From the Cat

We have lots of wonderful company on vacation, particularly in the summer when the sea breeze invites visitors to the beach to sun and swim. A friend used to work for Disney and told me, "Once folks cross into the Disney park, they lose their brains," meaning they're on vacation and don't pay attention to many if any the necessities. All that is fine and good unless you have a catling named Button aka Little Naughty. For those who don't know of Button's antics, let me elaborate.

One of her favorite activities is to play in toilet water. The necessity here is to put the toilet seat and lid down when finished doing what needs to be done. This will, in turn, prevent her from frolicking in the less than completely sanitary H2O. As an assist in this process, we have installed automatic slo-mo toilet seat descenders, which mean all you have to do is gently push down on the top edge of the lid and it closes quietly. Our intent is to make the closing of the lid as near to effortless as is humanly possible. We explain this to our brainless guests, complete with demonstration. The rub here is that memory is required and without brains, can there truly be memory? Since Little Naughty has trained Bruce and me already, this lack of memory accords our buds an application to my Three Second Memory Club. Their repeatedly leaving the seat and lid up is proof the they quality for membership.

To make matters worse, we were mildly surprised to see where Button has taken to writting notes and taping them to the inside of the toilet lids. Aha, her diabolical messages thanking humans for leaving up the lids, did just the opposite---for 24 hours. Soon, the notes became invisible to those humans, still on vacation, and Little Naughty was once again playing in the toilet water. Oh, what  clever cat thou art. Her latest message of scoff demonstrates how we of two legs are good for but three things, feeding, stroking and cleaning her litter box. Sigh. See her  "Button note" below and advise as you see fit.

Jane Marie Malcolm, cat lover and  germ freak

PS I may be late in replying to your emails at graciousjanemarie@yahoo.com  because I am in the throws of finding the best sanitation company in which to invest. Might as well. I spend enough cash on the sanitrate stuff personally.