INTO THE SAUSAGE GRINDER WITH YOU!
Pets gotta pay their way around here

Tommy The Freeloader got his courage up and crept inside today. He took a snooze right on the carpet in my office. It must have been the rain that drove him in, not the food. How can he eat that messy, foul-smelling stuff?

His extreme fear of me goes back to the time I trapped him in a cage and planned to get rid of him by throwing him in the sausage grinder! Ever since that day when he fought so hard to get free and I finally took pity on him and turned him loose out in the backyard he has known for sure that if he ever relaxes his vigilance I will grab him by the scruff and throw him in the suasage grinder!

That orange-colored feline is not earning his keep and he knows it. One day I will have to throw him in the sausage grinder!

Now my old cat Tiger - he was pure black - paid his way. He knew how the world worked. Tiger brought in many trophies and laid them at my feet. Tiger's favorite trick was to catch a mouse and hold the terrified little rodent in his jaws as he raced inside through the doggy door to show me his trophy. Then he would chase it around the room until it eluded him by hiding in the closet behind my galoshes. Never failed. Then when he couldn't find the mouse he would swish his tail and leave me with a another mouse in the closet.

Another of Tiger's favorite pastimes was to bring me birds - alive but near death from terror - daintily clutched in his jaws, then let the bird loose in my office and try to catch it in the air. One time Tiger even dragged in what I thought was a great big dead rat and dropped it at my feet, then calmly washed his face, as if to say, 'My work here is done, boss!'

I picked up the dead animal by the tail and dropped it in the trash can. What do you know? Wasn't a dead rat at all. A possum! and that animal began racing around inside the trash can. I took the whole can outside and dumped it in the driveway. Man, that possum skedaddled!

Tommy the orange Freeloader never brings me anything. He thinks he's somehow tricking me into filling his bowl every morning, and I should be so lucky to have such a fine pet.

That's all kids,
vince
www.vincejohnson.net