Smile and Say “Treats” -- by KittyCat

Bicklesworth--rhymes with picklesworth. That's the cat that beat up on me once. Scared he'd hurt me again, Mom wouldn't let me go outside for a long time. 

One day in a bad mood, I'm thinking, this is too stupid. Mom won't take my picture outside cuz Bicklesworth is out. So she makes this phony fall scene with pumpkins, fall flowers, and stuff, all on a grass-looking rug inside the garage. While she scatters silk leaves around--that's silk, as in fake--Dad is outside mowing, picking up real leaves and dumping them on the compost pile.

Ready to shoot, Mom put me and a treat on a pumpkin—the only real things in the whole scene. Ha, ha. I did a grab and go, and before the camera clicked I was snickering from a high shelf.

Mom stepped into the pretend pumpkin patch, and looked up at me. “KittyCat! I went to all this work to take your picture. Come here! This is so-o ridiculous.” All tempered up, she stomped her foot.

I almost fell off the shelf, laughing.

Ha, ha. Mom’s heel had hit the edge of a dandelion-looking plastic disk. As it flew up, it zapped a cardboard potted plant, and then both got hung up on a piece of wire. The wire you couldn't see before, now stuck out between pumpkins and other props, its leaves looking more like a string of broken lights than fall decorations. Startled, Mom fell backward into the bale of hay—you'd think a good landing place. But, with legs pointing up, she sank right through the “hay bale”—a straw-covered cardboard box.

She got up p-d-q, but the box stuck to her behind and hit this thing called a backdrop. It dropped—but not quite to the floor, cuz Mom was in the way.

I jumped down. All that laughter right after lunch jiggled the kibbles in my tummy and I got cramps. I puked on a pile of silk leaves—a pretty good place, cuz the colors in the up-chucked cat food blended real good with those in the phony fall scene.

Mom groaned like her tummy hurt. She stood the torn backdrop up again, but a paper bird's nest had traded its plastic branch for Mom's head, and a hobby-store sparrow hung from the witch's broom on her Halloween sweatshirt.

I looked at scrunched leaves, a broken pumpkin, the upturned hay box, and props turned everywhichway. Yeah, Mom, I thought, it is so ridiculous

The takeaway? --next time you’re in a bad mood, look around. You'll find something ‘so ridiculous,’ you'll laugh yourself silly.

(c) 2011, Bernice W. Simpson