Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle here to bring you chapter four of my new story Catzilla. This week was glorious because I was finally able to go to the groomers and be properly shorn. I behaved very well throughout the whole experience. The groomer even said so. I went from a mangy mini sheep dog to a chic stylish toy poodle. Look at my before and after pictures:

I am just like a fairytale Cinderella. Am I not the most gorgeous Canis Lupis Familiars you have every laid your humble eyes upon? Now I am ready for the rest of this glorious spring and the bright and beautiful summer ahead. And now without further ado, here is chapter four of Catzilla. Meow!

Catzilla

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Four

After Ellery scared the cat away, I gave up and went back inside. I decided it must have gone home to its owner.

“I suppose that’s just as well,” My mother said. But I detected a note of wariness in her voice.

That night I went to bed and put on my meditation audio which helps me fall asleep. It was made by a guy from Australia or maybe New Zealand. They work like a charm every time and I drifted off. It must have been around one in the morning when I heard caterwauling. Remarkably loud caterwauling echoing through the neighborhood. I sat up in bed, rubbed my eyes, and went to the window. Across the street, under the same lamppost was the kitten. It stopped making noise and stared straight at me. I rolled my eyes and went back to bed.

This, of course, did not appease the kitten. As soon as I shut my eyes it started caterwauling all over again. I got up, threw on my forest green terrycloth robe slid my feet into my fuzzy orange Ugg indoor/outdoor slippers and headed down to the garage. I put on my dad’s big puffy pewter gray gloves to make sure my hands were protected, grabbed Harlow’s crate, opened the garage door, and stepped out onto the driveway. The kitten saw me and stopped making noise. I approached with caution. It watched my every move.

When I reached the other side, I knelt about a yard to its right side and slowly opened the door to the crate. The kitten turned towards me, adjusted itself and sat on its haunches. We stayed there staring at each other. But after a few minutes, exhaustion caught up with me. I rose and carried the crate closer to the kitten. As soon as I did, the kitten scurried across the street and stopped in our driveway as if it were waiting for me, its green eyes sparkling in the porchlight.

I looked both ways and headed back to my driveway. I went towards the kitten and stopped a yard from its left side, squatted down and opened the crate’s door. The cat seemed bored with this would-be game and proceeded to lick its paw. I crept closer, reached out my gloved hand, and…

Suddenly, the kitten turned towards me and hissed the most satanic hiss I’d ever heard. Its green eyes turned pure black, and its large, oversized ears flattened as if they were wings on a stealth fighter. I inched back a couple yards and the cat calmly returned to its normal self, continuing to groom its paws.

Well, forget that! I closed the crate door and opened the garage door. The kitten caterwauled again.

“Not a chance,” I snapped. I started to step inside when I felt the kitten circling my legs, brushing up against them as closely as possible. It was getting fur all over my pajamas. This was not going to bode well for my mother. I would have to go over them with a lint brush, toss them in the hamper and change before I crawled back into bed. My instincts told me I probably shouldn’t let this cat into the garage much less the house.

I, however, didn’t get to make the decision because the kitten sauntered into the garage uninvited. She saw my old crib mattress tilted against the wall. She scratched her paw in the air at it as if to tell me to pull it down so she could lie on it. I sighed, entered the garage, and set Harlow’s crate on top of the freezer. I removed the blanket from the crate, knocked the mattress onto the floor, unfurled the blanket and spread it on top. The kitten scrutinized the arrangement with its emerald eyes and was satisfied with it. She stepped on, curled up in a ball and purred.

“Yeah, make yourself at home,” I told her. Then I shut off the garage light and went back to bed.

My mom woke me up at 6:45 AM. “Time to go to school,” she told me.

I blinked my heavy eyelids and attempted to bring the world into focus. The sun was already out which was better than the dank predawn I experienced earlier this semester. After dressing, I headed into the kitchen. My mom had made me a fruit plate. I sat down at the table and said, “I caught the kitten last night.”

“Last night?” my mom exclaimed. “What time last night?”

“Between one and two.”

“One or two in the morning?”

“Didn’t you hear it caterwauling?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“It was caterwauling at the top of its lungs. It woke me up.”

“You should have let it go on howling. It would have eventually stopped.”

“What if a racoon caught it?”

“There’s tweekers in this neighborhood who break into cars. What if they’d seen you and tried to hurt you?”

“No one was out there. The kitten could have been attacked by a coyote.”

“Where is it now?”

“In the garage curled up on my old crib mattress.”

“I guess that’s just as well. But I never want you getting up and wandering around at night like that again.”

“I was going to give it food and water before we left.”

“Go do that then brush your teeth, wash your face and comb your hair or you’re going to be late.”

“Alright.” I finished my fruit plate, took a last sip of my tea, and got out a couple of Harlow’s steel bowls. I filled one with water and the other with one of her fancy pâtés and headed to the garage.

When I stepped inside, I noticed the light was on. I thought about this for a second, certain I’d turned it off before I went back to bed. I looked over at the mattress. The kitten sat calmly licking its paws. I stepped towards it, and it turned its head and looked at me.

“I brought you breakfast,” I said before walking over and setting the bowl of water in front of the kitten. The kitten looked at it then back at me expecting more. I walked back to the freezer, grabbed the bowl of food, and set it down in front of the finicky feline. “Bon Appetit.”   

The kitten wolfed down the food sat back on its haunches and stared at me. I stared back. I wasn’t exactly comfortable about heading off to school and leaving it in the garage to its own devices. 

As I headed out to the car, I alerted my mom of my concern.

“We’re just going to let her stay in there until you get home from school. Then we’ll run her over to the vet and see if she’d microchipped. Then we can go about getting her back to her owner.”

“What if she doesn’t have a chip?”

“Then we’ll take pictures of her, print them out and post them around the neighborhood with my phone number. Then we’ll go onto the neighborhood web site and post that we found a kitten.”

“What if no one ever claims her?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: BETTER OFF DEAD (1981)-PLUTO TV

I thought it would be fun over the next couple of weeks to feature a few 80’s sleepers that are in no way shape or form politically correct but gleefully fun to watch just the same. The first one is a terrific satire on 80’s teenage angst called Better Off Dead. The film was John Cusack’s fifth major motion picture, and he is terrific playing Lane Meyer, a likeable middleclass teenage boy. His girlfriend Beth (Amanda Wyss) whom he is obsessed with is less than obsessed with him. When Lane tries out for the high school ski team, she dumps him for the arrogant ski team captain Roy (Aaron Dozier). Destroyed by the rejection and his failing to make the ski team, Lane tries several hilarious ways to attempt suicide. But his drug addled best friend Charles De Mar (the always hilarious Curtis Armstrong) encourages him to carry on with life and fight for a spot on the ski team. Also on his side is plucky French exchange student Monique Junot (Dianne Franklin) who is trapped in the creepy Smith residence next door where Mrs. Smith (Laura Waterbury) strongly encourages her to date her creepy son Ricky (Dan Schneider). Rounding out the cast are David Ogdon Stiers of MASH fame as Lane’s father Al Meyer, and Kim Darby, the original Mattie Rose from True Grit as Jenny Meyer as Lane’s goofy mother.