Twinkle Toes becomes some of the most excited I've seen him when I play the piano at night. Not yet having an acoustic piano, I practice on an electric piano emulating such in terms of tone and action, situated adjacent to french doors in the living room.

The first time hearing meowing and tapping on the window panes well past midnight startled me, including how Twinkle Toes gets up on his back paws to perform the latter with his front paws. Recognizing his visage dramatically silhouetted in the dark, I was smitten by the touching, unexpected attention, his radiant lime moonstone eyes staring while listening with genuine fascination for something previously unexperienced, or at least a new way of interpreting jazz standards.

Full disclosure, part of his motivation is for a post-dinner snack, which I gladly serve. Yet there are times Twinkle Toes has already eaten, and simply enjoys responding to a sound that seems to give him pleasure. It's definitely the music because I've noticed him just passing by in the daytime when playing with headphones.

Twinkle Toes has a most musical and graceful gait, the inspiration for his name, coming from the smoothly swift movement of his paws spinning a flawlessly modulated legato quality utterly captivating on its own in the realm of silence.

I think he thinks I'm a magician, first for making delectable cuisine materialize, and now something invisible yet entrancing in the sonic regions where kitties have phenomenally sensitive ears, compliment accepted.

Michael Robinson, March 2022, Los Angeles

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Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, jazz pianist and musicologist. His 170 albums include 150 albums for meruvina and 20 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University.