Pigs, Cats and Stingy Things

Whiny two-legs says the strangest things. She calls Beauty, My Boy and My Girl, the three little pigs. Now, I know what a pig looks like because way back when I was little, I first lived with my momma on a farm that had pigs. Those oinky things do not in any way resemble the three soft two-legs that came to live with us. I mean it could be possible that the two-legs hide their curly tails inside their clothes, but I really don’t think they have any tails to hide.

Nor do they smell like pigs! The pen the pigs lived in was plum nasty, as they aren’t like me and don’t mind peeing and pooping where they live. My three two-legs smell like warm beds and the fragrant papers I find on the floor beside the hot machine that tosses their clothes around and around. And when I get a chance to lick their hands, I can taste sugared frosting off their cereal in the mornings and salt and butter off popcorn after Friday night movies. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Booga-man could be right, Whiny needs us to watch over her as she seems a bit confused. Truly these three are not pigs!

One thing, though, Whiny is correct that we have more than our fair share of cats at Wish Island. Whiny’s cat is a severely cranky white thing named Simba. He believes he rules the outside world. Leo, a black cat, breakfasts here at Wish Island even though he belongs to the next-door neighbor that once saved Whiny’s life by feeding her Benadryl until the ambulance arrived. Occasionally if I don’t make a full-frontal assault, Leo tolerates me long enough to allow me to smell him from butt to nose. Really, two cats to one dog were plenty.

Then the three little pigs moved here and brought one more . And the one they brought named Shere Khan is the snottiest cat of all, completely ignoring me no matter how many times I fake an attack. He has both long limbs and stiff-back features to match his favorite friend, the Admiral.

The first thing I do every morning as soon as I can see off the writing porch, is yelp until Whiny comes to open my kennel door and the doggie-screen. Then I take one giant leap down the steps and chase away the scents of the raccoons that visited last night, finishing off my graceful race across the deck with a few perfectly executed leaps at Simba and Leo who are perched on the deck rail awaiting their breakfast.

You’d think the two of them would be grateful that they are now being fed at the first breaking light instead of just whenever Whiny can tear herself away from either her comfy bed or from whatever episode of cute doggie stories she’s writing about me. But, no, I get not a single morsel of their breakfast as a reward even though I stand directly underneath them and raise all kinds of hell.

Shere Khan lives in the guest house with Bright Eyes and Admiral Long Legs. Coming outside only when he deems the rest of us worth wasting a meow on. Totally snotty from daybreak to dark. Someday, when I get my full fourteen inches in height, I’m going to run that cat up the tallest tree on Wish Island and keep him treed until a squirrel forces him to come down. Then I’ll catch him by his long orange tail and bite down hard! That’ll teach him some manners.

But at least the cats don’t sting like the bug with the curly tail did early this morning, nor inject liquid fire into you like the tiny, crawly things that live in the tall mounds of dirt did shortly before dark. When they began to bite hard, Whiny had to chase me around to try to get me to stop moving. Finally tricking me into running through the front door and into the utility room where she grabbed me. And although I fought her, I was very grateful when she stuck me in the sink full of warm water and scrubbed all the stinging critters off me.

I’d had enough painful things happen to me to last a long time, but the day wasn’t done. When we went out on the front courtyard to have one more romp before bedtime, I turned just right when fetching the ball to catch stinging spray in my little face. Whiny was ever so sorry and once again carried me inside to wash it off, explaining that the spray she had been applying to her legs kept bugs from biting her. I forgave her, but would have loved to ask why didn’t she spray it on me when we first got up this morning?

For once I was quite ready to find Fred and crawl in my kennel. The trouble was that Fred had disappeared! No matter how hard I used my nose, we couldn’t find him in or out of the house. Whiny finally offered me a replacement, saying it would only be for one night. I wasn’t too happy about the white bunny she placed beside me in my bed. Expending what energy I had left from such a troublesome day and shaking him until I was sure he understood that he could never replace Fred. Who cared about his claim that he once knew a giant of a girl named Alice?

When the lights were turned off for the night, I whimpered a little bit like I did when I was a puppy, remembering the soothing licks my momma used to give me when the world seemed such a scary place. Tomorrow just has to be a better day.