Those were the years in base housing, when the children were little and the cat loved to terrorize them.  Slipper would sit on top of a piece of furniture (to be at eye level with them) then she'd w-a-i-t.  The patience of a cat is something to be admired.  When one of the children would happen by Slipper (on her perch) she would get big and meow at them and stick out her front paw (which had no claws).  The children would scream at the top of their lungs, arms over their heads, and run to me to rescue them from the mountain lion on the dressar.  I'd pick up the ferocious mountain lion and cuddle it and the dc would giggle and pet her...and Slipper would find her escape to plan another attack. 

By the time we moved into our present home, the cat had new ways of interrupting us.  We usually do school in the loft and Slipper loved to zoom up the stairs, run into the schoolroom, jump onto the rocking recliner we used to have up here, and then leap off of it onto the railing...then look at us in a state of complete calm.   Another lesson interrupted... 

As the children got older and bigger, Slipper no longer was capable of terrorizing them. She started to run away from them and hide. While hiding, she devised other schemes.

While we sang at the piano, she'd start catterwailing.  What a sound. 

There are the flannelgraph stories I have attempted to present, with the board propped against the easel.  But the board keeps getting knocked and the flannelgraph pictures fall off, sending the dc into fits of laughter.  I look behind the board, but all I can see is an innocent cat looking at me.

There are the schizophrenic moments of Slipper's double life.  She runs into the room, where we are holding a lesson.  She is all puffed up, scared out of her wits!!! She looks wildly over her shoulder, as if the Big Bad Wolf is chasing her. Then she runs into the kitchen, on top of the counter (bad cat!  I never allow her up there!) on top of the fridge and on top of the cabinet over the fridge.  What?  You don't believe she is capable of such a thing?  I actually had time to get my camera for this one!  I have proof!

By the time I had gotten my camera, she had calmed down and reverted to her normal self, calmly looking down at me as though I was crazy! Of course the lesson had been totally destroyed, as my children were in hysterics.     

Slipper loves to sit in my lap, especially in winter.  When I'm at my desk, trying to help dd with her math, Slipper has been known to jump on my lap and bat at dd's hand and it ends up being a game. The math lesson is gone; dd and the cat are now slapping each other in a fit of giggles.    

Slipper loves story time.  While we are cuddled on the couch and I am reading out loud from a book, she loves to jump up and rub her head on the book and stick her tail in my face.  ahem... 

Here is proof from Christmas Eve!  I was getting a cold, so I could not read the traditional Christmas Eve Bible devotion.  So dd did it...and got interrupted by the cat.

Well what to do when in the middle of a book and a cat keeps rubbing against it?

Ahhhhh, just what she wanted, attention!

Finally, drastic measures had to be taken, because we weren't getting any reading done. That's when ds stepped in...

Slipper even manages to interrupt movie night (sometimes movies can be educational, so of course she has to foil that too).  Slipper adores laying on my lap when I have a chenille blanket over it.  Here she is, while we are watching a movie, with dd laying along my side.  Of course, you can tell that dd is distracted from the movie.

Slipper loves to lay wherever I've been.  Since I'm usually too busy during the day to provide a good lap. Slipper haunts my previous spots.  She has even been known to condescend to lay on ds' lap, as long as he has "the" blanket on his lap. 

 Here he is apparently doing his history reading.  Actually, I had to put a stop to this.  I figured out ds wasn't getting any reading done.  He spent the entire time talking to the cat, petting her, shifting her to better positions, shifting himself to better positions, propping the book into better positions. 

Slipper has very recently discovered dd's room. One of the few enticements for her to come out, is my lap being available.  Here is dd, ahem, trying to study.

After 19 years, Slipper has developed arthritis, so she no longer zooms. The piano and singing no longer bother her. She has become hard of hearing, so she has a new interruption for us.   She can't always find us (since she can't hear us) and feels alone in her world, so we are constantly interrupted by plaintive high pitched strains of "Meow!  I'm lonely.  Will someone come and get me?"  That has just now happened. Dd has just rescued Slipper from her aloneness.  Slipper is standing her on lap while DD is "doing" her Latin. 

Slipper has also taken to sleeping with dd at night.  She used to lay at my feet, but dh has abandoned the noisy creature from our bedroom.  Now she lays on dd's bed, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her tummy.  Since Slipper is now deaf, she of course thinks that all of us are deaf.  So in the middle of the night she's been known to walk gently up to dd's ear and "MEOW!"

Of course, dd's sleepiness has been known to slow down school.  sigh