Our Only Fan

Jeff and I have been spending our evenings of late (well, a portion of them) playing Irish jigs and reels--he on the mandolin and tenor banjo and I on my spiffy new guitar:



It's the same kind of guitar we bought Greg for Christmas--a Washburn D10S. A dreadnought. Which means a honkin' BIG guitar. I'm kind of dwarfed by it, actually (although some would say that I'm dwarfed by just about everything...). It's a nice, loud instrument!

Anyway, Shelly (who, alas, is starting to show her age as a geriatric 14-year-old feline) will come sauntering in, hideous sock toy in her jaws, about two or three songs into our repertoire. She will sit on the floor in front of us, watching and listening, for another song or two. At some point during those songs, she drops the hideous sock toy (sometimes in my open guitar case), and ambles over to the sofa. She launches herself up on the arm thereof and settles herself in for the rest of the set, purring loudly enough for us to hear between songs. It's really funny, because in her whole life she hasn't shown much interest in music, except for Laika and the Cosmonauts. Well, we're playing stuff like "Kesh Jig" and "Old Hag You Have Killed Me" instead of "Aztec Two-Step" and "The Man from H.U.A.C.," but to her, I think there must be SOME connection!

An aside... a couple of months ago when Jeff was in Boston on business, I hauled the guitar out to practice by myself. It didn't take but two or three chord changes before Shelly loped into the room, all happy and expecting, it appeared, to find that Jeff was home. When she didn't see him, she was visibly disappointed. (Don't ask me how I know when the cat is disappointed. It's really obvious.) Anyway, she did me the favor of listening to me plink away on my lonesome!