Are You Now or Have You Ever Been.................

After a long day full of wrangles with the work dogs and petty nonsense with Michael – he has forgotten to mention that he’s leaving town (tomorrow, no less) and has not made arrangements for the animals as he promised -  I’m feeling prickly and out of sorts at the prospect of four days of additional dog care in this sweltering heat.  As soon as I plunk my old bones down on the loveseat, a commotion breaks out in the other room and seconds later an unhappy tabby comes flying through the double doors with the kitten hot on her heels.  Both leap and scramble directly at me, tearing across my unprotected lap and opening up a series of long, deep scratches in my thighs.  The small brown dog and the little dachshund, both directly in the path of this oncoming destruction, freeze in terror then dive for cover.  Amid the blood and debris, my patience and perspective both desert me and I snatch both cats by the scuffs of their necks and shake them to their senses.

Enough!  I screech in my best fishwife voice and knock their little heads together for good measure, Now scat!

Chastised and still mad, they slink out.  It takes most of ten minutes to doctor the scratches and then convince the dogs that the danger has passed. They emerge wary and watchful, uncertainly climbing across my still stinging and bloody thighs and huddling against me. 

Five cats under one roof is, at times, as close to madness as I care to get, especially since the advent of the kitten who was clearly a terrorist or possibly a hit man in a former life.  While the elder cats are content to eat and sleep and generally keep to themselves, the kitten seems dedicated to violent revolution.  She has no dignity – none – and no fear.  And I’m absolutely certain that she enjoys creating chaos, she’s always at the center of it

Are you a communist or just an outside agitator?  I ask when later in the evening she casually strolls into the sunroom and settles herself between me and the little dachshund just as if nothing at all had happened.  She trills once or twice and begins to knead his exposed belly – he tolerates this with barely a glance at her – and it isn’t long before she stretches out and falls asleep, her head on his paws.

One of the secrets to happiness, Rita Mae Brown wrote, is a bad memory.

It must be so.