Are you sure you can manage Mr. Midnight?   The whole idea seems barmy and far  too  precarious for my liking.

      If you could just pipe down for a second I would be able to concentrate better.  It´s not easy you know.

       I can see that.  You wouldn´t get me up there at this hour in the morning.  The fence keeps swaying from side to side.  Don´t fall down!

        I won´t fall down if you kindly refrain from distracting me.

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Sir Winston could understand the fun in wanting to walk along the top of the fence but he couldn´t understand why Mr. Midnight had chosen to do it on such a windy day.  The wood panel fence looked rather flimsy and was obviously, not very stable.

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       Well done Mr. Midnight, you´ve nearly reached the other side. Just watch you don´t knock those low lying branches with your tail.  They could spring back and catch you unawares!

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Mr. Midnight ignored Sir Winstons wise words.  If Sir Winston could do it any better then why doesn´t  he have a go, he thought to himself.  At that exact moment he then reached the otherside of the fence and he sprang onto the low roof of the garden shed.

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       There you go Sir W.  Easy peasy pudding and pie!  I made it.

       Well it looked a lot of fun but why you had to go and take such a difficult path to get to the shed I´ll never know.  You could have just trotted over the lawn and sprang up onto the rain barrel next to the shed.  It would have been a lot easier.

       Why does everything have to be easy in life?

It´s more fun taking the “high road” than the low and the view from the top of the fence is a lot better than if I went across the green stuff.  The fence is so narrow and scary but the feat made me feel alive.

       You often appear to take the narrowest path in life and the fence is indeed, very narrow.

       Habitually, humans tend to take the wide and fast road in life. That´s why they seem to develop so slowly.  They believe they haven´t any time to lose and  usually prefer to take what is believed to be the “easiest path” in life.

       You mean the path of least resistance?

I´ve often noticed that with humans.  They seem to believe that if they can cut corners  then  they will reach their goals more satisfyingly.

       Which I believe is a load of codswallop.

The easiest path just gets you to where ever you want to go that much faster. It doesn´t necessarily mean that one has understood or  mastered the task at hand. The easy path just means that one reaches ones goal by putting in as little effort as possible,  which although appearing logical, will not always be the best path.

A line from my favourite music band, Depeche Mode, states that “the narrowest path is the holiest”

       Well there´s certainly a lot of holes in that fence Mr. Midnight. You´d think daddy would get it sorted wouldn´t you.

       I don´t mean the fence Sir W.

If people take the path of least resistance then they aren´t going to learn very much in life are they.   I mean, one has to put time and effort into something to properly understand its real meaning and to gain  genuine satisfaction.

If one takes the path of least resistance, at the end of the day, that easiest path may in actual fact, have been the steepest.  It´s easy to be lazy and convenient early on in life but when in ones twilight years,  that trodden so-called “easier path” may in fact,  turn out to be the hardest path ever taken.

       So you´re saying that “the path of least resistance” is in actual fact, possibly the path with the most resistance?

       I think to a certain extent,  you have it in a nutshell.  The easiest path is possibly  only the easiest at the beginning.   It´s  sometimes better to  hit the harder road and to do ones homework properly than to try and cut corners in life.

       Perhaps that´s why many humans tend to  get very ill in their later years.  It´s not because of their bodies getting older but because of their convenient habits and attitudes of yesteryear.

Poor things. You have to feel sorry for them don´t you.

       That´s why I wanted to walk the narrow ledge of the fence.  It was a challenge and I´ve gained experience.  It would have been easy to run across the soft, green stuff to get to the shed.  Where´s all the excitement in that?

       I suppose you´re right Mr. Midnight.

Although sometimes,  life can be quite  tiring,  it´s often worth the effort to occasionally take a challenge in which to discover the real secrets of life.

I think I´ll have a go now.  I may be a bit heavier and more cumbersome than you are Mr. Midnight, but that´s all part of the challenge isn´t it.

Make way for Sir Winston, the incredible, balancing  Black Forest cat!

(C) mags 2014