Pippi really likes it when she focuses on that! You can tell from all the sleepy purring noises. 

Cuuuuuuuuute.

Pippi purrs some more, and nuzzles against her leg just a little bit.  

"You're too cute. It's a problem." Pet pet. "What are you gonna do to my grumpy cynical image?"

Sadly, Pippi definitely can't understand that, and so has no reason to change her behavior one iota. What she can do though is stretch a little, shift positions, and go back to nuzzling and purring. 

"Yeah, yeah." But despite her mocking tone, she keeps petting the cat.

The petting feels very good, and so does April, and this house, and everything in it. Pippi is happy here. 

"I'm gonna be out all day," she explains, "and I don't want you to get hungry. I mean, I figure if you get really hungry you can go out and terrorize the wildlife, but you know, short of that. Take care of yourself and please don't anxiously shred my furniture. I guess you can anxiously shred your couch if you really feel like it."

Pippi goes over to the bowl, noses the contents a few times, eats a bite, and then eats one more. Food sampled, she takes a big drink of water and then wanders off to curl up in the sun. She brushes past April's shins as she leaves, though, wrapping a tail around a leg in an affectionate gesture. 

"Yeah, well, so's your face. See you later, Pippi."

And she's off!

Well, while April is gone, Pippi can take a nice nap on the couch. That's probably what she'll be doing all day while April is gone, as there is no reason for her to be doing anything else with the house to herself. 

Six hours later, the sound of good-natured cussing drifts up the front steps.

The voices involved may be familiar.

Oh good! Pippi perks her head up from the spot where she has definitely been spending most of her day napping (though when April does check on the bowl of food, later, it will be somewhat depleted, along with the water bowl). 

April opens the front door, and she and Daisy commence wrestling a great big wooden pole in through it.

Pippi hops down and observes their antics with interest. Making sure to stay a good distance out of the way, but curiously watching for sure. 

Step one: get the dang pole into the living room.

Step two: More Lumber (in smaller pieces).

Step three: a couple of shopping bags containing other tools and materials.

Step four: stand the pole upright, next to the coffee table on the side opposite the couch.

"How did I end up here?" asks Daisy, standing on the coffee table holding the pole in place.

"Out of love for my cat."

Now April has to assemble the base for this thing by herself! An observant viewer might speculate that she and Daisy did some construction work before they got here, because there are already various holes and notches and other bits that let her put together all that More Lumber into a frame that she can attach firmly to the base of the pole using a screwdriver and a lot of elbow grease.

Pippi does not have elbows that function that way, and so cannot help. She can, however, sit on the arm of the couch like a throne, and watch as April does all the hard work of putting the base on the tall pole, occasionally cleaning a paw. 

Unaccountably, after she finishes putting together the base, there is Even More Lumber left over!

Daisy gets down off the coffee table to help April assemble the crow's nest.

Pippi watches them put together what is clearly for her with great interest. She might also be fidgeting excitedly a little, for all her attempts at looking unworried about how long they're taking. 

Well, she's going to have to wait a bit longer, because after April takes her turn standing on the coffee table to get the crow's nest screwed into place, the two of them start pulling big rolls of thick twine out of the shopping bags and winding it tightly around the pole from bottom to top.

Pippi may have let go of pretense a bit at this point. She's clambering back and forth between the (smaller!) pirate ship and the couch, looking in their direction occasionally, tail swishing back and forth.