Instinct for the
Wild Life
by Bill Tope
Baby lay languidly
across the bed.
It was midnight and we were alone.
I reached over the quilted mattress
and ran my fingers lovingly down
Baby's side, gently kissed her
cheek, then softly rubbed her bare
belly. As was her custom, she was
totally nude. Baby, of course, was
my pet cat.
Interestingly, she had the coloration
of a border collie: black and white
splotches. A white face and a black
muzzle gave her the aspect of an
extra-large nose and so she always
appeared to be poking and peeping
into everything. On the other hand,
she was nosy!
Unexpectedly, a tiny mouse chirred at
us and then streaked across the floor. I
looked expectantly at Baby, but she
was disinterested; in fact, she had the
temerity to yawn! I shook my head
forlornly, thinking: if I were interested
in
pest control, perhaps I should have
gotten a boa constrictor as a pet.
I gazed through my bedroom window,
at the incredible cloud formations,
pierced at intervals by the moon in an
opalescent sky. I thought I discerned a
huge owl swoop down upon a fallow
cornfield, which was rife with
snakes, rodents and other varmints.
I then heard the plaintive yowling of a
lonely male cat.
My cat, having observed the activity
outside the window, made chirring
noises of her own, as if to tell me she
wanted to revert to the wild for an
evening. But Baby had been "fixed"
and, in a manner of speaking, so had
I, so would be no indiscriminate
carousing, for either or us.
Baby rolled over onto her back, with
her paws sticking in the air, willing to
settle for another belly rub. T'was
not
to be however, as my wife took that
moment to enter the room and she
shooed poor Baby off her perch and
out of the bedroom.
Taking her place upon the bed in the spot
that had just been occupied by my cat,
she
arched her brows provocatively and purred,
"What does a girl have to do to get
one of
your famous belly rubs?" She smiled.
I
smiled back. The wild life, it seemed,
had
beckoned once again.
originally
published by Little Old Lady Comedy |
|
