20 Very Important Things To Do On A Vacation Friday – Part 2: The Afternoon

  Note: Continuing our enumeration of critical things one must do in order to squeeze the maximum productivity out of your personal day and yet still remain relatively content and happy. Click here to read the first part of the series, in case you don’t recall the bit of a pickle I was in when last we chatted…

21. Avoid getting arrested for public indecency.

  This goal proved to be much more attainable than first thought when I realized that the window I was standing at only came down to general chest-level. This meant that the annoying minor and the medicated major standing in the street could only see, at best, my nipples, which definitely kept things more family-friendly. (Although, if those nipples could talk, they would definitely have some stories to tell. Perhaps another time.) However, I have to admit that a very small part of me was a little disappointed that I would not have a reputation as a sex criminal.

22. Avoid the public, period.

  As it dawned on the staring Trixie and June that there was indeed life within these walls, and Trixie started to re-hoist her evil cookie collection and stomp back my way, I grabbed the curtain and wrenched it shut again. Trixie made a little gasp of indignation (something she probably did daily, based on the professional sound of it) and turned to mother June, prepared to launch into a treatise on the indignity of my actions and how her retail aspirations were not being satisfactorily met. (Children simply have no patience these days. Perhaps if some parents weren’t shoving wireless phones and iPads into their tiny little hands as soon as they shoot out of the womb, things would be a bit different.)

23. Spy on people even though you really just want them to go away.

  There was a convenient rip in the window curtain, a drab bit of material that has been hanging from the same rod since the first moon landing, which allowed me to observe the family dysfunction taking place at the curb. Little Trixie was fully intent on making me purchase every box of sugared fat on the planet. Momma June was starting to realize that her offspring was making a bit of a scene, a notion that rarely crossed Momma’s mind unless she ran out of wine. More importantly, Momma was aware that the other mommas were getting an eyeful of what happens when ill-prepared people manage to conceive.

24. Discover that you can learn a lot just by looking at someone’s face.

  Due to the delicate nature of the situation, what with Momma June having been nominated for an important committee in her favorite organization, a pointless group that only had functions so the women could buy new clothes to attend them, a nomination that was dependent on the very women who were now standing around Momma and gloating that their own children were temporarily not having over-privileged meltdowns, Momma lowered her voice so I couldn’t hear her exact words to Trixie. But Momma’s eyes were very clear: You are going to shut the hell up right now and get in the car before I wallop you with this Gucci handbag that can only hold a tube of lipstick and a thong.

25. Discover that children can learn things very quickly, when they apply themselves.

  Trixie’s eyes: I am also up for a nomination in my own favorite organization, the Pre-Teen Bitchy Queen League, and if I give in to you right now, I will get two demerits and therefore disqualify myself from the election. However, I also wish to remain in your will, specifically so I can get the house in Connecticut and generally because I abhor the thought of ever having to work for a living. Therefore, I am going to petulantly get my ass in the car and we can continue to psychologically damage each other at a later time.

26. Remind yourself that some people have absolutely no respect for the environment.

  As June and Trixie and the cadre of Junior Leaguers and Junior League-ettes piled into their enormous SUV’s that were bigger than some residential housing and drove away, they collectively used up 47 gallons of gasoline before they reached the end of the block.

27. Try once again to force the cat to stop doing irritating things.

  I turned to Scotch, he who found it necessary to rip open the window curtain in the first place, and explained to him that Daddy was not very happy about his unwelcome behavior. If he wished to retain all rights and privileges that were in the original contract that we signed, he must refrain from activities that redecorate the house in any way or potentially cause Daddy to be involved in litigation concerning his nudity. Scotch studied me briefly, then hoisted a leg and went back to searching for Jimmy Hoffa in his nether region.

28. Take another nap.

  Watching disharmonious familial relationships can be very exhausting, especially if you have to stand at a window and peek out while doing so. I flopped back on the bed and fell asleep to the repetitive sound of a tongue on fur.

29. Actually leave the bedroom.

  A bit later, or maybe hours, no one was keeping score and I didn’t have to be anywhere that was court-ordered, I finally got tired of sleeping (ahem) and wandered down the hallway to the kitchen. It looked exactly the same as the last time I was in that room, so I was a little disappointed and almost turned around, but then I realized that perhaps I should eat something. After all, it takes a lot of energy to not do anything important. Besides, I couldn’t hear the damn cat drilling for oil in this room.

30. Test the longevity of the refrigerator light bulb.

  This is something I do quite often, so I obviously have a talent for it and should put it on my resume. (Somebody somewhere is surely interested in hiring someone that is capable of just standing there and waiting for something to happen instead of being proactive about getting things done.  Maybe the House of Representatives is hiring?) Anyway, I stared at the contents of the fridge for a good 20 minutes before deciding that nothing had the least bit of appeal and I slammed the door shut. Perhaps food producers should consider mechanizing their products so that the packages dance and sing and compete for a chance to be devoured. This would improve the quality of meal times and reduce wasted energy. Write your congressperson.

31. Contemplate unloading the dishwasher.

  Stare at the washer briefly, as if considering the joys of domestic athleticism, even though this doesn’t appeal to you at all. Then decide that all the little bowls and knives in there have become friends by this point and you really don’t believe in breaking up families. To avoid heated arguments later in the evening when some irritating person questions why you avoided the task, briefly open the door so the annoying “Clean!” light goes off, thus giving you an alibi. (“I thought they were still dirty. My bad.”)

32. Check all the other TV’s in the house to make sure that a new channel hasn’t been invented since you turned off the TV in the bedroom.

  This is a very doubtful development, but you should always strive to be an informed citizen.

33. Take something random off the kitchen table and throw it on the floor to see if it interests the cat in any way.

  If kitty pounces, you get to eat three cookies of your choice. If kitty just sits there and looks at you with that “insanity of the two-legged people” expression, eat the cookies anyway. They’re just going stale.

34. Try to organize that closet that you’re always talking about organizing.

  Open the door. Lift the lid on an unmarked box. Realize that you don’t recognize any of the contents, and you don’t know if they are important objects or just random crap from some long-ago half-ass housecleaning experiment. Close the lid. Close the door. Make sure the “Clean!” light turns off. Walk away.

35. Attempt to pay bills.

  Sit at your desk. Move things out of the way until you find the dusty stack of envelopes where people want money from you. Pick out one that looks like a credit card bill and open it. Stare at the outstanding balance and realize that the figure could also be the population amount of a medium-size city in Oklahoma. Read the now legally-required warning notice that “if you only make the minimum payment, it will take you 112 years to pay the damn thing off”. Sigh. Put the bill back on top of its little friends and leave the room. This is obviously a spiritually unhappy place and you don’t need to be in there.

36. Do some creative dusting.

  Track down the cat (he’s probably out smoking behind the barn) and convince him that you are not going to do anything annoying or psychotic this time so he will jump into your arms. Walk over to the coffee table and place him on his back, then slide kitty from one end of the table to the other. (If kitty gives the appearance of wishing to speak to management about this development, explain to kitty that what you are doing is just like that new ride at Six Claws Over Texas. Kitty should appreciate the efforts that Daddy goes to just to provide cultural entertainment.) Repeat this process with other furniture until kitty gets all Norman Bates on you.

37. Open the front door and explain to the SPCA representative that just showed up that you are only playing with kitty and it is not child abuse.

  Make a donation, if necessary. Donations often make people vote the way you want them to. (Just ask the NRA.) Then close the door and go take the SIM card out of kitty’s phone so he won’t be alerting anybody else.

38. Flop on the couch in the den and contemplate how many times today you’ve nearly been involved in legal matters today and you haven’t even left the house.

  Perhaps you need to change your diet in some way? Maybe you’re a little under the weather. Go into the bathroom and give yourself a health check. Stare into the mirror and try to determine which of your body parts show the most signs of decay. Check the box marked “all of the above” and leave your co-payment on the counter.

39. Contemplate leaving the house for a while, if only so people can’t see your house number as they report suspicious activity to authorities.

  Then realize that you would actually have to bathe and get dressed in order to make this little spontaneous field trip. And you might possibly have to interact with other human beings whilst loose in the wild. This is far too much to suffer through after your harrowing day of dealing with urchins bearing snack treats and the physical exhaustion of avoiding everything on your to-do list. You need to build your strength back up before facing societal problems like gum-smacking cashiers or people who don’t know how to work an ATM.

40. Go back to the bedroom and take another nap.

  It certainly can’t hurt anything. After all, no one has ever died from too much sleeping and a lack of measurable progress of any kind. Well, except for the Republican Party….

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20 Very Important Things To Do On A Vacation Friday – Part 1: The Morning

1. Absolutely nothing.

2. Test out the stamina of your alarm clock. You’ve always wondered how many times you can hit the snooze button until it just stops working and you wake up the next day. (It explains all this in the manual, of course, but you haven’t seen the manual since you first opened the box.) Change the alarm setting to “radio”, then keep hitting the little bar every time an annoying pop starlet starts bellowing some pointless song about rainbows. When the little urchin is finally dead, write down how long it took for Lady Kesha Spears to pass on. You now have a guideline for future reference.

3. Train the cat to bring you the TV remote, even if the remote is sitting right there on the nightstand. Two feet is a lot of distance to cover when you’re not in the mood.

4. If the training goes well, reward the cat by listlessly moving your foot around under the covers, so kitty will be convinced that something is under there that must be killed.

5. Think about actually getting out of bed at some point. If the thought of such an activity brings a tear to your eye, you’re not ready. Baby steps, people.

6. Pick up the TV remote, brush off the cat hair, stare at the number buttons as you try to think of what channel might have something interesting on at the moment, then set the remote aside. Some people just aren’t very good at math in the morning, and you really don’t want to push yourself.

7. While shifting around to get more comfortable, because lying around on your ass is a very intricate process, you discover something cold, flat and hard under the demarcation pillow that is used to clearly distinguish your side of the bed from your partner’s side. You pull said object out into the light. It’s your phone. Why was it there? Did I really not think I could sleep without it? This is entirely too much to think about, so toss the phone on the bed beside you so Kitty can pounce on it like Jesus just dropped a brick of catnip.

8. Sigh and turn on the TV anyway. Flip through the hundreds of channels, not stopping on anything because, even though several programs sound interesting, you don’t know if you can go on living if you missed something more important on one of the higher channels. When you hit the music-only channels, sigh again and throw the remote next to the your phone on the bed while Juice Newton wails about us calling her an angel and Kitty has a small catgasm over a new playtoy.

9. Ponder for a while about how much fun it would be if you were a cat. You sleep, you play, you eat. Every day is full of the wonder of sleeping and playing and eating. Then again, you have to go boo in a gritty box of pellets that manage to stick to your claws until you can successfully fling them down a random hallway for Daddy to stomp on in the middle of the night. Hmmm.

10. Stare at the ceiling and realize that it really needs to be painted. (What the hell happened in the corner over there, with the odd brown spots? Did somebody have a mustard fight? Why do I not know about this?) Then remember that the last time you and your partner decided to paint anything, there was a colossal disagreement on everything from the color to the texture to the way one should properly hold their brush whilst perched atop a rickety ladder and wearing poor-choice painting couture of cut-offs and flip-flops. The fallout from that extravaganza meant nobody had any sex for at least a month. Nope, we won’t be painting today.

11. Congratulate yourself on having marked ten activities off your list, even though you didn’t even know you had a list when you first woke up. As celebration for your hard work, take a small nap. Or three.

12. You awaken to an odd, insistent sound. You glance at the alarm clock. Nope, not that. You look at the cat, who is forcefully licking at a private part with a determination equal to a Tea Party member refusing to read a book. No, probably not that either. Then the sound comes again, and you realize that somebody is ringing your doorbell. Aw, hell no. It should be against the law to ring someone’s doorbell at eight o’clock in the morning. Then you glance at the alarm clock again. It’s after ten. Oh. Well, maybe they’ll just go away.

13. The doorbell rings again. The cat pauses in mid-hygiene routine, with one leg perfectly hoisted straight in the air, which is both an envious and an annoying ability. Dude, you gonna do something about that? I’m kinda busy.

14. You sigh again, which is what you’re always doing at work, so you might as well be there. You throw back the covers, a move that sends Kitty tumbling and is sure to become a plot point when Kitty files papers about child abuse, and stagger to your feet. You approach the front bedroom window that reveals that least amount of your body, because you haven’t worked out since 1982, and, well, you’re sort of naked, and cautiously peer out a one-inch gap in the window treatment. (We’ll ignore the fact that there’s a half-inch layer of dust on said treatment. We all have different priorities.)

15. Your stunned eyes discover that there are several cars parked in the street, still running, as chaperoning moms wait while a horde of pre-teen girls are stomping all over the neighborhood, lugging boxes of cookies. Oh. My. God. Is it cookie time again? Didn’t we just do that? Why are they so insistent? If this country could just harness our financial engine to the backs of little girls who really, really, really want to go to camp next summer, we would never have a financial deficit again.

16. The doorbell rings again. Okay, seriously? Why is that little Honey Boo Boo not giving up? Why isn’t one of the perfectly-coiffed, committee-attending moms not marching up to Honey and explaining to her that if you ring a doorbell 47 times, the inhabitants of the house are either not home or they are dead. Neither situation will help you reach your goal. Let go and let God.

17. Amazingly, one of the Stepford Wives honks. Oh, happy joy. There’s the sound of something happening on my front porch, and then Little Trixie suddenly appears in my line of vision, racing up to an SUV that cost more than my house. It seems that Trixie is a bellower, and I can catch every word of her status report: “Mommy, there’s somebody home. I can hear them.” (My eyes widen. Hear me? What can you hear? My nudity? The incessant licking of a cat that really, really wants to be clean?)

18. June Cleaver smiles at her willful child. “Honey, maybe they just left the TV on for their kitty or doggy, like we do when Mommy has to go to an appointment with her divorce lawyer. It helps keep the kitties and puppies calm and happy so they don’t slice people open with their claws in the middle of the night.” Little Trixie nodded sagely, as if recalling a recent event wherein an animal thought domesticated and gone all ghetto and shifty. “Yeah, TV’s should be on for kitties.”

19. My own cat, Scotch, stopped in mid-lick, leg still hoisted, glaring at me. “What is this about entertainment when my daddies are not here? Why am I not aware of this? I must know more.” He leapt to his paws and did that odd shake cats have when they are trying to rid themselves of things that no one else can see. I felt a tingle of panic. “Scotch, my pretty kitty” I said soothingly, “don’t listen to the little urchin with the big mouth. She’s in a different tax bracket than we are, and they lead different lives.” Scotch studied me momentarily, his cryptic and possibly sociopathic mind contemplating his next move.

20. Then he raced up beside me, leapt up to the window sill in that stunning way cats have of leaping forty times their own height, snagged a drape with one of his weapon-like claws, and whisked the material aside, exposing my anatomy to the world. Before I could even engage my mind to react, June and Trixie both turned toward the window and suddenly had a whole lot to talk about in their next therapy session.

Oh God.

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Scotch the Cat, “The Exorcist”, and the Island of Misfit Toys

  Okay, what happened was…

  I woke up. That’s all I did.

  I was napping in one of my secret places, behind the purple couch with the too-big pillows that smell like me because, well, I can’t leave stuff alone. I like it back there. You have to squeeze a little bit to get in there, but it’s worth it, because then there’s a place just my size. I can lay there and peek and see stuff, but nobody can see me. My daddies will call one of my names and walk around looking for me but they don’t know where I be and it’s fun.

  They try to tease me, though, my daddies. They go to the Pan Tree and open the door and make one of the Treat Bags make noise. When I was little and more simple, I would hear that noise and run to them very fast, because it meant I would get little bits of something special in my bowl. I like bits of special. But after years of simple I figured out that sometimes the noise was a trick. My daddies were not putting something in my bowl. They wanted to get me.

  I don’t wanna be got. I don’t wanna be anything where I can’t jump down and run somewhere else. My daddies don’t understand that I am very important and I don’t have time for being got. I have things to do. Important stuff I need to do now, not later when they lay down on the big bed with the come-for-tour that I like to scratch and they are not caring if I break stuff or not. Don’t get me! Unless I say.

  Because being got is bad. My daddies are going to do something I don’t want them to do. Sometimes they want to take little round white things and shove them in my place where the food goes. My throwed. I don’t like that. That’s not a treat. Why are they shoving it? I don’t want it. And one of the daddies knows how to squeeze on part of my face where my mouth just falls open, I can’t help it. Then bam, not-treat in my throwed. I will scratch him later for bamming.

  And sometimes they want to stop fleece. I don’t know fleece. My daddies say fleece is bad and they don’t want fleece on me. But what is fleece? They don’t say that part, just stop fleece. So they get me, because I didn’t think right, and I got got. And one daddy holds me and the other daddy puts cold yuck on my back. The part of my back that I can’t lick or scratch, by my head. That’s mean. Daddies are mean about fleece. I can’t get yuck off! Even if I run and hide and be mad.

  But the baddest got thing? The clip hers. I think my daddies love me but then I get got and one of the daddies has the clip hers. And then I don’t know about love. I only know I want to be away from clip hers. One of the daddies makes me be still and the other daddy puts the clip hers on my scratch-toes and he CUTS THEM! My daddies cut me! They cut my toes! It is terrible and bad.

  And I try to stop them. Because I know they might have demons and maybe they don’t understand. I know about demons. Sometimes the daddies leave the Tea Vee on when they go to those places I can’t go and they come back with bags of stuff that I can sniff. And one time the Tea Vee had a long show called “The Ex Or Sips”  about a girl named Lend the Bear who spit up lots of hairballs and killed people who wore black and white clothes and made them fall down stairs and stuff. She was loud and mean but other people in the show said she did it because of demons.

  So my daddies have demons. And that makes them want to cut me. But it’s still just me that has hair balls, so maybe that movie didn’t tell me everything.

  I forgot what I was trying to tell you.

  Oh, the cutting and the clip hers. So when my daddies and the demons try to cut me, I fight. I fight hard, because I don’t like it when big people make me do things I don’t want to do. I squirm and I wiggle and I howl like Lend the Bear, like my daddies are trying to kill me. I don’t know if they are or not but I don’t want to find out. This makes the daddies say strong words and they are not happy, but Scotch is not happy either because they might be killing me. Why do they not understand that I’m not happy?

  I’m sad now. I don’t know if I want to talk anymore. Daddies should not hurt kitties with clip hers. Bad.

  Oh, look. A leaf just fell in the yard. I want to kill it. Or maybe I want to check my bowl to see if there’s something new. Or sleep. I like sleeping.  And stretching after sleeping. Do you like tuna? I like tuna. Bunches. And bugs can be yummy.

   I forgot again why I’m here. Oh yeah. I was talking about the picture that goes with this story. I don’t like that picture. And I think it’s Lie Bell that one of my daddies took it. It makes me look mean and maybe did something bad to my toys that look hurt. They are only a little hurt, not bad hurt. And they only got hurt because they made me mad. Don’t make me mad, don’t get hurt. Gold In rule. But maybe I should tell why I mad and then had to hurt.

  I was behind the purple couch, just laying. I already did all my important morning stuff and checked and sniffed all the things that need checked and sniffed. So it was time for a brake, because I’m in the Kitty Union and we have work-hers rights. So I was braking, and maybe snoozing a little because I’m good at that. And then one of the daddies was done with his get-ready stuff and it was time for him to say bye and drive away in his car to that place he goes to make money.

  I don’t really like this part. Because I was all settled and comfy and didn’t want to do things that make me look cute. But that daddy has to play with me for a little before he drives to the money place. I don’t know why. I know he’s going to come back. And I’m not going anywhere, because they don’t let me go anywhere, because I am End Door Kitty who gets told no-no when I try to run outside and touch grass. (I still try, but always no-no and door slamming.) So daddy was trying to play and I didn’t want to because I was braking. He called my name lots.

  I pretended I didn’t hear him. (Braking!)

  He called more. I was starting to think I didn’t like this daddy. Let me lay and not do anything! Go make the money and bring me back a treat bag. Not hard, just do. He called more. I thought maybe I call my Union Stew Herd and file a grieve ants, but I didn’t know where my sell phone be. (Maybe in big water bowl where daddies sit. The bat room?) I like to throw stuff in big water bowl, so maybe sell phone got throwed. I forget stuff. I’m simple but I’m pretty.

  I finally got tired of daddy calling so I got up and peeked around the purple couch. Daddy saw me and grabbed me and raised me in the air and made baby talk. I don’t like to be in the air. I have told my daddies “No Air!” all the time. One daddy understands, and no air. Other daddy not understand, and air happens. So Air Daddy was doing the air thing and I had to remind him about no air. When he didn’t listen, I squirmed and tried to kill him with my claws.

  He didn’t like that.

  Good. He put me down on my special place. It’s a desk that other daddy got from Pear One. But my daddies don’t do desk stuff with it. They put nice soft floors on the top so I can lay down and watch out the window and wait for leaves to fall so I can think about killing them. And that was okay, because it’s my me-only place and I can think about being the King Kitty of the world. But then Air Daddy found one of my old toys and put it down beside me.

  I don’t like that old toy. I liked it a long time ago when I was little and didn’t know that if I just wait, there will be new toys coming. I played with it a lot when I was stupid, because it was red and it was a crab and I like seafood and it was easy for my claws to grab it and throw it everywhere or maybe put it in one of my water bowls and wait for one of the daddies to find it and make funny faces because I drowned my crab. I like it better when my daddies don’t understand my plans. Because I get more treats that way.

  Anyway, daddy threw yucky crab on my special throne and then kissed me on the head. My head that I had just cleaned with one of my front paws and now it was dirty again. Why do they not understand about clean spots? Don’t touch! It takes a long time to make things clean. So I was in a bad mood and I was glad Air Daddy left for the way-far place because I needed to call my lawyer. And then sleep.

  But I didn’t get to do anything of my important stuff, because other daddy came out of the Off Hiss room and wanted to know what I was doing. Why checking on me when Air Daddy just did? You have sell phones. Text and leave me alone! But I tried to be sweet because maybe treat time, you never know. I just sat there and tried to look hungry.

  But no treat. Other daddy saw ugly crab toy and thought I was playing with it. (I not!) And he thought I needed other toys. (No, please.) And he found the mouse toy and flopped it on my throne. I don’t like the mouse toy, almost more than crab. Mouse toy don’t work right. When you pick up, no sound. When you throw on ground, it make noise. Why that? It should scream when I pick up, not throw down. Stupid bad toy.

  So now I had two not-want things on my throne. Life is very hard. I tried to tell daddy that this was not working for me, that toys should be in trash and treats should be in mouth. But he not listen. He thought I was singing or something and wanted to take a picture. He stupid sometimes. He ran to get cam-raw. I wanted him to fall down and leave me alone until time for attention. I’m busy and popular on Cat Book. Two thousand furrers!

  But he came back. Bad daddy! And he had cam-raw, and shoving it at my face and talking to me pretty but he really didn’t mean it. He just want me to look at cam-raw. I don’t want to look at cam-raw, but only so many places to look, with ugly crab and stupid mouse in my house. So I finally look at daddy and he burn my eyes with cam-raw fire. More reason to call lawyer.

  And then he show me picture. I look all mad, because I BE mad, with not-want toys on my soft royal floor that is MINE. And I get madder because I know this daddy is the one who makes clog posts about me and not talk to my agent before he do. Not right. But I can’t stop it, daddy goes clogging without asking me if okay. My daddies need training, Clog Daddy AND Air Daddy. Please click on Pet-Pal link to donate for my cause to train daddies better. It’s flax deductible! Send lots of money. Money good.

Love,

Scotch

P.S. to Clog Daddy: Why are there dead plants outside my royal window? King Kitties don’t want to see that. More lawyer reasons. I call now.

Scotch The Cat Replies To Emails From Some Of His Beloved But Possibly Twisted Fans

  Yep, the rising feline star actually receives fan mail from time to time, a clear indication that we have some folks out there  who might need to get out of the house a little more. I thought it was only appropriate that Scotch respond to these missives, since these folks took the time to correspond with a kitty, but you know how cats are. They aren’t interested in doing anything that wasn’t originally their idea. But eventually, after I pretended to no longer care and went into another room to make fake busy noises, Scotch padded over to my desk, slipped into my fancy office chair, adjusted some of the controls with his tail, picked up the first letter, and began to read…

Deer Skotch...We luved your Store Ree. It sounds like our house too eggsept we have 2 Mommies that won't let us on the toplap to make our reports. Keep up the faith, our brother from another mother....Piece Out! Your Ginger Brothers from across the pond, Angel and Spike Aten-Shearwood

  Dear People Who Wrote This,

  Why are you talking about deer? I don’t think I like deer. I was watching a dockingmentary on the NayChore channel the other day, because my daddies left it on that stupid station and I couldn’t press the buttons on the Ream Oat because my stupid daddies didn’t trim my nails and I kept making the sound louder instead of making the picture change and I was not very happy.

  Oh. I don’t think I should be saying my daddies are stupid because they feed me and stuff and I really don’t want that part of stuff to stop because I’m hungry a lot. All the time. I don’t have any brothers and sisters so I just eat and sleep. I don’t know any different.

  But I do know that I didn’t like the deer on that show. I don’t like horns. Nobody I know has horns. So horns are bad. I think. I don’t know.

  I don’t know what I’m talking about right now. I get confused. Sometimes sunshine comes in my favorite window and sometimes it doesn’t come in. Nobody told me why, I just wait for the sunshine and keep myself clean.

  Oh, wait, you have two mommies? I think that’s good. Better than dockingmentaries about stupid deer with stupid horns. And those co-mershal things, with stuff to buy.  Why do the Big People need something so they can clap and make lights turn on? Just go ask a Daddy. He can turn it on for you. And maybe give you treats if you did the right things that day. Or are cute. Cute means treats sometimes, so I try that a lot.

  Why are we talking?

  Oh yeah, two mommies. I have two daddies, so we are just alike except your Big People have to sit down when they squirt water. And they don’t have a dangle thing that I want to scratch when they are sleeping and making noises with their mouths. Tabby Lee, the cat who gets to run around Out Side and sometimes talks to me when I’m in my favorite window, she says that I use to have a dangle thing too, but I think she drinks a lot, so I don’t know.

  But what is the ginger stuff? What is ginger brothers? I was in the pantry one day, because when somebody opens that door I know I need to run like crazy because I might be getting a treat, the pantry is the Treat Kingdom, there are treasures in there. So I was sitting there all nice and not-clawing in the pantry, and one of the daddies knocked over something and it fell on the floor down where I live. A bag of something.  I can’t read very well, because I hit my head when I was little, trying to fly, but I think the bag said “Gingersnap Cooties”.

  Is that what you and your brother are? Ginger Cooties? I don’t know if that’s really fun or not, because I don’t know what that is. And I don’t know why you would want to be in a bag that can fall down, unless you just have to do that because your Mommies said you had to. My Daddies make me do stuff all the time that is not right and doesn’t make me happy, so I understand if you have to live in a bag, because I have to stop scratching stuff even though it feels good and I like the sound of things being ripped to pieces.

  Oh. That made me think of something. Have you ever played with the fancy machine in the bathroom that gives you paper if you just pull on it? I think it’s called the Twyla Paper Distemper. I love that thing. You can whack at it for a long time and paper just keeps coming out. Until it doesn’t anymore. Then it’s kind of sad, like when there’s something floating in your water bowl and you don’t want it in there anymore, even though you put it there. I don’t know why I do stuff sometimes but I think Daddies should just fix it when I don’t like it and not just tell me it’s my fault.

  But even when the magic paper stops coming out, there’s still fun. You can roll around in the paper and play games about being trapped and you have to kill the paper and rip it up. Then you can hear one of those noises that the Big People don’t hear you hearing, and you can pretend to be scared and go running all over the house without knowing where to really go. And that makes some of the paper be in every room and that’s a special thing I like to do. I’m an inferior decorator!

  The Daddies don’t think so, though. They say bad words when they pick up all my presents everywhere. They don’t understand that I’m giving them nice things. I have to hide for a while until they quit stomping around and talking about trees dying for no reason. But then I get them back when they try to pick me up and love on me, and I get to act like it hurts me and I just want to get down or I’m going to die. Daddies can’t scream and twist like me, so they need to understand that my fighting makes me very important. And they need to give me treats for my special skills.

  Okay, I think that answers all your questions, fan mail writer person. You said more stuff about “Angel” and “Spike”. I think those might be your names, because names are at the end of stuff you read that you find in the mailbox, but those words make me think of a TV show that my Daddies used to watch, one that I didn’t like when they watched it. That show was about van pires, people that bite you in the night.  But I can bite in the night too, and I do, all the time, so they just need to turn the TV off and wait for me to get bored. Anyway, bye bye.

Dear Scotch,

My name is Princess Noelle. I am a supurr sexxy sleek jet black kitty with purrty gold eyes. I live in a catsell with my Queen Mommy and King Consort Daddy and my Prince Poodle brother. I would love to trade my brother for another daddy like you have though.

My hobbies are laser light shows, making things go bump in the night, ambushing my brother and all things shiny and sparkly (I get that from my mommy). I also enjoy indulging in a bit of herbal relaxation on occasion. Maybe someday we can meet, enjoy some fresh grown herb and learn all about who, what, when, where, why and how together. Maybe even get Mary'd and share a sunny window.

Dear Princess No L,

  How did you become a princess in our land? My daddies say they don’t have royal T’s where we live. They say this while we are watching dockingmentaries on TV where they are talking about Egg Land, where they still let people wear crowns and long robes that I want to jump on and rip and then act like I don’t know what people are talking about when the don’t like ripping. (Try it! It’s fun!) I think one of my daddies really wants to be a royal T, because he likes to wave like that one queen woman, queen Liza Beth, where she waves like her arm is broken or something and she needs to use the litter box real soon.

  What is super sexy? I don’t know anything about sexy. Because my daddies ripped my berries out when I was too little to fight and now I don’t think of sexy. Well, they didn’t really do the ripping (they don’t like ripping! bad kitty!) but I saw them sign a little piece of paper and give it to the man who did the ripping. If you sign something and give it to people, that means you are saying “yes, do a bad thing and here is my otter graph”. I learned that watching Cord TV.

  But I do know what a catsell is. I learned that watching the stories about Queen Liza Beth, her ugly children with big ears, and lots of catsell staff who did jobs I could do, like wind a clock or make sure there were seven doves flying in the air when Liza Beth had to go tinkle. I think I would like to live in a catsell, because with that many people, somebody is gonna have treats in their pocket.

  Why do you want to trade your brother? I had a brother and a sister who had to go to a resting place with angels, and I didn’t want to trade them, but it happened anyway. But if your brother is fussy and makes people look at him instead of you, well, that’s not good. You have to always be the cutest if you want to win. My mommy told me that, before I didn’t listen to her and ran away and was very scared until my new Daddies found me in the pumpkin patch at their house. My new house is not a catsell, but there is always food in my bowl.

  What is a hobbies? Are those the little people in those movies about the Lord’s Ring? Those really long movies where I fall asleep trying to be cute and I wake up two hours later and movie people are still talking about a ring that I don’t care about? I think you don’t need hobbies. Too long.

  But laser light shows? That would be when the daddies make something shiny dance on the floor and I go a little bit crazy because I must kill that light spot even thought I can’t catch it. (My friend Tabby Lee says making lights dance that you can’t catch is child abuse. I never know if I can believe her or not.) Making things go bump in the night is good, though. I’m trained for that, even if I don’t remember who trained me. Maybe the angels who are resting? I don’t know.

  Okay, the other stuff you are talking about. I don’t think you should ambush your brother. That’s silly. He’s a poodle and he’s a dog. He’s going to ambush himself, so just let it happen without getting off your special pillow. I do like Shiny and Sparkly, they were my favorite characters on “Will and Grace”.  But I didn’t like how that show ended. I thought it was stupid. And it’s hard for me to call things stupid, because I lick my own boo-boo.

  Now, what is this with herbal? Herbal Essence? Like the shampoo, where the commercials  had people telling two friends and telling two friends and the TV screen was full of hundreds of big-hair women who just should go to a disco and leave me alone? Oh wait. I might be mixing up my shampoos. I don’t really use one (I have a tongue!) so I should maybe be quiet. But if you want to share shampoos and talk about why and how, okay, but I don’t want there to be water. Especially if there is something floating in it that I threw in there but then decided I shouldn’t have done that.

  Thank you for asking to be Mary’d and sharing windows, even though I can’t have sex and I will claw you out of the window if I want to be in it. But I can’t do that. I can’t be Mary’d . Not until my daddies can be Mary’d too. I have to protest and wave a sign and smile for the TV people and vote for progress people. Everyone should get a Mary if they love each other. I learned about that watching the Ellen show while I waited for my puff balls to dry out after I Bap Tithed them in my water bowl.

  Okay, I have to go now. My daddies will be home soon and I need to make sure that I have the magic paper from the bathroom spread out in a way that will help me win Design Starch. Bye bye.

Scotch.

P.S. If you have treats, I want them now. Thank yoo.

25 Things That Scotch the Cat Is Probably Thinking In This Picture

1. “I am king of this box. And my rule will be unstoppable.”

2. “Why is that fool asking me to smile? Like I know what that means.”

3. “Please don’t come at me with that feather-on-a-stick thing.”

4. “Someone said there would be food in here. They must die for their deception.”

5. “How long are we going to sit on the runway before this thing takes off? And where are my peanuts?”

6. “If you don’t go away in the next three seconds, I will cut you.”

7. “I have no knowledge of how that hairball managed to appear in the hallway. Swear.”

8. “I’d like to have a word with you about what I just found in your nightstand.”

9. “At least this box is always here for me and doesn’t go away on ‘vacation’ like you do.”

10. “I shall now perform my mystifying trick of scratching at the absolute nothingness in the bottom of this box for a solid 30 minutes until you snap.”

11. “Let’s revisit this thing about me only getting wet food once a week.”

12. “I like pie.”

13. “I do too have a perfectly good reason for thundering from one end of the house to the other and then jumping halfway up the wall. I’m just not allowed to share critical information with someone who has your crappy level of security clearance.”

14. “I will not be returning your remote control until the other horrid cat in this house is forced to live somewhere else.”

15. “I find it highly amusing when you are walking down a darkened hallway and then you do the funny dance when you think you are stepping on my tail but it’s really one of my 47 cat toys. Please do that some more.”

16. “Speaking of, there’s really no reason why I can’t have fifty toys. Or even more. You know how easily those things lose their charm. But I can still tell you exactly where every single one of them is at this very moment.”

17. “We’ve talked about this. I’m not allowed to show you any affection or they will take away one of my merit badges.”

18. “I now have feline seniority in this house. Don’t expect me to give that up easily.”

19. “Notice that green plastic thing on the couch to my right. It used to float. Now it does not. That’s just one of my many powers.”

20. “I will no longer fall for your deceptive practice of luring me with a kitty treat and then shoving a pill down my throat. Those days are over.”

21. “I am waiting for you to lay back on the couch so I can knead your belly with my claws that should have been trimmed a week ago, but you will endure the pain because you love me and I have no idea that I’m ripping you to shreds.”

22. “I greatly enjoy the expression on your face when I leap onto the bed in the middle of the night and land in your crotch. Gets me every time.”

23. “Yes, my eyes are glowing. Most humans fail to understand the meaning of this until it’s too late.”

24. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done, I can always flop on the floor and do that roll-and-stretch thing, making me so adorably cute that all is forgiven.”

25. “It all goes back to the day when my berries went missing. Are you still claiming that you have no knowledge of how that went down?”

10 Bizarre Things That Can Happen When You Take An Accidental Nap

  You know the drill. All you really meant to do was lie down for just a second or two, letting your body regroup after that ill-advised Chinese buffet. You pick up a trashy magazine, barely finish the first paragraph, and the next thing you know it’s two hours later and everything in your world is not right…

1. You’re covered in sweat.

  I have never understood what that mess was all about. Why were you sweating in your sleep? Does your body have to work harder when it tries to sleep during daylight? Did you sleep-walk and do aerobics? Is it a reaction to the Egg Foo Yung? Was the bed on fire at some point?

2. Your mouth is completely dried out and your sinuses feel odd.

  This means that you were snoring really hard, like at the chain-saw level, a level you normally only reach after tequila has been introduced and there was a drinking game involving tiny plastic pigs. The violent-snoring also explains why the cat is perched in the farthest corner of the bed, eyes wide, wearing a crucifix and clutching a tiny designer bottle of holy water.

3. You have no idea what time it really is.

  Even if you look at the clock, because all the clocks in the room are showing that Devil Time that you know just can’t be right. Somebody has got to be playing a trick on you, right? Your panic and confusion increases as you check other rooms and other clocks, hoping that someone from Candid Camera is standing beside one, but you only get confirmation that, yep, two hours of your life done got sucked away. Just like the pig-tailed redhead in that movie where monkeys flew and people melted. Maybe you should  find three traveling companions that like to walk and sing happy songs and things will get better? Or maybe not.

4. The stumbling and general body dysfunction.

  The impromptu nappage has your body really whacked out, and now your system is not cooperating in a pleasing manner. So there you are, staggering around and slamming into things that you normally wouldn’t have any problem navigating around. (“The corner of that dresser has always been there, sweetie. Don’t hate the furniture because it’s beautiful and stationary.”)

  Of course, just as you trip over nothing and crash to the floor in front of your picture window at the front of the house, fanny waving in the air, Gladys Kravitz across the street will capture the action with her wireless phone, and then she will race to slap the evidence online. Within five minutes, 46 of your supposed friends will click “Like” and make rude comments about alcoholism and the elevation of your butt. You will have to un-friend these fools later, once you remember if you have a laptop and where it might be.

5. The fuzziness.

  Your head is all clouded, because your brain is confused, expecting input data that should have happened two hours ago, and the command center is short-circuiting trying to analyze and catch up. And you’re making things worse by sending signals to the brain like “I can’t believe I fell asleep!” (obviously you did, Rip Van Winkle) and “I wasted so much time!” (Did you seriously think you were going to do anything important, anyway? You were laying on your bed at three in the afternoon.)

6. Food tastes funny.

  There’s really no reason for you to eat, but you pinball your way into the kitchen and latch on to some comfort food, desperate for something that will return balance and normalcy to your life. But the food tastes all wrong, cottony and flavorless, so you pull your head out of the chocolate pie and shove it back in the fridge. You’re now starting to wonder if you’ve slipped into an alternate universe. This is a minimally interesting (“Hey, what if they have flying cars over here!”) but also terrifying (“What if they don’t get Ellen in syndication!”).

7. No one seems to care about your trauma.

  You turn on the radio, expecting to hear news reports that Anonymous has released a carefully-designed virus that makes people fall asleep on the job, meant as a political statement about Congress. But no, nobody seems to be saying anything about that. Just the same old songs from Britney (“Oops, I’m A Chipmunk On Helium Again”) and Bieber (“I’m A Millionaire And I’m Still In Puberty!”).

8. You have lost the ability to communicate effectively.

  Best friend Bitsy calls. She’s very excited about a new place in town where they serve rhubarb martinis and kiwi salsa. Everybody who is anybody is racing there right now in their Mini-Coopers. She heard that, just last weekend, RuPaul showed up unannounced and led a limbo competition using some guy in a thong as the limbo pole. She can be at your house in thirty minutes, run put on something cute that can be adjusted to slutty easily, should the need arise. If some of the men are already horizontal, this could be a good thing. Hey, gurl, hey!

  Your tongue is still fuzzy and too big, and this is far too much information. You briefly try to remember what drinking binge or unexpected pregnancy led to your friendship, but you can’t recall. (Something about New Orleans and two people really, really wanting those beads.) You simply hang up on Bitsy without a word. She’ll be fine.

9. The damage to your personal appearance.

  A bit calmer now, having just had a one-sided conversation with someone who might be in worse shape than your own situation, you wander into the bathroom for a physical assessment in the mirror. Your face is both mashed and puffy (was I dragged behind a horse carriage in Central Park?), your eyes are bloodshot and watery (well that certainly doesn’t say drugs and/or angry serial killer) and your hair is jacked, matted and twisted (the words “breach birth” come to mind). You will not be making any social appearances this evening.

10. The eventual fallout and backlash.

  It’s 3 AM. Your body is still out of whack with the sleep thing, so your eyes are wide open and you don’t feel the tiniest bit tired. You briefly consider resuming the story in the trashy magazine, but that thing started this whole mess and it’s not really your friend anymore. There’s nothing on TV, despite the satellite beaming 712 channels into your bedroom. There’s no one you can call to kill time, because all of your friends are already slumbering or doing a backbend under a RuPaul stage prop.

  You sigh, then happen to notice the cat is still crouched in the far corner of the bed. Has he not moved? How bad was your snoring? You try to calm him. “It’s okay, BoBo. I won’t do that anymore. I’m all better now. Come on over here and let’s have us a nice little nap. Come on, lay right next to my leg like you always do.”

  BoBo stays right were he’s at, clutching the bottle of holy water even tighter.

10 Things It SOUNDS Like The Lawnmower Man Is Doing Right Now

  Note: I finally broke down and started paying someone to take care of the yard, having fretted previously about justifying the expense. Turns out this was one of the best decisions, ever, and the joy of not having to screw with all that mess is indescribable. But I always know when the Lawn Guy is here, because that bitch can be LOUD. These are the auditory signals of his arrival:

1. The 18-wheeler slamming into a train.

  Okay, it’s just a pickup and this long-ass trailer full of equipment, but when the man arrives, you’d think there was a forty-car pile pileup on the Interstate. He can’t just drive up and politely stop. He’s got to make sure that every piece of equipment on that trailer slams into something else, with at least two pieces of said equipment hurling themselves over the side of the trailer in a frenzy of mechanical suicide. I’m guessing he didn’t read the entire driver’s manual.

2. The reenactment of the Berlin Wall coming down.

  This would be Lawnmower Man lowering the gate/ramp of the trailer. No automated regulation here, folks. He just slams the thing open with bad-childhood menace, resulting in an exploding thunderclap that echoes throughout the neighborhood, giving palpitations to the elderly, alerting gang members to the possibility of yet another drive-by, and occasionally triggering false reports of seismic activity in California.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tribute Medley

  Actually, it’s his leaf blower and not a chainsaw, but you wouldn’t know the difference. This weapon, clearly manufactured in the jungle encampment of some pissed-off drug lord, has a noise level that breaks the previous upper-limits of the known decibel range. And that’s when the demonic thing is idling. When he revs that sucker up, going after leaves that can’t possibly offer any resistance, trees fall over and birds drop out of the sky.

4. The rhinoceros having sex on the patio.

  It’s nice that he blows all the leaves off the patio, something he doesn’t have to do yet he takes care of it anyway. But with that G-force blower we have furniture flying through the air and bouncing off the side off the house. Even the wrought-iron stuff. It’s truly a display of man harnessing the elements, something that would be fascinating if it didn’t sound like the Gestapo raiding the house, really upset with me for having plotted with Veronika to take out Hitler.

5. The voice from the toilet.

  It never fails. I always desperately need to use the facilities right when this man is here. (Perhaps my body is in shock from all the cacophony and it’s just natural instinct.) And he inevitably manages to start yelling into his phone right outside whichever bathroom I have chosen, bellowing instructions to other members of his crew as they annihilate neighboring lawns, scaring the hell out of me and sending me toppling for Jesus.

6. The saw-blade of Satan.

  This would be the ear-shattering whir of the weed-eater, as it also gets ratcheted up to full-destruction mode and is unleashed on any bit of whatever that had the nerve to grow a mere millimeter beyond its designated length. This man does not mess around. If he wants you gone, you’re gone, even if you can’t hear yourself going. The military should have weapons like this.

7. The aircraft carrier pulling into port.

  And we have the actual lawnmower, a term which can’t possibly adequately describe the shock-and-awe thing the man drives as he proves his domination over the tender green shoots. It’s massive, and I really am surprised that I haven’t seen fighter jets land on the thing, with a strand of weed-eater line keeping them from racing off the end of the lawn-ship. Of course, this traveling football field is just as loud as his cousins Blower and Eater, and just as apt to be confused with a Stage 5 hurricane.

8. The Japanese retreat from Pearl Harbor.

  This is the pivotal moment when L-Man decides that things are just fine and dandy, and he signals to his crew that departure is imminent. Now we have running, yelling and clanging, with all of the equipment heaved back toward the long-ass trailer, with little regard for where things might land, what might happen when they do, and whether or not the folks three counties over really needed to hear all that.

9. The pinging of emails.

  As neighbors discover they can hate me even more than previously thought, sending me nasty-grams of invective about twisted souls who arrange for Armageddon to take place at 8am on a Saturday morning. Vlad the Impaler had better social skills. Nothing they can think of doing to me could ever be punishment enough. But they are sure going to try everything they can to make my life miserable. Just as soon as they actually get out of bed and have some cawfee.

10. The near-silence of the financial transaction when Lawn Guy rings the doorbell.

  Him: “Hey”

  Me: “Hey”

  I hand him bills, he leaves, I close the door. Peace and serenity return.

  Three days later, Scotch the Cat comes out from under the couch. With an attitude and legal papers from his lawyer.

10 Things I Just Realized While Wrapping Christmas Presents

1. It sucks.

  Granted, there was a time and place when I greatly enjoyed swaddling carefully-selected gifts in whimsically-printed paper. I would spend hours ensuring that each box o’ joy was so meticulously enshrined in festive wrapping that angels would descend from Heaven and sing praises about the craftsmanship. That is no longer the case. Now I just want the dang things done and shoved under the tree as quickly as possible.

2. The discreet use of tape is highly overrated.

  I used to be an acolyte of the school which believed that if you could see the Scotch tape lovingly applied to yuletide packages, then you just didn’t care enough. The tape should be placed so precisely that the gift recipient would swear that artisans of great fame were responsible for the finished product. But I dropped out of that school. Now the tape is used as a binding tool, physically forcing the wrapping paper to do what I want it to do, even if it means we end up with weird wads of paper mashed into the ends of the package.

3. I can no longer cut in a straight line.

  Another skill that has eroded over time is the ability to slice off the required bits of wrapping paper at perfect 90-degree angles from the baseline, thus ensuring that the next person to use the tube of paper has a clean and geometrically-pleasing starting point. My snipping with the scissors starts out swimmingly for the first few inches, but then things go terribly awry and I end up with a ragged edge that looks like the San Andreas Fault. My partner is not amused, and there are heated discussions.

4. I apparently had a fetish concerning the purchasing of “after-Christmas” discount wrapping paper at some point.

  We have tons of this stuff. There are countless bins of paper that I don’t even remember buying, shoved into random corners of the attic. I think it’s fair to say that I won’t need to purchase more wrapping paper until 2027. And some of the patterns I picked out? I have no idea what inspired me to purchase the New Kids on the Block “Figgy Pudding” tribute roll of paper. Maybe I had bronchitis.

5. The TO and FROM areas on gift tags are entirely too small.

  Dear low-paid people who make these tags: Not everybody in America is named “Ann” or “Biff”. Expand, please. And while you’re at it, quit making those glossy tags where the ink smears and it looks like I have some motor-skill issues.

6. I have lost interest in bows.

  These things just irritate me now. Visiting the past again, I actually used to make bows, using rolls of ribbon and this plastic thing with spokes that, after several hours of threading and twisting, would create intricate displays of glossy art, resulting in treasures that would send Patti LaBelle running to the nearest hair salon.

  I don’t do that anymore. In fact, I don’t do bows at all. Just flat packages, because the bows are just going to get crushed when you cram all those presents in the back of the car and drive 20 hours to the house of the relative who is hosting this year’s awkward gift-exchange extravaganza. Nobody likes smashed gift-toppings. Save yourself the pain.

  7. There’s no shame in random gaps in the wrapping.

  So the square of paper that you just cut out is apparently FUBAR and doesn’t adequately hide the entire thingy you are trying to cover? No worries. Just make sure that critical words on the packaging are nicely obscured, and you’re good to go. It’s not like anybody is actually going to care, what with the entire planet being afflicted with attention-deficit disorders of one kind or another. They’re just going to rip the thing open, squeal with fake Southern Belle delight, and then toss the thing aside and never look at it again. At least you didn’t waste any time putting a bow on it.

8. I made the mistake of actually sitting on the floor while doing the wrapping.

  This would not have been a problem in my more limber years. But as well know, things and bodies don’t work quite the way they used to function. Once I was in the lower altitudes, I was pretty much staying there unless a fire broke out in the house. So I’m wallering around on the floor, grunting and trying to reach for the next present that needed to be wrapped, usually one that I had stupidly placed way on the other side of the room. (Side Note: How is it that the scissors that you just used disappear the instant that you set them down and you have to search for five minutes every time you need them?)

  And when I needed a fresh beverage? I rued the day, just sayin. Try convincing Scotch the Cat to go get Daddy another beer. The success rate with that endeavor often leads to disappointment, hurt feelings, and a restraining order. Ungrateful little hairball launcher.

9. Some companies maliciously create products that are difficult to wrap.

  Why can’t they just put the item in a standard box and be done with it? Doesn’t that make more sense for everybody? But noooo, these evil manufacturers insist on the most jacked-up packaging they can design, with odd angles and things that stick out and sharp pointy bits that will rip the wrapping paper to shreds. I think these companies should have to pay hefty government fines until they knock it off and act right.

  Yes, I know that I could just put the unruly gift into a wrap-technician-pleasing box and go from there. But it’s a known household fact that you can never find a box when you need one. Two days ago, of course, there had been hundreds of empty boxes all over the house, tossed in piles by irresponsible people who didn’t care, leading to me bellowing things like “who the hell left these boxes EVERYWHERE!” and to a very quiet evening meal where the perpetrators didn’t say much after I made them haul the boxes to the trash. Clearly, I wasn’t planning ahead.

  And I could also take advantage of those “holiday” gift bags, with their symbols of high-cholesterol Santas and fornicating reindeer. But using a gift bag just seems like a cop-out to me. The bags might as well come printed with a disclaimer stating “It’s two in the morning, I’m tried of wrapping, so I’m just going to throw your over-priced Pier 1 ornament into this bag and cram some tissue on top of it. I still love you, though. Kiss, kiss.”

  Maybe it’s that tissue paper that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can never get that crinkly mess to look right. Some folks are a wiz at it, sculpting delicate snow angels and an origami Baby Jesus out of the stuff. My tissue paper looks like I ran over it in the driveway and then shoveled it into a designer bag featuring dancing chipmunks and special dots that, if you scratch and sniff, smell just like fruitcake.

10. Despite all of the above, I actually do like to wrap Christmas presents.

  I just have to force myself to set aside a big chunk of hours, pick a room where I can seal myself off from the rest of the house and all those prying eyes (“Yes, you were trying to peek, now get out of here you little urchin.”), make sure I have everything I need so I don’t slip out of the wrapping chamber and get distracted by things like a Will & Grace rerun or a Facebook request that somebody needs materials for their suppository factory in BodyCavityVille, stay focused, and get the job done.

  Oh, and at some point I must play the entire “Christmas Portrait” album by The Carpenters. It’s not the holidays without it, and it takes me back to those innocent, less-bitter, child-eyed times when I really did care about not being able to see the tape on the packages as I wrapped up the tiny, dime-store goodies I had carefully picked out for my family after I saved my allowance for months and months.

  And that strategy worked just fine this evening. I managed to get twenty gifts prepped and ready to go, an admirable amount if I do say. But now I have to get up off this floor, and that’s going to take a while. Thankfully, I was able to convince Scotch to bring me my laptop so I could blog about my experiences while I build up the strength to get back on my feet.

  Cheers.

Scotch the Cat Discusses the Big People and Their Drinking Games

Hi, everybody! It’s me again, playing on Daddy’s toplap because he’s in the Food Room trying to make a breakfast burrito. He’ll be in there a while, because he makes them extra special and puts lots of stuff in them, stuff that I can barely smell before I get shooed away, and it takes him a long time. Plus he has that look he always has in the morning after people stay up way late and sing songs on the patio, stupid songs that don’t have anything to do with cats. He’s moving kind of slow.

But I’m making something special, too, and that’s why I’m typing on the toplap. I need to write a report. I sold some of my cat treats to simple LeeLee Kitty that lives in that blue house, and saved my money until I had enough to start Online School. I cornrowed at DePaw University and now I am doing my very first class. I’m going to be a Jordanist!

That means I write stuff and people pay me when I do it. Well, the paying comes later, after I take all the classes and get to wear a hat with a tail sort of like mine, but not as pretty. That will take a little while. But my confessor says I just need to practice and practice writing about what is going on around me and I will get better. And I have lots of time to practice, like the long part of the Daylight Time when nobody is here to watch me run and knock things over and then pretend that I didn’t. (I checked so see if there were Running and Pretending classes at the DePaw place, but no, so I had to pick something else to be good at.)

So I decided to write my first report about this thing the Daddies do, when they have loud friend people come over and everybody is thirsty. They do this a lot so I understand most of it, but I still get surprised sometimes because I forget things when I go to sleep or a flying bug outside whacks my watching window and makes me pee a little. (Don’t tell Daddy or Daddy that I do little tinkles outside the box, I’m not supposed to but I’m a little jumpy and egg-sight-a-bull and whoops.)

Okay, now I have to check my student intox for emale, because there’s 5 things I have to remember to write about when I report stuff and I already forgot. (This is hard, learning and paying attention and not just laying around and licking my no-more-berries place.) Um, oh it’s this emale here, with the 5 things. Now, it says I have to tell about Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Okay.

Wait. One, two, three, four… Hey, there are six things here. Why is my confessor talking about 5 when there are 6? (See, I told you this was harder than licking.) I guess I should write about all 6, and if there’s only 5 then I can throw the other page away later. Wow, this is going to take longer than I thought. I better go check on Daddy in the Food Room, make sure he’s not ready to come in here and yell and make me get down.

THUMP-THUMP. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Thump. Pause. Assess situation. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thumpthump, airborne noise, THUMP.

Okay, I think there’s still time. Daddy hasn’t even finished finding all the things for his burrito, and he’s looking for the big white bottle with the head-rake medicine that he sometimes needs when there’s been singing on the patio. Then he’ll need a big glass of water and will probably lay down and watch Golden Grills for a few minutes. (And Other Daddy is counting money and crying a little bit, so he’s busy too.) If I hurry, I think I can get done.

Oh, dang, already stuck. Which of the 5-really-6 do I write about first? Is there a rule? I am always surprised by rules because I just don’t understand them even if I try to. I always get some part of it wrong and then the Daddies have to discuss it and I have to wait longer for my food. Well, I’m just going to pick one and start. The confessor can tell to do it another way if I should, I’m still a little kitty. Okay, um…

WHERE:  I like this one because it’s very easy. Where is here, my house. I’m never anywhere else except my house. (Or the Satan place, with white-coat people pretending to be nice and then BAM, there’s a long stick in my butt and people are taking notes. I don’t like that place and I tell everyone all about my not liking.)

WHO:  My Daddies and some of their always-friends, the really thirsty ones. Oh, and Other Daddy’s Brother. The Brother one doesn’t come over very much, because he lives in Hugh’s Tongue and that’s far away by lots of big water. I don’t want to go places with big water, so it doesn’t matter if Brother has a litter box or not, I’m not going.

But the always-friends I know more better. There’s one lady who wants people to look at her all the time, and if they don’t, she does things to make them look. And there’s the other lady that always smells like lots of different kitties, like me but different. She’s nice to me, but she never brings her kitties over for play-time, so she might be a little mean or her kitties don’t know how to behave like I do. When I want to.

Oh, and there was a man and a lady that just got Mary’d. That means they get to sit really close and groom each other’s faces a lot, while the other people kind of look at other stuff and drink more. It might be nice for me to have a Mary’d friend one day to lick. But I don’t know. Where will she go when I’m done playing with her and want to be alone and stretch in the window? Maybe I’ll understand that part better when I’m older.

WHEN:  Last night. (Wow, that was the easiest part of the 5-really-6. Now I’m halfway done with my news story. I could be very good at this.) But it sure would be nice if the Daddies let me know when there will be drink-singing, so I don’t have to be scared at first when it starts happening. But they never do. I have to find out on my own, and we already know that figuring things out really fast is hard for me.

Usually, I’m just really relaxed, flopped on the kitchen floor, just kind of so-so sticking one of my paws under the Fridge Raider like I lost a puff ball, hoping the Daddies will stop by and pay attention to me by getting the yar stick and whacking around for something that I probably hid somewhere else. (Sometimes I have to wait a long time for the Daddies to pay attention and not just step over me and head to the Treasure Closet for “something to snack on”. They need to be better trained.)

And then BAM, somebody pushes the front door-hell or just walks in the back door, clomping and yelling. Of course I have to claw at the wood floor just trying to get up really fast, and then race to a secure zone. (Mean people could be coming to take my toys or my food or even kill me like that scary movie, Night of the Living Catnip. None of that has ever happened, but you never know around here.)

So I hide and I stay very quiet and I peek out. Once I figure out it’s just time for more drink-singing and not death, I’ll slowly amble out and eventually let people see how cute I am so they can pet me or give me taboo bits of something to gulp down really fast before Daddy can yell “Hey, kitties don’t eat that!” (Daddy can be a little bitchy sometimes.)

WHAT:  People drink lots of stuff from little bottles and big bottles and fancy bottles and bottles that have to be in the Fridge Raider first and bottles that are really boxes with a faucet and bottles that sometimes fall over that make people say loud things and point at each other but nobody is really sure so they just find more bottles.

They eat things, too, stuff that smells good and is in pretty Fee Hesta Ware that the Daddies collect in a cabinet with doors that I can’t open, damn them. But the drinking is very more popular than the food. One of the always-friends told me in the hallway once that you can’t have too much food or you lose your fuzz. That sounds scary, so I’m going to drink more, too.

WHY:  Well, I guess they do it because it’s fun. All the people sure laugh a lot and tell naughty stories and play Tree Via games and know all the words to the songs. When it’s time for people to go home or go nest on one of the couches, they all hug each other and stuff. I don’t think they would do that if drinking was boring and sad, but I don’t always understand people. Like why they have to leave home so much or why they wear pants.

HOW:  How sounds like Why to me, so I guess I need to take some more DePaw classes and get smarter so I can finish my reports all the way. I want to get really, really good so I can be on TV and have my own show and wear a beret and meet Pappa Rotzy. And I can write movies and win A-cat-a-me Awards and make my Daddies very proud. I’m so excited. Well, as excited as us cats can get about anything.

Oh, dang! Daddy is coming down the hall right now and he’s gonna use that voice if he sees me typing. I gotta go and destroy the Evan Dense. That means I have to use all of my paws to walk on this keyboard and mess everything up and-

“SCOTCH!”

Meow.

“Get DOWN!”

THUMP-THUMP.

Thump, thump, thump, thump. Thump. Pause. Claw on leather couch. Thump, thump, thump, thump….

Scotch on the Rocks

Hi, People with two legs!

It’s me, Scotch the cat. I’m on Daddy’s toplap again, the thing I’m not supposed to be on, like the kitchen table and stuff that can break, but I don’t think he really cares right now. He’s in the other room, being very mad, and I’m pretty sure it’s not about me.

It’s been a very scary day.

I didn’t know it was going to be scary or I would have just stayed asleep. But I was up way early, before the dark goes away, running around and knocking things over for my Daddies to find later and talk real loud in funny voices. The Larm Clock said something with a 5 in it. I can only count to 5, because of my legs and tail, but I’m taking classes to learn more. I’m trying really hard but I know I don’t like that Ho Merk thing. I’m not good at it.

I was slapping at a plastic cap in the hallway (I love those things!), when Daddy got out of bed, looking not nice and very sweaty. That didn’t look good, so I ran to one of the places where I can watch things and people can’t see me. Daddy walked over to a little box on the wall, the Thermos Tat, and he looked at the numbers. They were big numbers that I don’t understand. Daddy did something with buttons and stuff, then he said bad words and stomped away.

I ran up to the Thermos Tat and hissed at it, because if Daddy doesn’t like it then I don’t like it either. Then I sneaked behind Daddy and watched him do something with the Circus Breaker Box in the room that’s way at the back of the house. Daddy didn’t like that box, either. He tried to make it do something and it wouldn’t. Then he went outside.

I’m not allowed to go outside. I tell my daddies every day that I want to go out there, but they don’t listen, and don’t let me. This makes me scratch stuff.

Daddy came back in, and he was still mad. He laid back down in bed, still mad. Other Daddy finally woke up, and they talked about Hair Conditioner. Something was wrong with it. A bad wrong. Other Daddy needed to call somebody about the Hair Conditioner, so he groomed himself in the little square room with water, then he left for that place he goes when it’s daylight.

Daddy sat down at his desk and turned things on, the toplaps and everything. That means he’s staying in our house today. Yay! I like it when he does that. I don’t understand why Other Daddy always has to leave when it’s bright outside but Daddy doesn’t always have to leave. But they keep feeding me, so I just pretend like I don’t care. I like treats. Yay more!

Daddy started typing and talking to people on the phone and doing the boring stuff that isn’t about me. This is when he is “working”. I don’t like this part, because when I jump on his boardkey he doesn’t think I’m cute and makes me get down. I never want to be working. It makes people different.

So I took a nap. I like naps. I have lots of places where I can do that, special places only for me. I change my mind every day about which is my favorite. Cause I don’t always remember the yesterday stuff when a new bright light comes in the window.

When I woked up, something wasn’t right. It was kinda warm. My special place in the window was warm, and I didn’t want to be there anymore. I went to go ask Daddy about this. He was talking to Other Daddy on the phone, and somebody named Pear Man was supposed to come visit, but not until later because Pear Man had lots of places to go, lots of people had Hair Conditioning problems.

Daddy said some bad words. And Daddy was only wearing his underwear pants. It wasn’t the right part of daylight for him to be wearing those. I was a little scared, but I could tell Daddy wasn’t talking about me and there was still food in my bowl so they still loved me. I thought I should take another nap.

When I woked up this time, it was all very wrong. It was hot. And Daddy was all shiny, the shiny he is when he walks on the Dread Mill, but he wasn’t walking on the Dread Mill and breathing hard, he was still working at his desk and typing every time there was a ping noise. I don’t think he was happy. He kept looking at his watch and saying bad things about God.

I thought maybe I should just be quiet and not run and knock stuff over. Sometimes you have to do this so people won’t yell. But everywhere I went, it was too hot, and I couldn’t stay still, and I wanted to scratch stuff, even the no-scratch stuff like cow chess and widow treements. So I went back to Daddy and his underwear shorts and I asked about why so hot and what’s wrong?

He petted me, and said my name lots in the special way that says love, and then he made me lay down in front of a machine. I didn’t want to at first, but he kept making me be still, so I finally did, and the machine was making wind! It felt good, like stretching, and catching tiny things that run. But I didn’t have to do anything, just lay and let the wind make my hair move. It felt yummy like treats. I wanted to stay forever in the wind.

And I fell asleep again, because I can do that really good. When I woked up again, Daddy wasn’t at his desk where people ping and he types. I went to look for him, running through part of the house where it was really really hot, and he was in the Guess Bedroom, lying on the bed and trying not to move. Oh, I know how to do that! I jumped up with him, and he had a bigger wind machine, and I snuggled by him and we just let the wind make it better than places with no wind.

Daddy petted me a lot, and he talked about nice things, and we just “had to get through it” and it would be good again. I didn’t really understand, but there was wind and Daddy and it was okay, so I purred. I knew something was wrong with other parts of the house, but the Pear Man was coming and it would get better because Daddy wouldn’t lie to me.

I think there was another nap, but I have lots of naps so I don’t always know when I have them. But Other Daddy finally came back from his daylight place, and he and Daddy talked about the Pear Man and if he was going to be coming today because there was a Heat Rave and lots of people had hot houses. I hoped all the hot houses had wind machines.

Then there was the ding-dong noise that means people want to come into my house. I’m not always happy about that. Sometimes I don’t know them and don’t know what they are going to do to me. Then Other Daddy closed the doors on the room I was in, which means stay there and don’t scratch, so I did. When doors are closed it can be bad and you have to pay special attention and hide. So I hid.

There was a lot of noise and banging. The ding-dong man went to the room over my head. I’m never allowed to go in the sky room, the place where my daddies keep Chris Mess boxes and a tree with shiny things that make me want to whack at them. You have to go up a Lad Her, and I think I can do it, but the daddies never let me so maybe there’s badness in the sky room.

Ding-dong man told my daddies that something was full of water, and that made the hotness come. Water? I make water. Did I do something bad? I snuck under a piece of furniture where nobody could reach me. I sometimes get sad about not understanding things and I have to hide.

More stuff happened in the sky room. I don’t know what, but it happened. Then it got kind of quiet, and I sneaked up to one of the doors for my hiding room, and peeked through the crack. Ding-Dong Man made Daddy sign something and give him a little piece of paper with numbers. Then Ding-Dong Man left.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I was glad that Ding-Dong Man went away. He didn’t give me any treats.

Then the doors to my hiding room got opened, and my daddies came to pick me up and love on me, which I don’t always like, but I know they need to do this because they are daddies. They showed me that wind was coming out of the ceiling now, not like the wind machine, but it still felt good. They told me I just needed to be Pay Shunt and then all the rooms would be happy.

I made them put me down, and I ran around to smell things, and I think they are right. I can smell feel-good air coming back, not bad air that makes Daddy wear underwear and be shiny and say bad words. I ran back to my daddies and let them love on me a little bit more, then I ran to one of my favorite sleeping places and tried to be Pay Shunt and wait for everywhere to be fun again.

I think I want a wind machine just for me. I liked it. Tabby Lee from the alley says I should ask Sandy Claws for stuff like that. But I’ll ask my real daddies instead, cause they know people like Pear Man and God Am It, and can take care of stuff like they always do. Cause they love me, and I deserve nice things.

Piece out.


Scotch