invented what looks like a fleece toy on a stick to me, but it is really an Interactive Device for Entertaining Worried Shelter Cats and Keeping Visitors Dirty Fingers (I Hope) Out of Cages.   Sara got involved, by arrangin’ for her friends in Leadership Salem to assemble the toys for us an’ she added catnip into the mix.

Me. I thinks catnip is just catnip and there are plenty of cats who like me don’t figure it, but there is not a cat born what doesn’t like the feel of that fleece material under his paws.   No, and never will be.

Thanks to Jen, every cat kennel in the place is equipped with a fleece toy just outside.  It helps the cats get their mind outside the kennel.  They even send the toys home when someone is adopted. I works with a great bunch of people. That’s for sure.

I got to add a thought… the Quality Control Project for Cats of which I have reported to you in the past has had a lot of turnover, staffwise. Most of us researchers has been promoted to Permanent Household Companions. Me too (a long time ago), but I am too young to retire to the soft life.  My colleagues need me.