In Which the Naughty Cat Decorates for Autumn

We gathered on the last day of summer, the lovely women in my monthly craft group and I, for a morning of knitting, felting, stitching, and chatting. Tea and coffee flowed along with the conversation. There were pastries. And chocolate.

Autumn would start the next day, though that was just a chronological fact; summer lingered, lolling in a beach chair, putting on its shades to block out the sight of any turning leaves. (Indeed, summer only just packed its bags and left town three days ago.)

All too soon, needles were safely stowed in a pincushion, skeins carefully tucked into bags, and cups and dishes stacked on the counter.

The dog pranced around, begging for a walk, as soon as my friends left. I put on her leash and off we went, after I remembered to weigh down the stack of orange paper napkins left on the table beneath a heavy book.

But my precaution was useless because when we returned, this is what we found:

The culprit wasn't hard to figure out. Or find.

Not only did he have no regrets, he also bragged about his work.

Django tried to convince me that he hadn't chewed up the napkins and strewn them about the floor merely to be naughty. No, this was just another one of his art installations, one in which he was celebrating autumn and was going to call "A Scattering of Leaves." But I found a big wad of napkins stuffed into the dog's water bowl, as usual, so I suspect he's just trying to veil his addiction to immersing paper in water.

(The age-old excuse "the dog ate my homework" will never be true for my daughter, because the dog is good as gold, but "the cat drowned my homework" would be 100 percent fact. The same blue geometry worksheet, for example, ended up in the drink not once but three times the other day.)

Of course, after all this hard work and creativity, he had to rest for another 23 1/2 hours.