How is it that the human hand is so perfectly designed to play with kittens?  You stalk your fingers deliberately across the floor and he crouches, revving up his hind legs for the pounce.  You roll him over and tickle his belly while he grabs you around the wrist with his forepaws and tries to kick your fingers away with his hind feet.  You scoot your hand quickly out from behind a table leg and back again, and he gives chase in a perfect feline ring-around-the-rosy.  Or you slide your hand under the bedclothes and suddenly poke up a finger and he comes hopping sideways across the blanket, back arched, tail fluffed up, to attack.  But best of all, is swooping him up into your lap where, with the softest stroking of your index finger across his tiny forehead, he falls instantly to sleep.

© 2015, Sandra Shaw Homer

Photo by Marten Jager