Today is Nicki’s birthday. She’s two, which is like two and a half in cat years. I never understood that “dog years” nonsense.
And when I say “birthday” I’m estimating because the orphanage didn’t keep good records. When we adopted her they told us that she was about six months old. Come to think of it, they told us a lot of things, but they forgot to mention that she had fleas. I don’t know how old they were. Our kids did some calculations and came up with August 31st as her birthday.
Last night I got an email from my friend P.K. who said that she tried to leave a message on Nicki’s Facebook page only to find that it was gone. She was alarmed. So I asked my daughter what happened to it and she said that Facebook suspended Nicki for … I’m not sure exactly what, my daughter thinks “not updating her account often enough.” Which doesn’t sound right to me. So then I emailed P.K. back and asked what the hell was she going to post on Nicki’s wall and she never got back to me. I can only assume that she’s now following Nicki on Twitter and communicating with her that way. Get it? CommuniCATing. (I’m sorry. It’s been a long vacation).
Okay, back to Nicki.
We are now at the dacha (my parents’ house upstate) and last night as I was sleeping and dreaming of a better tomorrow, I heard Nicki running around in our room. I turned on the flashlight just in time to see a mouse run by and wave to me, with Nicki in hot pursuit.
Obviously this was one of those life or death situation, so I woke up Husbandrinka. Now, in case you ever wondered, Husbandrinka is the rare type of man who does not enjoy being woken up at night, even to be told that there’s a mouse in the room. He thought that we should just let Nicki take care of it because “she’s the cat.”
A little Third Reich, if you ask me.
“You know that once she kills it, she’s going to put it on our bed, right?” I asked him. Because if I’m not sleeping, neither is anyone else.
And Husbandrinka said, “Don’t tell me these things as I’m trying to sleep!”
My protector, ladies and gentlemen.
The bad news is that there was no mouse on our bed and I must assume that the mouse, like the hills, is still alive.
I called Mama with this tragic news in the morning.
“I think Nicki is special,” I tried to be politically correct.
“What special, you’re special,” mama said. Mama seemed to think that Nicki was playing with the mouse.
“Why would she play with the mouse?” I asked.
“Because it’s fun for cats. It’s like that thing before sex. Foresex.”
“Do you mean foreplay?” I asked, waves of nausea washing over me.
“Exactly. They play, then she kills.” (Incidentally, this is why you should never talk to your parents about sex.)
“That doesn’t sound right to me,” I said. Because in my mind, the cat is a ninja-like assassin who doesn’t have time for these cat and mouse games.
Oh.
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