Kiddo and friend are playing piano-cat.
A piano-cat.
Indeed, yes. A real-life piano-cat.
Description?
Happy to oblige, dear fellow writers!
A piano-cat is a giant kid keyboard device powered by batteries, on which one steps to play the notes (or noises, depending on the setting).
It’s designed to be extremely funny, not to mention entertaining, for kids from 2 to, I don’t know, 102 years old.
And, yes, dear fellow writers.
Oh yes, your suspicions are correct.
It is a terribly noisy kid toy, gifted, of course, by a well-intention but clueless relative without children… or any kind of souvenir of their own childhood games.
A parent brain-cracker toy.
Close to being as annoying as that work colleague repeating a very bad joke until somebody fakes a laugh or simply snaps a wholehearted « that will do ».
Therefore, piano-cat is only able to get out of its hibernation state when we have a friend over.
Today is such a day.
It’s New Year day. The afternoon is looking at us, grey, cold and rainy, RAINY. Rain in January, in the province of Quebec.
No sliding down the hill, no skiing or ice skating or taking a long walk with the sleigh in tow.
On the lake, ice is melting. No ice fishing either.
Kids are deprived of all the winter fun. What’s left is cold mud, yellowish grass and bare trees.
But… hey… we have a piano-cat.
And it’s New Year today. That means we’re allowed to hope for better days.
Until the next snowfall in this little corner of the world, take care, dear fellow writers.