Puttikins Organise their own Egg Hunt

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On Easter Sunday, I was relegated to the position of an adult who had to pretend not to be interested in the Egg Hunt for the other guests who were aged 10 and less. Easter is one of my favourite holidays and I love all of the traditional symbols of the festival, including the gaily painted eggs that are hidden throughout the garden.

Well, I should not have envied the children. There is a saying to the effect that you should be very careful what you wish. I had my own Egg Hunt today.

I created a basket for the Puttikins for Easter, filling plastic eggs with Cat Treats and adding a soft toy and some soft balls. It was a great success, although this year's plastic eggs were superior to those of previous years and could not be opened by any of the Cats without human help.

The cats are not allowed in the kitchen ordinarily as it is shared with other people who would frown upon their presence and indeed their existence. Today, as I was the only person in the house, I took them into the Kitchen for an encore of the Egg Hunt, filling the eggs again with treats.

They always have boundless energy, but when they find themselves in a fairly large space like the kitchen, they become almost insanely hyperactive. When they finally exhausted themselves and overturned a music stand, scattering sheet music everywhere, exhumed every scrap of dust from every hidden nook and corner and dragged an old pair of shoes out from God knows where, I took them back to their own room.

When I returned to the kitchen to tidy up the mess, I could not see ANY of their Easter Eggs anywhere. As some of them still were filled with Cat Treats, I had to find them or else be forced potentially to explain the contents somehow. A cunning Easter Rabbit could not have hidden them more cleverly than the Puttikins. It took me half an hour to find all of them. No prize for doing so except that of not being obliged to worry about the consequences of a non-Putti finding a wayward treat-filled egg.

What is ironic is that, with a basket filled with plastic eggs that rolled beautifully, the Puttikins managed to find a small cap from a spray bottle somewhere in the kitchen and THAT became their favourite toy. Yes, they scattered the eggs everywhere and 'lost' each of them but the little plastic cap was the hit of the day.

When will parents ever learn the lesson that children, whether human or feline, do not require expensive playthings but can be perfectly content with a stick, a chunk of wood or a scrap of fabric? Imagination is the greatest gift of all and is the birthright of every child. (That... and the sense of mischief that is a dubious blessing for the adults who are 'in charge' of caring for the children.)