T.P.

Teenage boys and cats have independently discovered a source of endless entertainment. Just give them a roll of toilet paper, and they immediately know what to do.

Compared to imbibing drugs or alcohol, TP-ing a yard is a benign form of adolescent male recreation. As parents, we were fully aware our son was indulging in the sport.

He invented a sure-fire method for a quick, spectacular attack. A case of generic toilet paper and a broom were all that was needed. Loading numerous rolls on the broom stick, he would twirl the broom in the air thus draping trees with multiple streamers simultaneously.

One memorable night he and his friends staged a spectacular raid on a girl's yard. The next day people came from miles around to photograph the results. No one got mad; they were too busy laughing.

The combination of our son's reputation and the 14 mature trees in our yard made our house an obvious target. Our son knew he was responsible for cleaning up the inevitable mess... before it rained. We know he spent one entire night in our yard climbing and un-decorating trees.

Cats have developed two approaches to toilet paper sport. The first simply involves unwinding an entire roll right off the roller onto the bathroom floor. If you are not a cat owner, you cannot begin to imagine how many mountains of T.P. are on a single roll.

Our cat, Pi, is a proponent of method two. He takes the roll off the holder and wrestles it through the entire house shredding it as he goes. This is known as "the snowstorm", and last week we recorded three record-setting interior blizzards.

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