Possibly The Last Straw This Time

 

A Story For A New Year

            It was that boring time of year. Pretty tree days were over. The lights! The lights! Ah well. Gone until next winter! Loud geboomin’ night was right around the corner, not a big favorite with house lions.
            Willie had nothing much to do. So, stretching and yawning, he went looking for his sister, just to see what she was up to. Sometimes it was entertaining.
            He didn’t see her in any of the usual places. Not on the sewing desk looking out of the front window. Not behind the piano. Not behind those boxes full of stuff on the back porch. So, where could the little nut be?
            He knew this was crazy, but he went looking for her in the bathroom and there she was in the shower. It seemed odd. But it was a very quiet day, and he had nothing to do.
            “Suzzo, what is that spicy smell?” said he.
            “Cinnamon, what do you think,” said Suzy. But her speech was strangely garbled.
            “What are you doing? What’s wrong with your mouth…” Willie was so confused.
            “I’m chewing it!” said Suzy.
            “Chewing what?”
            “Gum,” mumbled Suzy.
            “Why would you be chewing gum, Susan,” demanded Willie in astonishment.
            “To keep the wolfies away,” said Suzy, busily chewing away.
            “I don’t get the connection.” Now he was really mystified.
            “What is a wolfie, anyhow?”
            “I don’t know, but it sounds dangerous. She said cinnamon keeps bad things from getting inside of me. I heard her talking! They mentioned cinnamon gum!”
            “I can’t hear what you're saying, Suzy. You sound like a stopped up drainpipe,” said Willie. “Besides, where did you get this stuff?”
            “Oh. You know,” said Suzy.
            “Well, no, I don’t,” said Willie, “and none of us has ever seen a wolfie!”
            “I have!” said Charley, appearing suddenly, with a sniff and a hiss! “They’re six feet tall, and they chew cinnamon gum!”
            “Where the heck did you come from,” said Willie.
            “I came in here to use the box and found you two goofballs discussing something you’ve never seen.”

            "I didn't even know you were here," complained Willie.
            “They can’t chew cinnamon gum!” said Suzy. “They would be dead! Um, what do they look like?”
            Charley tucked herself down into a small black and white loaf shape. She slitted her eyes and got into mythic story mode, ready to tell a thrilling tale. She was also in the shower.
            “I saw one once,” Charley moaned.
            “Oooo,” said Suzy. “Tell us more! Where was it?”
            “One night, we were outside. We went for a walk down by the big river. I was on my leash, so I couldn’t run away!” whispered Charley. “The wind was blowing. Things flitted by in the air like little ragged ghosts. I could hear unnatural sounds from underground. Bubbles flew by, whipped out of  her bubble machine. Eerie bubbles, shining in the street lights!”
            “Noooo!” whispered Suzy. Her mouth hung agape, and her eyes looked like startled green marbles.
            “Then I saw it, the wolfie,” said Charley, through gritted teeth. “It was nearly as big as a motorcycle; it was shaggy and grey. It was big and bony! It was singing or howling, or something….
            “and there it is! Run, Suzy! It’s coming up out of the litter box!” yelled Charley.
            Suzy spit out her gum on the shower floor, and split as only Suzy can split, or maybe like Toots could! She was recent history in a fur suit. She was gone, man! Poof! Like she had never been there at all! Only Charley was left to occupy the shower.
            We know that the laughing cat is a figure of improbability, but Charley was giggling, sitting there in the shower.
            “Doggone it, Charley,” said Willie. “Why do you have to be that way?”
            Snuffles and giggling from Charley was all he heard.
            “Now I have to go find her and convince her not to believe anything you tell her!” said Willie. “Last time it took me overnight and into the next day to find her!”
            “Where was she that time?” giggled Charley.
            “In the drawer under the oven. Don’t ask,” said Willie, walking away.
            Charley thought maybe she could find Suzy first and calm her down. Suzy was in none of her normal roosting spots.
            At last Charley found Suzy behind a stack of towels in the bathroom closet.
            After a while she got Suzy to laugh about the whole charade, enough to not be afraid of the litter box.
            Willie’s takeaway from the episode was that girls are weird, first they go one way, then they go the other. Who can understand it?

Happy New Year you guys!