With a Postscript on the Plight of Tobias.
Annie is a black cat with white face and breast markings. She is the adopted sister of Toby and cuddles with, grooms, head rubs and arches against the canine reprobate.
Toby has a large bed, that contains his 70 pound frame easily. Annie permits Toby to lie there until it is nice and warm. Then she pricks his nose with one evil claw and sends him off into the hard, cold corner, while she reclines in feline majesty, all 10 pounds of her.
Annie has green eyes that glower sphinx like in the dark.
Annie walks stiff legged like an elk, from the hips, affecting an odd strut.
Annie hunts and kills, humming birds, sparrows, shrews, mice, rats and moles. When she hears a mole under ground, she will direct Toby to dig out the hole so she can snag it with a precision guided claw.
Annie does not stray from within sight of the ape den, whose giant, idiot occupants serve her food, water and provide cover from hawks, owls, coyotes and Izzy and Amos, who occasionally stage an insurrection and chase her under the housing frame.
Humans occasionally use ladders, which Annie finds entertaining. She has slept on a ladder, suggesting to the human engaged in installing the ceiling light, that they find other occupation for their rampant OCD.
Annie practices hunting Bisquick, her larger brown grandmother, sneaking up on her and rolling he rover into a rear-naked belly rake neck bite, boss bitch submission.
Annie climbs the 4 by 4 porch supports to the roof to hunt humming birds, which the mother ape lures for Annie’s killing pleasure with a nectar feeder.
Annie has is entertained and served by a visiting ape every winter. This aged creature must make water often so is good for opening doors when Toby is off duty. Annie stalks this creature constantly:
When it limps, yawning and stiff towards the main den, Annie leaps down from the roof upon the porch and startles it.
It hauls wood from the distant wood place to the warm-for-Annie place, permitting Annie to expand her hunting range, using the human as a coyote and hawk deterant.
It digs holes way down by the water, giving Annie cover for hunting ducks.
It wheels rocks and dirt around in a big bucket with a wheel, which Annie leaps upon and rides, its otherwise pointless activity harnessed to good use.
When it snows, this human scrapes it up with a shinny metal platform, which Annie runs at and leaps off of as the idiot shovels.
When it emerges from the side den, Annie is always there, and reminds him whose den this is by shredding the lookout [porch] roof beams with her claws.
When it is cold or raining out, this creature goes out into the rain and stares at the puddles in the rain, from within its great stinking coat—thoughtfully in Annie own nighted color—as if puddles were a problem that can not be solved by going around. This idiocy provides Annie with a dry boot-shod ape foot to sit upon and scout for prey.
This human is not a reliable food source, but is a first rate door opener, eating little and coming and going much.
When this human walks to the ape bathing station with the towel, Annie reaches out from her perch on the dining room chair under the table—the padded one—and snags it, just to remind him who is boss.
This human sits at the table after dark playing cards with the food-bringer human and drinks rum—a useful ration for door opening humans, who must now come and go more often to urinate in the yard, maximizing Annie’s shadow-stalking killing potential.
Two nights ago, this human drank so much rum that it forgot that the padded dining room chair is Annie’s own regal throne.
Annie rubbed him, arched against him and even climbed up on the back of the chair behind his neck, purring for her throne.
Well, drunk apes have their limitations. As it continued to pour rum into its woolly muzzle, Annie leapt onto the table next to his elbow and got his attention. And—clear proof that humans are not evolutionary beings—rather then get up and make way for Princess of Darkness Annie, it smiled and reached for its glass again, as if she were, rather than his awesome mistress of darkness, a mere apparition! This was too much for Annie. She stepped between his muzzle and his drink and arched her back, preventing him from guzzling anymore intoxicant.
This almost became a full scale ape insurrection as the mama Ape rudely laid hands upon Annie and placed her on the floor. So, afronted, but still Queen, Annie showed mercy and grace, sat next to the old drunk ape, extended her paw, deployed only one single claw, and pressed it through his pants to his knee, just needling, not breaking the skin reminding him that he was seated above his station.
The drunken ape apologized, stood, moved the throne of darkness closer to the wood stove, took an unpadded ape seat, and dragged it under his posterior, as, pious once again, the other humans applauded Queen Annie, now seated mysteriously upon her throne.
…
Postscript
Toby is outraged to report that on Sunday, 13th, of Black History Month, when he should have been honored, that the entire servant staff: Food Bringer, Toby Cuddler, Mamma, Grandma Who Never Cleans Her Plate, and even the normally loyal Butt-Scratch the Hobo, who arrives during the winter months to scratch Toby’s dry rear haunches, since he is served by white folks who do not realize that he needs afrosheen treatments or his ass gets all ashy, abandoned Toby.
Toby was locked out of his own house and left bereft of servants, who caravaned out of the driveway in their vehicles. However, being a true born aristocrat, and mostly useless, since the door was traitorously barred and he would not be able to let the werewolf twins in to raid the pantry while the servants were at church, Tobias rose to the occasion and took the lead, running ahead of the servants in their cars until they reached the main road...and there he stood, like a lion at the gates of Babylon, the least he could do to impress the endlessly useful but restive servant class.
…
And Annie, Princess of Darkness, rolled over on her throne and stretched, resting her sleek limbs for the falling night and the coming hunt.
