Every Cat Has His Day

Mindlovemisery's Menagerie

Wordle #282

Happy International Cat Day to all the cats out there, especially my own Benny and Baby Cat!  (photos below)

Prompt words in red. 

     I had taken a walk to town that overcast March afternoon for a milkshake.  Sure, it might not be milkshake weather to some, but my shake consumption had hit a lifetime high that spring.  

     I’d felt a sensation I had been followed since I’d turned onto Maple Lane, a tingling on the back of neck sort of thing.  The tree-lined lane would be leafy and in deep shade within a few weeks, hiding the front view of the Craftsman style bungalows.   Now though, the front windows of the yellow house I was passing could be seen through bald branches.  Knowing the resident, old Miss Cranshaw, always sat at her front window gave me comfort, knowing I’d have a witness should my chillie-willies be correct, and someone was behind me.  I gave a wave to the window as I passed by, unable to see if she waved back. For all I knew the old curmudgeon flipped me off.  Let’s just say, there were a few incidences in my youth that put us at odds with each other.  Miss Cranshaw had been a neighborhood fixture for all of my twenty-two year life.

     I crossed over Oak Street, still under unseen Miss Cranshaw’s beady-eyed surveillance.  (Yes… how lame is my town to name the streets running east to west after trees?  You might well wonder what the north to south runners were named after.  Fruit.  Plum Street.  Pear and Peach Avenues.  Even a Prune.  Gawd…) 

     Halfway down Poplar was my destination, home. I’d lived here for as long as I’d known Mrs. Cranshaw. That is, since I was born.  Milkshake nearly gone, I slurped noisily on the straw, something my mother would scold me for, had she been alive.  How else was I supposed to get that last sweet sip?   Thinking of my mother, I slowed, briefly forgetting my possible tail.

     Suddenly, it felt like needles were being plunged into my calf!  I cried out, dropping my empty cup. Was I being drugged by some fiend, to be dragged unconscious into a plain white panel van, driven off, never to be seen again?  Oh, I did hope Mrs. Cranshaw was watching this!  It would make her day, her year, even her entire existence!

     The pain ebbed, and I realized I wasn’t being dragged away.  In fact, spinning around I could see no one at all. I looked down to see Benny, the fat cat belonging to my next-door neighbor, sitting on the pavement with a demanding look on his fat cat face, top fangs hanging out. The very fangs that had so recently been sunk into my leg.  Benny loved milkshakes, and could smell the cream a house away, often appearing on my back patio when I attempted to eat a sundae.  I guess his over-indulgence is why Benny was fat.  If a cat can have, Benny did have a double chin.  Benny was a solid shiny black cat, but for one crooked white star on the bridge of his nose. 

    Now, I’m fond of milkshakes, but I’m fonder of Benny, so I bent down and gently stroked his shiny black fur.  “Sorry, fella.  I finished my milkshake.  If I knew you were waiting, I’d have saved some,” I tried to explain.  “Come on in with me and I’ll get you some cream.” 

    Benny yawned, pulled in his fangs, and trotted ahead of me up my path to the side kitchen door, which I held open to his royal highness.  Tail in the air, he sauntered.    

    As the adage aptly puts it, “In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats.”  Even milkshakes.

©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

 

Benny - age 9

 

My story only uses Benny's name, he isn't an outdoor cat, neither of my cats are.  He has been known to bite my leg though. 

Baby Cat - age 11