Saturday 10 January 2015

Floating, vanishing balls...

Just when we thought things were settling down, we had a new and unexpected experience.

We're quite used to balls rolling around the floor. There are some that go slowly, and some that go faster. Some of them bounce better than others. Most of them eventually get lost under a sofa, or beside a big piece of furniture until we can persuade the humans to get them out again.

However, after much experimentation and a great deal of playing, we had determined that balls last pretty well, even if we sometimes can't easily find them. At first we thought that sometimes they vanished - but that was when we got distracted and forgot to watch them. As we grew older and more mature, we realised that they simply disappeared from our view, under or beside furniture. Sometimes with a careful paw we can retrieve them ourselves.

What they don't do is to vanish into the air.

Or so we thought.

We had just finished our afternoon nap one afternoon when we heard talking from the big humans and some chuckling from the small one. We had a good stretch, and made our way slowly downstairs.

There we saw some new and shiny balls, some floating in the air and some on the carpet. They looked very interesting:

Alexander the Great watches bubbles

We started to jump at them, only to have a nasty shock. As we touched them, they disappeared. It was as if they stopped existing! We chased them and tried to bat them about, but it was useless. And when I nudged one with my nose, I had a nasty taste in my mouth; it reminded me somewhat of the sink when the human has been washing dishes.

We backed away. Then we saw something even stranger: the humans were somehow making these balls appear. Or so it seemed.

We didn't make the same mistake more than a few times. The small human was still trying to bat at them to catch them, but we kept out of the way. This is a scary kind of magic.

Alexander and Joan watch bubbles

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