Bacon and Fireworks

Friday morning was heavenly. The Mommy made bacon and Peep, LT and Miss Rudy all ate as much as they wanted. So did the Daddy, which made him happy too. Miss Rudy had gotten over her snit, and enjoyed the Mommy. She let her scratch her head, and even brush her. Brushing felt nice, and it rid her of all that winter fur she hadn’t removed from bathing. She was always careful about that – she didn’t want to get hairballs. They were so uncomfortable.

Peep didn’t look as happy as LT thought she would so he asked her, “Peep, is there something wrong?”

“Last night Mommy told me that she is only going to be here for the weekend and then she needs to go back and stay in Virginia for as long as she was already gone. I think I miss her already.” Peep said this with her head on her paws, a woebegone look on her face.

“Rats. I was hoping that she was home to stay. The house is so clean again, and we had bacon – it’s just perfect. The Daddy is really good, but he needs a woman around the house. I never realized that until the Mommy came to stay here all the time, but he does.” LT put his head down on his paws too.

Rudy came over and saw the two of them. “What happened? Did you eat too much bacon and get a stomach ache?”

“The Mommy is leaving again and staying away for a long time,” Peep said. “I heard her say it herself last night.”

“Not good news at all. Hmmm. Do you think we can convince her to stay?” Rudy decided that something needed to be done. She wasn’t sure what, but this called for drastic measures.

“No. She’s so excited about that upchuck index she keeps talking about. Who cares how fast people throw up? She said she needs to go back to figure out the formula to compute it accurately. You know, people care about the weirdest things!” LT shook his head. He just didn’t understand people sometimes. Cats were sensible. They cared about food, a good place to sleep and those they loved. People cared about ideas. You couldn’t eat them, sleep on them or play with them with your paws. A cat would never bother with stuff like that.

“And on top of that, there were fireworks last night, and there are going to be more tonight. I hate fireworks,” said Peep.

“Oh, it’s that holiday where some of the people fire them off. Ick. Maybe we should cancel Cat Club for tonight. Peep’s old family is so weird, they will probably fire some off. They usually do, and I don’t want to risk us getting burned. I’ll go tell Fuzzy and Ginger.” After saying this, LT was off like a shot.

The Mommy came into the living room and observed the two sad cats. “What’s wrong with you two? Did I feed you too much bacon?”

“No, Mommy. I just don’t want you to go away again.” Peep got up and sat down with the Mommy on the couch. She didn’t touch her, just sat next to her. “It was so hard while you were away. I almost forgot what you looked like.”

“Poor little Peep. You sound so sad. I’ll come home again to stay in August. It’s just another month or so, and then I’ll be done at NASA. This has been a good experience for me, and who knows, maybe I’ll get a job out of it!” The Mommy scratched Peep’s head and rubbed her back. Peep rolled over so that the Mommy could rub her belly. No one could rub a belly like the Mommy, not even the dream mice with their golden combs.

Peep fell asleep, and dreamed of the mice. As they combed her belly fur, they sang to her a little song about how much the Mommy loved her. “No one loves Peep like the Mommy, no, no, no. The Peep is the Mommy’s favorite cat, yes, yes, yes. Even the magical mice with their golden combs aren’t as good as the Mommy, sniff, sniff, sniff.” The mice sang this over and over in a minor key. It should have been a happy song, but somehow it wasn’t.

The Peep woke up in the dark to the sound of fireworks, and they sounded close. Wheee….bang! Wheeeeeee..…bang! Peep jumped up and ran under the couch. Where was everyone? Was she going to have to endure this by herself? She hated loud noises. Fireworks were even worse than bacuum!

In a moment she was joined under the couch by Rudy. “Ok, this seems like a safe place to me, unless they bomb our house,” she said. They hunkered down and decided to wait for either the fireworks to stop or the house to explode. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be the latter.

Photo courtesy of Kropsoq http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:2007_Nagaoka_Festival_004.jpg