Going back through old photographs turned up this one, which explains a great deal about why so few puzzles were ever finished.
The setup was always the same. Glass-topped table by the window, a thousand pieces tipped out and turned face up, edges first, the box lid propped somewhere useful for reference. A good system. It survived contact with Howl for roughly fifteen minutes.
The method
He never scattered the pieces, which would have been the obvious crime. He simply lay down on them — full length, usually on whichever section had just started to come together — and asked for attention. Clearly, we had been ignoring him. Unfortunately, encouraging him to move would cause puzzle pieces to get entangled in his fur. The puzzle here is still missing the one piece that was carried off and never found.
Sometimes the best strategy was to stop and just give him attention.
The archive
These are the oldest pictures on this site by some margin — small files off an old camera, a little soft, the colors slightly off. They are worth keeping anyway. Between them, Howl and Paradox are the reason there is a website about cats here at all.