El Burro Volador

(part III in an intermittent and ongoing series)

I shall resume my tale of a typical morning at the point where Clementine, who is being a right bastard today by the way, has gone outside.  While she offloads her metabolic byproducts, it is time for me to feed the cats.  Now, on mornings when Gypsy begins his food-yowling before sunrise, or augments it by flinging himself bodily into the bedroom door, I usually give him discount cat food we get from Sam’s Club.  This may not seem like much of a punishment unless you’ve read the ingredient label, so I reproduce it for your edification:

Ingredients: Brewer’s Rice, Shredded Newspaper, Toenail Clippings, Powdered Cellulose, Gravel, Scabs, Calcium Sulfate, Strychnine, Potassium Sulfate, Despair.

Anyhow, Gypsy’s been good this morning, so he gets his prescription weight-loss food from the vet, which is made mostly from black magic and guys who squealed on the mob.  I quickly dial the combination on the cat food safe and scoop Gypsy out some of the good stuff, then deposit it in his bowl in the laundry room.  After Gypsy minces in there, I close the door for his protection and head back to the kitchen.  Clementine is pawing at the door now, so I scoop food into Cleo’s bowl, pluck her out of the air as she drifts by, and set her down in front of it.  Past observation has shown that it will now take her anywhere from five to seven minutes to find the food directly in front of her, but I don’t have time to watch, because it’s time for Clemmy to come back in.

Clem shoots a stiff paw to my groin as I let her in, and I do my best to shrug it off as I head over to turn on the stove and get the ingredients for her breakfast out of the refrigerator.  For the next fifteen minutes or so I will be busy searing steak and sautéing mushrooms, as well as preparing a fresh green salad.  It may not sound that hard, but trust me: anything becomes a challenge when you have a sixteen-pound dog hanging off your sweat pants and snarling incessantly.

Finally  I’m done cooking and can lay Clem’s breakfast out in front of her.  She dives into the steak and mushrooms while I croon encouragements to her: “That’s it Clem, eat up so you’ll grow big and strong”.  I watch anxiously as she sniffs at the salad, because I’ve decided to try something new today: Arugula!  Clem snuffles around the salad bowl very carefully, then turns and squats over it, urinating deliberately as she looks back over her shoulder at me to make sure I get the message.  When she’s finished weeing, I scoop her up and carry her to her corral.