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16 SOUTHERN SENIOR MAGAZINE | Winter 2023 Dear Diary, Hi there. It’s me, Emma. One of our neighborhood cats is a run- ner and a jumper. When he is in danger, he runs from it and leaps 6 or 7 feet into the air onto a nearby tree. I call him Jumper Cat. This morning the kitchen door was slightly open so Jumper Cat tiptoed in and began nibbling breakfast from Emma’s food bowl. Emma heard the intruder and quickly went after him, snarling and growling. Emma is a hunter, not a runner. Caught by surprise, Jumper Cat darted away and leapt straight up onto what he thought was a tree but was actually the back kitchen door. He hit the door with a thud and slid down, slamming the door closed and trapping both cats in the kitchen. Immediately, the growl- ing turned to screaming and the ruckus became a frenzy of wildcats yowling and soaring through every room in the house. They flew over the furniture and Jumper Cat ran sideways along the walls. I thought I was in the middle of a Chinese martial arts movie with angry ninjas flying about. Jumper Cat became trapped again in a storage room and I found him dangling by his finger-claws from a curtain rod above a window. As soon as he saw me, however, he leapt into the center of the room several feet from the curtain rod and the frenzy continued. He was fi- nally able to squirm into a tight spot behind some boxes and, in the brief calm, I could hear him earnestly praying he would somehow be delivered from this horrible place. I was praying the same. I thought I could help the situation a little by fully opening the back door, closing all other doors, and going after Jumper Cat with my broom. Bad idea. I did rout him out of his hiding place, but Emma was all over him again, and again the cats soared wildly through the house, Emma Cat across the floors and Jumper Cat bouncing off the walls. Let’s try that again. For my second act, I closed Emma in one room, and went alone with my broom to locate and extricate the intruder. I found Jumper Cat who yelled several nasty epithets at me, then ran frantically through the house and out the back door. Finally. Emma and I looked around the house. Pictures were now hanging crooked on the walls and storage boxes were kicked over with box contents scattered all around. I assured Emma that she had done very well, and I asked her if she was ready to help straighten up this mess. She was, and we did. Who does housework at 6:30 in the morning? Purrs, Emma S CROUCHING TIGER MEETS THE MATRIX