The shopping night ritual..........

The rustle of plastic shopping bags was like music to Jonesy's ears.....it meant the possibility of food for a gut bucket cat, as well as unlimited fun getting your whole body into a small space and then scaring the girl cats silly by leaping out at them! Forget special cat nip toys, (although those were a favourite too), because a plastic bag was much more exciting. I am not sure when Jonesy began his fascination with bags, but most kittens and cats find them great entertainment. The association with food, on the other hand, didn't take long to work out. We tended to always do our shopping after I finished work on a Friday, and by the time we had got home it would be close to 6.30. Cats have super sensitive hearing and ours could easily recognise our car pulling up the drive. As soon as the front door was opened so we could go back and unload the shopping from the car, Jonesy would shoot out to have a nosey at what was happening. It didn't matter what the weather was like...if it was raining he would race under the car and peer out excitedly...if it was summer he would ponce about our legs getting in the way...if it was snowing he would yowl from the doorway to tell us to hurry up! Even when we changed to 'bags for life' that didn't rustle so intriguingly, he would still sniff them in frantic excitement. The girls were far more sensible. Ripley would perch on the banister post and meow hello as we walked past....Peanut would perch on the middle stair and peer through the banister silently. The minute the shopping was unloaded we would coax Jonesy back in and shut the front door. All three cats would high tail it into the kitchen and therein began the fun. Well, fun for them, exasperation for us. It is almost impossible to unpack shopping with three cats milling about. At least one of them, if not all three, would at some point meow to tell us to hurry up as they were starving and hadn't been fed for ages and ages! Jonesy would try to help with the unpacking by sitting on as many bags as he could, in turn, to let us know which one to unpack. If he could get his whole body in a full shopping bag that was a bonus....if he could get his whole body in an empty one that was even better. Getting his head stuck in the handle, and then trying to walk away with a bag attached to his body, was the icing on the cake. The girls rarely messed about with the bags, but to Jonesy this was a shopping night ritual he never veered from, even when he was ill....and he always knew which bag had the cat crunchies in! In fact he tried to help us so much he would even attempt to get into the cupboard where the cat food was kept. I ask you, as if we didn't know where that was kept!