Connections: Let ‘let alone’ be good enough

In my cat-sitting days, I always brought something interesting to the cat to win their friendship.
I was going to sit for a beautiful, long-haired Russian blue, whose people had told me he was very old and mostly slept. I didn’t have time to get something new, so I took along a stick with white feathers attached on a string. It was a bit bedraggled, but my cat, Mulan, had loved it.
When I got to Felix, he was half asleep on a bed. I took out the white-feathered stick, waved it back and for