junk.rat

a night time story from mattress-land

once upon a time, in the land of dairy cows and telephones that don’t work, ratty went to bed. her [big] dog went to bed with her, curling up by the other pillow next to ratty’s head. a few cats trickle in, find themselves some warm spots and they go to sleep as well.

as soon as everyone is snoozing nicely, the boy arrives home from work and puts his key in the door. the [big] dog does a spastic, diving bounce from the bed to greet the boy. this leaves the other bed occupants to be jarred awake from the massive bed jiggle that spastic bounces create.

purrl, the big black ma-moo of all cats, gets up from her spot at the end of the bed and starts purring loudly as she walks toward ratty’s head. it should be mentioned that purrl, the big ma-moo of all cats, does NOT purr very often as she is very imperious and often cranky. so. she is purring loudly as she walks ONTO ratty’s pillow, where she stands on ratty’s hair [which is rather painful] and proceeds to stare at ratty’s closed eye.

what else can ratty do? she opens her closed eye, looks up into the little black nose and says, “hello, big fat ma-moo, what do you want?” then, ratty reaches up and gives purrl’s cheeky-cheekys a scritch-scritch because purrl appreciates this muchly. but only when she is in a good mood. after tolerating this for a very short time, the big, fat ma-moo turns around, saunters over to the spot that the [big] dog has vacated and lays down next to the pillow. purring loudly. almost verociously. definitely imperiously.

ratty just smiles and closes her eye. she knows that this is the way of the big black ma-moo. she doesn’t neccesarily like sleeping by the pillow next to ratty’s head. but she will when someone ELSE wants to. ratty also knows that all she really wanted was a witness to her superiority over the [big] dog.

a little later, the [big] dog, who has had her romp and snack with the boy, comes back to bed only to find that she has been ousted. with great sadness, she sits next to the bed, with her big doggy head resting on the edge of the mattress, and she alternately stares at the big black ma-moo and ratty’s closed eye. which stays closed this time.

sorry, [big] dog. you know the law of mattress-land…
if you don’t snooze, you lose.