Ten degrees this morning, but nothing daunts Ruckus. He bounces into the house after his morning constitutional, blue-eyed and beaming, his white pelt as fluffed and dense as an ermine's--a cat who has lucked into the best of all possible worlds: shrews and songbirds in the forest, wood heat and a homemade cardboard-box playhouse (with windows and a front porch!) in the living room. He runs over to me, puts up his paws to be carried, rubs his ears into my hair to warm them up, wriggles down again, rushes over to Anna's breakfast dish and licks up her leftover gravy (while carefully avoiding the carrots), whizzes upstairs to jump on my keyboard while I'm typing, gets pushed off, sharpens his claws on my violin case, gets yelled at and chased down the stairs, which is exactly his goal, because now I'm going to let him outside again so that he can go back to prowling around among the shrubs and stones doing Top Secret Cat Stuff. This will all be repeated in about 45 minutes.

Writing of his cat Jeoffry, eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart said: "For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life"; "For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat." This is blatant cat propaganda; I daresay mole- or chickadee-centered poetry would tell a different story. Nonetheless, like Smart, I am susceptible to the way Ruckus "brisk[s] about the life."

For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.

It is good to imagine an eighteenth-century man, on his knees in a flagged, rushlit kitchen, tossing a cork to his cat, and laughing, and tossing it again. His poem is like a cat video in words. "Spraggle upon waggle"! Ruckus can do that too!