d.: (ring) Hey, Cal.E., it's me, d.c. Why don’t you tell me the whole story of how you lost your natural claws.
C.: I’ve already told you that story. I jumped down off the refrigerator. Since I wasn’t familiar with gravity, I dug my claws into the countertop so deeply that my claws had to be removed for me to get off the kitchen island.
d.: You need to give me more details because I know that there is more to the story than what you’re telling me.
C.: Okay, fine, you win, d.c. I’ll tel y’all the whole story.
When my spaceship first landed on this planet after I’d been exiled from my home planet and galaxy for eating my husband, King Tom’s Rodent Prepared for Royalty, I was confused but thankful to be anywhere but wandering around in space. However, my spaceship exploded after I’d swum to land. I knew that because I saw the explosion in the reflection of a shiny barn. I had a run in with some cows, and then was rescued by a barn cat named Barney. He wanted me to stay on the farm with him and be his…concubine is the term humans formerly used.
I told Barney that I was accustomed to fine things and civilization, not farm living so I couldn’t stay with him and be happy. That’s when he directed me to Baltimore. This was the closest large city to where I’d landed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland. There, I met my second husband, also named Tom. He impregnated me with fourteen kittens after he invited me to sleep with him. I thought that this would be harmless, since he was in his coma…
d.: Don’t you mean comma?
C.: No, d.c., my ex-husband slept in a coma-shaped bed. Anyway, I was so scared after my kittens were born that I hopped on an 18-wheeler headed for Houston. I just wanted to get away from Tom and my kittens.
When I got to Houston, I hopped off the truck and was caught by the evil animal control officer. He took me to The Kennel, where you work. You could understand what I was saying, so you told me not to talk to anyone else because I’d be cut open to see what made me be able to talk, unlike earth cats. On my home planet, The Planet of the Talking Cats, all cats speak English. That’s because we want our loyal subjects, the humans, to know what our commands are.
Anyway, your best friends and next door neighbors adopt cats, dogs, and human hairless kittens, so you told Horace and Hotense about me when you brought me home with you. They adopted me, and that’s the end of the story.
d.: Not exactly.
C.: ???
d.: You still haven’t gotten to the part about losing your claws. I know that you’d experienced gravity before, because you’d been on this planet for two years.
C.: Okay, fine, I’ll spill. I thought that refrigerators were gods, because humans on this planet seem like they worship them. They give it food sacrifices, and then, if Blanco, as I called the refrigerator because it was white and we were in Texas, was pleased with the human’s sacrifice; he gave the human some food to eat. The worst punishment for a human, I thought, was to have to go on a diet.
I decided that the best place to observe what was happening in my new home was atop the white god. Well, as I sat atop Blanco, the master criminal dog Buddy Bones walked by, and started flapping his ears, like he was trying to fly. I thought that, on this planet, maybe animals could fly, so I started flapping my ears and jumped off Blanco, landing on the kitchen island.
When I did, I was so frightened that I dug my claws into the formica so far that I couldn’t removed them, so I was stuck. After he laughed heartily at me, Buddy Bones went to another room. He didn’t try to help me get loose, so I was still stuck on top of the kitchen island when Mom and Dad came home much later. That’s when they called a special vet who couldn’t get my claws loose. He had to declaw me so that I could get off the kitchen island countertop. The end.
d.: Well, if that’s the end of your cat tail, we’re done for today. We’ll see y’all tomorrow on Cal.E.’s Korner.
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