okio9/
It’s confusing, I know, and the first word has not been mistyped. The site is called Fiontan Writes, and the first item I choose to publish is called Linus Types. It really isn’t my fault. My first post has been hijacked by a cat.
I was sitting at my desk, preparing to write. I am aware that may sound a little pompous, engendering feelings along the lines of ‘Who the heck does this Fiontan think he is? As if his writing matters anyway’, and such like. I admit it was never likely to be a piece of prose that would enlighten the destiny of mankind. Nevertheless, I was getting into a frame of mind to write something that might entertain a reader.
The blank page was on the screen in front of me. Linus, the largest of the three cats rescued from a plastic bag in the olive grove last year, had jumped onto the desk. He used the keyboard as a stepping stone to reach the window sill. ‘okio9/’ appeared on the page. You can see it there now, top left, just where he typed it. I was reaching for the Backspace key to delete it, when I realised the key selection may not be random. Because strangely, one of the cats that lived in the house next door until two weeks ago was called Oakie; or did his owners spell it Oki? I don’t know. I never saw the name written down, and I never had reason to ask them.
I don’t know why I am worrying about the spelling. Linus is barely one year old, far too young to be literate, not that we’ve had any thoughts of giving him a formal education. The four clawed toes and central pad of his front right foot had made a credible attempt at spelling the name phonetically. So what does he mean by ‘o9/’? It would be unfair of anyone to expect a young cat to understand the need for a space between words. I look at the ‘o’ key. The ‘9’ lies above it, to the left, and the ‘k’ lies beneath it, also to the left. Perhaps, in his rush to reach the noisy fly inside the window, he had hit the ‘9’ instead of the ‘k’. He had been trying to type ‘Oki ok’.
I look at the ‘/’ key. He had pressed it with one of his back feet. What was already strange is becoming stranger. The ‘/’ key is shared with the question mark character. Perhaps he saw the question mark and just pressed the key, having no idea of the need for the Shift key. Linus is asking if Oki is OK.
I think about which is more amazing: that Linus can remember his ex-neighbour, and is missing Oki after a full two weeks, or that he is able to type a meaningful question on a Qwerty keyboard, to the point of understanding the need for punctuation. This in turn leads to another decision for me. Either I must learn not to underestimate cats, or I need to get out more.