The cats are exploring wrapping paper discarded on the living room floor.

Willy pokes at the crumpled paper with a front paw, tentatively. He crouches, bobs his head, lunges forward, pounces, stops, retreats, repositions. He peers through tears in the paper. He retrieves one of his cotton-ball cat toys and drops it into the folds of the paper, then seeks it out, rescues it, bats it around the living room, then picks it up and drops it back into the paper again. Or he paws it under, circles the paper trying to figure out the best way to go about retrieving it, then suddenly leaps forward to scrabble it out.

Willy's enthusiasm intimidates his brother, Romeo, who has now retreated to the end table. He watches Willy. I am lost in this moment, watching them both.

Text and image © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.