Thurz-day 13 (& an extra one!)

Okeedokee. I yam turnin’ da T13 oefvur to Auntie Stinkie. She iz gonna talk non-stopee fur a bit until she gets to da lastee ting on da listee:1) I am going to the V-E-T tomorrow with the kind man who became my dad. He was my “mail-box friend” for many years before he became my dad. When I was a young cat, I would walk with him down the road to the mailboxes and talk with him while he gathered up his letters. He was very kind to me, but did not understand what I was trying to tell him. He thought I was just saying “Waah! Waah!”

2) When the woman who became my mommy first visited the neighborhood, I became very excited. I was 11 years old by then, and she was sitting with the kind man in the dark, watching stars in the clear January sky. I walked over from my house to see them and have a chat. At first, my-soon-to-be-mommy thought I was a sick alley cat. I had hair missing, there were itchy scabs all over my body, and I was as skinny as a rail. Because I had such a loud voice, and yelled “Waah! Waah!” she thought I was a boy. (Oh mommy really, a boy!)

3) When my-soon-to-be-mommy moved in to the kind man’s house, I decided to pay her daily visits. I sat on the porch rail outside and shouted, “Waah! Waah!”

4) I barfed all over her car every day, just in case she didn’t get the translation right.

5) After a couple of weeks of barfing undigested food on her car and on the front porch, and yelling non-stop “Waah! Waahs!” the light dawned in the woman’s head. (I was beginning to think she wasn’t as smart as I first thought)

6) My soon-to-be-mommy revealed all to the kind man. “Oh, she’s allergic to the food they’re feeding her over there,” said the woman. “She’s barfing it up here, so that we can see. And she’s talking non-stop about her flea allergies. That’s why her hair is missing and she has scabs. She also HATES the yappy dog that they have, and she is so lonely. She just wants somebody to pay attention to her.”

7) But still, they would not let me become their cat. The couple already had four cats, and two of them were very old. My mail-box friend had old cats and the woman had two boy cats. They were like the Brady Bunch—when they moved in together, their cat family got bigger than either of them had ever counted on. However, they talked to each other a lot about me:

8) “She really wants to move in here, can’t you tell?” The kind man looked at the lady and said “We can’t have five cats Maddie, and besides, she has a home.” “But she’s begging us to take her in, and it’s freezing out there, and she’s old.” I decided to be a little more persuasive in my argument for moving in. “Waah! Waah! Waah! Waah! I said.

9) “Allright,” the kind man said. “Since it’s freezing and might end up snowing, we’ll put the electric blanket in a basket on the front porch, and she can sleep there.” “That’s a good solution,” said the woman, and she filled up a kibble bowl with good nutritious food and set it next to the blanket. I sank into the lovely warmth without an argument.

10) When Spring arrived, I had my paw in the door. The lady became mommy and my mailbox friend became my daddy. I nursed his old cats when they got sick, and I took on mommy’s “bull cats,” those hooligan boys that she brought with her, and I slapped them around every chance I got.

11) When mommy and daddy decided to bring two young cats home from the shelter a couple of years ago, I became Alpha cat. Well somebody needed to, and two young girls and two unruly boys need an Alpha cat. Since I became blind however, things have shifted a little in my ability to control those boys, and I am going to tattle on Tweety:

12) He has been slapping me lately, and I think it is pay-back for the last four years. Mommy gets very upset with him, but I just take it in stride. I’ve seen it all at my age, and I really am a “Buddha cat” now. Sometimes boys like Tweety who were abused early in life, have trouble adapting to change.

13) The new pills have helped me very much. I was yelling at mommy this morning, “Waah! Waah! Waah! Waah!” She just was not moving fast enough fixing my eggs. When I visit the V-E-T tomorrow, I am going to have my heart checked to make sure I don’t have to take a different pill. But the pills are easy to swallow now, since mommy ordered the pill pockets.

14) As a T13 bonus: I am very happy that all of you are coming to Tweety’s New Year’s Eve party, and I hope to contribute to your good time by singing one of my favorite songs: “Waah! Waah! (Happy Holly-days to you!)”