First Word

A funny Help a Reporter Out (HARO) query presented the story "Five Ways Cats Improve Your Life". My cat Bill is my nemesis. So as you can see I wrote the opposite. Here are the five ways Bill doesn't improve my life. 1. The trashcan isn't there to knock over and bat around garbage -- although Bill thinks it is. Any kind of trashcan within claw's reach is fair game. Whoop! All over the floor. Who picks it up? Oh yeah, I do. 2. Just because I liked it . My favorite purse. One bite and the leather strap chewed through in one place. Tied it back together. I said to my husband, "The little shit did it because he knows I love my purse." A day later: not only did he chew both ends of each side, but he severed them. Oh by the way: it was a new purse. 3. Scars on my ankles . For some reason it's A-okay to run past me and swipe my ankles. The last time he did it he left a red, bleeding slash. I think he's a serial-kittier.  4. Scratches on my feet...

Who me? Today's humor comes from (where else) my loud-mouthed cat, Bill. My boyfriend Kirk, who picked him out with me at the SPCA, asked me, "Was the cat meowing too loudly again?" "He always meows too loudly -- it's in his job description," I dryly replied. "We should have looked more closely at his job description," said Kirk with a chuckle. And, of course the cat is jumping on the pillows on the sofa, because those are his favorites. Bill could spend an entire hour twirling, tumbling and tossing those pillows with little notice of anything else around him. My other least favorite Bill activity is for him to get on his hind legs and pounce on my leg (as I'm walking through the room). Another uninvited pounce involves my feet at the base of the bed where I'm folding clothes and a paw briskly with claws extended comes from beneath the bed ruffle to rudely scratch the top of my foot. And finally, we have the infamous toilet-pape...