Of Cats and Guitar Strings
When we first got our cats (almost a year ago now), they were initially fascinated any time I got out my guitar and played it: they'd stare intently at me and sometimes approach me warily as if torn between curiosity and fear. The novelty wore off soon enough, though, and now they either ignore it, or they leave the room, which is hopefully more indicative of their skittishness than any lack of quality in my playing...
One thing about the guitar still fascinates them, and always will, I think, partly because I don't do it very often, and partly because of the spectacle it involves: restringing my guitar. Their eyes go wide whenever they hear me cut an old string, and they watch amazed as it becomes two writhing tendrils shooting off in opposite directions. They also love seeing the new string dangling and bouncing about as I thread it through the guitar and get it into position. Just last night, Camo decided to ambush one of these dancing strings, and made some lunges at it with her jaws. It's always tempting to let the cats play with the strings, since it's so cute, but a more responsible feeling always prevails and I remove the strings from harm's way, so that no feline ends up swallowing steel wire.
(Kendell once joked that the cats must be attracted to the strings because they'd heard they were made of catgut -- which of course they aren't, they're made of steel -- but that made me look up catgut on Wikipedia, which notes that "[a]lthough one could conceivably prepare catgut from cat intestines, the name neither implies nor derives from any association with cats." It gives some etymological possibilities, including the theory that "[t]he word catgut may have been an abbreviation of the word 'cattlegut'.")
One thing about the guitar still fascinates them, and always will, I think, partly because I don't do it very often, and partly because of the spectacle it involves: restringing my guitar. Their eyes go wide whenever they hear me cut an old string, and they watch amazed as it becomes two writhing tendrils shooting off in opposite directions. They also love seeing the new string dangling and bouncing about as I thread it through the guitar and get it into position. Just last night, Camo decided to ambush one of these dancing strings, and made some lunges at it with her jaws. It's always tempting to let the cats play with the strings, since it's so cute, but a more responsible feeling always prevails and I remove the strings from harm's way, so that no feline ends up swallowing steel wire.
(Kendell once joked that the cats must be attracted to the strings because they'd heard they were made of catgut -- which of course they aren't, they're made of steel -- but that made me look up catgut on Wikipedia, which notes that "[a]lthough one could conceivably prepare catgut from cat intestines, the name neither implies nor derives from any association with cats." It gives some etymological possibilities, including the theory that "[t]he word catgut may have been an abbreviation of the word 'cattlegut'.")