Clawdette LaClaw
Years ago when our home was bursting with life -- two kids, two dogs, five cats, and a squirrel that like to hang out on our deck to pick up the seeds that the birds visiting the feeder would drop ... Ahem ... Years ago my wife named one of the canines Mildred R. Dog. (Get it?) Ever since then our pets have all had first and last names.
If you're a cat person you will understand when I say that, unlike dogs, cats do not have owners, they have servants. This is especially true of our black cat Clawdette LaClaw. (Get it?) I am her valet. She tells me in no uncertain terms when I am to make a lap for her, and when I do she expects a full body rubdown, becoming huffy and demanding if I don't respond immediately.
Anyway, The Claw (get it?) has taught me a new trick. Having gotten accustomed to sleeping in the hall bathroom sink sometimes, she now tells me when to turn on a trickle of water so she can lap the cool, clean stuff rather than the grungy warm water she would otherwise share with her fellow lifer, Fraidy Cat, aka Freddie. And when The Claw has drunk her fill she lies down outside the bathroom door, guarding it against intruders in the same way that the beautiful statues of the black Nubians once guarded the entrance to the inner shrine of Tutankhamen.
That's the only place she will sleep now, that and the sink. Before this she had a dozen different sleeping places and would rotate among them, rarely sleeping in the same place on two successive nights -- a feline Sadaam Hussein avoiding ... ... well, avoiding boredom, I suppose.
And when I enter the bathroom now, she talks to me. "Turn the water on" she says.
And I do.
Edited by xxmikexx
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