Kelly, Lead Crochet Tester

Kelly has claimed my crochet project.

Whenever I crochet something, Kelly can hardly wait for it to be big enough for her to knead and settle down on. I got up to take something out of the oven and when I turned around she had already made herself at home on my partially-finished project. You can’t hear it here, but she is purring mightily. Perhaps it’s because the yarn nearly matches her eyes.

Kelly yawns.

Kelly refused to give up her claim to my partially-finished legwarmer, so I let her give herself a full bath and purr on it, the true test of a crocheted item’s worth and durability, until she finally grew drowsy and gave a big yawn. Since I was making two of these I simply started from the other end of the skein and began the second one.

Other feline members of the household also enjoy crocheted items, but they don’t make a profession of testing them out as Kelly does, they take the easy route and simply curl up for a nap.

Kelly entered my home at about age four, but at probably 16 she has barely changed a hair in all these years, always looking like a young kitty, slender and graceful and very, very vocal. I can see her pupils aren’t as dense black as they once were, but her irises are still vivid clear green, not showing the striations usually seen in senior cats’ eyes. Her eyes also used to be perfectly round and are now a little flattened top and bottom. And she had completely black whiskers, but in the past year has one by one developed three white ones.

Kelly curled, a sign of approval.

Cats LOVE crocheted items. They probably love knitted items as well, though I crochet much more often and I notice that many of my online crochet friends have images of cats on their blogs and websites and as avatars for their online identities, and even have feline-oriented words as part of their online names and e-mail addresses.

This must be good stuff if Kelly finished her bath, rested a while, then curled up on it. I’d guess it meets with Kelly’s approval.