Because we found our two cats at a garden centre, and because as brothers, they were inseparable, and because they both shone with silver-grey fur, we gave them the names of the wine—made with silvery-grey grapes—called Pinot Grigio.
They are as opposite in personality as night and day. And, as a consequence, they have lately come to enjoy very different toys—that seem to accommodate their different natures.
Pinot’s favourite toy is a piece of dried pasta—the spiraled fuseli—which, on a smooth floor, he bats about in a fast, noisy, speedy, unpredictable game like floor hockey.
But Grigio favours the light, crunchy paper balls which I make for him by scrunching up sheets of computer paper. They are now everywhere (he plucks them deftly from a basket, to which he never returns them). Grigio adores his paper balls, of which he has hundreds, scattered throughout the house. The balls are light, soft quiet—which seems perfectly to suit his poetic nature.
He usually delights us with one of them at three o‘clock in the morning, when he wakes us up to present us with a paper ball, dropping it on the bed with an air of triumph, as if it were a conquered prey.
In the drawing shown here, the ball Grigio plays with looks shiny, with an almost porcelain quality, though it is, in truth, nothing more than a crunch of light, semi-translucent paper. Which is consistent with Grigio’s delicacy
