I sit at the desk reading some of the many posts written today about Carl Sagan.  Kako rests next to me.  I pet her with obedient attentiveness as I read.  She purrs quietly, occasionally rubbing her head against my hand or wiggling a bit as she settles into a new position.  Because she is beside and behind me to some degree, I cannot see her clearly—mostly what I see is her tail flicking back and forth from time to time if my scratching and rubbing on her grows too slow.

The infrequent sounds of things shuffling around the desk near her reminds me she is busy.  Kako is always busy, mind you, always up to something which generally equates to no good, mischief if you will.  I pay no attention to it.  I know how she is, how invariably her curiosity and meddling will lead to some kind of trouble, albeit rarely serious.  Accepting this side of her personality is part of what I must give to ensure her happiness, and in return she helps ensure mine.

Then she sneezes.  It is but one sneeze, a small one and nothing to worry about, yet it rattles her body just enough to push around a few items on the desk.  Again, I do not look.  Nothing crashed to the floor or exploded, so I doubt whatever has been dislodged is of any major concern.  I continue petting her with an absent-minded repetition like that of a pendulum swinging methodically along the tall frame of an old grandfather clock.  My arm moves with ease and continues stroking her fur, and she continues purring quietly, although I become aware that the sound contains a new element: sniffing, the kind representative of investigation.  I do not turn to see what she has found.  If it rests atop the desk, it cannot be all that important.

She nuzzles my hand with insistence.  It is as if I had stopped petting her, yet no such thing had happened.  She is simply telling me not to waver in my resolve to meet her needs.  She is, let us not forget, Miss Thing, and more importantly, she is Daddy’s Girl.  It would be a terrible injustice were Daddy to forget the responsibilities that last name implies.

As I dutifully pet her, her attention once again turns to rummaging about the desk behind me.  I assume her sneeze has offered her access to one or more items of interest, perhaps things not visible before she moved them.  Her sniffing continues even as her purr deepens.  It becomes almost throaty, a reverberating snore if one were to describe it in common terms.  Whatever she is up to, she is at least enjoying herself.

Finally, she stands and quietly turns away from me, moves around the desktop flat-panel monitor standing dark and quiet over my left shoulder, steps around one of the speakers, and quickly makes a dash for the cat castle.  Her surreptitious movements pique my own curiosity and I finally turn and look at her.

She is holding the microfiber cloth in her mouth.  It is the one I use to clean the monitors and my sunglasses.  Even as I begin to react, she glances quickly over her right shoulder and sees me beginning my pursuit, so she bolts from the desk to the castle, climbs one of its columns with the cloth still held firmly in her mouth, and lands defiantly on one of the top platforms.  I watch her as I stand, and she reacts to my motion by curling into a ball and pushing the small gray square firmly beneath her as though hiding it will confuse me.

Clever girl, that one.  I am most appreciative of the laughter her theft induces.  I need it.