When does a waste of time become a waste of time?

In this case, when you have a cat.

Allow me to elaborate. I have never grown up (physically and mentally). I spend too much time playing “silly buggers”. Things such as plastic aircraft model building, READING, jigsaw puzzles, sports such as squash, golf and table tennis wasted many a happy hour. Of course, to say nothing about “computer games”. I also have grown to love watching the weird game of cricket, especially 5 day test matches, and especially games involving South Africa, the Proteas. I also must confess that I prefer watching the games from the comfort of my lounge, I went once with Michele to watch a live game of cricket but the problem with watching the game live is that there is no replay! If you blink when something happens, you miss it. So I will watch it from my lounge where I can see action replays for what I may have inadvertently missed.

Of course all these enjoyable activities are rudely interrupted by work, and on the odd occasion, by my studies when I get the urge. Recently I also took a break from regular activities with some health dramas (which I happily survived), I am glad to report that my wife and kids are pleased about that too.

To get back to the mysterious title...

In the years before I started to attempt my honours, my wife excitedly phoned me the one evening. She had been to the Randfontein Agricultural Show and she had found a stall where jigsaw puzzles were being sold. She had seen my ultimate fantasy, BIG PUZZLES! I jumped in my car and raced there. The journey of 15 kilometres seemed to take an eternity. I parked as close to the entrance of the venue as I could, then I ran the whole way to a pre-arranged meeting spot. Quickly I arrived at the little stall and there I saw many BIG puzzles.

Puzzle building is something that I have been doing for many years. I knew exactly what to look for; not too much sky or too much water (if there is too big an area of such, then puzzle building becomes more of a battle of guessing attrition than skilled memory and judgement. Then I saw it! The puzzle that was made for me. Humbly, may I submit that this was the "GOLDILOCKS" puzzle for me? Not too hot, not too cold but just right! The puzzle has over 9 000 pieces (9 120 to be exact) and was a replica of a cartographer’s map of the year 1611. When I think back to that watershed moment in my life in year 2009, I am sure that there were lights surrounding the puzzle and a faint sound of music in the background. Celestial Choirs?

How much? I asked. R500 came the response. Crazy cheap! No bargaining, no haggling, just gratefully produced my credit card and made the puzzle mine.

When I got home, I reverently opened the box. The pieces were equally divided into two transparent packets. There was no intention to start building it immediately. PLANNING is vital ingredient. The next thing to consider before even opening the packet or starting the puzzle is to consider the size of surface area that you will need to be able to build. I read the dimensions on the side... 192 cm by 138 cm. Holy Tomoli! My table tennis board is just perfect. A table tennis board is 9 foot by five foot, that table tennis board translated to 274 centimetres long and 152,5 centimetres wide.

So I commenced with the delightful task of completing the first half. Tragically one of my scumbag kitties (I shall blame Teddy, the most beloved of all our feline children) scrambled pieces around before the first half was completed. To this very day, despite numerous cleansing frenzies, ONE piece has disappeared forever. The half puzzle was then carefully deconstructed into portions that would fit inside the lid, Then the portions stacked and carefully wrapped in news paper. The box was closed, years would have to pass before the stars would align themselves favourably for the second half of the puzzle was to recommence.

In the origins of time...
or, in other words, where did it all begin?

I first started seriously building jigsaw puzzles when I was in hospital for about 5 months when I was about 6 or 7 years old. My Mother would keep bringing me new puzzles to build, and over time I became hooked. Today I will not consider building a puzzle of less than a thousand pieces. Often when she visits a puzzle will be commenced. We do not talk but build in companionable silence. The only noise is "tap tapping". This sound is created when a puzzle piece is connected to the completed portion. When the piece is placed, the "succeedor" shall tap the piece in and the loud TAP is when the finger is used to push the piece down. The primary reason for this is to let the other participant(s) know of the minor triumph. My youngest daughter Maeve, irritates me as she too seems to have got hooked on puzzle building; she does a lot of "trash talk" and boasts of her superior placement skills. However "the TAP" is a psychological blow that intimidates her and sends her off to her mother to complain. She also lacks puzzle building etiquette in several ways:

1. she talks
2. she brags
3. she holds pieces in her hand while trying to find where to place them
4. she leans over the board, preventing me from seeing the whole picture
5. once she even committed the ultimate blasphemy, she hid a piece away and was the person who put in the last piece
6. another major crime was committed was to complete a puzzle while I was trapped at work.

The contradiction...
Not of time or space, no, much less grand a matter than that.
No, I refer to the relationship between puzzles and cats. Kids can also come into this equation, but I don’t like them, least of all my own, and when I add terror to the equation, kids disappear.

I love cats.
But they are natural enemies to puzzles.
The First Great Offender was Marmaduke, I shall never forget the ginger beast; I was building a puzzle that was not too big, a two thousand piece puzzle. It was a difficult puzzle though, lots of sky, grasslands but the majority of the pieces were trees. Do you have any idea of how difficult that is to build? Lots of hit and miss; it is also difficult because it is hard to remember all the pieces as they all looked so similar. I was almost finished and down to the last hundred or so pieces when above-mentioned offender must have liked the way the pieces skidded on the floor. I can still remember my feelings of despair and Michele’s gasp of horror. The cat lived and the puzzle was completed in due course.

Now it has happened again.
Astro you swine!
He pulled down the only completed segment of about a thousand pieces. Sadly my language was most inappropriate. He lives too. I have rebuilt it but it has cost me about 4 to 5 hours I estimate.

(the whole section at the bottom was on the floor!)

The cat has laid low for the past few days but he is back seeking affection as though nothing has ever happened.

I suppose he thinks I have forgotten it by now.

But the beast is wrong, how can a mental scar of this magnitude ever be removed?

So there you have it. I feel twinges of guilt when I waste the priceless treasure of time. I have learned to cope with such guilt but when a feline monster makes me waste unnecessary time on something I have already wasted time on, then anger combines with guilt and as I rebuild the previously completed sections of the puzzle, I fantasize darkly about dreadful torments for those for which I have equal measures of hate and love.

Soon, so soon, my kids will have all grown up and left the house. Then I will dedicate a bedroom to the building of puzzles, where I can CLOSE THE DOOR!!!