Richard’s favourite game has always been Biting Cat. Most cats want to play this game at least sometimes, but most owners won’t play it. We tried to stop him, when he was small, but he got terribly worked up and tried to dig our hands out when we hid them, so that in the end we gave in and played with him as much as he wanted.. He doesn’t really hurt us very much. Most of the time.
Biting Cat is played in some other households (I asked about it on CompuServe), but it tends to worry people who see it being played here, because our bear is so big. When he wants a game of Biting Cat he will come and stare at someone with his ears back, which is a way of asking you to get down on the floor. When you do that he comes up to your hand and suddenly lunges at it with his mouth open, to bite you on the wrist. You then have to pull your hand up and rub his head sideways between his ears. He stands on his hind legs, wraps his forelegs round you wrist, and bites your hand. The last stage is for you to flip him over onto his back without breaking his grip; he then kicks you repeatedly with his back legs, a process which we call "disembowelling." When he has disembowelled you for a bit he springs away and sits a foot or two off with his ears back, regaining his breath. Once he has recovered he will come back for another go.
This is not a very good picture of Biting Cat, but it isn’t easy to catch the game in action. He plays it most often with me and with my mother, as other people are afraid of it. We are used to this game and don’t really get hurt: we get scratches, but they soon heal up again. I know it is all in fun, because I once intervened in a fight between Richard and Pussy Whiteface, and then he really bit me hard: I still have a scar to prove it. Biting Cat hurts, but he is trying to hold back from damaging us, and on the whole he manages it.
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