shaggy, succulent, glissando, mortified, repetitious, cats

Untitled
© 2005
by mk

The cats were shredding the furniture to shaggy threads.

Calvin was mortified. He hadn't anticipated that housesitting was going to be this difficult.

It wasn't only the cats. He had apparently overwatered the succulents and they were rotting and growing a white fungus.

Besides that there were the sounds from the neighbors which were driving him crazy. The walls must have been made of papier mache. He was awakened regularly every day to a combination of the glissandos of the piano teacher practicing upstairs and the repetitious bangs of the bedframe of the newlyweds next door.

Untitled
© 2005
by sw

She awoke before dawn to the sound of cats ... cats fighting, cats meowing, cats scattering with excitement over the smallest movement from the bed. She was mortified when she peered stealthily from beneath the pillow at the alarm clock that read four thirteen a.m. Maybe if she lay still and ignored them, they would give up for another couple of hours. Then the shaggy twenty-two pounder launched himself off her head and slid across the slippery headboard like a seasoned piano player's fingers interpreting the glissando effect.

She sat up suddenly, pissed off. Cats scrambled off in any direction that led to an exit. She stretched across the floor, half her body still in bed, one hand supporting herself above the cold wood floor, and flipped the door closed. Exhausted and desperate for sleep, she lay back down. That's when she realized the repetitious one had managed to stay behind. She shoved her off the bed at the first light squawk, only to have her immediately leap back up to do it again. And again. And again. It's amazing what a feline will do for the succulent taste of canned cat food.


© 2005
by kk


Shaggy hated it when Luis did the glissando at the end. It was so cheesy. And, when Sussie Hellinger slithered up to him after the recital, Shaggy knew it was only a matter of time before she mortified him by proving herself to be nothing more than a wretched social climber with bad breath. He had it on good authority that Sussie kept two dozen cats in that monolith on Fifth Avenue and that every inch of the place was permeated with the smell of urine.

Look how Luis grasps Marc Sylvester’s succulent hand. Could he be any more obvious? Luis and his repetitious affairs with unsuitable hangers on. Why did he have to humiliate him at every turn? Shaggy sometimes wondered if enough was enough. But when it came down to it, could he even imagine a life without that officious tiny pianist looking at him across the breakfast table every morning?

Shaggy turned away from the foul vapor issuing from Sussie’s mouth and refusing to give Luis the satisfaction of even the simplest of goodbyes, left the room and walked out of the house. He hailed a cab and gave the driver his mother’s address in Queens. Shaggy was going home.