weekly writing assignment

Good try, Diane, but yesterday's quote was actually stolen from Kelly Bundy, from Married with Children. Yeah, I know that I'm dating myself by quoting from a show 20 years old, but come on! It's Married with Children! It paved the way for The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy. And strangely, the Bundys were more cartoonish than any of the characters in the animated series. (Plus, it's kind of quaint that 20 years ago, skanks were created by writers and played --superbly --by sweet, wholesome girls like Christina Applegate. Now we have reality TV for our skank fix.)

Ok, now that that's out of the way, it's time to play the writing game with Mamakat:

This week's chosen prompt is to write about a stray animal you brought in:

When I lived in Washington state, I came dangerously close to becoming the crazy old cat lady. A fact made all the more sad because I was in my 20's at the time. My friend, Adam told me to just give up. "Once that cat lady thing begins", he said, "you may as well just fill your apartment up with newspapers and TV dinner trays. There's no turning back."

Adam has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

I lived in an apartment that had a very strange window set up: it was hinged at the top and opened outward like an awning. There was also a window screen with a mini-hinged section. You stuck your hand out through the mini-hinged section to access the handle on the glass part of the window. It kind of looked like a pet door. Which is what it eventually became.

Even stranger than the window design was it's placement. It opened up over a walkway that ran in front of the apartments. It really wasn't the safest plan in the world: somebody could easily climb under the window, push out the screen, and crawl into my bedroom. (I know because I did it once when I locked my keys inside.) And for about 6 months, my next door neighbors were drug dealers. They slept until about 2 pm and emerged, puffy eyed and blinking into the sunlight about 30 minutes before it set. They got a steady stream of visitors (walking right past my hinged window thing-y) from 10 pm 'till 3 am.

This was my living situation when I awoke at 2 am by a THUMP-BUMP. I kind of looked around, wondered if I had dreamed the thump, and settled down to go back to sleep. That's when something jumped on my bed! I was literally airborne, arms and legs flailing to get out from under the covers, and planning a mad dash to the door when I heard "Meow." Oh. Whew. Just a cat. My last thought before I fell back asleep was: "I sure hope that cat doesn't have fleas."

At 6 am the next morning when my alarm went off, the cat (who had been sleeping curled up in the small of my back) got up, walked over to the window, opened the mini-hinged section with his little paw, and THUMP-BUMP walked out.

Later that week, I was watching a movie with my friend, Chris. I was telling him about my feline nocturnal visitor. He looked at me sideways and said "A cat opened the window with his paw, walked into your apartment, slept on your bed, and then let himself out in the morning?"

"Yes."

"Uh-huh. I think you should stop drinking NyQuil before bed."

Not only did this cat have amazing paw-dexterity, but perfect timing as well. Because as soon as Chris finished the word "bed": THUMP-BUMP, who should come strolling out of the bedroom with his tail in the air?

He let out a big "Meow", jumped up on the sofa between me and Chris, and pulled a few kernels of popcorn out of the bowl for himself. He hung out and watched the movie with us before letting himself out again.

That was just the beginning...