Every time I find one round a package or a bundle of mail I stick it in a certain chest of drawers, in case it comes in handy and to keep it away from Molly, who is obsessed with these things. She quite likes playing with my hair scrunchies sometimes, and those towelling bands. Those skinny rubber bands you get in a multicoloured pack from the stationer's don't seem to interest her. No, it has to be the thick brown genuine Royal Mail article that arrives through the letterbox. I'm surprised she's never unpacked the mail before I have.
She can smell them. Rubber bands to her are catnip, butterflies, mice, moths, spiders, whatever gladdens the heart of an active cat. Should she manage to filch one, all is peace, with a blissful cat skipping in circles round her treasure, picking it up, carrying it a few steps, putting it down and gloating over it, dancing round it, going into total ecstasy over it ...
Alas, the rubber band must be banned ...
She might chew it or swallow it, or swallow bits. She might manage to catch it round some part of her person while my back's turned. I daren't let her play freely with one, no matter how she adores them.
I feel so sorry and cruel when she stuffs her nose up against a drawer left open a crack, to inhale the intoxicating aroma of her prey, or finds an inch or so's gap when she shoves in a paw right up to her armpit and rummages ... how can I deprive her?
I have to. Sorry, Molly
I had a curtain whose hem was coming undone. I sewed it up in situ, stuck the needle through the curtain while I trimmed off loose threads, and forgot to retrieve the needle. Later I saw the cat I had at the time start chewing at the remaining thread dangling from the needle. If he'd swallowed the thread, the needle would have followed it down. Fortunately I saw what was happening in time to take the needle away.
The landmark Holmes dramatisations with Jeremy Brett made the cat a leopard rather than a cheetah.
