Cats

On a scale of one to ten I would give a dog a ten, a cat a two. I wouldn't rate it a zero because it can catch a mouse now and then. Dorothy would give a cat a ten and a dog a seven. She said so. Now my problem with cats comes from how much trouble they are to take care of. My dogs pretty much take care of themselves. All I have to do is put out their food once a day. They bathe in the lake, do their bathroom duty out in the woods away from everybody, and generally conduct themselves in ways that show respect and love for their masters. Dorothy's cat needs a sandbox that needs to be emptied and cleaned. A lot. It shows no respect for anyone or anything. And my number one complaint: it gets hairballs from constant licking. I have the duty of holding the animal upside down on my side and squirting a blob from a tube vaseline into its mouth. Then I have to hold the mouth closed until the stuff melts and is swallowed. I was told to put the goo on the cat's paw and it would lick it off. That didn't work, the silly thing just rubbed it all over my favorite chair. Today, Dorothy watched me administer the hairball antidote to Fluffy and remarked that I could show a little more love in my technique.
I know a lot of you like cats and will not like my remarks. Sorry, but I can't bring myself to write anything good about cats after a vaseline ordeal.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle