Popcorn Drool
The spring rain had stopped, and the house smelled like wet dog, damp grass, and mouse possibilities.
I was on the back of the couch pretending not to watch Ted Lasso with the Milkkeeper and her man. The Milkkeeper crunched miserably on plain popcorn. Her man’s had butter.
Naturally.
“I can’t stick to a diet,” she said. “It’s too boring. The thinking about food. The not thinking about food. The pretending salad is enough.”
Her man nodded gravely, the way he did when he had no clue what danger he was in.
“Maybe you’re making it too complicated,” he said.
She turned her head slowly. He missed this.
“I’m just saying, look at them.” He waved his bowl toward me and the dog, tossing a fist full of popcorn into his mouth. “They eat the same thing every day, and they’re perfectly content.”
I stopped washing my paw. Across the rug, Dog lifted his head.
Content?
“They don’t overthink it,” the man added.
Oh, we were thinking it.
I am not content. I am observant. I am withholding judgment in case I need to kill something with my murder mittens later.
And I do not eat the same thing every day because I enjoy simplicity. I eat it because the Milkkeeper pours dusty triangles into a dish and acts as if she’s solved world hunger.
I prefer mice. I am a carnivore.
I opened my mouth to say so, but a hairball arrived first. I hopped down, hacked three times, and deposited a gray lump on the rug.
The Milkkeeper glanced over. “Oh, lovely.”
Exactly. You’re welcome.
Dog sniffed toward it until I gave him a look. Slobbery, sentimental, always starving. Dinner happened twenty-five minutes ago, so naturally he was near death.
He doesn’t like kibble either, though you’d never know it from the way he scarfs it down. He prefers hamburger, gravy, ice cream, and gristle. Lettuce and radishes offend him, nonetheless he licks them clean, then spits them out on the floor.
His disdain pleases me.
Dog believes garbage is his birthright. According to him, his ancestors discovered that humans created mounds of scraps and didn’t guard them.
Last week he got stuck in the garbage pail and emerged wearing a peanut butter jar.
On the couch, the Milkkeeper reached into her man’s popcorn bowl and announced that tomorrow she would start again. Sensible meals. No snacking.
Her man reached in too. “After the popcorn, babe.”
“Obviously.”
I looked at the bowl. The dog looked at the bowl. A strand of drool hit the rug between his paws.
One can only be insulted so much in one’s own home.
I rose and hopped up onto the back of the couch. With one paw, I reached down over the man’s chest and hooked the rim of the bowl.
I tipped.
Hard.
Popcorn scattered across the couch, rug, the humans, and Dog. The bowl bounced off the floor with a thud. The Milkkeeper yelped. Her man laughed. The dog launched himself into the wreckage like his ancestors had whistled him home.
I landed on the windowsill, clean and blameless.
“That cat did that on purpose,” the Milkkeeper said.
I blinked.
Prove it.
Outside, under the wet porch, something tiny rustled.
At last.
A proper meal.
Hey there, lovely reader!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s story whether you’re a popcorn fan or not. For more of this cat’s adventures, check out Not a Creature Was Stirring.
If this story made you grin, you might enjoy one of my novels. They aren’t all the same flavour, but they all come from the same brain: curious, wry, emotionally nosy, and very interested in what people do when life gets life-y.
Start with Odd Mom Out if you like bad best friends, terrible mothers, bratty daughters, aging, reinvention, and the humiliating business of being human in public.
For a darker and more emotionally intense story in which a man must go back to his hometown and face the music while his girlfriend is left behind to figure out what’s happening on her own: Where the Night Winds Wail. (On sale for $0.99 for one more week.)
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