I have been teaching my exercise classes from my family room since the Pandemic lockdown. I teach Active Agers (otherwise known as Seniors). Just before the lockdown our cat Puss N’ Boots (13 yrs) passed away and during lockdown our dog Mikka (12 yrs) passed away. I really didn’t want to get any more animals for a while as I wanted us to be able to travel without the hassle of finding someone to care for our animals.
After a few months it was clear we were not going to be able to do much traveling and I broke down and put in applications at three different rescue shelters for two short haired kittens (they needed a buddy to play with). The next day I got a call, one of the shelters had two kittens.
We now have Musti (means Blacky in Finnish) a very curious and needy black cat and Sami (Samuel) a skittish tiger cat. They mostly play in the family room. We have a scratching post, cat tree, cat tunnel, cat house (made from the box the cat tree came in) and various toys. It looks like we have two toddlers in our home.
The cats like to play in the family room while I’m teaching. My Active Agers love watching the cats play during class. They refer to the class as the show. Musti will literally climb up the curtains in front of the sliding glass doors. He likes to be held and will often launch himself from the couch, chair, my computer table onto me using his claws to grab on.
One day Musti was in rare form. A client asked me to record the class so she could do it on the weekends. This was the class that Musti felt like he needed to be held by me over and over again. See the video to catch some of his most active moments of the class.
I am sure that you have some of your own stories to tell about your cats getting in your way while working from home. Maybe they walk across your keyboard sending the letter r rrrrrrrrrracing across your screen. Maybe they sit in front of your monitor saying “Play with me!” Maybe they jump up on you, out of nowhere and dig their claws in to you.
While working from home during this Pandemic, our lives aren’t boring with our kittens around.
Holly Kouvo is a personal trainer, functional aging specialist, senior fitness specialist, brain health trainer, writer, and speaker.