On Playing With The Dog

by Henri of Twin Brook

Although Sidney, my housemate is not one of my favorite feline buddies, I wish him no harm. Most of the time he exasperates my patience but when necessary, I try to counsel him on appropriate behavior, especially when it concerns our persons' d*g, Ashley. Ashley is an overgrown mutt with long brown fur. Her primary purpose in life, is eating, chasing other dogs around the d*g park and eating. In between these two activities, she sleeps. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ashley has a burning desire to play with cats. Since Ashley hits the scales at seventy-five pounds, I have no intention of satisfying this perverse desire. D*gs should not play games with kitties. Unfortunately, Sidney being the idiot cat that he is, decided break all the rules of the game and began conducting himself in a manner ill advised by myself, Helen and Erika. "If they are carefully regulated and the rules adhered to, any cat can play games with a d*g." He meowed these words to me one morning while preening his fur. "I, Sidney, shall show you other cats how to engage in pleasant and educational exchanges with canines." "Fine, Sidney," I hissed, " but be careful. That is a mighty big mutt and I'm not at all sure she has a full complement of brain cells....." "Never fear," he crooned. "We shall start out with simple games, such as 'you chase me and then, I'll chase you'. That will not be too difficult for Ashley's limited mind to grasp." The next few days were without serious confrontation and the only problem was the excesses noise which was produced by those two animals racing back and forth from one end of the house to the other. I managed to nap through most of it as did Helen and Erika, but one can only hope that peace and safety will prevail. Three days after the start of that reckless pursuit, Ashley nudged me furiously with her cold, wet nose. "Wait up, Henri! Something terrible has happened! Sidney broke his tail! Wake up! Wake up!" I was still fuzzy with sleep but could hear Sidney's wails coming from the living room. I leapt to my feet and rushed toward the living room, meowing loudly at Helen, "Hurry Ericka, fetch the bandages and the smelling salts! Sidney is in trouble again!" Sidney lay on the floor, his feet wrapped around his head, his tail between his front paws. "Oh, my head is broken! My paws are broken! My neck is broken! My tail is broken!" he wailed. Quickly I ran my paws over Sidney's fur, checking each inch of him for broken bones. His injuries were bruises and sprains, battered ego and pride. Helen and Erika wrapped Sidney's tail and paws in warm clothes and applied an ice pack to his nose. Eventually his moans and groans grew quiet and soon only the purrs of a wounded pussycat. Ashley lay on the living carpet, her paws covering her eyes in shame and despair. "I didn't mean to hurt Sidney, honest I didn't!" she yelped. "We were playing and then we decided to play another game......." "What other game, Ashley?" I growled prodding the mutt's ear with my paw. "What other game?" Ashley looked at me with her enormous brown eyes. "It's called 'fetch'." "Fetch?" I meowed loudly. "How is that played?" Ashley stared at her front paws and began chewing on an envelope which had fallen on the floor. "Well, at first you start to throw things like toys or pillows across the room and down the hallway.......Then your partner retrieves them and brings them back to you again. Then you throw them again and again, harder and harder......And then Sidney would run faster and faster and bring then back..." "And?" I held my breath. "Then what happened?" I growled. "The game became faster and harder and my heart beat harder and my tail wagged faster and harder with excitement and then I picked up Sidney by the tail and with all my strength, threw him down the hallway and he hit the wall....". Ashley whimpered. "I'm so ashamed!" I was meowless, growless and hissless. For a moment, a very brief minute, I felt sorry for Sidney. He is a cat who is destined to stumble into all the worst that life has to offer. Needless to say all games of "go fetch' have been forbidden within these walls.