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Today, you can write about whatever you what — but your post must include, in whatever role you see fit, a cat, a bowl of soup, and a beach towel.
This is a true story, a memory if you will, and it involves the odd trio. My mother-in-law, we called her Nonnie, had a cat named Johnny and her mother, Grammy, lived with her. They made a nice trio, slightly eccentric and adorable at the same time. Grammy lived by her stomach and it was a delight to watch her eat, she savored every bite at every meal, no matter what she was eating. One day, I was there, I don’t remember why, they lived five houses down so it wasn’t a special trip or anything like that. It was meal time, it could have been 11:00, 12:00 or 1:00, the time didn’t matter, meal time was determined by Grammy’s stomach. When I walked into the house, Grammy was sitting at the table with her napkin tucked into her blouse and she was spooning her chicken noodle soup into her mouth with one hand, while she was holding a piece of buttered white bread in her other. She looked very content concentrating on her spoon one minute and then her bite of buttered bread the other. In the background, I saw Johnny’s crate open waiting near the door, I assumed that it meant that Johnny had an appointment with Hazel our small town veterinarian right down the road and when I saw Nonnie come out of the bathroom with a beach towel in her hands. The bathroom was on the first floor right near the kitchen and the side door so she kept all of the beach towels in there to make it easier to hand out to the kids when they used to go and play in the little kiddie pool she had for them years back. But this time there weren’t any kids seeking a beach towel, the beach towel was for Johnny. He needed to be put into his crate for the ride down to Hazel’s and Nonnie wasn’t about to risk her skin with his claws. I wasn’t about to become involved in her negotiations with Johnny, for one, I am deeply allergic to Johnny and number two, Johnny and I had an uneasy truce, accidentally some time ago as I was opening Nonnie’s screen door, a heavy one at that, and a gust of wind slammed it and unfortunately Johnny was coming in right at that moment and his tail got broken, he naturally associated his broken tail with me, so there it was, I stayed away from Johnny out of his respect for his sensibilities.
So Nonnie came in from behind Johnny and swooped him up into the beach towel and eased him into the crate. He wasn’t very happy about being in the crate, but there was nothing that he could do about it, he was at this point familiar with the drill. Nonnie didn’t have to worry about getting him back into the crate at the vet’s because the technician’s were very good with Johnny and knew how to get him back into the crate safe and sound.
This memory isn’t just the one, it is actually an accumulation of several similar memories rolled up into one. Nonnie used that beach towel not only on Johnny, but also on her dog Zingo when he would get raw hide bones stuck in his throat and when she would enlist my friend Gale to click our ferret’s nails when she would babysit our ferret Nippy way back when. So this prompt wasn’t so far off the wall; beach towels, cat and a bowl of soup were not a strange occurrence in my life.
laurieanichols 