Trifecta 33-word Fable Writing Challenge: Dinner at the Fable Buffet

Hello Dear Readers!  This weekend’s Trifecta Writing Challenge was to write a fable in 33 words!  They certainly keep us on our toes over there at the challenge! So here goes:

Dinner at the Fable Buffet

A cat and a parakeet were dining on pie when the cat remarked that he really should be eating the parakeet to which the parakeet replied, “Shut up and eat your Puddy Tat pie.”

Until next time . . . I love you

Shhh . . . Stop Interrupting and Listen to the Warm!

Foraging around the falderal at my local thrift store,  (I am starting to feel like they stock it just for me!) I found this wonderful gem:

“Listen to the Warm”  Written and performed by Rod McKuen

On the back of the album is his historic poem, A Cat Name Sloopy — in three parts. It’s a poem Rod Mckuen penned during an unprecedented burst of love for his cat, Sloopy.  And a poem, I might add, that catapulted Rod McKuen to superstar poetic status back in the halcyon days of unflinchingly serious, popular poetry.

Here are some excerpts from that historic poem with a few observations of my own.

“For a while the only earth that Sloopy knew was in her sandbox”

Just a quick heads up, Rod, kitty litter works better.

Every night she’d sit in the window among the avocado plants waiting for me to come home (my arms full of canned liver and love)

Excuse me . . .Rob?  . . . you dropped a whole bunch of love coming up the stairs. (By the way, I hope you didn’t buy avocados, the grove in the window sill is finally producing!)

We talked into the night then, contented but missing something

Uh . . . could it have been Sloopy’s side of the conversation?

She the earth she never knew,  and me the hills I ran while growing bent

Oh that . . . well, I hear calcium can help that.

Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat with prairies to run not linoleum

Good call Rod!  And that’s why linoleum should be banned once and for all!

I never told her, but in my mind, I was a midnight cowboy even then. Riding my imaginary horse down Forty-second Street . . .

What?  You love doing that?  Me too! OMG!

Going off with strangers to live an hour-long cowboy’s life but always coming home to Sloopy, who loved me best.

Wait. . . what? . . . hold the phone . . . Rod . . . Rod!  No more beer for you.  Why don’t you go to bed now and see if you can’t sleep it off.  What’s  that?  You can’t sleep because Sloopy keeps slapping her paws walking around on the linoleum?  Well, just listen to the warm . . Rod  . . .that’s right . . .  listen to the warm . . . .

Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can get a call into the president so he can do something about the linoleum.  And tomorrow you can start working on your next album.  What are you going to call it?  What’s that, Rod?  You’re going to call it, Smell the Humidity? 

I love it!

Until next time . . . I love you

The Taffy May Incident

Hello Dear Readers.  Is it Lazy Friday Rerun Blog Day already?  OK!  Who am I to argue with the calendar!  (except I do think a week should have 8 days and 3 of them should be a three-day weekend –  but apparently my calendar wouldn’t give me the time of day.)  Here’s today’s rerun:

Taffy May I Hardly Knew Ye

When I was a little girl, the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow was a horse.

I had no preference as to style, make or model.  If it had four legs and knew how to gallop, I’d take it!  We lived in a small town smack dab in the middle of an ocean of wheat, so there were lots of girls who had horses and rode them everywhere.  It would rip my heart out to see a gaggle of girls atop their sterling steeds clip clopping all over town.

“Clip clop clip clop clip clop clip . . . etc.”

I really only voiced the question of my getting a horse to my parents a couple of times, knowing full well that the answer would be no, and, as a matter of pride,  I’d ultimately have to run away from home or –at the very least — stage a runaway as in the following true scenario:

“Look at this Janey,” my father remarked to my mother, “I found Linda’s yellow shorty pajamas in this little 45-record case in the bushes just outside her window when I was mowing the lawn.”

Oh I was going to run away alright . . . eventually.

Ok, fine . . . if I wasn’t going to get a horse, at least I could try for a kitten.  This is how I went about it: 

Step 1:  Convince my parents that I was head over heals in love with cats.  To accomplish this,  I colored umpteen pictures of kittens and scotch taped them to my circa 1959 pink wall.

Step 2:  Wasn’t even needed because Step 1 worked like a charm.  Next thing I knew I was picking out my very own gray, long-haired kitten from a batch of five.

In my excitement, I failed to notice that this particular kitten had issues.  It suffered from the world’s lowest kitty IQ.   Maybe that’s why the name I chose, Taffy May, seemed to fit her so well.

Taffy May was the perfect cat for a little girl to bond with.  Being nearly brain-dead, she allowed me to pick her up and carry her around without protest. 

She slept with me all night under the covers which I thought was because she loved me so —  but more likely she just couldn’t figure a way out.

Taffy May had one batch of kittens – if three can be considered a batch.  But being the little dummy that she was, she managed to lie on all three of them during the night and  in the morning the only one left breathing was my beloved, Taffy May.

Perhaps it was Karma (I know there was a car involved) the day Taffy May shuffled off this mortal world.

I was on my way home from school without a care in the world.  When I rounded the corner, there stood our across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Huey, holding a lifeless Taffy May up by the tail.

I don’t know how many times Taffy May had been run over, but judging from the fact that she was literally as flat as a pancake, it would be safe to assume more than once. 

I screamed and ran into the house where I was inconsolable well into the night.  I never got another cat of my very own, out of respect for Taffy May, who will always have a place in my heart . . . about two feet wide and one and one-half inches deep.

Until next time . . . I love you