Natalie is sitting up pretty well these days, but she still does a lot of over-correcting. As long as she doesn’t get hurt, it’s pretty hilarious.

Over the weekend, I had her sitting on Sammy’s bed while I was putting clothes away. She and Sammy were both sitting there, looking at a book together. Well, mostly Sammy was looking at the book, and every time Natalie would try to touch it, Sammy would say, “No touch, Nye. My book.” and yank it away from her. But at least they were both occupied and no one was crying.

I turned around to see Natalie hanging headfirst off the bed. I lunged and grabbed her in time before the rest of her slid off. I had set her well away from the edge of the bed, but I always underestimate how long she is. She didn’t even seem to realize what had happened, so all was well.

That reminded me of something that happened when Sammy was around the same age. I set him on the floor in the hall outside the bathroom, and Anya came running over. That poor cat never did figure out that she was more likely to get her fur pulled by him than petted.

First, I need to explain the “fall-down” trick. Both of our cats were very good at this trick. It was one of the only two tricks in their repertoire – the other one being the “lie on the newspaper to get your human’s attention” trick. The fall-down trick involved me patting the floor, and the cat coming over and flopping down on top of my hand.

Sammy must have done something with his hand that reminded Anya of this trick. She put her head down on Sammy’s hand, and executed her trick flawlessly. Sammy went butt-over-teakettle backwards, cat on top of him.

I rushed into the hall, laughing so hard I couldn’t hardly catch a breath, and removed the cat so she wouldn’t end up clawing him as she tried to get off.

I wasn’t finished in the bathroom yet, so after sitting Sammy back up in the hall, I went back to the bathroom.

Along came Anya for round two. She sauntered past Sammy, twitching her tail in invitation – come on, you know you want to pet me was what she was thinking. Sammy was thinking, I wonder what will happen if I pull this? He reached out and grabbed her tail, and she tried to take off running. That was enough to yank Sammy out of his precarious sitting position, and he landed squarely on top of Anya. They called it even and went on to other pursuits.