Muffin is our long-haired, 18 pound, Manx cat. He's colored, and looks much like a Bobcat. We have an acre of land in the Pacific Northwest, which my then husband, Larry, turned into a Bamboo jungle. He called it Northern Tropics, because he tried to grow all sorts of tropical plants there, figs, kiwis, bananas, etc... Muffin has a wonderful time hunting for mice and rats and, unfortunately, birds.

One day I was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the sliding glass doors at the back yard. Muffin came tearing up the trail from the "Back Forty", past the greenhouse, and up a tree beside the flower beds. I noticed flashes of light above his head and another below him. He was trapped!

He'd been messing with the Elves again, and they were out to teach him a lesson. With an Elf above and one below and closing fast, Muffin leaped from his ten foot high perch. His powerful hind legs sent him flying nearly twenty feet before he landed beside the Koi pond. Sparks and flashes leaped from the grass, right on his stubby tail. Muffin made a leap over the goldfish pond, which is only four feet wide. Suddenly, he stopped in mid air, suspended for a second by a eire glow all around him, then ~splash!~ he was plunged into the pond. Several sparks hovered over the water for a second before they disappeared. They must have plunged him deep for it was another second before he surfaced and drug himself from the pond. He shook himself like a dog, then each foot, catlike, of course. Then looking over his shoulder, he ran to the house, still terrorized.

I let him in. "Messing with the Elves again, I see. Maybe you have learned your lesson," I scolded. Never-the-less, I got a towel and dried him off. He was content to stay in the rest of the day.

 

(c) Sharri Lorraine~ 1992, 2001